Forever Love

Calvin Copeland: Welcome back to *How Love Can Last Forever After All*. I'm Calvin Copeland. So glad that you could be with us. I hope you enjoyed the first episode of this second series, and I hope you're starting to see things a little different.

It will take some time, but the more you better understand what forever love looks like and the fact that it is formed—it's not a fantasy—you realize that you have the ability and some control. Relationship love isn't something that just happens to you; it really is something that you can participate in. Isn't that a novel thought?

You're not waiting for your Prince Charming or your Cinderella, but you have the ability to shape your world of love. There is a novel concept. Today we're going to talk about how to recognize emotional safety. Now that you've begun to see some of the patterns that you have experienced in life, let's begin to identify how you begin to recognize emotional safety.

Now that you can see the patterns, the next question becomes: can you recognize what is actually safe? Not everything that feels strong is stable, and not everything that feels calm is boring. Sometimes calm is what you've been missing. Emotional safety is not about perfection; it's about consistency. It's about knowing this person will show up. This person can handle discomfort. This person takes responsibility. This person repairs. Once again, it's not about perfection. We're not talking about perfectly, but reliably.

My wife is the first person to tell you that I am far from perfect, but she's also the first person to tell you that I'll stay in the game. I can say the same thing about her. We may have disagreements and we may know each other's shortcomings, but we keep showing up. Quite frankly, that's the biggest part of the fun of it—the fact that over these 40-plus years, we continue to enhance an environment that feels safe so that we can continue to grow from our shortcomings.

Once again, we've been talking about this frequency illusion, and here's what's going to happen now. Once you see it, you'll start to see it everywhere. You'll begin to notice who avoids accountability, who gets defensive, who creates clarity, and who creates confusion. Now something shifts. You're no longer just feeling relationships; you begin to observe them. Before awareness, you were reacting. After awareness, you are discerning.

There have been relationships in my life that, before I understood what healthy was, I didn't recognize. I was the kind of kid that was always asking questions. I've got some close relationships, and I remember being a pre-teen—I'm talking eight, nine, ten years old—and I would be in conversations with family members and they would say something that didn't make sense to me. I'd ask questions, and I remember I was talking to one family member and I asked a question and they turned around and said, "Man, why is it when I talk with you, it always feels like a work-on-me session?" I was nine years old and I had no idea what he was talking about.

What I realized later in life was that he was talking from the lens of our family dysfunction. Every family that I've ever talked to has some form of dysfunction. I didn't realize this at nine or ten years old, but what was happening was that he was talking from the lens of our family dysfunction and because I hadn't—there were several years apart—I didn't know the rules of the system. Nobody gave me those glasses yet.

As I began to study in this field of relationship and understand what makes healthy relationships, I now understand that I was challenging the dysfunction in our system. It was so eye-opening to understand that so much of our identities—if we don't begin to learn how to discern how we are operating in relationships—we will stay in that reactionary place that oftentimes is very dysfunctional.

A lot of people confuse intensity for safety until they experience consistency. So ask yourself: "Do I feel clearer after interaction or do I feel more confused? Does this person create stability or emotional fluctuation?" Do you have some people in your life that you don't know how they're going to show up? You don't know how the interaction is going to flow. A whole lot of that has to do with whether or not the people are paying attention to what their frequency illusion is.

What have they identified to be true, and is that truth a safe place, a stable place? Once again, once you begin to see healthy, you'll begin to see healthy in places you didn't realize it was healthy, and you'll begin to see unhealthy in places that you've been walking in and not realizing that this is an unhealthy place. You start seeing it everywhere. Attraction may open the door, but emotional safety determines if love can grow. What is formed can be recognized, it can be protected, and it can grow.

This has been a relatively short session. This episode is a short session, but it really does go deep. My hope is that you'll take the time to really think about where the stable places are in your life. You begin to identify where you are reacting rather than discerning. You begin to take the time to identify: "Why am I doing what I'm doing?"

Much of the reason that that is so important is because when you leave situations or you leave places and you're feeling more anxious, more stressed, or more confused, those are all signs that you are in environments that cause you to be reacting. Begin this process of discerning, which means you want to begin to ask the questions: "Why is this making me feel that way? Why does this person always get my heart racing?"

This is so that you can begin to become aware and then you can begin to discern: "How do I find some safe places? How do I have some places where I'm not more confused? How do I identify persons and people who create stability for me? How do I get off of these emotional roller coasters?" Once again, I want to emphasize that once you begin to see it, you really will begin to see it everywhere.

I'm going to say it one more time. Attraction may open the doors, but emotional safety determines if love can grow. What is formed can be recognized, it can be protected, and it will grow. Remember, forever love isn't fantasy; it's formed.