The Game of Love CHANGING THE RULES CHANGES EVERYTHING! © By Kevin B. Rice INTRODUCTION Ah, the game of love! You know – falling head over heels, the pursuit, the chance to win someone over, and all those feelings of butterflies in the stomach! Where did all of this begin? Why is it such a part of our lives? And why does suffering so often follow? Once I became interested in the topic of love and romance I began to research it. It seems so much a part of everyone’s life at one time or another that I figured it had to be something primal – behavior imprinted on the human psyche since the beginning of time. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I discovered, much to my surprise, that “courtly love,” or modern day’s idea of “romantic love,” was invented by humans, not by God. The first time in recorded history where courtly love, (as it is now known,) appeared was with Guilaume IX, the Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine in the 11th century when he wrote eleven poems that set forth the ideology of courtly love. It was not until the appearance of Eleanor of Aquitaine when she made the courts of her two daughters’ important centers where this courtly poetry could be read. One chaplain, Andreas Cappellanus at Marie’s court, penned a three book treatise called The Art of Courtly Love. In it, Capellanus wrote several rules setting forth how courtly love was to be played out. However, courtly love was marginalized for centuries because France became a monarchy and the feudal order reigned. It was not until the late 19th century that the courtly version of romance was once again flourishing in Southern France and, eventually, in England. Now we find ourselves in the 21st century with our own version of romance, inspired by the unrealistic musings of poets and troubadours from centuries past, complete with fears, the intrusion of the ego and, romantic fantasies that are doomed to fail 100 percent of the time. This book is dedicated to showing you how to exchange the dysfunctional, doomed-to-fail version of love as most of us know it, to one in which everyone wins, all the time. True romance is only found among those who understand love as it was granted to us by God, not the “love” man has invented to stroke the ego. Real love and romance are the opposite of human-created love and romance. While the world’s version of romance was invented by the human psyche, love was not. Romance changes with the wind; love is as solid as a mountain. Romance produces tremendous ups and downs; love is steady and unyielding. Like a mirage, romance metamorphoses and finally goes away as lovers move toward it, grasping at something but finding nothing there of substance. But love is like the ocean, deeper and more encompassing the more you envelope yourself within it. We have all had relationships where we would have felt better taking a cheese grater to our faces! How many times have we found ourselves writhing in misery and pain, crying, “love is going, going…gone”? All of this happens not because love brings pain but because the illusion of man- made love is nothing but a lie wrapped in a pretty package. As children, we were taught not to play with matches because they can start fires, and fires can bring pain. As adolescents, we were taught to avoid unsafe sex because of disease that causes pain. In fact, much of the experiences of life are about avoiding the things that bring pain. Yet, one of the most common sources of pain in our lives is disappointment in our relationships. When it comes to relationships and love, whether they are romantic, familial, or friendship, something strange happens: We experience the pain and stay for more. And, we think that love is the cause of pain (love hurts!) when, in fact, real love never hurts. The culprit is the illusion of “love” to which we cling for dear life, not knowing that pain’s authentic alter ego – fear – is hovering nearby, waiting to be recognized. 1 How many times do we choose the same relationship dynamic that brought pain in the past, only to find that the new one produces just as much pain? We writhe in agony after a breakup or relationship breakdown, only to get back on our feet and play the same game again with the same rules – maybe only with a different person. While love may be the genuine desire of everyone entering a relationship, it certainly is not the experience of everyone. Instead, insecurity often reigns (this is how fear masquerades itself). You suffer instead of being in peace. You sense loss, not gain. Why does this occur when our desire is to find true love? Why is it that, within these games that we play, we leave many casualties alongside our path: broken people, with broken hearts, who scratch their heads wondering what the heck went wrong? We look upon our own past relationships and wonder what happened to the love – where it went and why. The truth is, although we desire the experience of love, many of us fall short of knowing how to find it. The game of love the world plays looks wonderful from the outside. Like a beautifully wrapped present, it fits all the criteria for superficial love. This present is wrapped with beauty to distract your attention from what is within the package. What is really inside the package is not love, but what we want to be love. Once the “present of love” is unwrapped, we find something different than what we thought would be there. “You’re not who I thought you were! Where’s the romance and love we once had? She’ll be the right one once she sees what she’s doing wrong and changes.” It’s as though we have fallen in love with the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and her crew perceived a mighty, powerful presence hidden behind a veil. Reality ripped their illusions away immediately when a simple man behind the curtain was unveiled. What they found instead of power was a weak, timid man. Likewise, the package of love this world is trying to give you looks loving on the outside, but when you open the package, you find fear. Let’s admit it – this world is not loving and fear-free; it is fearful and the antithesis of love. So, what we are playing often really is not a game of love; a more precise label would be “a game of fear.” The Games of Fear and Love The allure of the “game-of-fear-masquerading-as-love” is that it contains the compelling lie that we are playing it to find love. In the game of fear, fear is loved and love is feared. So, what do I mean by that? In order for us to grasp this fully, for now, understand that there are only two emotions: love and fear. Every other emotion or feeling falls under one or the other category. People run toward fear (and away from an awareness of love), unaware that they are actually doing so. They have confused the two. When we invest in an illusory form of love, such as today’s version of romantic love, we pretend that our fearful thoughts are loving. “Will he love me in the morning? How can I keep her away from other threats? I can’t be happy without him!” We define these feelings as love when they are, in fact, fear-based. I will explain later why these thoughts stem from fear, not love. In this upside-down cycle of sabotage we are reviewing together, you will uncover many fearful thoughts that you formerly thought were based on love. The voice of fear is subtle and hides behind seemingly loving, caring, and compassionate thoughts. This voice of fear has the daunting task of deciding how best to convince us that fear is actually love, and love is fear. Fear is not something you should be afraid of because you created it through your thinking, and you can let go of it. When fear is gone, only love remains. Don’t misunderstand. Fear is not a sinister force out to get you and ruin your relationships, but when you place your belief in the unbelievable (fear), it will wreak havoc on your relationships. 2 Our journey together will take us through the circuitous routes of the fearful road that people traverse, thinking they are on a path to love. When you recoil from fear, this seems natural. But before we can look at these surface fears, we need to look at the underlying fears in the unconscious mind that masquerade as thoughts of love and romance. We are going to look very closely at the game of fear we play. In The Game of Love: . You will be shown the roads that fear travels, with all its bumps and curves, bends and twists, mountains and valleys, and then finally to the destination of suffering and pain that it takes you to – all under the banner of love. You will be shown the reason you are on this road to begin with, and why you have confused it as the path you want to travel and the game you want to play. You will be shown that there is another path and another game that is worth every bit of your time and attention.