What We Really Want From Relationships

By Slade Shaw
Author of Why Men Pull Away

Learn exactly what pushes men to leave…and how to NEVER feel abandoned or rejected

Why Men Pull Away…and What Makes Them STAY In Love

What We Really Want From Relationships

Every day, hundreds of thousands of people enter the search term “love” into their search engine. They’re looking for love poems, love quotes, love horoscopes, love letters. They’re looking for true love, young love, first love, to find love, and to find out what love is.

Do they discover what they’re looking for?

We’re ALL looking for love … in one form or another. Whether we realize it or not, we spend most of our lives yearning to be loved enough.

And getting it is never as simple as we think.

Money Can’t Buy Love

Even though love is commercialized all around us – candy hearts at Valentine’s Day, soft teddy bears in hospital gift shops hugging plush hearts, heart designs on underwear and Hallmark cards and paper coffee cups – we’re still missing it in our lives.

We can buy a heart-shaped balloon, tie it to a heart-shaped paperweight and place it on our desks to look at every day … but those symbols of love, on their own, can’t make us feel loved.

Things don’t make us feel loved. People do.

We forget that sometimes. In our everyday language, love is something we “get” or “earn” or “win.” Love may be as intangible as happiness, but that doesn’t keep businesses from trying to sell it to us.

Wear this brand, drink this beverage, or drive that car, and you’ll be surrounded by admiring members of the opposite sex. It’s a comforting message. If love is a commodity, then at least it is within our grasp.

If you don’t have the money to head out shopping for love, all you have to do is boot up your computer. The internet is the newest frontier of our search for love.

Online dating sites and chat rooms open up a sea of potential mates. We’re no longer bound by the geographical constraints of proximity. We can fall in love and court our beloved through the LED glow of our computer screens.

Love letters scroll in cascading blocks of texts. Digital photographs smile at us from the screen. We stroke each hard plastic key with a lover’s touch.

But the moment we shut down the computer, our beloved is lost to us. Our love affair has been with a computer rather than a living, breathing, infinitely responsive human being.

For some, it’s easier that way. Love is such a complicated, messy thing. When another person is standing in front of you, no holds are barred.

There’s no time to muse over what you want to say before saying it. Once the words are out of your mouth, you can’t just press the “Delete” button. Your beloved will see you when you’ve just woken up or when you’re frowning or bleary-eyed, not just when you’re at your photogenic best.

No wonder some of us prefer to keep our relationships online. They’re safer that way.

What We Really Want

If all we really wanted was attention, attraction, and affection from the opposite sex, then having a satisfying love life would be a piece of cake.

But love is not just a chemical reaction that makes you feel good in the same way that drinking or a sweaty workout or a payrise makes you feel good. There’s more than the pleasure principle at work here.

Nor is wanting a mate simply a societal goal that you’ve been programmed to have. As Harville Hendrix points out, marriage is no longer a necessary institution in the 21 st century.

We can live perfectly happy, fulfilling lives as singletons and enjoy multiple lovers without ever putting on a ring. Monogamy is optional.

Yet the majority of men and women still overwhelmingly choose to live in intimate relationship with a single member of the opposite sex. 94% of men and women will marry in their lifetime.

Even when we have the option to cohabitate, most of us still choose to wed. That’s why I believe there is more than social programming at work.

Love is not an option. It is a fundamental part of who we are as human beings. I am convinced that someday doctors will emphasize the role of intimate relationship in the same breath as nutrition and exercise when it comes to good health.

Without intimate social connections, we wither spiritually, emotionally, and physically. The Pfizer Institute tells us that without close, loving relationships, we have a greater risk of disease and depression, we die younger, and we generate less wealth.

Love matters. It’s not something we can do without.

But what is that ineffable feeling we’re after? When we say that we want “love” in our lives, what is it that we really want?

What we want in a loving relationship goes beyond pleasure. It goes beyond societal approval. It even goes beyond wanting someone to grow old with.

From my research, I’ve concluded that what we want in a loving relationship – and what we cannot get anywhere else – is (1) to be known by another person so intimately and completely that we have nothing we need to hide, and (2) to feel their love and acceptance no matter what.

Wouldn’t that be simply amazing? To know that another person has seen every side of you – when you’re naked and vulnerable when you’re upset and crying, when you’re angry and irrational – and loves you anyway?

To watch their face as they greet you when you’ve just woken up in the morning, or when you’re sick and puffy-faced, or when you’re feeling fat and ugly and just plain gross … and see a warm smile spread over their features, and the angel they see in you as reflected in their eyes?

It’s the kind of unconditional, committed love that, if you were lucky, you experienced as a child.

Hopefully, you knew back then that no matter what you did or what mistakes you made, your parents would love you anyway. You knew that even when you grew up and left home and were no longer part of their daily lives, they’d still love you just as much.

In an age when images of perfection bombard us from all directions when competition is fierce for contracts, careers and connections, it’s nice to know that there is one place in your life where you don’t have to compete.

It’s nice to know that there is one place where you don’t get marked down if you don’t measure up.

We all need to experience that warm, fuzzy kind of love that makes us feel safe, cherished, and serene.

But you can’t get that kind of love by buying the latest beauty product to make you desirable to men. Your looks won’t last.

You can’t get that kind of love by hiding aspects of yourself that may be off-putting to your partner or keeping parts of your life hidden so that you remain “mysterious.” The minute he sees the “real you,” he’ll be gone.

Let’s face it: there are a lot of reasons for a man to judge you and find you lacking. Maybe you have a few extra pounds. Maybe you have a secret passion for John Travolta. Maybe your underwear drawer resembles your granny’s.

All of us have aspects of ourselves that we’re ashamed or embarrassed of. We fear that if a man finds out about them, he’ll be repulsed.

That’s why the initial stage of attraction is so much easier than building a committed relationship.

We can all put our smiley faces on and go out and have a good time for a few hours, especially after we’ve spent hours running between the bedroom and the bathroom to select the perfect outfit and finish our hair and makeup.

A sexy appearance masks your flaws – real or imagined – and emboldens your inner flirt.

Attracting a man is easy. Attracting love is not.

How To Attract the Opposite Sex

We all have a lot of ideas fed to us by the media and popular culture about what attracts men. Science has even come up with a list of characteristics that men are biologically programmed to find attractive. Here are just a few.

• Youth
• Curvy figure
• Shiny hair, white teeth
• Energetic, fun-loving
• Sparkling eyes, clear skin

These characteristics are indicators of fertility and the ability to bear healthy offspring. A man will feel sexually attracted towards a woman with those characteristics because he’s biologically programmed to see her as a fit mother for his children.

In other words, the common denominator is sex appeal.

But what if you’re past the age of bearing children? Should you just write yourself off because you can’t reverse the process of aging and look twenty-five again?

And what if you’re super-attractive and you’re frustrated with men who only want you for sex?

There are a LOT of attractive women out there who still don’t have the love they want, just as there are a LOT of mature women still have much to offer a man.

A man has to desire you on a physical level for there to be the potential of something more, but being able to flick a man’s biological switches isn’t much help if you want to attract men on a higher level. Sexual desire is simply the jumping-off point.

That’s where we can get confused. “If only I were younger/sexier/skinnier,” we think. “Then men would fall in love with me. Then I would get the boyfriend/lover/husband of my dreams.”

I hate to break the news, but enticing a man to desire you until he’s out of his mind with lust is not the same thing as making him fall madly in love with you.

As flattering as it may feel, a man’s sexual arousal is just that: sexual. Not emotional. Not intellectual. Not spiritual.

Create Love, Not Desire

Creating love is an art that’s becoming lost to us as our dance of courtship becomes more prescribed by commercialism than by the simple value of human connection.

Articles, books, and programs teach us how we should “sell ourselves” to the opposite sex. First dates end up like job interviews. As Leil Lowndes laments, there is sociological truth in the harsh adage: “Everybody’s got a market value, baby.”

Under this commercial view of love, if you wanted to find the love of your life, you would probably invest in a personal trainer to create a hot new body.

You’d go to the top hair salon to get a killer new style. You’d stop by a high-end department store to get a makeover and a stylish LBD.

And when you went out on the town, luxuriating in your new look and all the admiring male glances, you would feel utterly female and utterly fantastic.

But would you feel loved?

Love is not the same thing as desire. We’ve been led to believe that if a man wants us, that means he loves us.

But wanting to sleep with someone is not the same thing as wanting to honor and cherish them for a lifetime. If you set out to find your perfect mate by making yourself sexier, you’ll simply attract men who want to have sex with you.

We don’t need more books teaching us how to be sexy. Most of us are actually pretty smart when it comes to understanding what is attractive to the opposite sex.

Movies, television programs, women’s magazines, and advertisements educate us even if our parents did not. Wear that brand of cosmetics, or that brand of clothing, or that brand of perfume.

Go for Botox, breast implants, bleaching. Shape your body through yoga or Pilates or the latest aerobics craze. Be confident and mysterious and hard to get.

Avoid displaying the slightest hint of neediness and make sure your social calendar is always busy.

Those techniques do work. They work fantastically to attract men on a sexual level so that they’ll desire you and elbow one another in their attempts to be the guy who “gets” you.

For some women, that’s enough.

But if you’re one of those women who wants more than that … if you’re one of those women who want to feel completely, utterly, unconditionally loved down to the tips of her toes … if you want what your grandparents had, that kind of love that endures past the golden anniversary to the twilight of their days … then you’re ready for what I have to say.

The Principles for Attracting Love

If you want to have more love in your life, you’re going to have to make yourself more lovable and more loving. And it’s a lot harder than you might think.

Many of us are fantastic at applying our makeup but horrible about allowing ourselves to be emotionally vulnerable. We know how to choose the perfect outfit to enhance our features, but we don’t know how to open a conversation about where our relationship is going.

We read magazine articles about how to be great in bed, but we’re not so great at dealing with the bad times in a relationship.

If you really want the kind of love that I talked about earlier, the kind that embraces everything you are, then it’s time you started building a different skill set. Stop focusing on attracting men sexually, and start speaking to them on a deeper level.

No cute outfits. No perfect body. No glitzy VIP passes. Not even time and money.

All they require is that you be willing to take an honest look at your life and the messages you’re telling yourself about men, your past relationships, and your dating prospects.

If you can look beneath what you’ve been telling yourself all these years, you may discover that the reason you don’t yet have the relationship of your dreams has nothing to do with men.

It has nothing to do with your imperfect figure. It has nothing to do with the fact that you live in a small town/have a child from a previous relationship/can’t meet anyone new, or whatever excuse you’ve been telling yourself.

These principles stand on the framework that you have chosen everything in your life up to this moment. Things haven’t just “happened” to you.

Through your actions, attitudes, and beliefs, you have invited everything that’s in your life to be there. You have also excluded what isn’t in your life.

It can be a bitter pill to swallow to consider that we may not have a perfect love because we have unconsciously been driving it away. In my course, I’ll show you exactly how this happens and what you can do to correct it.

All I ask is that you don’t take the easy route and believe that the only thing standing in the way of attracting the perfect guy is your looks.

If becoming prettier were the answer to attracting men, then supermodels would have amazingly fulfilling love lives. Instead, the Kate Mosses of this world can hook up with losers as easily as any of us.

Give up the belief that what you need to attract men is to lose weight, erase your age lines, dye your hair, or get a new wardrobe.

That’s all the advertising you’ve watched since childhood speaking through you. It’s distracting you from the hard work that needs to be done on yourself, healing you of the hurt, pain, and resentment that’s blocking you from a fully loving relationship with a man.

If you want your life to be different, you can’t keep waiting for something to happen. Mr. Right won’t come walking into your life until you get up off your seat and open your heart’s door for him!

So if you can entertain the idea that YOU are the only thing standing in the way of your finding love, then you are ready to turn your love life around – immediately.

You may find that once you finish my course, the way you think about attraction will have undergone a radical shift. You may find that you feel freer to be yourself and embrace even those flaws that others say should disadvantage you.

Best of all, you may start hearing people comment that you have a glow about you. Everyone from eligible men to small children may be attracted to you without being able to explain why.

I have so much more I want to tell you, but that comes soon. I promise.

If you’re ready to take the plunge and learn why men pull away – Click here to watch my free video presentation…

Why Men Pull Away…and What Makes Them STAY In Love (VIDEO)