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Click here to attract your own twin flame NOW!If you are a believer of twin flames, then you are a believer in eternal romance. However, romance has got a bad press of late, blamed for the impossible expectations it's said to bring: It must be unconditional, constant and, of course, invariably passionate. Anything else casts doubt on whether the love is genuine.
Relationship experts say this needless doubt can paralyse or kill a relationship, and it is our idealised notion of romantic love (elevated above other types of love only since the mid-19th Century) that is actually the biggest enemy of long-lasting relationships. The romantic myth that there is someone out there with whom your life will be complete, and conversely, without whom your life would be a half-life, would have us fall in love with love, and paradoxically not with one another.
But true love isn't about high expectations, it's about removing the burden of expectations. And twin flames isn't about falling in love, it is about standing in love. It is the understanding that love is found in the gritty ups and downs of being with someone who is as flawed as you, but is somehow perfect for you. You see through the imperfections, because you compliment and support the other unconditionally.
Twin flame is teamwork, it takes teamwork. A twin flame relationship will suffer its fair share of challenges like all relationships, but what it benefits from is the support that acts as a strong foundation between two people in a trusting relationship.
True love is more than a trick played on us by our hormones. It is more than the high we feel because of the endorphins and other substances released in the brain. It is more than the working of nature to ensure that people reproduce. It is more than sex for the sake of sex. It is not the lust or attraction that comes from the onset of hormonal youth, nor the need to fill the gap of loneliness or appease a crisis that comes with old age.
Neither is it the intoxicating sense of possessing someone and/or being possessed. This just can't last, because possessiveness crushes liveliness. It might feel good while it lasts, but you're in trouble if you confuse that high with twin flame love, which is something that you do need to work on, because the practicality of it is that this spiritual love needs to be nurtured within a physical relationship comprised of two physical beings with their own baggage.
Twin flame love is the capacity to be with someone and be free with someone. It allows more subtle qualities to come to the fore, such as commitment and generosity, honesty and openness. It welcomes life. And as testament to this, people from all across the world email in to tell me their true twin flame stories. For example, one couple met when they were 14, married when they were 24 and have been happily so for the last 34 years, while another, who knew they had found "the one" the minute they clapped eyes on each other, got engaged three days later and married three months after that. They have been together for 55 years.
Nevertheless, although such examples make for easy reading, the survival of such relationships (even twin flame ones) doesn't come easy. Some couples will be happy to allow their relationship to mature from roller-coaster passion into more realistic long term expectations of each other. For others, romance is not fancy gifts on Valentine's Day, it's getting in late to find your partner has done the washing up already. For some it's about give and take plus love. For others, it's just for that particular look of the eyes that makes their heart crash in their chest like a steel drum.
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Valentine's Day at Mickie Kent |
This does not mean we can't choke our relationship in the stranglehold of sexual expectation. We should think of sex as just one of the bonds and delights of erotic love, rather than as its touchstone. Sex is an unsurpassed pleasure - but you can have a tremendous erotic bond with a person and have sex only infrequently. Twin flame tantra is not always about physical consummation, but focuses more on spiritual lovemaking. This special support, and the view of standing in love, is a real healing notion, because true love heals - and is healthy for you. It is usually the absence of love that hurts us.
I often suspect that the things we see "wrong" in others are usually the things we most need to deal with ourselves, and perhaps for some of us true romantic love is the reward at the end of a road of self-discovery and acceptance. It could be why so many twin flame relationships initially suffer from one partner or both "running away" from the relationship at first. But if we put our trust in true love, it will not fail its purpose.
Finding someone and spending the rest of your life together is like taking a trip to the outer reaches of the solar system. You need the rocket boosters of romantic love to get you into space in the first place, but it's then a long, long journey after that first initial thrill. When in space, you'll certainly get cabin fever, but when you accept the other's faults, you'll appreciate the company and the unconditional support that twin flame love brings.
Although there is a romantic myth that many have fallen prey to, making many of us are naive about what the feeling we call romantic love offers. It has been distorted and manipulated by the entertainment media to suggest that true romantic love often ends in tragedy, more often than "happy ever after". It's mainly for that reason I am an admirer of Jane Austen and her works. I studied Emma for A-level English literature, and became captivated by its wit and warmth, its delicious irony and irrepressible high spirits. And two centuries since her first publication she is still captivating audiences.
Despite having been branded as "chick lit" in modern times, Austen was widely regarded well into the 20th Century not as a romantic novelist but as a steely, tough-minded, sardonic social critic. Yet, I have often wondered why "feel-good" stories are met with such derision, and romance is so closely associated with death and separation in films and literature. The film industry churns out its fair share - think of some of the best of romantic films ever: Brief Encounter, Casablanca, Somewhere in Time, Brokeback Mountain, Titanic, and Ghost to name but a few, which all share this common theme.
Some believe it goes back to William Shakespeare's successful weaving of tragedy with romance to heartbreaking effect (following in the tradition of Lancelot and Guinevere, or Cleopatra and Mark Anthony) in his play Romeo and Juliet, where romance grips Juliet's heart with tragic results.
Although his play may appear to teach that tragedy arises when the pernicious action of romance seizes young lovers' hearts, and that to be star-crossed, to be passionate, to be authentic means to die for love, arguably Shakespeare's play also holds the deeper truth that Romeo and Juliet just needed a little more faith, patience and maturity to see their love live.
Real love, therefore, like relationships, must be fought for, and that fight lies in perseverance, and the minutiae of daily living. Remember that although the spiritual is eternal, the physical is wrought with change, and our eternal energies will have to channel the changes that nature commands. If we truly believe that eternal romance is not fiction, then it's a right we have to work hard to provide for and protect. And you don't need to be Romeo and Juliet to tell that true love's a good cause to fight, even when the fight is lost, because true love not only points to life, but to many it is the point to life.
Yours in love,
