So tell me, what does love look like to you?

A very key and important question I like to ask anyone who sits in front of me newly in a relationship “What does love look like to you?”

Why is this such an important question you might wonder, well to put it quite simply I like to figure this out because normally the idea of what love is to someone will look and sound totally different in the head of their partner. So if the two of you have different ideas of what love is, how will you know once you’re actually in it? (and by it obviously I mean love)

Even if you’re not with someone right now, it’s still an important question to wrap your head around, because your idea of love that you have in your head might actually look totally different to what you find yourself in in real life.

In your head love could look like grand romantic gestures, passion in abundance and endless amounts of affection. When in reality, the relationship you’ve found yourself in is actually representing love in a calm, supportive and romance in every day small actions kind of vibe ….. so naturally when your built up idea isn’t matching the reality, it will be hard for you to accept that this is in fact love.

If you’re anything like me you grew up idolising your parents relationship, you looked at them and the unit they’d created as if that’s the only version of love you ever want to experience. But then …. well, we grow up. We start noticing that maybe this relationship we idolised isn’t actually as prefect as we first thought. It doesn’t mean there aren’t aspects we still adore about it, but what we can realise is that we probably won’t want to duplicate that kind of love. I like to refer to this as our rose tinted glasses falling off.

As we grow up and start experiencing our own relationships and our own heartbreak, our vision of love will begin to morph into what we know we want our “forever love” to feel or look like, it’s very rare for someone to view love in the same way consistently throughout their lives, I’ve never heard someone say they see love in the same way they did as a teenager vs when they hit their 30’s, unless of course, they haven’t taken any lessons from their relationship experiences!

While searching for lessons in break ups has always tended to be known as a more feminine trait to help us process the heart break, I think it’s very important for anyone going through a break up to sit back and take some time to understand what that relationship has taught them about love so they can take something with them going forward.

When I look back on who I was at the age of 21 and what I wanted from a relationship I can see how much I’ve grown as a person and to me that’s a great sign that I’m moving in the right direction. While at 21 I wanted to be in a relationship consumed by chemistry and a level of sexual attraction that drives two people to act in crazy ways, I’ve actually come to realise that actually what I crave in a relationship above anything else, is a sense of calm. I love knowing that I have someone who will be in my corner no matter what and always be on my side in times of external conflict, but to me that shows I’m ready for a relationship that has longevity rather than short term satisfaction.

So here’s the questions I want you to sit back and ask yourself now:

1. What does love look like to me in my head?
2. Do I really really think that idea is something sustainable in a real life relationship?
3. Have I ever experienced a different kind of love to the one I thought I wanted in my head and how did it make me feel?
4. What are the core values I bring to a relationship to make sure I give and receive the kind of love I want?
5. How has my perception of love changed in the last 10 years?

What does that even mean?

‘I feel like I could do better than you’ nine of the worst strung together words to ever fall out of someones mouth, especially when they’re saying them straight to your face. Ouch.

But I get it, we say as much as we can to try and divert how we really feel, our defence mechanisms come out in full force when our fight or flight reflexes are letting us down. You know you should run away from a situation that’s bad for you, but you’ve never known bad to feel so good. So you won’t go anywhere.

I have a real habit of leaving a trail of destruction behind me wherever I go, because once someone makes it onto my hit list, I’ll go after them with no regards to anything else around me, and I always get what I want. But it’s ok because that destructive path actually looks kind of pretty, it’s filled with passion, lust and physical desire. Some of the best things to feel for another person.

So what does it even mean, when you’re telling me one thing but I know you mean another. When I know your negative comments are being used as a deflective technique. It’s actually a very good psychological trick, but you won’t have known that. The more you think of something negatively the less you’ll want it, but you’ll have to spend quite a while trying to think of negative things to put you off of me, or shall I pretend not to know that?

When you go from thinking about something almost obsessively, it takes more than a few days to stop old habits. When you want something as bad as that, it’s going to take more than a few deflective words to actually trick your brain. But good luck, because I think you’ll need it.

10 Things I Think About When I’m Thinking Of You

When I say I’m thinking about you or that I miss you, you probably wonder what it is that I could be thinking about, what thoughts could have caused me to miss you, crave you and want to be back in your arms again. So here are 10 of the things I think about when I say I am thinking about you:

1. Our first kiss, the way you held my face, picked me up and put me against the nearest surface you could find. How I could tell you had kissed a lot of people before me because you had it mastered, the way you moved your tongue into my mouth and how you knew when to stop and put me down. You had the right balance of intensity and softness at the same time. How you made sure this memory was engraved into my head I’ll never know.
2. The smell of your skin, how warm you are and the shape of your body. I imagine running my hands down your arms and over your chest. Kissing every inch of your body and then having the taste of you left on my lips.
3. The way your hair sits, how much I love to run my hands through it. I suddenly visualize your head in between my legs and how nice it feels when I stroke your hair as I enjoy you going down on me.
4. How you look at me when you tell me you love me, how much I love your eyes and what a beautiful color they are.
5. You singing in my car, clicking your fingers and bobbing your head. It makes me remember how happy you are with me.
6. Your touch, how your fingers feel on my skin. How it feels when you hold me against your body and how I love having my face buried into your neck.
7. The sounds you make, how much it makes me smile when you’re making sounds from the pure pleasure of laying skin to skin with me.
8. Or how a different kind of pleasure makes you close your eyes and reopen them again very slowly as you look up to the ceiling, the deep extended breathe you take in and then exhale.
9. How you will gently bite my finger when I run it across your bottom lip.
10. Your laugh, it makes me smile every time I hear it, its so infections.

What To Say When You’re Speechless

What is normal? How should you behave with your ex’s?

I can’t help but think that the situation I’m in right now is anything but normal and yet it still feels like the right place to be.

I’m laying in bed with my ex yet again …. although this week I can’t help but feel that what was once casual sex or as he liked to put it ‘fuck buddies’ has become a bit more intense. We no longer sleep with each other after nights out where we drunkenly bump into each other ‘accidentally on purpose’, but only when we’re sober. We’ll lay talking about the most pointless things for hours, reminiscing about how things used to be and the last two nights I’ve actually stayed over at his and not left that night like I did when this arrangement first started. I can’t even try to lie about the fact that he’s the best shag I’ve had and he continuously tells me the same which of course is very flattering. But once I leave here today I wont see him for three months, we’re both going away for summer now, unless of course I mention to him that my house is all mine for a month and maybe he should come down and stay with me? But I have a feeling this is dangerous territory after the last time I mentioned the possibility of seeing each other during our time off of university .. he freaked out saying it wasn’t like that between us.

I fully understand we are not in a position to be in a relationship  but as it stands I don’t want to have sex with anyone else, is this just because I think of myself as a monogamous person, or is it because I have feelings for him again? All I can say to that  is I bloody hope not! But I can’t deny that I am going to miss him for the next three months and the possibility that all contact between us will now be stopped for over summer hurts a little bit … I’ll miss our pointless conversations that go on for hours, but I’m sure I can find a replacement him.

So right now I’m speechless and I think it’s the best thing to be, I don’t want to ruin this weirdly perfect situation I’m in with him right now. It might be messed up, but I don’t mind.