D-Empress, Contributor

D-Empress

Picture this: you meet your chocolate dream, you date and now enjoy significant other status. Then, there are children in the picture, and life becomes a busy schedule punctuated by joy and ecstasy, heartache and pain and all the consolation bits in-between. Falling in love was fabulous, and now this part?

Twelve months of happiness

Relationship psychologists report that the bliss of the honeymoon phase lasts for a maximum of 12 months. They say, like the addict's first high, we spend the rest of our lives striving to recapture those times when nothing could dim the euphoria of love rays which lifted us, soaring, to cloud nine.

Of course, we experience moments where we skydance in happiness. The birth of a new baby, the graduation, the joy of a birthday surprise, the warm, fuzzy feeling of living and growing as a family.

Wouldn't we be short-changing ourselves if we bought into the one-year scenario? Surely, our creator would not limit our capacity to give and receive such a beautiful gift to each other to 12 months. That said, we don't have to look too far to see couples weighed down with responsibilities and emotional baggage, to the extent that they hardly communicate, living as strangers who share the same bed.

So, how do we recapture those heady days? Is it possible to experience rapture on a constant basis?

Rising in love

Blissful living is even closer than we may imagine. It starts with our love anchors - our love orientation. I've often heard my beloved matriarch say that couples should focus on rising as opposed to falling in love. She teaches that by rising in love, we zone into a rapturous paradigm of thinking, doing and being with our loved ones.

According to her diverse wisdom, we get carried away in the thrill of early romance and literally do fall in love. While falling, we lose our grip of reality and begin to make completely irrational decisions based on illusions of fiery, lust-driven connectivity.

Taking time to work out whether this partner is an asset that will grow your family's investment portfolio is the discussion to be having. Checking whether his finely toned body will make for handsome children is, of course, also a consideration, but before all of that, know where your love ship is anchored.

Is your love vision set on a path that can articulate what a true partnership looks and feels like? One that values giving and receiving as opposed to giving and taking? Are you ready to be what it is you want to see, to give and allow yourself to receive? In exploring these questions the answers will reveal joyful dreams, spread out as wings as we rise in love.

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