Happily Ever After…and 39 Other Myths about Love – Introduction

Excerpted from Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love by Linda and Charlie Bloom
True or false?
Couples with great relationships don’t fight.
Most people expect too much from marriage.
All the good men/women are already taken.
Love can heal all wounds.
If my partner were more like me, we’d have a better relationship.
These are some examples of commonly held beliefs about love, but do these beliefs help or harm your ability to sustain a relationship? Just as importantly, how do you know these beliefs are true? In this book, we call these beliefs “myths” because we consider them to be unsubstantiated ideas that many people accept without question. A myth is defined as “an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution.” Myths are not personal ideas; they are collective attitudes or stories that possess the power to influence a large number of people. Myths may or may not contain some truth, but whether or not they do, we often repeat them as received wisdom.
Such beliefs can get us into a lot of trouble. When everyone around us seems to share the same ideas, we rarely question them. We don’t even see them as beliefs. We regard them as facts, universal truths, or as the way things are, and we act accordingly. When we unquestioningly accept a myth, or a system of thinking and doing things, we become locked into a fixed and rigid perspective that makes it impossible to entertain other points of view. It’s the mental equivalent of going through life in a straitjacket.
On the other hand, when we recognize a myth for what it is — a point of view that can be subject to question — we open ourselves to the possibility of considering other ways of seeing and doing things. Relaxing a fixed perspective allows us to access a wider range of responses. This makes it possible for us to be more creative and better able to understand another person’s perspective. Suddenly, we can see things from a more expanded point of view, and the world opens up.
Relationships require open-mindedness in order to thrive. Loosening our attachments to widespread myths about love enables the kind of flexibility that strengthens relational bonds. In a relationship, more openness translates into greater mutual understanding.
Our goal is to encourage this kind of open and flexible approach to your romantic relationships and committed partnerships. We aren’t asking you to stop believing what you believe. We aren’t hoping to install a different set of beliefs or a new version of software into your brain. Rather, we want to encourage you to recognize when certain ideas about love have become so deeply embedded in your thinking that it hasn’t ever occurred to you to question them. When we step back and see these ideas for what they are — as points of view or opinions, not reality — we free ourselves of inaccurate or unconscious assumptions that may not be serving us, particularly in the context of our relationships.
The ability to consider other perspectives enables us to communicate with greater understanding and trust, which minimizes conflict. Relationships aren’t meant to conform to certain standards or fit certain ideals; they aren’t right or wrong based on some external measuring stick. Instead, when two people share love, empathy, and compassion, they create a unique partnership that may or may not conform to society’s beliefs and definitions.

Excerpted from Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love. Copyright © by Linda and Charlie Bloom. Reprinted with permission from New World Library.
Linda Bloom, LCSW, and Charlie Bloom, MSW, are bestselling authors and the founders and co-directors of Bloomwork. They have lectured and taught seminars on relationships throughout the United States and the world. They have been married since 1972. Their website is www.bloomwork.com