Are You A Mature Lover? 

by John Amodeo 

excerpted from 
The Authentic Heart
all rights reserved

Oh no, mature love? 

Who wants to be mature? It sounds so old and stuffy! Nobody wants to be accused of that in our youth-crazed culture! Young, unrealistic love - the weak kneed, starry-eyed kind of stuff - is based on fairy tales and Hollywood movies. We find the perfect mate, fall in love, lose ourselves to love, and all our problems suddenly dissolve. Sadly, by the time we awaken from this dream, we may find ourselves in the midst of a bitter divorce wondering what went wrong, since we played our part of the script quite well. Or perhaps we've hit a wall in our partnership, which has left us wondering, "Is this all there is?" The good news is that there is indeed a path to an emotionally satisfying and spiritually rich love and intimacy. We just need to find that path. Since most of us never learned this in our schools or families, we need some remedial education in how to create and sustain a healthy relationship.

Young people are capable of deep, mature love, but it often takes sufficient life experience - and learning from that experience - to prepare our heart for mature love. Midlife is an especially ripe time to deepen connections. Realizing we won't be here forever, we're newly committed to pursue what's important. We want to live fully while there's time!

Mature love is enlivening and even exhilarating , but we're wiser about it. We realize the human heart is tender and easily hurt, and we learn to hold our own heart and other's hearts with sensitivity and compassion. We realize being intimate with others forever rests on being intimate with ourselves. This includes embracing our dark side - our rough edges and limitations, rather than struggling to present an image of perfection to the world - as if that polished image will win us love. It's finally time to be ourselves and live from our authentic heart, not play games, attempt to change people, or try to manipulate ourselves.

The key to mature love is being real with each other, not fabricating a self that we think will be acceptable. We need to be authentic, not strive to look good. And we need to distinguish between the young images of love destined to disappoint us and a mature, authentic vision of what love really means.

There are two loves: Young love: I can't survive without you and Mature love: Life is richer with you.

In young love, we're consumed by the romantic belief that we need a partner to survive, rather than want a partner because it adds depth and richness to our lives. The dependency of unrealistic love keeps us from growing into a whole person. True intimacy requires two whole people coming together - or becoming more and more whole through being together. There's a resonance of two souls, not a merging.

Then there is the Young love where Love is enough and the Mature love where Love is a good start.

In unrealistic love, we believe that being in love has the power to carry us through all conflict and difficulties. But to convert the romantic fantasy into a living reality, we need to understand the dynamics of relationships. There are skills we need to develop if we're to move toward mature love. We need to know what we're really feeling and wanting, so that we can let our partner see and touch our inner world. We need to learn self-soothing skills - holding ourselves with love and gentleness when we don't get what we want, so that we don't react with rage and blame when we're disappointed. Set boundaries, but without pushing people away. Practices such as meditation, yoga, focusing, walks in nature - anything that helps us connect with ourselves - also helps us to love better because we then have more of ourselves to offer another person. We also need to communicate clearly, yet kindly - without the attacks and criticism that are destructive to love. We need to heal old hurts so that we're willing to risk trusting again, rather than holding back our love or administering secret tests of loyalty. We also need to keep our heart open even in the midst of conflict, so that we remain attentive to our beloved's feelings and needs, while expressing our own authentic self in a kind way.

Others can't fill our emptiness, but they can add immeasurably to our well-being as we be and become our authentic selves. This means acknowledging our vulnerabilities as well as our strengths - our beauty and our insecurities. Love and intimacy mature and deepen by being and showing our tender selves with a trusted person, not by hiding the parts of ourselves that we think others will find distasteful. As we reveal our authentic heart and softland into the arms of a warm, supportive person, the tender strands of trust grow. Love deepens. This is not a shallow love destined to decay when inevitable imperfections creep in. It's a mature love that strengthens as we see each other more clearly and relish the radiance that arises as we connect from our authentic hearts. §