Have you fallen in love lately? If you are in a relationship, when was the last time you “fell in love”? Now falling in love and loving somebody are two different things for most people. Often times when we first are with someone, we feel that spark, which gets fanned into a flame and before you know it that flame turns into a bonfire of emotions which we refer to as “falling in love”. The state of being of falling in love is one of the most incredible experiences we have in life. Our whole state of being changes and in many ways our daily life changes as does our perspective. Things that normally would agitate us seem trivial when we are falling in love. The world seems brighter, we seem to walk with an extra skip in our step and life feels great. Of course as our relationship matures this feeling of elation is replaced with a more mature feeling of love and we begin to settle into a loving, warm and secure relationship. Life begins to resume normalcy and our state of being, while still in love with the other person, returns to a similar and familiar level as we go through our day to day life. This is a natural progression of a long term relationship. We are still in love, however life and our state of being do normalize to a large extent. The euphoria that we initially felt fades and is replaced with a warm and loving knowing as we plan our life together. In a solid relationship, this change is understood and accepted, which is healthy for each person and the relationship. We call this “being in love”.

Being in love is a wonderful state of being. The downfall for many people when they have been in this state for an extended period of time is that one of both partners begin to take each other for granted. It is easy to do, daily life is hectic for most people, work, bills, plans, children, school, etc have a way of taking over our life to the point where we unintentionally neglect our relationship. We may even have moments where we long to feel like we did at the beginning of the relationship when we were “falling in love”.

Falling in love does not have to be a one time event in a relationship. Many people feel there is some unwritten rule that falling in love is a one time event that happens at the beginning of the relationship. This is a fallacy, we have the ability to choose our state of being. In this case we have the ability to fall in love again. We can fall in love with the person we are with as many times as we desire to. We can fall in love every morning as we tenderly rouse each other from sleep or every night as we hold each other as we dream. Falling in love is action, it is a verb and it is only our thoughts which limit us or allow us to experience the euphoria of falling in love.

I believe falling in love over and over again is a critical component of a successful long term relationship. We can have the feeling of falling in love again and again if we take actions to make it happen, if we look through the eyes of love as the love of our life putters around the house, as we watch them laugh, smile and even cry. When we are in love with someone, it is simply a matter of looking for reasons to fall in love all over again. We can initiate falling in love again simply with the looks we give our partner, the words we say and the simple things we do for them. These actions do not have to be over the top, we do not have to rush out and buy flowers or candy or expensive jewelry. We didn’t fall in love the first time because of things that we bought, we fell in love because of the simple things, the way we looked at each other, the extra phone call we made or the simple touch as we passed each other in the kitchen.

If you are in a long term romantic relationship, I encourage you to meditate on these thoughts, meditate on your love for the other person and to fall in love all over again! You will be amazed at how great you will feel and how you will strengthen and revitalize your relationship!

If you are not in a current relationship, I suggest that you practice falling in love with yourself and with those who are close to you, parents, children, friends, etc. Falling in love is not limited to romantic love. Watch a mother and her child as the child grows up and you will often see the mother falling in love over and over again with her child over the years.

Fall in love today!