4 Phases of Love We Go Through in Our Lifetime & How to Attract the Love and Relationships You Desire

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1:30Trust me. Discover more at chase.com forward slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA. Member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. Radhi, we're always talking about being intentional with our time and energy, right? What about gifting with intention? Apple Gift Card is perfect. They can use it for meditation apps on the App Store or audiobooks from Apple Books. Whatever nourishes their mind best. Exactly. It's a gift of possibilities aligned with their personal growth journey. Visit applegiftcard.apple.com to learn more and gift with purpose today. Relationships are masterfully designed to annoy us.

2:15But that's not why you're in a relationship. Bringing awareness to your relationship is uncomfortable. We expect love to flow naturally, but this is extremely rare and often it means that we're not taking on the tougher issues. We need to make mistakes, identify what we need to change and work on doing better. This is where we grow as individuals and together.

2:44Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be adding a really special offering onto the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. It's my short daily series on Calm, The Daily J. And let me tell you, it's unlike anything else I'm doing. It's part storytelling, part mindfulness, with a wide range of unique, actionable insights, and it's also the only place you can meditate with me each and every day. I absolutely love all the wisdom we're sharing, all the lives we're changing. And whether you want to improve your mindset, your habits, or your relationships, whether you want to work on developing more focus, presence, or equanimity, building a Daily J routine, just 7 minutes every day, can make a huge impact.

3:25So make sure to check out the session at the end of the podcast, and then subscribe to Calm for your daily dose of the Daily J. Go to Calm.com forward slash J for 40 % off your membership today. This week, we're talking about your relationships and how to create the most meaningful connections with the people that matter to you. Of course, if you want to listen to The Daily J every day, you can go subscribe to Calm. So go to Calm.com forward slash J for 40 % off your membership today. Welcome back to On Purpose. This is your safe space. this is your place of comfort of discomfort of self-work and self-care we're that space that gives you both and you know that because you turn up every day every week and i'm so grateful to you i honestly am so deeply grateful to you for all your love and all your support and to reciprocate with you today i'm giving you the third chapter of my audiobook the third rule of my new book, Eight Rules of Love, absolutely free.

4:31So today's episode is called Define Love Before You Think It, Feel It, or Say It. And inside this book and this audio book chapter, I'm gonna teach you how to come up with your own definition of love, how to redefine love so that you don't get misled again, so that someone doesn't get to manipulate you again, so that someone doesn't pretend to give you a relationship and a partnership when actually what they want is ownership. how often has someone pretended to care for you when really they were trying to control you how many times have you felt someone pretending to be affectionate when actually they were just trying to be assertive and so I hope that this episode helps you I hope it helps your friends and for those of you that don't already have the book even though so many of you do already head over to 8rulesoflove.com order the audiobook order the hard copy if you want to hear it in my voice the audiobook is in my voice I know some of you like reading and listening at the same time, but you're going to love this episode.

5:31Part 2. Compatibility. Learning to love others. The second ashram, grihastha, is the stage of life when we extend our love to others while still loving ourselves. This stage introduces the challenges of learning to understand, appreciate and cooperate with another mind Another set of values and another set of likes and dislikes on a daily basis Here we explore the challenges of karma, metri, loving others Rule 3 Define love before you think it, feel it, or say it My boyfriend told me he loved me And a week later, he fully ghosted me I told my partner I loved her She said, thank you I was dating a girl for several weeks When I told her I thought I was starting to fall in love with her she said she needed more space.

6:40We've been together for three years and we say I love you before bed. Same time every night. I'm not sure it means anything anymore. We say I love you or wait for the right time to say it or hope someone will say it to us but there is no universal agreement as to what it means. For some it means I want to spend the rest of my life with you. For some people, saying I love you means I want to spend the night with you. Between those two intentions are infinite others and some of us say it without any particular intention because in that moment, we just feel something we interpret as love. This leaves a lot of room for confusion, miscommunication and false expectations.

7:35Writer Samantha Taylor says, The first time I told my now husband I loved him, we were spending one of those long nights on the phone early in our dating relationship, back when people actually talked on the phone. Delirious with sleepiness, I told him that I wanted to tell him I loved him but didn't want to scare him off. Don't worry, he told me. Saying I love you isn't a big deal to me. I love my mom, I love my friends, I love you too. Great, he loved me like his mom. So romantic. He was telling her that his definition of I love you was different from hers. Broad, low pressure, and not particularly romantic.

8:25She adds, Fortunately, he must have grown to love me in a romantic way because we've been married for almost 10 years. We say I love you in so many different contexts, with family and friends and lovers, that it doesn't indicate anything but the presence of some sort of affection. And yet we have expectations based on what we assume it means to the other person. I love you doesn't include commitment. It doesn't promise you want to have children together It doesn't guarantee that you'll put any effort into making a relationship work It's a beautiful start, but not a substitute for many other meaningful conversations A survey showed that men are quicker to say I love you than women Taking an average of 88 days A whopping 39 % of them declare their love within the first month Women take an average of 134 days And 23 % of them declare their love in month 1 It's hard to imagine that people who feel love within weeks Actually live up to what their partners think that statement means You may feel like you know someone because you've spent time with them and you like their personality, but you may not know their dreams, their values, their priorities, the things that matter to them.

10:02You think you know their heart, but you just know their mind. Love takes time. I'm not saying you need to understand someone fully before you fall in love. We're always learning new things about our partner, but too often we leap to love based on a very small amount of information. In any other area of your life, it's very unlikely that you make a big decision based on such a small amount of information. Love is not black and white. You either love someone or you don't. And there's only one way to do it. Some people renew their vows every 10 years, Either to recommit to love Or to express how their love has evolved Some people have long distance love Some people are friends with benefits Some people get divorced But they find a way to parent together peacefully and comfortably Recently, a guy came up to me at a wedding And told me he just got out of a long relationship He said, we love each other but leaving each other was the best way to carry on loving each other.

11:20That's love too. To discount the many forms of love is to miss many beautiful possibilities. Understanding the nuances allows you to define and honor the love you have with the person you're with. As soon as we say I love you, we're going to have to live up to those words, not by our definition, but by the definition of the person we love. On the flip side, when we accept someone else's love, we have to realize that they aren't using our definition of love. Before we decide that we're in love, before we tell another person we love them, and before we determine what it means when they say those words to us, we must consider how we define love.

12:13What do we expect love to feel like? How do we know we love someone? How do we know if they love us? The only way to avoid miscommunication is to talk about love using far more than those three words. This rule will help us figure out what we mean when we say, I love you, what it may or may not mean when our partner says it, and how to find a meaning we can share. The four phases of love. When we tell each other we love each other, we rarely elaborate, unless it's to add a romantic flourish, like so much, or to the moon and back. It's pretty black and white. We've either declared our love, or we haven't.

13:02We don't leave much room for variation or degrees of love. But we can take some cues in the practice of love from the bhakti tradition, an 8th century movement in Hinduism. Bhakti describes the journey of falling in love with the divine in stages. The first stage is shraddha, where we have the spark of faith that makes us take interest in the divine. Notice how even when we're talking about connecting with the Divine, there's a preliminary desire. Curiosity and hope drive us to engage. This leads us to the next stage, Sadhu Sangha, desiring to associate with spiritually advanced persons. Here we find a spiritual teacher, guide, mentor who can help us develop our practice.

13:57After that is Bhajana Kriya where we perform devotional acts like attending services and praying As our devotion gets deeper we become free from all material attachments Anartha Nivratti Achieve steadiness, nishta, in self-realization and find enthusiasm, ruchi for serving the divine This taste leads us to further attachment, which is called bhava. This is the preliminary stage of pure love of the divine. Then finally, we reach pure love for the divine, preim. This is the supreme stage of life, where we have attained the highest form of a divine loving relationship, unbound by awe and reverence or any kind of hierarchy.

14:55Because the bhakti stages of love describe an intimate, direct relationship between a person and their god, they can apply in many ways to how we love each other. So I decided to bring the model down to earth and reinterpret it for the practice of understanding and loving another person. When it comes to love, we expect that we'll know when we know. But our experiences of love can be different at different times The four phases of love I'm about to describe Can all look like love and feel like love And they are all part of the journey of love How do you know if you're in love with someone? Love isn't being called every day Or having your chair pulled out for you Or feeling warm and fuzzy when you see someone Love isn't a purely romantic fairy tale And it isn't pragmatically checking qualities of a list Looking at these phases helps us understand love differently Define love for ourselves And better articulate our feelings of love At the same time, seeing the levels of love Helps us understand why our partner Might have a different concept of love than we do Knowing what phase you're in helps orient you for progress to the next phase And when you can't see yourself getting to the next phase Then you might enjoy it for a while, but you know that it's not sustainable We might not progress in exactly this order And the rest of this book will show you how we cycle back through the phases This is a cycle we will repeat not just with one partner but with pretty much everyone who plays an important role in our lives.

16:52This is the practice of love. 1. Attraction 2. Dreams 3. Struggle and growth 4. Trust Phase 1. Attraction In phase one, we feel a spark of intrigue, interest, and attraction. This makes us want to figure out if someone is worth our time and effort. Researchers describe what we call love as three distinct drives in the brain. Lust, attraction, and attachment. When we move from lust to attraction, we're taking the generalized desire to connect with someone and focusing it on a specific person. The brain chemicals involved in lust differ from those that produce attraction. Lust is governed more by testosterone and estrogen, whereas attraction includes dopamine, the reward chemical, and norepinephrine, the brain's version of adrenaline, which when combined with dopamine can generate that feeling of euphoria around the target of our attraction.

18:14Additionally, levels of the feel-good hormone serotonin actually drop in this phase, which contributes to our feelings of anxiety and passion in the early stages of attraction. We have an exciting surge of hope and belief that someone could be the right person for us We feel intrigue and interest We swipe right Love often starts with this thrilling hint of possibility It means, you intrigue me, I want more Chemistry like this feels amazing but we should be careful not to think that chemistry is the only way love begins or that it is the entirety of love. Time helps you understand whether what you're feeling is truly love.

19:08Think about what it's like when you place an order for a chair on a website. It looks good online. It fits beautifully into a room pictured on your favorite home store site. But when it arrives, it isn't comfortable to sit on In attraction, we observe people for how they appear But we don't understand what it's like to have a relationship with them I used to know this guy who came up to me every month And told me he had fallen in love with another girl Someone he'd bumped into or met on Instagram For a week, he'd be completely infatuated And then a few weeks later, it would be someone else In the attraction phase, we have glimpses of love that show us its beauty Lingering in the attraction phase is pleasurable With new people, we've carefully exposed what we want them to see Our best features There are few arguments, expectations and disappointments We can sustain the fantasy of a perfect match but it takes a deeper connection to go beyond phase one.

20:21Science supports the idea that having deeper connections bodes well for relationships. Professor Matthias Mel at the University of Arizona in Tucson and his team studied whether the conversations we have affect our well-being. Specifically, they were looking at the difference between small talk and having deep, meaningful discussions. They had 79 participants wear recorders for four days while they went about their daily lives. The devices were designed to record snippets of ambient sound, netting about 300 recordings per participant over the four days. The researchers then listened to the recordings and noted when the participants were alone or talking with others and when their conversation was superficial, what do you have there?

21:17Popcorn? Yummy. Or deep? She fell in love with your dad? So did they get divorced soon after? The researchers also assessed participants' well-being through a series of statements, such as, I see myself as someone who is happy, satisfied with life. They found that higher rates of well-being were associated more with people who had deep conversations than those who made more small talk. Going deep isn't a technique. It can only be a genuine experience that leads to a true connection. But we can examine our own willingness to open up and be vulnerable with people as we build trust with them. Social scientists say that vulnerability leads to reciprocal escalating self-disclosure What this means is that over time a couple begins to reveal vulnerabilities to each other That's the self-disclosure Sharing parts of yourself doesn't mean bearing your whole soul all at once Support for this podcast is brought to you by Walden University If you're listening right now and feeling that pull to grow in your career or make a bigger impact, Walden is designed exactly for that.

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24:08And with so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So you can continue to celebrate all of life's biggest milestones. Go online at statefarm.com or use the award-winning app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there Sometimes, when we are caught up in the moment We're tempted to do that But if we gradually unveil our personalities, values and goals We start to see if there is a connection Letting yourself be vulnerable with this intention Keeps you feeling protected Like you aren't exposed too much too fast To a person you can't trust If it all goes well, you reveal increasingly intimate facets of yourself at a pace where you feel comfortable.

25:02That's where the escalating comes in. And the disclosure is a gift that you give back and forth to each other. That's reciprocal. It is with reciprocal escalating self-disclosure that we start to truly know a person. The three date rule In my experience working with clients, three dates usually provide enough time to determine if you and another person would be a good match These three dates don't have to be your first three dates and you don't have to do them one after another You can spread them out Sometimes it's nice to just see a movie In these dates, you'll focus on three areas Whether you like their personality Whether you respect their values And whether you would like to help them achieve their goals For simplicity's sake, I'm going to suggest focusing on these qualities sequentially One per date But you'll probably be uncovering some aspect of each dimension during each date First, we start with personality because it's the easiest thing to spot, understand and connect with In their personality, you'll see how their past has shaped them Second, you'll explore their values, which define who they are today And third, you'll try to recognize their goals, which encapsulate what they want in the future Date 1 Do you have fun together?

26:46Do you enjoy each other's company? Does conversation flow? What makes you comfortable and what makes you uncomfortable? The first day is to find out if you really enjoy each other's personalities To do so, you need to shift between small talk and deep talk The topics we gravitate toward, favorite movies or vacation plans don't help us know people deeply. Instead, you can start to ask questions that inspire both of you to reveal more personal details, including your quirks and imperfections. Remember, we share vulnerabilities gradually as we get to know and trust each other. So on this date, your focus is to see if you enjoy and appreciate their personality.

27:39Try to learn something new about them Or see a side of them you haven't seen Here are some light questions you can ask on date one You'll see that they are questions about taste and preferences They tread in areas where most people are comfortable But they create the possibility to show real passions When you ask someone what the best meal they ever had was The question isn't just about food It opens up a bigger conversation About where and when they had the food And what made it special If you ask what they wish they knew more about You find out about their curiosities And unfulfilled interests If you hit on a strong interest Like taste in movies or books You can dig deeper into why they like what they like And find out how introspective they are Even if you think you know your partner well, the answers might surprise you What's something you love to do?

28:47Do you have a favorite place? Is there a book or movie you've read or seen more than once? What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment? What's something you wish you knew more about? What's the best meal you've ever had? This isn't an interview. Every conversation has two sides. And one aspect of your partner's personality these questions will reveal is whether they're curious about you. Do they ask for your own responses to these questions and dig deeper when they turn the conversation to you? Try this. Prepare for date one. Take the questions I suggested you ask your date and write out your own answers to them.

29:42What's something you love to do? Do you have a favorite place? Is there a book or movie you've read or seen more than once? What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment? What's something you wish you knew more about? What's the best meal you've ever had? Once you have your answers, ask yourself what they might tell a person about you. Do these questions bring up some of your strong interests? Do they give you a chance to reveal important aspects of your personality? If not, are there other questions that would? Add those questions to the list you bring to your next date. Date 2 Your date 2 could come after any number of dates spent dancing or going to the museums or talking casually over dinner But knowing that you enjoy the same movies or like the same cuisine doesn't really tell you if your values are compatible Gently encourage your date to share meaningful stories and details about their life Take turns with these questions and make sure again that it's not an interview.

31:06In fact, if they hesitate over a question, you might say, I know it's a hard question, I'll go first. Your answers can reveal your own values. If the question is who's the most fascinating person you've ever met, don't just give a name. Say what interested you about the person What you learned from them Or what you would ask them if you could meet them again If you're telling a story about something you've done that's out of character Then tell them what's in character for you Why you hold that value And what made you diverge from it If they're not immediately open That's okay Escalating self-disclosure is a slow build Sometimes when we're ready to share We think it's the right time for them to open up as well But people do this at their own pace, in their own time Ask questions and listen carefully to the response To gauge if the person is hesitant Give them openings to change the subject Asking, is this too heavy a topic?

32:20or would you rather not go here right now? Not only do we want to avoid grilling our date, we also don't want to overshare. Taking up all the oxygen in the room with unsolicited, deeply personal stories will only make the person feel overwhelmed. Your ability to be vulnerable and open will help them be vulnerable and to share what feels comfortable at this stage. Here are some uncommon questions you can try out on date 2 that will help you learn what they find interesting, how they deal with challenges, what they value, how they tolerate risk, and how they make decisions. Who's the most fascinating person you've ever met?

33:11What's the most out-of-character thing you've ever done or would like to do? Have you ever had a big plot twist in your life? If you won the lottery, what would you spend the money on? What's the most spontaneous thing you've ever done? What is a tough thing you dealt with in your past? What makes you proud? What would you do if you had enough money to not need a job? Notice how all these questions approach deeper issues without pressure or intensity. You're not asking the worst moment of someone's life or what their darkest secret is. These questions are framed to learn about the other person, but in a playful way.

34:03Don't treat your opinions as if they're better than your partner's. They're just different viewpoints that emerge from different backgrounds Different experiences, different upbringings Date 3 Date 3 should occur when it feels natural to share some of your ideas for the future Just as you don't need to share the same values, you don't need to have the same goals One of you might have your whole life mapped out And the other might still be exploring what gives their life meaning On date 3, you can try out some deeper questions I'll share some here Do you have a dream you'd like to fulfill one day?

34:51A job? A trip? An accomplishment? What would you like to change about your life? If you could meet anyone, who would it be? Is there a single moment or experience that changed your life? Is there someone you consider to be your greatest teacher? Using the information you glean on these three dates, you can determine if you like a person's personality, respect their values, and want to help them pursue their goals. Notice the verbs I chose here. You don't have to have the same personality so long as you enjoy each other. You don't have to share their values so long as you respect them. Their goals don't even have to be things you want or enjoy.

35:47But are you interested in having these aspects of who they are and who they want to be as part of your day-to-day life and coming to pass near or alongside you. Certain goals, like robbing a bank, should be deal-breakers. It might be that you like them so much that you'd be excited to help them with anything within reason that they want to pursue. Or if their goal is to eradicate homelessness in Los Angeles, such a noble goal might in itself make them more attractive. Attraction leads to dreams When our attraction to a person continues over time We start to fantasize about the relationship that could develop What adventures we could have with this person What our life together would look like We find ourselves in phase 2 Phase 2 Dreams In the second phase of love, many of us move fast.

36:53Our attraction to this person tells us that they might match our dreams. But our dreams can cloud our vision of the other person and our own needs. In this phase, we strive to dismantle false expectations and focus on designing, building and nurturing a strong relationship based on realistic expectations rather than intoxicating dreams. False Expectations In this phase of love, we often have in mind a checklist of the qualities our partner should have. Sometimes these are very specific and or tied to the opulences. Successful, owns a home, likes to watch basketball, is a certain age or a certain level of fitness, is ready to get married in the next year.

37:45Psychologist Lisa Firestone says these unrealistic expectations are exaggerated by technology. Online dating sites can promote the overwhelming notion that there are endless choices in the world, leaving some of us to get stuck in a cycle of perpetual searching or what one team of researchers called relation shopping. We may unintentionally find ourselves seeking perfection or one person who can fill every imaginable criterion we've created in our mind or on our profile. This list-making can turn dreams into requirements. Any potential partner will come with a past, challenges, and possibly trauma just as you do.

38:34You simply won't find someone who ticks every box on your checklist It's okay for different people to fill the different needs on your checklist Research shows that the happiest people have multiple close relationships So whether we're coupled or single, we shouldn't look to any one person to meet all our needs John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist who researched love and affection, told the New York Times, one of the secrets to a good relationship is being attracted to someone out of choice rather than out of need. We might also hope that our partner wants the same things in life that we do, the same standard of living, the same family structure, the same likes and dislikes, the same friends, the same notions of how money should be saved and spent, the same plans for the future in terms of how hard we will work, how successful we will be, where we will live, how we will handle unexpected challenges, and how frequently we will make changes.