'Romance' Articles
Romance is the emotional overtones. It’s the willingness to have the emotional component of the experience of your relationships. Romance isn’t a relationship role. It isn’t relationship behaviour. It’s something that goes beyond any one thing you think, or do, or even feel. Romance comes from the heart, not the head. You can’t learn it, but you can discover it. Romance is a quality of engagement, and as twisted as people make it, no wonder it isn’t well respected.
In the romantically immature stage we “fall in love with” the one we can identify with. Which is fine when our self awareness is shallow, but it can never last. We eventually need the truly “other”. That person we don’t really understand at all, but who we can open our heart to.
“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.” Bruce Lee (American Actor and martial arts expert. Born in San Francisco, California, USA 1940-1973)
“To love one’s self is the beginning of a life-long romance” Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)
Romance Adventure
Romance isn’t a nebulous sensation you feel sometimes. Romance is a status of a relationship, and actually any relationship can be at a point of “romance”. I was even looking at a picture that had the main character from House and his best male friend on it. It said “Bromance…1 day they’ll admit it.” What is romance really? It’s a quality of engagement. It’s a level of being involved with a person, place, or thing so much that you are immersed in it. You are “in love” or whatever emotion you have for the object of your involvement. And yes, this… Seek More
Genuine Romance
I myself find people fascinating. In a sense that makes me a romantic, as I become very invested in the experience of human lives and the trials of their relationships and existence. One of the things my wife notices about me, and even sometimes seems to make her feel a bit uncomfy, is how interesting I find her. Maybe we need to bring this down to active experience. Can anyone name an action that is by itself romantic? A kiss? Have you heard of the kiss of death? Or of a rapist kissing their victim? Kissing can be done with… Seek More
Spiritual Romance
What is it about the quality of something like a beautiful sky that moves us to feel romance? Psychologically, it’s been called “biophilia”. We instinctively have positive responses to witnessing things that are life supportive. I feel romance for things that are bigger than the earth, for the power of the moving stars. Romance can be highly spiritual. Indeed, it can be very spiritual. If life itself is the root and seat of spirit, then the attraction to life and the things that support life is by definition spiritual. Ordination is supposed to be undertaken when you have that strength… Seek More
Strong Engagement
Romance can apply to any relationship, even a temporary one such as a discussion. You have a romance when there is strong engagement. I was immersed in the romance of the Olympics. Sports is engagement hence romance? All sport is romance of a very visceral/bodily stripe. I’ve always wondered if sports was bad for the spirit? The need to compete and showing your support for your country. The need to challenge self is good. The need to compete is damaging, but in any sport those are mixed. Sports make very little pragmatic sense too. A romantic notion. It’s true. It… Seek More
In Love
The subject is romance, and is romance all that it’s cracked up to be in your experiences, friends? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. No, and I’ve never considered myself romantic. Yes. It can be wonderful. An inconsistency suggests there is something wrong with our understanding of romance, as would the world wide divorce track record. I’ve always seen it portrayed and thought it seemed fake. Rightfully so. Somehow in this day and age people still “fall in love”. But tell me, do you know anyone who is really “in love“? I could only hope for such a partner. You cannot hope… Seek More
Look Inside
Why does personal presence become lost to the identity in a relationship? Wouldn’t a good relationship help you to know more fully who you are? It can if it involves a person who already has some idea of who they are, or some sense of how they could find that. Is this very common? So true romance requires maturity and a certain self sufficiency? You cannot give what you do not have. I can’t give you food if I have none. I cannot give you place if I insist on assuming a false place. You should be able to be… Seek More
Romantic Maturity
One reaches romantic maturity when they have accepted their “opposite” side, and instead of looking for their opposite, they look for the truly “other”. Someone who’s total self is genuinely other than they are. Who can actually contribute to their life experience, and who will actually value their contributions. In the romantically immature stage, we “fall in love” with the one we can identify with. Which is fine when our self awareness is shallow, but it can never last. We eventually need the truly “other”. That person we don’t really understand at all, but who we can open our heart… Seek More
