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Tabloid Love vs. Real Love
6 Steps to Make the Most of Your Relationship
Brad and Jen split after five years of seemingly blissful marriage. Speculation rages over how long Tom and Katie (whose relationship seems a bit too, well, intense) will last. Call it "tabloid love." It's sudden. Sexy. Superheated. Short-lived. And all of us watching such relationships explode and fizzle from our grocery store lines and living room sofas should learn a thing or two.
"Watching these larger-than-life dramas unfold can teach us a lot about what love is not," says Susan Jeffers, author of The Feel the Fear Guide to Lasting Love (Jeffers Press, 2005). "Tabloid love, or what I call 'enchanted love', is often mistaken for real love, at least by the celebrities who experience it. These men and women are crazy with excitement and passion. It's too bad so many of them can't figure out that it is a guarantee that the initial attraction will wear off. It's too bad so many of us can't figure it out either."
Here's what happens to celebrities and mere mortals alike, Jeffers says. "Boy meets girl. Passion flares. Sex thrives. All is great until the passion dies down and real life sets in," she says. "We become dissatisfied ... resentful ... angry. We find ourselves bewildered and dismayed. And some of us act like our Hollywood counterparts, tossing aside our budding relationship and seeking those heady feelings with someone else. What we don't realize is that when the enchanted love wears off, it is then time to begin the journey to real love." If we don't have this important understanding, how can we ever create a superb relationship for life?
"I believe that a relationship is the best workshop going," Jeffers says. It can teach us about moving ourselves from the weakest, most selfish part of who we are to the most powerful and loving part of who we are where real love lies. Remember that the same feelings come up in a good relationship as a bad relationship. It's what we do with these feelings that makes all the difference in the world.