Love myths

1. True love conquers all
2. If it is true love, I'll know right away
3. There's only one true love for you out there
4. The perfect partner will fulfill you completely
5. Powerful sexual attraction/chemistry must be love

1. Going home syndrome: This happens when you seek familiarity, regardless of how bad it may have been at your house. If what you had at your house was good, then those good things will hopefully be planted in your marriage. But be careful about the things that were not so good! Here's where you have to be careful! Since you may not know other alternatives to dealing with familiar issues that you recognize are happening, you resort to the same tendencies you saw in your parents, which you swore you would never stoop to. Patterns of abuse (physical, drug, alcohol, emotional and verbal), emotional avoidance, lack of affection and conflict resolution will permeate unless you discover and deal with these tendencies if you have been exposed to them.
2. Unfinished emotional business: Your situation as a child may have left you with a sense of incompleteness in yourself. Perhaps your desire for getting closer to your father or mother was never fulfilled, or that admiration you were hoping to have for your parent never came. You therefore, unconsciously seek out someone to admire or someone to be close to, in hopes to close the gap, that piece of unfinished emotional business you have.
3. Fear of intimacy: Perhaps, because your parents were emotionally stingy, you have developed a fear of intimacy, or you may associate intimacy with a fearful event or trauma you suffered in the past. What you may also fear are the consequences of intimacy, and not just intimacy itself. Perhaps you tried to get to close to someone before and it ended up costing you a great deal emotionally. Perhaps you had a parent that died, or a close relative that died and your emotional openness died as well.
4. Low self-esteem: This type of emotional programming can begin to embed itself into your consciousness early on in your childhood if you were lead to believe or concluded that you didn't deserve to be loved. Perhaps you were abandoned or felt abandoned by a close relative or parent, maybe you've had a string of relationships that have all ended disastrously, or maybe they always ended in sexual encounters. Premarital sexual encounters can be a sign of low self-esteem. You may feel that your body, or the pleasure you can give another body, is the only thing that's worth someone's love.

1. Pressure: Pressure can come in different forms. Be wary of how it shows up before you:
1. Age: As men and women grow older, there is the "so-called" ticking of the biological clock. This tends to affect women more, since biology does have a lot to do with the bearing of children. This is, however, a wrong reason to want to commit to someone because it can blind you to have a healthy relationship.
2. Friends: Friends can be very influential in this game, especially if most of your friends are married or dating. You may feel left out if you're the only one not married.
3. Society: In social circles, you may feel left out, or different, just because you may not have a spouse or a mate. People tend to respect you more and treat you different if you are married and have children. They may think you are funny if you haven't married yet or if you are not dating.
4. Family: Your family can also be a pressure cooker, especially if your close relatives are always asking you who you are dating, or, why haven't you married yet, etc.
2. Loneliness & Desperation: Some, by craving closeness and affection, wander into potentially dangerous relationships because they are deceived by these desires and are not ready to contribute to a relationship since they come into the relationship wanting instead of bringing.
3. Sexual Hunger: Others may desire to be in a relationship just because they are horny. They are not necessarily attracted to the person, as much as they are attracted to a body for the sense of pleasure. Perhaps they are looking to indulge in their own pleasures as opposed to thinking about pleasing the other person.
4. Distraction from your own life: This is called "the grass is greener on the other side syndrome". Instead of looking within, you look without. You try to change the outside (environment or circumstances) instead of looking within you for a change to truly happen. So, you may be deceived by what another person may be bringing into your life as opposed to making a decision based on the influence this person can have on your character. They may be affecting your external circumstances, but can make little or no contributions to your spiritual, emotional and mental growth.
5. Avoidance of Growing Up: You may be caught up in an emotional program where you are looking for a replacement for your mom or dad as opposed to companion. You want to be taken care of and nurtured. You want someone to spoil you as opposed to help you grow and mature. There's nothing wrong with some nurturing and parenting going on in a relationship, but when you find yourself or your mate consistently filling in the role os a parent in a relationship, watch out! You may be with someone, or it may be you, who is simply refusing or avoiding necessary growth!
6. Guilt: Perhaps you are staying in a relationship because you would feel guilty if you leave the other person. You don't want to hurt them, because you know if you leave they would feel devastated. What you are feeling is sympathy for the person, not love. If you really loved them you would have left long ago, so that they could really find someone who could spark growth and maturity in them, or so they could work on their relationship with God.
7. Fill Up Emotional or Spiritual Emptiness: This is another result of bad emotional programming. Relationships with people won't help you fill voids in your life. If anything, they accentuate those voids and point you to a relationship with God. Only Jesus can truly fulfill you in every way. If you have an emotional dependency on anything or anyone other than God, you stand to live a very bitter and depressing life.

1. Fullness: It is fullness that makes a relationship, not emptiness. You should want to be in a relationship with someone because you are, and feel, full of love and good things you want to share with that person. You want to be bringing good things into a relationship, not looking at what you can get or take in a relationship. You want to look at what you can give to the relationship, not what the relationship can give to you. I'm not saying you shouldn't be interested in how distracting a relationship could be, or what wrong influences it could burden you with. Someone with the right focus will be interested in that, but that person will be able to look at that because they are looking at what they can give, not at what they can get. Someone who is looking to get something out of a relationship is usually blindsided enough so that they cannot even asses how distracting or negative a relationship could be for them.
2. Attitude of Openness & Willingness to Grow and Change: You should be willing and able to look into the mirror of your mate to learn more about yourself. You should consider your mate as a partner and companion to you on the exciting journey of life. Someone who will be there to help you, complement you, teach you and sharpen you spiritually, emotionally and mentally. The more you are open to the things your relationship will teach you, the better your relationship will be. If you are looking at the relationship in a one-sided way, you will not be able to be a functioning part of the relationship because it takes two to make the relationship a relationship!

You should not look at the relationship as a possession, but as a process for both your growth and your maturity in Christ. Marriage is the ultimate state of this process! You cannot acquire a relationship, you enter into one voluntarily. Many of the hang-ups that we have begin by you developing an unconscious possessiveness of that other person in your heart and mind, perhaps even before that other person is aware that you think that way about them! This kind of possessiveness promotes barriers that prevent intimacy from taking root and developing into true companionship.

1. Not Asking Enough Questions: Because you may think questions are not of a romantic nature, you may shy away from asking them of your partner. Don’t shy away from your natural curiosity. You want to get to know someone intelligently, not just passionately. Don’t get swept away by looks or your hormones—let your attraction to someone mature on the basis of their character.
2. Ignoring Warning Signs and Problems: Passion and intimacy are quickly choked by justifications that we make for continuing a relationship. If you are focusing too much on the potential of your partner because there are no other justifiable reasons for you to be together, then you are not being critical enough of the relationship. You are not being a realist. It is great to be idealistic once you’ve been through the "weeding-out" phase of your relationship. Unfortunately, many are first idealistic and then they are forced into realism once the wedding has taken place. This leads to much disappointment and bitterness in many marriages. Be aware early on of your incompatibilities together and any character flaws that may cause you to think twice about becoming a partner with that person. You will regret every single one of the warning signs if you don’t address them and ask questions from the beginning. Some warning signs or problems may be:
1. Addictions: To drugs, alcohol, smoking, food, sex, pornography, spending $$$, etc.
2. Debt problems
3. Control Freaks: Lack of control in anger, Obsessive/compulsive
4. Emotional Instability
3. Premature Compromises: If you are having trouble justifying yourself being with a certain someone, you may fall into this grave mistake. You may compromise criteria that you listed as necessary for compatibility because you may not be finding any, but may still be attracted to the person. You may say to yourself that you like something that person likes and then believe you have the same interests creating a false harmony between you and that person. Instead of confronting differences that you see early in the relationship you try to change your convictions on those differences because you may desire the relationship more than the person. Your fear of losing the relationship is greater than your love for the person. You try to fabricate the compatibility by forcing yourself to have the same likes/dislikes as the other person or you may try to force your interest and likes on your partner.
4. Lust Blindness: Lust blindness limits your ability to find compatibilities because you focus on the carnal relationship. This establishes a foundation on the things of the flesh that tends to crumbles quickly, especially when conflicts are experienced. A physical, sexual or passionate relationships is not substantial enough to carry you through the intricacies of intimately knowing someone. An intimate relationship is based on substantial things, like emotional, personal and spiritual compatibilities.
5. Giving in to Material Seduction: This mistake is made when you evaluate you r relationship in the material benefits you are receiving instead of the emotional, personal and spiritual intimacies you should build. You may love the lifestyle, the status or your partner’s looks more than you do your partner. This will produce a shallow relationship that eventually will crumble due to conflicts or loss of interest and fulfillment. Always see what you can build spiritually and emotionally rather than materially.
6. Putting Commitment Before Compatibility: This 6^th biggest mistake kind of sums up all the mistakes together. This means you are ready to make a commitment before you know whether this is the right person. It is easier to fall into this mindset and make hasty decisions when:
1. You are tired of dating.
2. You feel emotionally empty.
3. You’re in love with the relationships not with the person.
4. You are more concerned with getting something out of the relationship than nurturing, loving and caring for the person.