"The 100 most asked

questions about love, sex and relationships"

By Barbara De Angelis

(kam's notes taken from the book)

1 We have been brought together for the purpose of helping each other grow, and will be each other's teacher.

2 Our relationship is a precious gift-it will take us through whatever we need to learn to become more conscious, loving human beings.

3 The challenges and difficulties we experience will always illuminate our most needed lessons.

What are the characteristics of your ideal partner

E.G.

Available: free to be in a relationship with me and not involved with any one else.`

Interdependent with the world-home and the 6 billion member family.

Willingness to work through emotional damage from childhood.

Willingness to feel (emotional openness) and forgive.

Willingness to value love above all other things.

Free from all previous relationships.

Committed for life.

Not controlled by parents.

Ruthlessly honest

Won’t compromise to the point of resentment

(Deeper issues won’t start to surface till around 12 months)

Establishing needs:

What I need- How partner could demonstrate this

To feel cherished - Come over to my house to see me

To be entertained - go out for dinners

Commitment rebels are motivated by a need to be in control and a fear of losing control.

In childhood someone you loved took your power & now you think “people I love are the

enemy.” Commitment rebels don’t like being told what to do, don’t like making plans, don’t like talking about or showing feelings, are often procrastinators, can be unmotivated with no strong direction in life. A commitment rebel will panic the moment their partner starts using the “C” word.

Living together before your relationship has reached a significant level of commitment, maturity and emotional stability can actually speed up the disintegration of the relationship.

Words are bridges that allow you to travel from your private world into your partners.

Relationship is ultimately the commitment to loving your partner and doing everything you can to make the relationship work. (activly participate)

Some commitments both partners can take:

I am committed to learning everything I can about being a better person and a better mate, & I will do whatever it takes to make the relationship work.

I am committed to being emotionally open to and with my partner by sharing my feelings.

I am committed to being emotionally generous with my partner, not emotionally stingy & will express my love and affection.

I am committed to being honest with my partner and myself.

I am committed to learning how to love my partner as much as they truly deserve to be loved.

You can try so hard to avoid any conflict or confrontation, that you never have a chance to resolve any of the issues in the relationship.

The six levels of (deepening) feeling are:

1 Anger, blame and resentment

2 Hurt, sadness and disappointment

3 Fear, insecurity and emotional wounds

4 Regret, understanding and responsibility

5 Intention, solutions and wishes

6 Love, Forgiveness and appreciation

Underneath anger is hurt, underneath hurt is fear (this is were past wounding is), underneath fear is regret, underneath regret is intention, underneath intention is love.

Anger is love turned inside out.

1 Angry emotions aren’t bad – they are a natural result of feeling the love being blocked, and are only dangerous when they are acted out, instead of talked out.

2 When you suppress anger, you end up suppressing all of the emotions underneath it, thus cutting yourself off from the love.

3 When you’re unable to resolve your angry feelings in a constructive way, those emotions don’t just disappear- you store those feelings inside you. “Outrage that isn’t expressed becomes in-rage.” Can you imagine how much energy it takes to hold down all that anger? When you’re suppressing anger you may find yourself feeling tired, lifeless, hopeless. You’re using up your vital energy to keep the anger from showing.

“I guess I just fell out of love,” you tell yourself, but the truth is, you built a wall between yourself and the love by not communicating the truth.

You’re fighting for two reasons:

1 You aren’t receiving the love, support, appreciation or understanding you need from your partner, and emotional separation has built up between you.

2 Old repressed feelings are surfacing and magnifying the present situation into something more upsetting than it actually is.

Most conflict on the surface of a relationship comes from much deeper within the relationship, a place where you store ‘emotional tension.’

1 Verbally abusive behaviour during fighting must stop. Although you support your partner in cleaning out all their old anger, they can’t just dump those feelings on you.

2 They need to get some professional help and understanding their old rage.

When you suppress all of the unpleasant emotions, such as anger, irritation, hurt or sadness, you end up cutting yourself off from the love as well.

In numbing yourself to pain, you rob yourself of the ability to feel great joy.

Children from very strict or dogmatic religious homes often aren’t given permission to feel or express ‘unholy’ emotions.

Trust in your relationship enough to know that it will not only withstand disagreements and even arguments, but that it will grow stronger each time you transcend a conflict and return to love.

“The four R’s”-the 4 increasing stages of tension

1 Resistance-small things that bother you

2 Resentment-is when there are so many little resistances that build up, they create a feeling of resentment. You know your in resentment when your starting to feel angry,  frustrated, a little more unloving, a little more distant from your partner. Anger kills the  sexual attraction.

3 Rejection-usually separation.

4 Repression-is a state of emotional numbness. It is the most dangerous of all because  you can fool yourself into believing everything is “fine.”

The control freak has one of the most difficult kinds of emotional damage to heal, since by definition, a control freak hates being out of control, and that includes admitting they have a problem or giving in to an ultimatum by a partner.

Love Myth: “If my partner really loves me, he will know just what I need.

Premature intimacy- You wait and you watch and you postpone having sex until you can’t stand it any longer….And then you postpone it again.

1 You should be intellectually and emotionally intimate before being sexually intimate.

2 Don’t sleep with someone you don’t want to become like.

3 You should respect the person and their values.

4 You should have gone through some difficult times together. And have seen how

partner operates under stress and how they treat you under stress.

5 You should have discussed birth control, STD’s child support, etc.

6 Would you want to share child raising with this person.

Having sex can cause tremendous pain, humiliation and heartache for people who experience it with the wrong person at the wrong time.

Making love can be one of the most beautiful and healing experiences in the world when you experience it at the right time with the right person.

Women who have been molested or raped, abandoned or cheated on, may have so much anger locked inside of them that it prevents them from feeling joy, passion or climax.

Religious guilt or shame, fear of being controlled or going out of control also can prevent a person climaxing which is about totally letting go.

Infidelity doesn’t just happen. There are many moments when your partner made decisions to do things they didn’t need to.

Out of every crisis comes a chance to be reborn.

If you love someone, then support their quest for happiness, even though it doesn’t involve you and honour their wishes to not be with you.

The 4 stages of breaking up:

1 Tearing apart-cry, mourn, keep busy, friends, family, body care, avoid seeing partner

2 Adjustment-to your new life

3 Healing-no emotional reactions

4 Recovery- no emotional residue

You’ve probably spent years doing what you thought was right, but never asking yourself was it right for you.

A new partner cannot become part of you if the space in your heart is already occupied by an old partner or imagined partner.

Bachelor parties are adolescent, self-indulgent, sexist rituals that are insulting to the bride-to-be, disrespectful of every wife or girlfriend of the men who attend, demeaning to the female “performers,” and in general completely unsupportive of the true spirit of marriage.

Back to Articles