John Lennon Got It All Wrong

Don’t get me wrong, I love John Lennon and I love the Beatles, but their song “All You Need is Love,” a lovely sentiment to be sure, is also far from the truth.

The wild and wonderful state of “being in love” is natures greatest trick to get us to keep the species going, but it’s no predictor of a long term, happy, satisfying relationship.

We need more than just love to make love work.

I like to call being in love “the socially acceptable form of insanity.”

It’s a cocktail of adrenalin, dopamine, oxytocin and some other feel good hormones oozing from your brain throughout your body (and it does feel soooo good), but when it wears off (and it always wears off somewhere between six months to three years) you then are confronted with a real, live, fallible human being, and if you haven’t chosen well, things will devolve pretty quickly.

For those of you singles who are desiring a lifelong partner, it’s crucial to understand that true, adult mature love is much more than a feeling.

Love is a behavior. It’s a choice, a decision, a way of being where you and your partner are devoted to each other’s happiness, health and well-being.

And, while there are plenty of good feelings to this kind of love, there are also times when you don’t feel the love and it doesn’t mean you don’t love them.

As you are connecting with potential partners add these to your selection criteria: connection, great communication, compatibility and most importantly a shared vision for the future. (And be sure to ask yourself, is this someone that I would enjoy being in quarantine with for the next time we are in lockdown?)

Wishing you love, laughter and magical kisses,

Arielle