Looking over Your Shoulder

Excerpted from Who Can You Trust? Overcoming Betrayal and Fear
By Howard E. Butt, Jr.

Trust is the basis for every relationship.
So what happens when that foundation cracks?

• A cheating spouse destroys the feelings of confidence and fidelity in a marriage.

• A friend's betrayal causes mistrust to spread to your other close relationships.

• An undermining co-worker creates a suspicious, tense, disjointed workplace.

• Organizational board members work in secret to form coalitions to assume control.

Trust plays a key role in every arena of our lives, because trust is the linchpin for all our relationships-family, school, church, work, and community. And how we sort out all the issues of trust and mistrust determines the direction our lives will take-and our ultimate happiness and fulfillment. How can we build deeper, stronger trust in our relationships? How can we cope when that trust has been wounded or destroyed? How can we live a life of trust without being naïve about betrayal?

In Who Can You Trust? one of America's most beloved leaders, Howard E. Butt, Jr., candidly shares his own real-life experience and expertise to help you answer these questions in a biblical and practical way. He helps you recognize and resolve past trust issues that have shattered your faith and your spirit. And he shows you how to let your faith help you build stronger trust in the future for all your most important relationships.

Chapter 1

Looking over Your Shoulder

The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your mistrust.

—Henry Lewis Stimson

Have you ever walked down a dark street at night in an unfamiliar city? You feel apprehensive and uneasy; each footfall behind you seems menacing; you quicken your steps. You tend to look over your shoulder, hyperalert for any danger lurking in the shadows.

Trust can take on a similar feeling-following an unfamiliar path, encountering new people, working your way along in untested relationships, having to depend on the reliability of others-not knowing what may lie in wait in the dim, unknown future.

We've been making decisions about trust from the beginnings of our consciousness. Few of us can remember, but at one time we were all trusting of just about everyone. As we aged, we experienced both trust and its opposites, abuse and betrayal. Our human databank of knowledge increased tremendously. Some experiences were good, others bad. As these experiences multiplied, we began to shape our view of trust and mistrust.

Child-development educators teach today that our behavior depends to a great extent on how-or whether-we resolved the trust-mistrust conflict early in our lives. Their viewpoint largely comes from the work of the late Harvard professor Erik Erikson. He held that the conflict between trust and mistrust arises in the very first stage of a child's development. Successful resolution of this conflict depends largely on the infant's relationship with the primary caregiver. If we encounter trust during our infancy, the stage is set for a lifelong perception of the world as a good and pleasant place. But if our caregiver wasn't dependable, then the crib and nursery turned shaky, and it's likely we grew up to be mistrustful and insecure. Both history and personal observation show us early or late that the capacity to trust, or the lack of it, bears out Erikson's view.

Somewhere along the way, all of us in one way or another have seen our trust mishandled, either on purpose or by mistake. Slowly we became a little jaded in our view of the world. Perhaps at some point in our lives we blindly trusted someone without question. But as our experience grew, a little voice began to warn us to be cautious with every decision concerning trust.

We quickly discovered that no one is immune from the pain of mistrust. Like walking down that dark street at night, we learned to trust-but also to glance anxiously to and fro for possible trouble.

Trust and mistrust carry immense power in shaping our lives. They influence our view of our parents, our friends, our mate, our children, our bosses, our government, our peers… and even our view of God.

To make the issue of trust and mistrust more complicated, in recent years our trust in trust itself has been shaken. The events of September 11, 2001, fractured bodies, buildings, friendships, and families and set the whole nation on edge. Thousands had faithfully left home for work in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon that morning, trusting to return by evening. They never came back. Their routine of trust and their very lives had been smashed-by the treacherous violence of terrorists. The terrorists themselves had betrayed their trusting welcome at America's historically hospitable borders.

Shortly after 9/11, our trust quotient took another terrible blow, this time home-grown in corporate America. Enron, WorldCom, and other business scandals shook the trust of millions of people, horribly damaging employees, investors, and retirement-account holders. The economic bubble of the 1990s first started shrinking and then collapsed amid charges of irresponsibility, deceit, and accounting trickery.

Betrayal wears many faces, so how do we find trust?

The economy is built on trust, as we learn facing shady stock-market manipulations. Civil society is built on trust, as we realize going through layers of airline security. Marriage is built on trust, as we hear couples taking vows hesitate to pledge "till death do us part." Families are built on trust, as we observe when parents neglect and children rebel. Democracy is built on trust, as we relearn during each constitutional cycle of elections. Friendship is built on trust, as we discover across our years of life and work in groups.

Trust holds life together. Stanford law professor Joseph A. Grundfest says, "Trust is hard-wired into everything from computers to the Internet to building codes.… Societies which have a low degree of trust are backward societies."

Today, we desperately need to discover new, workable levels of trust for our society to move forward-in our work and organizations, in our marriages and families, in our professions and our governments. And yet… and yet… trust and mistrust both live inside every one of us. Each response is an essential virtue. Sometimes we should trust. Sometimes we should mistrust. If we can't practice either of these contradictory virtues with equal ease, calm, and assurance, we're in trouble, whether we know it or not. And all of us, in various ways and places, are in trouble. When to trust? When not to trust? How to decide wisely?

It all begins with trust and trustworthiness up close-up close and personal-in the microcosms of our lives, in the crucibles of our character. For the decline of trust and the rise of mistrust have become hallmarks of our era.

I grew up in a time when doors to our homes were left unlocked. In our houses today, one lock won't do; instead, we lock, double-lock, install a deadbolt, and then set the electronic alarm. My first car, a 1940s-model used Ford, was often left on the street with the keys still in it-ready to run. Today, automatic door-lock systems shut tight our cars inside and out. We then install the Club, keep our windows up, and still hear antitheft devices scream all around us. Security services proliferate-across six pages of our local yellow pages. More and more, the erosion of trust dominates our lives.

Divorce rates have zoomed upward in the decades just past. More often than not, trust was the triggering issue. Marriage promises broken by adultery provided flagrant examples. But often it was more subtle and even more basic. Husbands or wives, one or both, concluded: "I can't trust this man or this woman to ever really care for me, or understand me, or adjust to me, or fully give herself or himself to meet my marital needs for love and intimacy."

It should be a given that the church is built on trust. But even there mistrust grows. Harold Myra, the publisher of Christianity Today, wrote an article in Leadership, a magazine for pastors, entitled "Trauma and Betrayal." It began with a story:

People had been upset with the pastor and wanted to get rid of him. They called a special meeting, and one by one, they publicly stood up and told all the reasons they didn't like him and his performance. Sitting in the congregation listening to all this was the pastor's eleven-year-old son and, of course, his wife.

… How could something so cruel and thoughtless happen in _a church?… Other men in other professions may get fired, but _seldom with such exquisite humiliation, and certainly not in front of their own families.

To publicly treat a person's feelings so brutally is to stab trust in the back, to turn the church horribly unchristian. Leadership's survey found that 60 percent of pastors have experienced traumatic events in their professional lives that were extremely difficult to accept. Of that percentage, 85 percent felt betrayed by persons they thought they could trust. When asked if they ever anticipated that anything like this could happen, 80 percent said no. Such experiences are not limited to senior pastors. Music directors, youth pastors, and other leaders within the church have similar stories of betrayal.

The laity-the people in the pews-also struggle with feelings of trust abused. When pastors become dictators and tyrants, when denominations turn autocratic, when clergy scandals break hearts and lives and tarnish the faith, ordinary Christians feel betrayed too.

Hardened by broken-trust experiences, some of us learn to move on, repressing the pain. Others of us can't forget, swearing we'll never allow ourselves to be put in such a position again. Broken trust, real or perceived, keeps shadowing our lives. If we have been betrayed before, fears of betrayal loom like dragons whenever anyone gets close. We're like my high school science teacher, who regularly said about our lab experiments, "Expect the worst, and you won't be disappointed."

So while we trust our boss, we still find ourselves fearing the worst. While we trust our friends, we wonder whether they will reveal our secrets to others. While we trust our fellow workers, we suspect they're undermining us. Unfortunately, it can get to the point where we don't really trust much of anybody.

In his book Jesus & Personality Theory, James R. Beck writes:

Anyone who has been deceived by a person who reneges on a promise or who simply does not carry through on responsibilities knows how devastating that disappointment can be. We want to trust others, but sometimes that trust is violated. And when it is, the hurt, harm and long-term consequences are many and extensive.

That hurt-of trust violated-can finally make the principles involved clearer: this clash between trust and mistrust forms the grid on which we live our lives. The grid is the framework for both our agonies and our ecstasies. From infancy's fears of falling, loud noises, and abandonment to grade school's best-friends rankings and middle school's off-and-on romances, we're on a continual search for networks of love, support, and security.

Awash in and infused by the estrangement acid of distrust, we still find ourselves on a ceaseless quest for the reassuring calmness of trust.

Looking Beyond the Surface

So the trust-versus-mistrust battle rages around and within us. But you still may ask, "Why is it important to understand trust versus mistrust? All I know is that I hurt and want to know how to stop hurting." I have a tendency to look only at the immediate problem too. Each trust-versus-mistrust conflict is so personal, so close. Yet it's part of much larger patterns.

This trust issue goes so much further than simply dealing with the pain of broken trust. When confronted with the topic of trust, I find that most of my thoughts turn to how to deal with the consequences of the distrust I feel right at hand. But dealing with only the at-hand effects of betrayal-or just, perhaps, with the general pain of mistrust we've felt toward others-answers only the surface problem. Unless we learn more about the effects of our past experiences, we will be tempted to repeat those same early processes over and over again and remain locked in them.

So it's critical that we take a closer look at the very foundations of this trust-mistrust paradox. We must understand how universal, perpetual, and pervasive its dynamics are. We needn't make our personal trust-mistrust decisions without a broadening overview of the issues involved and a deepening grasp of how our inner histories affect us. For in them we're actually being offered a wiser, more powerful, more joyful life in Christ.

We do need to look over our shoulder-it's a common, necessary reflex in us all-but we dare not take it to extremes. Unmoderated mistrust leaves us isolated and alone. Pure distrust-distilled over time-shrivels us; our lives turn in on ourselves; our existence becomes unbearable.

If we only look on the surface, why trust anyone? The risk is too high, the pain too great. Why take the chance?

Certainly we all have asked such questions, especially after feeling the sharp blade of hurt in the violation of our trust. But it becomes increasingly difficult for us to run away from the issues if we hope to live a fruitful life of fulfilling work and relationships.

Something within us wants to trust. Something within us wants to distrust our excessive distrusts. We don't want to turn suspicious and cynical, withering away. We have been built to flourish, knowing when to trust, when to mistrust, and how to discern the difference.

But before we get there, we need to face some hard truths about reality and about ourselves.

Are You Lonely?

By Mary Ellen Copeland, Ph.D.

(Fr http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/are-you-lonely)

Many years ago, when I was a young adolescent, an adult in my life said that she dreamed about a great chasm, a chasm so deep that she couldn’t see to the bottom of it, with sheer rock cliffs on either side. She was alone on one side of the chasm, looking to the other side. On that other side, people were talking to one another, laughing and appearing to have a good time. She felt totally excluded and felt that there was no way to get to the other side of the chasm.

This vision has stayed with me through my life. There have been many times when I felt like I was on one side of a chasm looking across to a place where everyone else was having a good time. For me it was a very clear description of loneliness.

My studies, and my years of work in the mental health field, have convinced me that loneliness is a key factor in all kinds of mental and emotional distress. In addition, I have found that the incidence of loneliness in this country, and perhaps in the world, is at pandemic proportions. The value of meaningful interpersonal connection in our society is often minimized.

The frenetic pace of modern society and the need to be very financially successful to “just get by ” seems to have eclipsed the importance of having good people in our lives who affirm and support us. Many of us have little or no contact with family members or neighbors. Our work situations may increase our loneliness. Some people say they have forgotten how to connect with others, or perhaps they never learned. I feel so strongly about this topic that I wrote a book about it, The Loneliness Workbook (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2000). This column will help you to think about loneliness in your life and give you some ideas on how to relieve it.

What Is Loneliness?

There are many descriptions of loneliness. They often contain words that describe feelings like despair, emptiness, hopeless and longing. Which one of the following descriptions of loneliness feels right to you?

• A feeling of having no common bond with the people around you
• Feeling disconnected from others
• Feeling sad because there is no one else available to be with you
• Feeling uncomfortable being by yourself
• Feeling that there is no one in your life who really cares about you
• Being without friends or a companion
• Feeling like you don’t have anyone who wants to be with you
• Feeling abandoned
• Being unable to connect with anyone on either a physical or emotional level
• Feeling left out
• Being alone and not comfortable being with yourself

You may want to write your own definition of what loneliness means to you.

What Would It Feel Like If You Were Not Lonely?

To begin changing any situation or circumstance in your life that is troubling to you, it helps to envision what your life would be like if you accomplished this change. For instance, a woman with a disability who felt lonely and disconnected from others said, “If I had several friends, we could call each other and chat. I could share with them how I ‘really feel,’ about the sadness of having a disability, about the excitement of developing a new career, and about my separation from my family. They could stop by and visit with me. Perhaps they could even take me out from time to time.”

Not feeling lonely may mean that you have a sense of balance in your life between being with others and being alone, and that you feel loved and cared about. This connection is so strong that, even when you are by yourself, you feel bonded to someone, that others are there and will be there in spirit if not in person for you always. You have true friends and close family and the security of having someone there for you when you need them.

Relieving Loneliness

If you are lonely and want to relieve your loneliness, you may want to take some action to create this change. Read and consider each of the following ideas and start working on those that sound right to you. Perhaps you can think of other things you can do to relieve your loneliness.

- Work on liking yourself. If you don’t like yourself, it is hard to feel that others will like you. This often makes if difficult to reach out to others. In addition, people who hold themselves in high regard are often more interesting and fun to be with. What can you do to raise your self-esteem?

One very simple thing is to work on changing the negative thoughts you have about yourself to positive ones. For instance, if you keep saying to yourself, “I don’t like myself,” try saying, “I like myself” instead. Say it over and over to yourself. Repeat it aloud whenever you can.

Another thing you can do to improve your self-esteem is to focus on taking very good care of yourself. Eat healthy food. Get plenty of rest. Do fun things that you enjoy. There are many books filled with good ideas on how to raise your self-esteem.

- Plan ahead. If you feel lonely much of the time, it may be because you don’t enjoy spending time alone. People who don’t like to spend time alone are often so desperate to be with others that their neediness causes other people to turn away from them.

To resolve this situation, make plans in advance for time you know you will need to spend alone. Fill the time with pleasant and interesting activities. Look forward to this special time. As you feel more and more comfortable with being alone, you will notice that the time you spend with others will also be more enjoyable.

- Join a support group. Support groups are one of the best places to make good friends. It can be any kind of a support group — a group of people who have a certain disorder or disability, people who are working on similar issues, a men’s or women’s group, a group for single parents, etc. The list goes on and on. The hardest thing about joining a support group is going the first time. This is true for everyone. Just be determined and go. After you have gone several times, you will feel much more comfortable. If you don’t feel comfortable after you have attended several times, you may want to go to a different group.

- Go to meetings, lectures, concerts, readings and other events and activities in your community. Check the newspaper for listings of events that sound interesting to you. Then go. When you have seen the same person several times, you can begin to chat with them about your common interest. This is how friendships and closer relationships begin. As you get to know each other better, you may decide to visit on a friendly basis or get together. Where the relationship goes from there is up to both of you.

- Volunteer. Work for a worthy organization or cause that you feel strongly about. You will meet others who share your passion, and perhaps make some new friends in the process. Most communities have an organization you can contact for volunteer organizations. Or you can call the organization directly.

- Reconnect with old friends. Most people can think of friends they had in the past that they enjoyed, but with whom they have lost touch over the years. If you can think of one or several people like that, give them a call, drop them a note or send them an e-mail. If it seems that they are as interested as you are in reconnecting, make a plan to get together. Then, if you both enjoy your time together, make a plan for the next time you will get together before parting so you don’t lose contact again. Do this every time you get together.

- Strengthen your connections with family members. Connections with family members are important to almost everyone. However, due to difficult family issues and lack of time and attention, these relationships may be distant or nonexistent. Renewing and strengthening these connections, if it feels right to you to do so, can enhance and enrich your life.

You may need to be the one to reach out. Invite family members with whom you would like a stronger connection to join you for a meal or a shared activity. Share the good things that are going on in your life. Ask them to tell you about the important and significant issues in their lives. Make a commitment to work together on a strong relationship with each other, one in which you will resolve differences amicably, without estrangement.

- Make sure that the relationships you have with others are mutual — that you are there for them as much as they are there for you. Relationships often diminish and disappear if one person is doing all the giving and one is doing all the receiving. I have a friend who has since moved, but who used to call me or come to visit me often. She talked constantly, sharing every detail of her life. I never got a chance to say anything. I felt terrible — disaffirmed and unsupported by her. Finally I told her how I was feeling. She apologized and thanked me for telling her. She said she knew that she does this and that sometimes she notices that people’s “eyes glaze over” when she is talking, but it is hard for her to stop. We made a commitment that every time we talk, we would each get equal time to share. It worked. Our relationship survived. We are still in touch by mail, phone and an occasional visit.

- Seek professional advice. Do you think you are doing something that turns other people away from you, but you don’t really know what it is? If so, you may want to see a counselor and ask her or him to help you discover why you have a hard time keeping friends. A counselor could also help you to resolve the issue.

Getting Close to Five

In all my work, I have come to believe that we each need at least five people in our lives that we feel very close to — family members, neighbors, colleagues, and friends — so that when we would like to be with someone, someone will be available. In each of these close relationships, you love and trust each other, you connect with and support each other in the good and hard times, and, most important, you spend time together doing fun things that both of you enjoy.

If you don’t have five people like that in your life right now, make a plan for how you will make some new friends and connections, using ideas from this article and others that come to mind. You may want to make a list of these people, along with their addresses and phone numbers, so that you can be in touch with them when you notice that you are feeling lonely.

Mary Ellen Copeland, Ph.D. is an author, educator and mental health recovery advocate, as well as the developer of WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plan). To learn more about her books, such as the popular The Depression Workbook and Wellness Recovery Action Plan, her other writings, and WRAP, please visit her website, Mental Health Recovery and WRAP. Reprinted here with permission.

The Truth About Finding Unconditional Love

(fr http://www.enotalone.com/article/6423.html)

Real Love: The Truth About Finding Unconditional Love and Fulfilling Relationships

With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough.

Why do most people spend their whole lives searching for loving and happy relationships but rarely find them? What is the "secret something" that all relationships need in order to thrive? Dr. Greg Baer found the answers to these questions while working with hundreds of individuals and couples. In Real Love, he shares his enlightening and practical blueprint for creating successful relationships and reveals the secret to finding and keeping what he calls "Real Love."

Like most of us, I was told as a child that if I did all the right things - set my goals high, worked hard, and followed the rules along the way - I would accomplish great things. And it was further implied that, as a result, I would grow up to be happy. All our lives, we've heard people declare that they'd be happy if only they had more money, or a better job, or more sex, or a bigger house, or more opportunity to travel, or something else. I was determined to ensure my future happiness by having an abundance of all those things and more, and from an early age I worked hard to earn them.

I was valedictorian of my high school class, finished college in two and a half years, and received the highest honors in medical school. After completing my internship and specialty training in eye surgery, I eventually established one of the most successful ophthalmology practices in the country. I performed thousands of operations and taught other physicians locally and across the country. I was a leader in my church and in the local Boy Scouts organization. I had everything money could buy, and I was a husband and the father of five beautiful children.

By the time I reached my late thirties, I'd accomplished almost every goal I'd ever set for myself, but despite all my successes, I slowly came to the terrible realization that I had not achieved the happiness I'd been promised. When I was standing in front of a group of physicians, teaching the latest surgical techniques, and everyone was admiring me for my knowledge, I felt relatively satisfied with my life for the moment. And some of those expensive vacations were exciting while I was actually in those far-off, exotic places. But when I was all alone, with nothing to distract me, I knew something was missing - I just didn't know what it was. I couldn't have worked any harder. I'd done everything I'd been assured would bring me the happiness I wanted, but still something was wanting.

I found it difficult to sleep at night and began to take some of the sleeping pills we kept at the office for postsurgical patients. When those were no longer effective, I took other tranquilizers, and before long I was injecting narcotics every night. I rationalized my drug addiction for a long time, but it increasingly affected my behavior and my emotional health. Then, one evening, as I sat in the woods behind my house with a loaded Smith & Wesson 10mm semi-automatic pressed to my head, I finally realized that I couldn't rationalize my behavior any longer. I knew I needed to do something about my life.

I went to an in-patient drug treatment facility, and after my discharge I participated in several twelve-step programs for a while. Getting off the drugs saved my life, but it only put me back where I'd been when I started using them. I was still desperately missing something, but this time I was determined to find out what it was. I tried individual and group therapy, support groups, men's groups, New Age techniques, and Native American spiritual groups, among others. Each had wisdom to offer, but the old emptiness I felt was not being filled.

In my searching, I found many others whose feelings were similar to mine. Most of them hadn't been addicted to drugs, but they all were missing the profound happiness they'd always hoped for in their lives. We began to meet together in our homes, where we tried a variety of techniques I'd experienced or read about. Gradually, we eliminated the things that didn't work, and we discovered some principles that were astonishingly simple and effective. People who had been unhappy for a long time, in many cases despite years of therapy, were finding the first genuine happiness they'd ever known.

As we began to figure out what worked, I started writing down what we'd learned, handing out a few pages at a time to the men and women who participated in those early "experiments." Eventually, my observations became two self-published books that have now been read by thousands. I've shared these principles with people all over the country, and as they've applied them, their lives have changed in remarkable ways.

When I was trying to fill my emptiness, and later, as I was learning to change my life, I made many mistakes as a person, a husband, and a father. Among other things, those mistakes caused the end of my twenty-two-year marriage. Learning - as I discovered - can be very expensive. Now I'm deeply gratified to see the results of what I've learned, and to share it all with you. My second wife and I are the parents of seven children between us, and we're happier than we'd ever imagined it was possible to be.

Certainly there is a demonstrated need for people to learn something different. Half the marriages in this country end in divorce. One out of three children is now raised in a single-parent home. Ten to twenty percent of us are addicted to alcohol or drugs. One third of all girls and forty-five percent of all boys have had sex by age fifteen (compared with five percent for girls in 1970 and twenty percent for boys in 1972). Twenty-one percent of ninth graders have had four or more sexual partners. Nine percent of adult males will spend some time of their life in prison. I believe those statistics provide overwhelming evidence that we're unhappy and looking for something that's missing in our lives. Thousands of people have found that "missing something" as they've implemented the principles in this book. And I have great confidence that you, too, will enjoy the same experience.

Relationships fail all around us every day - between spouses, lovers, siblings, friends, and co-workers, among others. But despite an abundance of self-assured finger-pointing, the people involved rarely have any idea what actually went wrong. As a result, many people seem to be caught in an endless cycle of disappointment and unhappiness, blindly repeating the same mistakes.

Lisa came to see me because she was having problems with her fiancé, Doug. It was obvious that she was angry at him. "We met almost a year ago," she said, "and we fell in love right away. I knew he was the one for me. We never spent a minute apart that first month. But now he seems to look for reasons to be away from me, and we seem to fight all the time. I don't treat him any differently, but he sure doesn't treat me the way he used to. I don't understand it."

Lisa had been married once before, to Christopher, and the story was similar. They had fallen in love immediately, and within six months they were married and certain they would be ecstatically happy for the rest of their lives. But in the first year of their marriage, there were already signs that the magic of their relationship was escaping them. They began to find fault with each other over little things. Roses and kisses gradually gave way to expectations and disappointments, each of which left a wound and then a scar. Slowly, the excitement of being in love became a distant memory. Unable to find the happiness they sought, they divorced after eight years of marriage.

Lisa had tried very hard to make her relationship with Christopher work. She'd tried sacrifice, pleading, complaining, compromise, self-help books, professional counseling, and visits to her minister, but nothing she did seemed to help. And because she didn't see why her relationship had failed, she was doomed to repeat her mistakes with Doug and to continue being unhappy. We can all benefit from understanding Lisa's experience, because it's typical of the pattern seen in virtually every unhappy relationship - not only between spouses, but also between friends, family members, people in the workplace, and so on. We've all had the experience of starting a relationship that seemed promising, only to have something go wrong that we didn't understand, and when that happened, we were left feeling disappointed or worse. We must understand what happens in these situations, or we'll repeat the process again and again.

When we're unhappy, it seems natural for us to blame a partner - a spouse, a friend, a child, even a relative stranger - for our feelings, mainly because that's what everyone else does. All our lives we've heard variations of statements like "You make me so mad," or "He makes me so angry," until we've come to believe that other people have the power to determine how we feel. Because other people have often pointed out how their anger was caused by our mistakes, we have learned to justify our anger by pointing out the mistakes of others. And because people are always making mistakes, it's easy to find justification for our blaming and anger.

Sadly, it's a common pattern: If we become unhappy in our relationships, we turn our partners into scapegoats for everything we don't like, and we blame them for all the unhappiness in our lives, including the unhappiness we carried with us for the many years before we even met them. But we are mistaken to blame our partners for our negative feelings. It's just the excuse we use because we feel bad, we don't know why, and we need someone other than ourselves to blame. Until we understand that, we cannot learn to have truly loving and lasting relationships.

The Missing Ingredient

Imagine that after a violent storm, you and I are shipwrecked on a barren island in the middle of the ocean. After a week with nothing to eat, I begin to complain that you're not doing enough to provide food for me, and the hungrier I become, the more I complain. Not an hour goes by that I don't remind you that I'm starving and you are to blame.

You must think I'm insane. Obviously you didn't cause my hunger. I'm starving because a storm wrecked our ship and left us stranded on an island without food - and you had nothing to do with any of that. My blaming you is not only wrong, it's ineffective, because it does nothing to help solve our predicament. Two starving people with no source of food cannot possibly give each other what they need, and no amount of anger or blame can change that.

And so it is with relationships. When we're unhappy, our misery is not the fault of our partner. Blaming that person is therefore foolish, wasteful, and destructive, because no matter how much we demand or insist, he or she cannot make us happy. We're unhappy because we're starving for the one ingredient that's most essential to genuine happiness, and it was missing long before we met our partner.

That ingredient - the one thing that creates happiness and fulfilling relationships - is Real Love, unconditional love. It's that simple. When we learn what Real Love is, and when we find it, our unhappiness disappears just as surely as hunger vanishes in the presence of food. Loving relationships then become natural and effortless. But most of us have not experienced Real Love. As a result, we're emotionally and spiritually starving and are unable to make each other happy, no matter how hard we try.

It's Real Love when other people care about our happiness without any concern for themselves. They're not disappointed or angry when we make our foolish mistakes, when we don't do what they want, or even when we inconvenience them personally.

Sadly, few of us have either given or received that kind of love, and without it we experience a terrible void in our lives, which we try to fill with money, power, food, approval, sex, and entertainment. But no matter how much of those substitutes we acquire, we remain empty, alone, afraid, and angry, because the one thing we really need is Real Love. Without it, we can only be miserable; with it, our happiness is guaranteed.

When I use the word happiness, I do not mean the fleeting pleasure we get from money, sex, and conditional approval. Nor do I mean the brief feeling of relief we experience during the temporary absence of conflict or disaster. Real happiness is not the feeling we get from being entertained or making people do what we want. Genuine happiness is a profound and lasting sense of peace and fulfillment that deeply satisfies and enlarges the soul. It doesn't go away when circumstances get difficult. It survives and even grows through hardship and struggle. True happiness is our entire reason to live, and that kind of happiness can only be obtained as we find Real Love and share it with others. With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough.

The greatest fear of all for a human being is to be unloved and alone. As a physician, I saw that confirmed many times by people who knew they were dying. Those people were consistently more afraid that no one cared about them and that they would die alone than they were of death itself. We all have a deep yearning to feel connected to each other, and when that connection is missing, we are terrified.

When someone is genuinely concerned about our happiness, we do feel that connection to another person. We feel included in his or her life, and in that instant we are no longer alone. Each moment of unconditional acceptance creates a living thread to the person who accepts us, and these threads weave a powerful bond that fills us with a genuine and lasting happiness. Nothing but Real Love can do that. In addition, when we know that even one person loves us unconditionally, we feel a connection to everyone else. We feel included in the family of all mankind, of which that one person is a part.

Because so few of us have ever experienced unconditional love in our lives, and because the effect is so powerful, I want to give you a small taste of it. I encourage you to slow down right now and really take your time as you read the next four paragraphs. If possible, read them in a room by yourself and take the time to contemplate them deeply as you open your mind to the possibilities they suggest.

Picture yourself relaxing in the back of a chauffeur-driven car. You're on the way to a town two hours away. It's a small town you've never visited. In fact, no one knows about this place but you and the people who live there. Although it's a beautiful place situated in a lovely valley, you're not going there to see the sights. You're going because everyone there is genuinely happy. They're happy because they all feel loved. In this place there is no fear or anger. And you're going because they've invited you.

As you pull up to the house where you'll stay, dozens of people surround your car, touch you gently, help you into the house, ask about your trip, and look at you in a way you've never seen or felt before. You sense with absolute certainty that the only concern of everyone in that town is your happiness. Because they have everything that really matters in life - because they feel loved and happy themselves - they don't need you to do anything for them, and you know that. So you know there is nothing you can do to disappoint them or hurt them.

As you communicate with these new friends, you can see that it doesn't matter to them whether you're smart or pretty or handsome. You don't have to do anything to impress them or get them to like you. They truly don't care if you say something stupid or if you make mistakes. It finally and powerfully occurs to you that it's impossible to be embarrassed or ashamed around these people - because they love you no matter what you do.

That is the feeling of being unconditionally loved - and many of us simply can't imagine it, even as a mental exercise. We've been judged, criticized, and conditionally supported for so long that the idea of being unconditionally accepted is inconceivable. But I have seen what happens when people consistently take the steps that lead to finding Real Love, which I'll be discussing in the following chapters. For now I simply want to assure you that you, too, can find this kind of happiness and that it will utterly transform your life. I ask you to temporarily put your doubts on the shelf and allow for the possibility that Real Love exists, and that you can find it. I make that suggestion because in an atmosphere of skepticism and fear, you cannot experience Real Love, even when it's offered.

Feeling loved and becoming unconditionally loving doesn't happen all at once. You won't lose your fear, pain, disappointment, and anger overnight. Experiencing Real Love takes time and patience, and you'll stumble and fall along the way, as I do every day. But the journey is well worth every effort. This is not a fantasy. Thousands of people have successfully used this simple process to find Real Love, genuine happiness, and fulfilling relationships.

At this point, you may be thinking, But we can't just unconditionally love people when they're wrong. Somebody has to speak up when mistakes are made. And it's true that we sometimes do have the responsibility to teach and correct people - children and employees, for example. But that never has to be done with disappointment and anger, the two signs that always reveal that our true motivation is to get something for ourselves - and that is not Real Love.

You might also be worried that loving unconditionally would turn you into a doormat, to be used by everyone around you. But loving people unconditionally does not mean you have the responsibility to give them everything they want. That would just be indulgent and irresponsible. When we love people unconditionally, we accept them as they are and contribute to their happiness as wisely as we can. That does not imply that we respond to their every demand.

Real Love is "I care how you feel." Conditional love is "I like how you make me feel." Conditional love is what people give to us when we do what they want, and it's the only kind of love that most of us have ever known. People have liked us more when we made them feel good, or at least when we did nothing to inconvenience them. In other words, we have to buy conditional love from the people around us.

It's critical that we be able to distinguish between Real Love and conditional love. When we can't do that, we tend to settle for giving and receiving conditional love, which leaves us empty, unhappy, and frustrated. Fortunately, there are two reliable signs that love is not genuine: disappointment and anger. Every time we frown, sigh with disappointment, speak harshly, or in any way express our anger at other people, we're communicating that we're not getting what we want. At least in that moment, we are not caring for our partner's happiness, but only for our own. Our partner then senses our selfishness and feels disconnected from us and alone, no matter what we say or do.

Most of us have received little, if any, Real Love. We prove that every day with the evidence of our unhappiness - our fear, anger, blaming, withdrawal, manipulation, controlling, and so on. People who know they're unconditionally loved don't feel and do those things. But most of us have been taught since childhood to do without Real Love and to settle instead for giving and receiving conditional love. Let me use myself as an example. As a child, I was thrilled when my mother smiled at me, spoke softly, and held me, because I knew from those behaviors that she loved me. I also noticed that she did those pleasant things more often when I was "good" - when I was quiet, grateful, and cooperative. In other words, I saw that she loved me more when I did what she liked, something almost all parents understandably do.

When I was "bad" - noisy, disobedient, and otherwise inconvenient - she did not speak softly or smile at me. On those occasions, she frowned, sighed with disappointment, and often spoke in a harsh tone of voice. Although it was certainly unintentional, she clearly told me with those behaviors that she loved me less, and that was the worst pain in the world for me.

Giving or withholding acceptance based on another person's behavior is the essence of conditional love, and nearly all of us were loved that way as children. When we made the football team, got good grades, and washed the dishes without being asked, our parents naturally looked happy and said things like "Way to go!" or "I'm so proud of you." But when we failed a class at school, or tracked mud across the carpet, or fought with our siblings, or wrecked the car, did our parents smile at us then? Did they pat us on the shoulder and speak kindly as they corrected us? No, with rare exceptions they did not. Without thinking, they frowned, rolled their eyes, and sighed with exasperation. They used a tone of voice that was not the one we heard when we did what they wanted and made them look good. Some of us were even yelled at or physically abused when we were "bad."

Other people in our childhood also gave us conditional approval. Schoolteachers smiled and encouraged us when we were bright and cooperative, but they behaved quite differently when we were slow and difficult. Even our own friends liked us more when we did what they liked. In fact, that's what made them our friends. And that pattern of conditional approval has continued throughout our lives. People continue to give us their approval more often when we do what they want. And so we do what it takes to earn it.

Although it is given unintentionally, conditional acceptance has an unspeakably disastrous effect, because it fails to form the bonds of human connection created by Real Love. As a result, no matter how much conditional love we receive, we still feel empty, alone, and miserable. And although we like to believe otherwise, because we have received conditional love from others all our lives, that's what we tend to give to those around us. We naturally pass on what we were given.

We like to believe we're unconditionally loving, but in most cases we're not. We prove that each time we're disappointed or irritated with another person. We like to think we unconditionally love our spouse or children, but then we become annoyed when they don't do what we want, or when they're not grateful for the things we do for them. As we've discussed, the origin of our irritation is not what they've done (or not done), but the lack of Real Love in our own lives. Fortunately, you can now learn how to make decisions that will bring more Real Love and genuine happiness into your life.

If you're unhappy, don't look to your partner for the cause. You're unhappy because you don't feel unconditionally loved yourself and because you're not sufficiently unconditionally loving toward others. Both conditions have existed for a long time, usually from early childhood. Because your parents are responsible for the love you received as a child, and because any child who does not receive sufficient Real Love is necessarily filled with emptiness and fear, your parents are certainly responsible, to a large extent, for the way you feel and function as an adult. But you need to understand that as an adult you have become increasingly responsible for your own happiness. And so, exactly how much can you hold your parents accountable for your present condition? That would be impossible to quantify. But no matter what the exact extent of your parents' responsibility, it is definitely not productive to blame them for your present unhappiness - while it is useful to understand their role in your life. Understanding is a simple, realistic assessment of how things are, but blame implies anger, which can only be harmful to both yourself and others.

I've never met a parent who got up in the morning and thought, Today I could unconditionally love and teach my children and fill their lives with joy. But, no, I think I'll be selfish, critical, and demanding instead. You need to understand that your parents loved you as well as they knew how and that they certainly didn't set out to cause you emotional pain. The fact is that if they themselves didn't have enough experience with Real Love, they couldn't possibly have given you the Real Love you required. Moreover, you are now responsible for the decisions that will make you loving and happy, and if you continue to be resentful and angry, you will not make wise decisions in the present.

When I talk to people about their unhappy lives and relationships, I don't dwell on the past. I don't make them victims of their past experiences. However, I find that it is occasionally useful to make them aware of what effect their past has had on their present unhappiness. Cheryl was very unhappy, and she blamed it all on her husband. I explained to her that her husband was not the cause of her unhappiness. "Your life was incomplete long before you met your husband," I told her. "You came to your marriage already missing something, and you hoped your husband would supply what was missing and make you happy. When he didn't do that, you blamed him for not fixing everything in your life. You were missing the one thing in life that we all must have in order to be happy and to have loving relationships."

"And what's that?" asked Cheryl.

"Real Love - unconditional love. When people don't get enough unconditional love as children, they feel terribly empty and afraid. People who feel empty and afraid can't be happy, and they can't have loving relationships, because they're too busy filling their own needs and protecting themselves. You hoped your husband would love you unconditionally, but he couldn't because he'd never been unconditionally loved himself. He, in turn, hoped you would unconditionally love him, but you couldn't, either, because you hadn't been unconditionally loved in your childhood. Neither of you had the love that's required to make a successful relationship. So you tried to make each other happy with other things: praise, sex, money, control, things like that. But those things never last for long."

"But I did feel loved. My parents did love me," Cheryl insisted.

I've heard many people say that, and they're always sincere. Who, after all, wants to believe his own parents didn't love him? "How often," I asked her, "did your father hold you and tell you he loved you? How many times each day was he obviously delighted when you entered the room? How often did your mother sit with you and ask what was happening in your life - just to listen, not to give advice?"

Cheryl was speechless. Although she'd been raised by parents who were as good as any she knew, she couldn't think of a single time when any of those things had happened. I continued. "What happened when you made mistakes and disappointed your parents? Did you feel just as loved then as when you were 'good'?"

As Cheryl described the details of her childhood, it became obvious that her father had mostly avoided her. Her mother had been kind when Cheryl was obedient, but she was critical and harsh when Cheryl "misbehaved." Finally, Cheryl realized that she had never felt unconditionally loved. I then made it clear that there was no blaming in this, just an attempt to understand the real cause of the fear and anger in her life.

Once Cheryl understood that her emptiness, fear, and anger had been caused by a lifetime of feeling unloved, two very important things happened: First, she experienced a dramatic change in attitude toward her husband. She stopped blaming him for her unhappiness. That blame alone had nearly destroyed their marriage. Second, she began to take the steps necessary to find the Real Love she needed, and that changed her life completely. We often need to see that we were not unconditionally loved in the past, not so we can blame our parents or any particular person, but so we can stop blaming the partners we have now and begin to find the Real Love we need to create the genuine happiness we all want.

Some of you may believe that if our childhood was less than perfect, we just need to "get over it," like a bad dream. You may think that what we were given (or not given) so long ago couldn't possibly continue to affect us now. But look what happened to Cheryl because she'd failed to receive Real Love as a child. Without the most important ingredient for happiness, she grew up empty and afraid. As I spoke with her further, I learned that she'd reacted to her emptiness and fear by manipulating and controlling all of the people around her, not just her husband. She was destroying her life, and without Real Love that's what people continue to do, all the way into their seventies and eighties.

You can't build a solid house on a rotten, shifting foundation. But if you were not unconditionally loved as a child, that's the kind of foundation you have, and no effort you put into the walls, windows, and doors will ever be fulfilling. You have to fix the foundation. Fortunately, as you find Real Love now, you can heal all the wounds of the past, repair the foundation, and build the kind of life you've always wanted.

Imagine yourself again in the middle of the ocean, but this time there's no boat, no island, and no one to help you. You're drowning out there all by yourself. You're exhausted and terrified. Suddenly, a man grabs you from behind and drags you under the water. Completely overwhelmed by fear and anger, you struggle wildly to get free, but no matter what you do, your head remains underwater.

Just as you're about to pass out and drown, I arrive in a small boat and pull you from the water. After catching your breath, you turn and see that the man who dragged you under is actually drowning himself and only grabbed you in a desperate attempt to save his own life. He wasn't trying to harm you at all. Once you realize that, your anger vanishes immediately and you quickly help him into the boat.

That's how it is with relationships. People really don't do things with the principal goal of hurting you. When people hurt you, they're like the man who dragged you under the water - they're simply drowning and trying to save themselves. People who don't feel unconditionally loved are desperate and will do almost anything to eliminate the pain of their emptiness. Unfortunately, as they struggle to get the things that give them temporary relief - approval, money, sex, power, and so on - their behavior often has a negative effect on the people around them, including you. But that is not their first intent. Other people hurt us only because they're reacting badly to the pain of feeling unloved and alone. When we truly understand that, our feelings toward people, and our relationships with them, will change dramatically.

Without Real Love, we feel like we're drowning all the time. In that condition, almost everything seems threatening to us, even the most innocent behaviors. When people get angry or criticize us, we don't see them as drowning and protecting themselves. We become afraid, defensive, and angry, and we respond by using behaviors that may hurt them. Naturally, they react by protecting themselves and hurting us with even greater intensity, and until we understand that Real Love is the solution, we can only perpetuate this cycle of self-protection and injury.

Most relationships fail because we become angry and blame our anger on something our partner did or did not do. We need to remember that our anger is actually a reaction to the feelings of helplessness and fear that result from a lifetime of struggling to survive without unconditional love. Getting angry and assigning blame may give us a fleeting sense of power that momentarily relieves our fear, but those feelings originate within us, not with our partner's behavior.

When the man dragged you under the water, he did not cause your angry reaction. Your anger was the result of a series of many events that led to your drowning in the ocean, and also a result of your own decision to blame that man for drowning you. You weren't murderously angry with the man in the water because of a single tug on your shoulder. You were angry because you'd been spit out in the middle of the ocean with no chance for survival and because you were exhausted and frightened and about to die. What the other man did just added the last straw to the camel's back and appeared to be the cause of your anger.

Similarly, the anger we feel toward our partners results from past events (whether or not we felt Real Love - mostly from our parents) and present decisions (whether we choose to be angry or loving with our partners). We're reacting to a lifetime of trying to survive without unconditional love, and anger is an understandable response because it makes us feel less helpless and afraid - for the moment. It protects us and briefly makes us feel better. But it never makes us feel loved or happy or less alone.

We need to learn a better response to our pain than blaming and anger, and we can. As we come to understand that our partners are not to blame for our unhappiness, we can better exercise self-control to curb our anger. Then, as we begin to find and experience Real Love, we'll feel as if we're being pulled out of the water and into the boat. In the absence of the terrible fear that accompanies drowning, we'll no longer have a need to protect ourselves with anger - or any of the other unproductive behaviors we use in relationships, such as lying, acting hurt, and withdrawing. Our ability to form and maintain loving relationships will then come simply and easily.

Just as being pulled into the boat instantly allowed you to gain the correct perspective on the man who was drowning you, understanding Real Love will provide you with the ability to discern the difference between the "right" and "wrong" decisions you make in your life and in your relationships. First, I suggest that being genuinely happy is the ultimate goal in life and is therefore also the ultimate good. Second, because Real Love is absolutely essential to our happiness, I suggest that anything that interferes with our ability to feel and share unconditional love is necessarily "bad" or "wrong," while anything that promotes our ability to feel loved and share that love with others is "right" and "good."

TRUE FRIENDSHIP

(fr http://www.christianresearchservice.com/True_Friendship.htm)
For those who have experienced the joy of true friendship,
and for those who are searching for a true friend...

A true friend is there through the
good and bad, beautiful and
ugly, hot and cold, rain or shine

A true friend can't wait to see you,
embrace you, hug you, love you,
laugh with you, talk with you

A true friend is your backseat driver,
protector, adviser, righthand-man,
partner, consultant, one-of-a-kind

A true friend will not tolerate excuses,
condone compromise, or lie for you

A true friend is your bosom-buddy,
pal, confidant, sidekick, colleague,
comrade-in-arms, companion
A true friend is fifty-fifty, will tell you
anything, keep a secret, correct you
when you are wrong, and advise you
to do that which is right

A true friend is bold, courageous,
fearless, and will be at your side
in a moment's notice, under
any circumstances

A true friend will not patronize you,
forsake you, lie to you, or betray you

A true friend will stand shoulder-to-shoulder
with you through life's toughest times, and
will not back down in the face of adversity

A true friend is not dictated to or ruled-over
by others, but listens to you, cares only for
you, and puts you first in his life--above and
beyond everything and everyone on Earth

A true friend will share his life experiences
with you, and tell you the truth in love,
even if it hurts and makes you mad

A true friend will stand up for you in the
midst of your persecution, and guard
you in a storm of rocks and arrows

A true friend will keep a secret, correct
you, encourage you, and love you,
even when you are wrong

A true friend will warn you of danger,
warn you when you are being deceived,
tell you "Don't do it!" and always be
there for you...no matter what

A true friend will hold your hand tightly,
support you, stop you from falling, crawl
with you, and carry you if you can't walk

A true friend will feel your pain and
sorrow, suffer with you, cry with you,
and gently dry the tears from your face

A true friend will trust you with his life,
take you at your word, and tell you
to get tough and stop your whining

A true friend will stand face-to-face with
your enemies, defend you, protect you,
fight for you, make sacrifices for you,
and even die for you

A true friend will look ahead for you,
be there with you, lead you, guide you,
walk side-by-side with you, guard you,
follow behind you, and watch your
back to keep you safe

A true friend will give you his last morsel
of food, last drop of water, last breath of air

A true friend's shoulder is stained with your tears...

Friendship

by http://www.allaboutgod.com/true-friendship.htm

True Friendship - Recognition

How can we find true friendship in this often phony, temporary world? Friendship involves recognition or familiarity with another's personality. Friends often share likes and dislikes, interests, pursuits, and passion.

How can we recognize potential friendship? Signs include a mutual desire for companionship and perhaps a common bond of some kind. Beyond that, genuine friendship involves a shared sense of caring and concern, a desire to see one another grow and develop, and a hope for each other to succeed in all aspects of life. True friendship involves action: doing something for someone else while expecting nothing in return; sharing thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment or negative criticism.

True Friendship - Relationship, Trust, Accountability

True friendship involves relationship. Those mutual attributes we mentioned above become the foundation in which recognition transpires into relationship. Many people say, "Oh, he's a good friend of mine," yet they never take time to spend time with that "good friend." Friendship takes time: time to get to know each other, time to build shared memories, time to invest in each other's growth.

Trust is essential to true friendship. We all need someone with whom we can share our lives, thoughts, feelings, and frustrations. We need to be able to share our deepest secrets with someone, without worrying that those secrets will end up on the Internet the next day! Failing to be trustworthy with those intimate secrets can destroy a friendship in a hurry. Faithfulness and loyalty are key to true friendship. Without them, we often feel betrayed, left out, and lonely. In true friendship, there is no backbiting, no negative thoughts, no turning away.

True friendship requires certain accountability factors. Real friends encourage one another and forgive one another where there has been an offense. Genuine friendship supports during times of struggle. Friends are dependable. In true friendship, unconditional love develops. We love our friends no matter what and we always want the best for our friends.

True Friendship - Examples of Real Friendship

True friendship stories are found throughout the Bible. In Genesis 18:17-33, we read about God sharing His intentions with Abraham. Abraham responds by telling God his thoughts and feelings about the situation. God and Abraham are able to do this because they trust and respect each other.

First Samuel 20 focuses on the friendship of David and Jonathan. These two men truly cared for each other and had great trust and confidence in one another. David was running for his life from Jonathan's father, Saul. Jonathan recognized that David was innocent. Because of the true friendship they shared, David survived Saul's assassination attempts and went on to become one of Israel's greatest kings.

Real and true friendship involves freedom of choice, accountability, truth, and forgiveness. Peter and Jesus give us this example: Peter, afraid for his life after Jesus is led away from the Garden of Gethsemane, denies knowing Jesus (John 18). As He is led away by His accusers, Jesus casts a look toward Peter that says, "I knew you would deny Me, and I forgive you" (John 21).

Real friendship looks at the heart, not just the "packaging." Genuine friendship loves for love's sake, not just for what it can get in return. True friendship is both challenging and exciting. It risks, it overlooks faults, and it loves unconditionally, but it also involves being truthful, even though it may hurt. Genuine friendship, also called "agape" love, comes from the Lord. The Lord Jesus calls us His friends and He laid down His life for us (John 15).

Relationships in real life involve different levels of friendships, and that's okay. But humans are designed by God for lasting relationships. Often our isolationist society offers only vague, empty relationships. God wants us to have friends here on earth. Most of all, He wants us to be friends with Him!

God's Word tells us that a friend sticks closer than a brother, and that in order for one to be a friend, one must show themselves friendly (Proverbs 18:24). The question is: what type of friend do you desire to be?

Proverbs 18:19 in the New Living Translation says: "It's harder to make amends with an offended friend than to capture a fortified city. Arguments separate friends like a gate locked with iron bars." When we've offended a true friend - whether by breaking a trust or by speaking the truth with love - we risk losing that friendship. We must be careful not to break the trust. But when not speaking the truth will cause greater hurt in our friend's life, we must be willing to sacrifice our needs for those of our friend. That is true friendship.

If we sometimes offend a friend without meaning to, God's Word offers a solution. It's called forgiveness. There is no greater example than the love of God for us. It so great that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, in order that our friendship with God might be restored. He did that in spite of the fact that we have offended Him deeply. We have disobeyed His commands, turned our backs on Him, and followed our own path. So the question remains: What type of friend do you want to be? True Christian friendship forgives.

Do you need a friend? God wants to be your true friend. Are you longing for companionship? God is always with you (Hebrews 13:5). Who do you know who needs a true friend today? God wants you to befriend others. He calls us to be His hands and feet in a world starving for true friendship.

The Psychology Of Emotions, Feelings and Thoughts

This is a long one, so I will provide you the pdf link.

Download PDF here

http://cnx.org/content/m14358/latest

The Power of Love

From http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20021201-000001.html

Love is the best antidepressant—but many of our ideas about it are wrong. The less love you have, the more depressed you are likely to feel.

By: Ellen McGrath

Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. It's not negotiable. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both physically and emotionally. The less connected you are, the more you are at risk.

It is also true that the less love you have, the more depression you are likely to experience in your life. Love is probably the best antidepressant there is because one of the most common sources of depression is feeling unloved. Most depressed people don't love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also are very self-focused, making them less attractive to others and depriving them of opportunities to learn the skills of love.

There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills.

Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the pop-culture ideal of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation.

One consequence is that when we hit real love we become upset and disappointed because there are many things that do not fit the cultural ideal. Some of us get demanding and controlling, wanting someone else to do what we think our ideal of romance should be, without realizing our ideal is misplaced.

It is not only possible but necessary to change one's approach to love to ward off depression. Follow these action strategies to get more of what you want out of life—to love and be loved.

• Recognize the difference between limerance and love. Limerance is the psychological state of deep infatuation. It feels good but rarely lasts. Limerance is that first stage of mad attraction whereby all the hormones are flowing and things feel so right. Limerance lasts, on average, six months. It can progress to love. Love mostly starts out as limerance, but limerance doesn't always evolve into love.
• Know that love is a learned skill, not something that comes from hormones or emotion particularly. Erich Fromm called it "an act of will." If you don't learn the skills of love you virtually guarantee that you will be depressed, not only because you will not be connected enough but because you will have many failure experiences.
• Learn good communication skills. They are a means by which you develop trust and intensify connection. The more you can communicate the less depressed you will be because you will feel known and understood.

There are always core differences between two people, no matter how good or close you are, and if the relationship is going right those differences surface. The issue then is to identify the differences and negotiate them so that they don't distance you or kill the relationship.

You do that by understanding where the other person is coming from, who that person is, and by being able to represent yourself. When the differences are known you must be able to negotiate and compromise on them until you find a common ground that works for both.

• Focus on the other person. Rather than focus on what you are getting and how you are being treated, read your partner's need. What does this person really need for his/her own well-being? This is a very tough skill for people to learn in our narcissistic culture. Of course, you don't lose yourself in the process; you make sure you're also doing enough self-care.
• Help someone else. Depression keeps people so focused on themselves they don't get outside themselves enough to be able to learn to love. The more you can focus on others and learn to respond and meet their needs, the better you are going to do in love.
• Develop the ability to accommodate simultaneous reality. The loved one's reality is as important as your own, and you need to be as aware of it as of your own. What are they really saying, what are they really needing? Depressed people think the only reality is their own depressed reality.
• Actively dispute your internal messages of inadequacy. Sensitivity to rejection is a cardinal feature of depression. As a consequence of low self-esteem, every relationship blip is interpreted far too personally as evidence of inadequacy. Quick to feel rejected by a partner, you then believe it is the treatment you fundamentally deserve. But the rejection really originates in you, and the feelings of inadequacy are the depression speaking.

Recognize that the internal voice is strong but it's not real. Talk back to it. "I'm not really being rejected, this isn't really evidence of inadequacy. I made a mistake." Or "this isn't about me, this is something I just didn't know how to do and now I'll learn." When you reframe the situation to something more adequate, you can act again in an effective way and you can find and keep the love that you need.

What is Love

by Love-Sessions.com (http://www.love-sessions.com/whatislove.htm)

What is love? It is one of the most difficult questions for the mankind. Centuries have passed by, relationships have bloomed and so has love. But no one can give the proper definition of love. To some “Love is friendship set on fire” for others “Maybe love is like luck. You have to go all the way to find it”. No matter how you define it or feel it, love is the eternal truth in the history of mankind.

Love is patient, love is kind. It has no envy, nor it boasts itself and it is never proud. It rejoices over the evil and is the truth seeker. Love protects; preserves and hopes for the positive aspect of life. Always stand steadfast in love, not fall into it. It is like the dream of your matter of affection coming true. Love can occur between two or more individuals. It bonds them and connects them in a unified link of trust, intimacy and interdependence. It enhances the relationship and comforts the soul. Love should be experienced and not just felt. The depth of love can not be measured. Look at the relationship between a mother and a child. The mother loves the child unconditionally and it can not be measured at all. A different dimension can be attained between any relationships with the magic of love. Love can be created. You just need to focus on the goodness of the other person. If this can be done easily, then you can also love easily. And remember we all have some positive aspect in us, no matter how bad our deeds maybe. And as God said “Love all”

Depending on context, love can be of different varieties. Romantic love is a deep, intense and unending. It shared on a very intimate and interpersonal and sexual relationship. The term Platonic love, familial love and religious love are also matter of great affection. It is more of desire, preference and feelings. The meaning of love will change with each different relationship and depends more on its concept of depth, versatility, and complexity. But at times the very existence of love is questioned. Some say it is false and meaningless. It says that it never exist, because there has been many instances of hatred and brutality in relationships. The history of our world has witnessed many such events. There has been hatred between brothers, parents and children, sibling rivalry and spouses have failed each other. Friends have betrayed each other; the son has killed his parents for the throne, the count is endless. Even the modern generation is also facing with such dilemmas everyday. But “love” is not responsible for that. It is us, the people, who have forgotten the meaning of love and have undertaken such gruesome apathy.

In the past the study of philosophy and religion has done many speculations on the phenomenon of love. But love has always ruled, in music, poetry, paintings, sculptor and literature. Psychology has also done lot of dissection to the essence of love, just like what biology, anthropology and neuroscience has also done to it.

Psychology portrays love as a cognitive phenomenon with a social cause. It is said to have three components in the book of psychology: Intimacy, Commitment, and Passion. Also, in an ancient proverb love is defined as a high form of tolerance. And this view has been accepted and advocated by both philosophers and scholars. Love also includes compatibility. But it is more of journey to the unknown when the concept of compatibility comes into picture. Maybe the person whom we see in front of us, may be least compatible than the person who is miles away. We might talk to each other and portray that we love each other, but practically we do not end up into any relationship. Also in compatibility, the key is to think about the long term successful relationship, not a short journey. We need to understand each other and must always remember that no body is perfect.

Be together, share your joy and sorrow, understand each other, provide space to each other, but always be there for each others need. And surely love will blossom to strengthen your relationship with your matter of affection.

How to Deal With Grief

What is grief?

Grief is the normal response of sorrow, emotion, and confusion that comes from losing someone or something important to you. It is a natural part of life. Grief is a typical reaction to death, divorce, job loss, a move away from friends anf family, or loss of good health due to illness.

How does grief feel?

Just after a death or loss, you may feel empty and numb, as if you are in shock. You may notice physical changes such as trembling, nausea, trouble breathing, muscle weakness, dry mouth, or trouble sleeping and eating.

You may become angry - at a situation, a particular person, or just angry in general. Almost everyone in grief also experiences guilt. Guilt is often expressed as "I could have, I should have, and I wish I would have" statements.

People in grief may have strange dreams or nightmares, be absent-minded, withdraw socially, or lack the desire to return to work. While these feelings and behaviors are normal during grief, they will pass.

How long does grief last?

Grief lasts as long as it takes you to accept and learn to live with your loss. For some people, grief lasts a few months. For others, grieving may take years.

The length of time spent grieving is different for each person. There are many reasons for the differences, including personality, health, coping style, culture, family background, and life experiences. The time spent grieving also depends on your relationship with the person lost and how prepared you were for the loss.

How will I know when I'm done grieving?

Every person who experiences a death or other loss must complete a four-step grieving process:

(1) Accept the loss;

(2) Work through and feel the physical and emotional pain of grief;

(3) Adjust to living in a world without the person or item lost; and

(4) Move on with life.

The grieving process is over only when a person completes the four steps.

How does grief differ from depression?

Depression is more than a feeling of grief after losing someone or something you love. Clinical depression is a whole body disorder. It can take over the way you think and feel. Symptoms of depression include:

• A sad, anxious, or "empty" mood that won't go away;
• Loss of interest in what you used to enjoy;
• Low energy, fatigue, feeling "slowed down;"
• Changes in sleep patterns;
• Loss of appetite, weight loss, or weight gain;
• Trouble concentrating, remembering, or making decisions;
• Feeling hopeless or gloomy;
• Feeling guilty, worthless, or helpless;
• Thoughts of death or suicide or a suicide attempt; and
• Recurring aches and pains that don't respond to treatment.

If you recently experienced a death or other loss, these feelings may be part of a normal grief reaction. But if these feelings persist with no lifting mood, ask for help.

How to Choose the Right Partner

http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/students2/hrc/Health_Topics/topics/choose_partner.htm

Do you have an ideal partner sketched out in your head? Perhaps you have a shopping list of “must have” traits. If so, you are not alone. The most common characteristics people want in their partners include honesty, intelligence, sense of humor, openness to new ideas, stability, communication, common hobbies and interests, and willingness to work on the relationship to make it succeed. Though men and women might seek similar traits in a partner, research has demonstrated that each individual focuses on different qualities. Men typically want a relationship that allows autonomy, while women look for a sense of connection.

To begin your quest to find the right partner, think about the traits and behaviors you prefer. Most people automatically think of superficial traits such as “height” or “blue eyes.” Though these traits can be important, other traits are more important when it comes to having a healthy, long-term relationship. Here is a list of some important qualities to consider:

1. Commitment to personal growth
Is interested in learning how to be a better person and spouse.
Is aware of emotional baggage, blind spots, and weaknesses.
Has personal goals for self-improvement.

2. Emotional Openness
Is aware of his or her own feelings
Is able to express his or her feelings
Desires to share feelings with you

3. Integrity
Is honest with himself or herself
Is honest with others and you
Does not play games about wants and feelings

4. Maturity and Responsibility
Maintains a clean house, pays bills and handles finances
Is able to take care of himself or herself
Follows through on promises, shows up on time, doesn't let people down
Respects your boundaries, feelings, time, etc.

5. High Self-esteem
Takes pride in himself or herself without being arrogant
Takes care of body, living environment, car, possessions
Does not allow other people to mistreat him/her

6. Positive Attitude Towards Life
Focuses on solutions instead of problems
Turns obstacles into opportunities
Sees the good in situations and people

Now that your list is complete consider some flaws that are fatal to a relationship. Your partner might have one or more of these traits and still be capable of having a relationship. However, you may have a problem-filled relationship. According to Barbara DeAngelis, PhD the following is a list of fatal flaws:

• Addictions
• Anger
• Victim consciousness
• Control freak
• Sexual dysfunction
• Hasn't grown up
• Emotionally unavailable
• Hasn't recovered from past relationships
• Emotional damage from childhood

Analyze Yourself
Next, turn the examination inwards. Ask yourself what is holding you back from having a loving relationship. Perhaps you are hurt from a previous break-up. Maybe you are afraid of commitment. Identify these issues and handle them . In addition, examine your previous relationships and learn from them. What mistakes did you make? What aspects of a previous relationship would you want to develop in future relationship(s)? Finally, examine other factors that might affect your partner choice: cultural norms, expectations of male and female roles, religious background, and socioeconomic needs.

Analyze Your Relationship
Once you are in a relationship continue to examine your compatibility with your partner. Do not overlook compatibility issues in order to be in a relationship. In other words, do not ignore warning signs of potential problems. Other mistakes include making compromises, such as eliminating activities you like because they don't interest your partner or reducing communication with family members your partner dislikes.

Talk to Your Partner
You should not be hesitant to ask your partner questions. You need to find out the behaviors and attitudes you can expect for later. It is important to learn not only about your partner but also about your partner's relationship with his or her family. Moreover, learning about your partner's family will provide insights about your partner. Here is a list of questions you could ask:

• What do you like to do for fun? What did you do for fun when you were younger? How often do you get out and have fun? How much time per week do you take for leisure activities? What do you do when you want to relax? What do you like to do on vacation? What were your friendships like when you were growing up?
• How do you handle tough times? How have you handled some of the difficult situations in your life?
• What were your parents like when you were growing up? How did their opinions influence you, then and now? How did your parents get along? How have you changed over the years?
• What are your plans for the future? What are your attitudes and what is your style for handling money? Do you like to help with household chores? What do you like to talk about? What conversations do you like to avoid?

Take Your Time
Overall, be patient. Take the time to get to know potential partners before jumping into a relationship. After all, you wouldn't select the first apple that caught your eye in the produce bin! Why be any less selective with your choice of mate?

References:
James, John and Schlesinger, Ibis. How to Choose the Right Partner? Addison- Wesley: Menlo Park, CA; 1987.
DeAngelis, Barbara, Ph.D. Are You the One for Me? Delacorte Press: New York; 1992.