If you want a lasting, loving relationship and - above all - if you wish to find someone who will truly be able to love you completely and whom you can truly love back, you need to get to know the real him/her! Unfortunately it's something we often neglect when searching for love, particularly whilst 'inebriated' by the 'in-love' feeling we are experiencing. But it's so important! Even in a fully developed relationship (or even in marriages) we may only get to know what - for simplicity’s sake - I will describe as ‘the outer reality’ of our loved one (through questions such as 'how was work today?', did you enjoy that movie?', 'did you enjoy that hotel?' etc). You may think you know the ins and outs of your boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse, but if all you are limiting yourself to knowing is his/her ‘outer reality’, then you don't really know them at all and, one day, this will 'come back to haunt you', so to speak, with a break-up, or with infidelity, or with a relationship/marriage well below our needs or expectations. It is always the case when we find ourselves saying 'I don't know my husband/wife anymore... ' or 'he/she is not the person I fell in love with'.

So, what to do?  

In order to truly know someone we need to find out as much as possible about their 'subjective reality', which is made of their innermost thoughts, their innermost feelings, their fears, their innermost desires, their undisclosed fantasies, their memories and so on. Because those 'experiences' are unique, personal, deep, they are what truly makes us unique and also what makes us 'alive' (some people would call it our 'spirit', others would call it our 'consciousness', others again would call it 'our true identity'). They are the truly remarkable aspect of ourselves and, if we really love someone, we should want to explore that 'inner' part of them, because it's what they really  are. Needless to say, if you are searching for true love it's essential to explore the inner part of your him/her because it's what you will need to think about to evaluate your compatibility as well as to truly connect with him/her.

Moreover, and this is particularly important, we all have a need to be known this deeply, subconsciously or consciously, and to be accepted for the inner person we really are. In a successful relationship this need is fulfilled. In a non-successful relationship this need is not met.  Is this begining to sound true to your current love life?

 So, if we care about someone we need to learn to know those inner aspects of them and, of course, to respect them fully. It's the side of them that we need to connect with. Unfortunately we often limit our knowledge of our partner (and vice-versa) to the 'exterior' part of them. So, we learn to interact with them according to that outer side; we may indeed love that side of them. However, it's not the real them and, sooner or later, the real 'them' will surface and often be quite different from what the outer side may have suggested to us (or rather from our interpretation of it).   

Thus, when - by living with them or spending a long time with them - we find out more, bit by bit, about their 'inner' side (their true identity, made of those emotions, memories etc described above), we experience a 'clash' between what we thought they were and what we are finding out about their true selves. And we come up with sentences like 'you have changed; you are not the person I fell in love with’, and so on. But it's OUR fault, not theirs, for not having got to know them in the true sense of the word.  Of course, if it's your girlfriend/boyfriend or spouse who's accusing you of having changed, you know it's them who failed to truly get to know you..

What happens when we're at this 'disappointment' stage in our marriage or relationship?

Therefore, what we often do in such circumstances is either search for love elsewhere (eventually repeating similar mistakes) or begin to expect or even demand that our love partner or spouse behave in the way we had interpreted them to be like originally, from our ‘superficial, exterior’ understanding of them.     A gap between what’s perceived and what’s real increases; we think we understand and know our loved one but we do not; similarly, we think or expect that they understand us (say because of the long time spent together) but they do not.   There is no real understanding because our knowledge of our loved one (and vice-versa) is not based on deep knowledge of his/her ‘inner’ self, as explained above.  Whilst this takes place, it is also inevitable that our ‘interior’ self slowly becomes the dominant part of us (because it’s who we truly are); this is why it is essential that we present our inner self to the other as soon as possible so that they can make informed decision over compatibility and connectedness; similarly, we ought to find out about the other early in the dating process so that we too became aware of what he/she will truly be like in the future.

How to do this right now? 

You must learn to encourage him/her to open up about everything and anything, and for that you can use SPECIFIC CONNECTING TECHNIQUES. Improve communication between you two in multi-faceted ways, such as adopting some NLP COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUES. Then, as you find out who your partner truly is, if knowing him/her truly is loving them, then your love will be real.

But what happens if we already are in a relationship where true knowledge and true acceptance of one another (who we really are deep down) has not taken place over a period of time?

- If we have managed to maintain our identity one way or the other (not easy to do) and we are still emotionally and psychologically ‘strong’, we will eventually ‘rebel’: what I mean by that is that we’ll want to be known truly and deeply and we’ll want to – finally – be accepted for our inner identity (who we really are). Then arguments may take place which may or may not resolve successfully. I would always recommend some form of couple therapy because it’ll help speed up the process; at the very least, it’ll get you out of the mis-communication rut you two may have fallen in.

-  If we are not so ‘strong’, we will regress to what the other person is expecting us to behave.   This is detrimental, of course, not only for you but also for the other person.   In what way?   Some suggest that this ‘regression’ is one of the main reasons why some emotional disorders set in, or why some addictions (drugs, alcohol, painkillers, etc) arise, re-emerge or worsen.  Some people may try to find comfort somewhere else and cheat in this quest to be ‘known’ and accepted (and loved for who we really are).

This is a pivotal point if we are to embrace a truly successful form of love relationship.  We need to learn to get to know our romantic partner and (if we decide to be with them) to learn to accept the inner person they really are.  If we do not, we can never say that we love them, can we?  How can we say that we love someone if we don’t really know them?  We need to think about this seriously.  I have expanded on this subject in the first part of my relationship types page and – if you really want to understand how to create and maintain a successful love relationship, you may well find it very useful. When you are searching for love, always remember to truly get to know the person you are with before you can believe that you are compatible. Remember: if really knowing them is loving them, then yours will be true love.