To feel love for someone and their love in return is the most wonderful experience of our lives. When we feel love, we experience joy and fulfilment, but when it is absent we rapidly become unhappy and disillusioned. The search for love defines our lives and plays a critical role in the quality of our relationships. Love really does make our world go round!

Unfortunately we are rarely given any teaching about love, and yet with a little understanding and awareness it can transform our lives. Love can solve problems and heal emotional pain, but only when we allow ourselves to experience its power - we must invite love into our lives.

Consider for a moment the times when you have fallen in love or felt the love of a parent, child or friend. It is almost impossible to describe those comforting feelings of connection and well-being. Notice how anxieties and problems fall away to be replaced by solutions, ease and confidence. There is a timeless quality about love that buoys you up and protects you in even the most despairing of times. You are experiencing the power of love to heal and bring joy and success into your life.

Love is the fundamental truth of life. We are born to love and be loved. It is our natural state. Some people prefer to see this love as a characteristic of our humanity while others prefer to see it as the manifestation of a divine or spiritual source of love. Whatever our personal belief, the power of love is experienced when we connect open-heartedly with others and embrace our natural connections.

Our emotional and relationship problems result from our denial of love - our separation from the love that bonds all people and separation from our higher or spiritual source of love. This denial usually starts when we are very young and has a damaging impact on our lives. Perversely, we invent all manner of negative thoughts, feelings and behaviours to distract us from the love that we already possess. In romantic relationships we then search for love from another person, or try to gain fulfilment from material possessions, to replace the love that we believe is lacking within. This is a terrible mistake because until we have rediscovered self-love, we cannot give or receive love fully from somebody else.

Luckily the best place to work on finding self-love is within a supportive relationship. All relationships have their challenges and it is by working with our partner through the difficult times that a partnership is strengthened. Relationships fail because of our inability to get to the core emotional issues that create the separation. These will be our fears and insecurities and lack of self-belief. In our attempt to hide away any sense of low self-worth we make ourselves unavailable to our partner. It is like building a fortress around ourselves - we think it protects us but in reality it damages or even destroys our relationships.

The way to embrace our loving essence and our natural connections with others is to be willing to feel all our emotions and communicate about them maturely to our partners. We can also ask them about there feelings and commit to working with them to heal any fear.. Normally we will find that they have just the same fears and insecurities as us, but may play them out in different styles. Getting to these core issues is the key to healing the pain and fear in a relationship and to becoming more bonded.

As we achieve such healing within our relationships we will automatically discover more success in our lives, we will feel more fulfilled and this will make us happier. We can all do this if we can find the courage to feel our emotions and reveal them within our relationships. As our hearts open we will feel all the love that has been hidden behind our defences and our relationships will go from strength to strength.

About the Author

Peter Granger is an acclaimed relationship and life coach. He has recently launched a book - True Love, The Amazing Truth about Love Relationships & Life. For more practical tips and advice about relationships and dating or for information about his book go to http://www.iloveyouloveme.com