The Search For Love Starts With You

By Robert Kirby

“Why does everyone else seem to find love so easily?” you say.

It’s the $64 million question that men and women always ask me.  And I’ll be honest, I get your frustration. You’re beautiful, accomplished, funny, caring, highly successful and financially stable.  You’re a total catch.  You’re committed, capable and you excel in virtually every aspect of your life.  But for some reason, love and finding love is a mystifying prospect that just doesn’t seem to work out for you. 

You might find yourself constantly jumping from one long-term relationship to the next, in a perpetual cycle of love and pain. The process always starts in the same way: caught in the heady connection of the initial romance, the love feels perfect and serendipitous.  Then, as the two year anniversary approaches, you find yourself feeling angry, constantly criticising your partner and pushing them to change.  The common ground you once shared slips from under your feet and without even realising it, it somehow all disintegrates.  You crawl out from the relationship wreckage feeling the weight of disappointment once again: all that time, energy and investment.  You say to your friends: “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.” But inside, you wonder: “What’s wrong with me? How has this happened again?”

Or, you might be the one who flits between first dates. Like a Trojan, you pound the online dating circuit and meet and greet and present your best self each evening: “It’s a numbers game, right?” At first, there’s a thrill and the whole process gives you a sense of confidence and validation, because the singles scene seems quite taken by you and there’s no shortage of people wanting to find out about you. But then, as the months pass and each evening ends in wasted hopeful anticipation, your heart feels empty, you’re exhausted and the grind gets to you.  You’re over it.

It doesn’t matter which situation you’re in: finding love and connecting with your love is not about changing your partner and their flaws. It’s also not about where you look or what you’re doing to meet your soul mate. It’s never about changing your external circumstances or searching for something outside of yourself to fill that void. Instead, as strange as it sounds, it’s about turning the mirror on yourself and looking at the way you can let go of the negative beliefs and past pain that’s holding you back.  Because it’s only then that you can unlock your heart and raise your vibration to attract the right partner.

It all starts with you

You’ve heard it before: “You need to love yourself before someone else can really love you”.  It all sounds a bit vague and esoteric, I know.  But, I want you to take a moment to really think about it.

Have you noticed that when someone says “I love you” to you, there’s a part of you that doesn’t really believe it? You might instinctively think: “Really? Why?” And then when your partner tells you all the reasons why they love you so much, you might – for a fleeting second – feel appreciated, acknowledged and special.   But then there’ll be a part of you that doesn’t fully receive it; that can’t fully own it.  And, so you run yourself to the ground constantly doing things for them, helping them and generally being indispensible.  Really, you do it to give them a list of reasons to love you.  But it’s not a sustainable way to exist, and if at some point, your partner forgets to acknowledge you or reciprocate in the way that you need them to, it can trigger you to bring up mountains of past anger, rage and resentment that you didn’t even know you had.

 “Why does this happen?” you ask.

I’ll let you in on a secret: you’re not alone.  All of us have defences that we’ve put up over the years.  As children, if our best friend let us down, we may have concluded that we weren’t worthy or lovable.  As young adults, if our parents divorced, we may have decided that relationships weren’t safe.  As adults, if our lovers and partners betrayed us, it again confirmed our unconscious belief that we don’t deserve to be loved.   Most of us don’t even realise that we’ve built these walls up around our hearts; we just see proof of our thoughts, words and actions in the kinds of unfulfilling, unhealthy and unhappy relationships that we attract over and over again.

Letting go of the junk from your past

What do you think would happen if you sent out a different message to the universe?  If you really owned your past and worked on yourself – confronting and dissolving your self-love issues, and forgiving yourself for all the times you gave your power away?

How would your heart feel if you gently accepted yourself, in spite of all the times you closed your heart to love because of your trust issues?   Or the times you gave in to sexual tension but never really let the other person in? Or the shame you felt when you cut your partner down and made them feel small, but only because you were the one who was scared of being vulnerable?

For many of us, we think that the solution lies in finding that special person who will fulfill our needs for love and support.  We search outside ourselves for someone to really appreciate and love us for who we are.  But really, anything that we try to change outside ourselves only makes things worse.   The world of single people – including those looking on internet dating sites or Facebook – can only align with people who have a similar vibration to themselves. You’ve heard the old saying: “Birds of a feather flock together”? Well, it’s true.  If your heart is broken or shut down, that is exactly what you’re going to attract.

It makes no difference if you’ve been married for 25 years or been dating someone for 25 days.  Opening to love and all authentic change requires you to look within and confront whatever is not in truth.

The mind, body and spirit are inextricably connected. It’s the integration of these aspects of you that will open your soul.  To do this, you need to clear the negative beliefs and move the energy around past pain, hurt and betrayal.  It’s only once you’ve done this, that you can love yourself completely and open your heart to actually receive and give love in an unconditional way.  Your vibration will rocket and you can then effortlessly attract the right person into your life.

Opening your heart to passionate love

For many of us, we need to hit rock bottom before we consider this journey of inner work. And that’s okay. But if you’re reading this, I can tell that you’re ready to clear the emotional blocks that are stopping you from being vulnerable and passionately giving and receiving unconditional love. You’re committed to attracting a healthy, emotionally available partner, and starting the process of really working on yourself.

“So, what do I need to do to let go of the stuff that’s been stopping me from attracting love?” you ask.

As people, we’re giant vessels of memories and our bodies hold onto past pain and trauma.  We’ve also held onto negative ways of thinking and become attached to wrong conclusions that we reached as children. So, it’s all about confronting these unresolved emotions and past events.  When you work on yourself and dissolve past pain and blocks, your container of self-love grows and your capacity to love expands in a big and beautiful way.  Your heart and soul connect and you feel so passionately congruent in life, that you’re then able to spread your light to those you love and receive from them, the love you deserve.

The work you need to do is the deepest and most effective in a safe group. The energy of the group with an experienced facilitator will support and guide you into the depths of your pain and back out again, so that you can embrace and feel the joy of passionate love.

Heartfelt Relationships  I’ve helped thousands of couples and individuals connect with their hearts, re-ignite the love in their existing relationship, or attract their soul mate.  It’s a beautiful process to facilitate, and on the weekend of 6 and 7 February 2016, I’ll be holding a FREE two day workshop in Sydney on Heartfelt Relationships. It will run from 9 am to 5 pm on both days.

It will change the way you feel and be incredibly transformational.  To book your spot or for more information, call us on (02) 9550 0099 or email me at info@robertkirby.com.

Robert Kirby is a leading relationships facilitator and mind-body integration expert.  He presents regular free workshops on Relationships in Sydney . The next workshop is on February 6-7, 2016 or more information, go to http://lv8.me/hrt