Romantic Love

Living with Spiritual Elegance

August 31st, 1997, and the news broke that The Princess of Wales had died in a car accident. The British people took to the streets in an outpouring of collective grief that was completely out of the national character. Dramatic and spontaneous, the people’s reaction took the Government and the Establishment by total surprise. Dreadful as the sight of the carnage in the Parisian tunnel was, on a symbolic level there was more at play than meets the eye.

Lady Diana Spencer had been the archetypal Princess who had found her Prince Charming, and happiness ever after should have been the storybook conclusion. As the carnage unraveled before our eyes, (The Princess grew up, The Prince was not what he seemed and The Castle was no safe haven) so did the mythology. It’s my belief that the sorrow was as much for the death of the Romantic Fairytale as for The Princess herself. So where does that leave the concept of Romantic Love in the human lexicon?

For those of us privileged enough to have experienced “falling in love”, its quite simply the best feeling in the world. The vocabulary people use to describe this indescribable feeling is always the same: “I feel like a teenager”, “I’m floating through my day,” “I’ve found my soul mate”, and so on. So powerful is this force that we simply forget that this Divine feeling never endures. I use the word “Divine” here because it’s my belief that for many of us, Romantic Love is the nearest we get to heaven on earth. But at some point we always come back down.

This initial stage of falling in Love is often described as The Rapture phase, and usually it has a dominant erotic side to it. Like a potent magical spell it can seduce and trap us into just about anything. As Al Green’s 1972 hit “Love and Happiness” eloquently puts it, “Love can make you do right, make you do wrong…”.

Without the riot of The Rapture phase of Love our relationships would run on a kind of earth-bound, survival pragmatism, making the world a very dull place. Some of the finest literature, art and music have their roots in the drama and glorious messiness of Romantic Love. And the stakes are high. The best feeling in the world has the flip side and when Love goes wrong, it’s the worst.

Seduced as we are into thinking the stars have aligned to bring us “the only one” who can fulfill all of our needs, this often leads to impossible expectations for our Romantic relationships. This mindset is doomed to failure and accounts for the high rate of divorce in our culture. But here I believe is where things become interesting. If we can retain and maintain our relationships beyond the unrealistic Rapture state we stand a better chance of truly getting to know one another and then there’s a possibility of a deeper love developing based in reality. Tellingly there is much evidence to suggest that relationships that blossom out of friendships are often more successful over time.

Whether our Romantic relationships are rooted in Rapture or grow out of friendship, there is only one truly effective way to create a union that supports a healthy life. And this next piece of the Romance puzzle is often tricky to put in place. If we can put our own fears aside and accept and support one another's individuality and separateness, we have found the way to Leverage our Love beyond the constraints of Romantic Love. This is the key that opens the door to the high-octane realm of True Love where we make the care of our partner's growth and development a matter of supreme importance. And this has the reciprocal effect of also supporting our own journey of Inner Elegance.

Fairy tale endings are not guaranteed of course and there are times when personal growth leads to the break-up of relationships. But in my experience when behavior is born out of genuine Love for one another, the long-term results are always rewarding and often deliciously surprising no matter the outcome.

Take a close look at your partnership and check the status of your Romantic Love. Do you constrain or support one another? Do you help or hurt each other? Does your relationship support a journey of Inner Elegance? And for those of you embarking upon a new romance with a clean slate, what a perfect time to set sail on a wonderful new adventure!