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• NEVER commit any hostile act against the person you love or once loved. Be adult and wise enough to walk away from a situation where you are
unwanted. Having failed in love, there is no good to come from receiving hatred in its place. Display grace, dignity, and honour, and others will respect
you for it however grudgingly.

• Don't take yourself or your love too seriously. Do NOT allow yourself to get depressed over love. Love yourself.

Falling in love

If we think of the process of falling in love as an act of imagination, we will better understand it. We are stirred by feelings we first experienced and learned in
Mother’s and Father’s arms. The ‘falling’ happens as we create connections with the powerful remembered feelings from long ago. We develop new and deeper
capacities for feeling. We imagine how life will be with this partner. We fill our hopes, wishes and dreams with this new person.

Part of this period is focusing on and appreciating the many facets of the loved one that speak so strongly to us. In a real sense, we invent a new life with this
idealized image of the beloved. This loving image will play an important role throughout our relationship, as life becomes increasingly affected by realistic
concerns.

The mutual exchange of courtesies and attention—is essential to create the full intensity of falling in love. Falling in love, inventing new ways of relating, and
glorying in this new dimension of being alive, gradually tapers off in intensity, but being in love can be long term if both partners learn and apply the skills of
loving.

We often assume that our partner constantly loves us. But a partner notices the other’s behaviour, interprets it, and decides whether or not to love. When our
appraisal of our partner’s action is negative, we go defensive and distance ourselves. When we appraise positively, we display cooperation, affection and enjoy
the partner. The process is continuous.

What Makes us Fall in Love?

We all have a model for the ideal partner buried somewhere in our subconscious. It is this model that decides which person in that crowded room catches our
eye. But how is this model formed?

Appearance

Many researchers have speculated that we tend to go for members of the opposite sex who remind us of our parents. Some have even found that we tend to be
attracted to those who remind us of ourselves.

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