SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER 3

Loving in Freedom:

Choice & Flexibility instead of Security & Obligation

    How often do people assume that love and freedom are incompatible?
How frequently do people use their loving relationships
as a means of feeling more secure?
Is it possible to be both deeply committed and completely free?
How can we change our relationships
to incorporate more freedom
and to feel less limited and confined?

    The old way of 'loving' generally sought
stable and secure relationship-patterns.
But the new way of loving described in this chapter
shows how it might be possible to insert choice and flexibility
into an old pattern of love
that was generally characterized by security and obligation.

    The old way of 'loving' sought permanence.
But this new way of loving permits (even expects) each relationship
to grow and change as the people themselves grow and change.
When we freely-commit ourselves,
we never establish permanent relationships.
But, looking back,
we might see that we have had a long-lasting relationship
—or, more likely, a series of different relationships with each other.

    Instead of looking forward and making promises we cannot keep,
we renew our relationship in every present now.
We re-commit ourselves for as long as
we both believe it is meaningful to create
or to re-create a loving relationship between us.

    Loving in freedom also embraces the possibility of radical change,
including the possibility that our relationship might end.
Affirming choice and flexibility above security and obligation
challenges us to love in the new ways that we find most meaningful.

HOW READING
"Loving in Freedom:
Choice and Flexibility instead of Security and Obligation"
MIGHT CHANGE YOUR LOVE-LIFE

    If you have been loving under the old assumptions
of security and obligation,
switching over to this new way of loving
—in complete freedom and ever-renewed commitment—
will certainly have profound implications for your relationship.

    You will find yourself talking about your relationship regularly,
rather than just assuming that it will continue along in its old patterns.
You will see different phases in the history of your relationship.
You might even describe these phases as
different relationships with the same person.

    And—most important—you will be empowered
to renew and revise your relationship
so that it better suits the two persons you are now becoming.

    If you embrace freedom as a primary principle of your relationship,
you will be able to consider several alternative futures for your love.
Instead of being threatened by the possibility of change,
you will enjoy imagining which improved forms
your new relationship might take.

    Loving in freedom gives you permission
to project creative experiments,
to consider their pros and cons,
and to try out the most promising possibilities
for the two persons you are now becoming.
Loving in freedom is loving in becoming.

revised 8-4-2007; 2-13-2014; 2-24-2017;

If you would like to read the first two pages of this chapter, click this title:
"Loving in Freedom: Choice & Flexibility instead of Security & Obligation" .
The first page includes the table of contents for this chapter.

An on-line essay has been created from the opening pages of this chapter:
"Loving in Freedom".

Go to the index page for New Ways of Loving:
How Authenticity Transforms Relationships .

Go to the beginning of this website:
James Leonard Park---Free Library .