When I think about how I lost love, I think about Alfred Lord Tennyson’s quote, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” When I lost love, I felt the whole world had collapsed around me. I’m sharing my story in order to help you if you too have lost the love of your life.

I think it is important to remember that every relationship has a natural lifespan. In Junior High, that’s about four days. As we get older, the lifespan increases. But, there are certain relationships that are right for a period of time and then go awry. Most of us will only have one great love in our lives. The other relationships will terminate. That’s why when I say I lost love, I understand that this is a natural process.

In my case, my girlfriend and I were thinking about ratcheting up our relationship. Her lease was about to end, and she wanted to move into my apartment. As we were spending most of our time there anyway, it made sense from a financial perspective.

But there is something significant about having separate places. I know I lost love because I couldn’t handle her taking our relationship to this level. I guess the time span of our relationship was up because I wasn’t willing to become more committed.

Now, I know I handled the situation badly. I went to a friend’s bachelor party and let’s just say things got out of hand. Word about the wild antics at the party got back to my girlfriend, naturally, and she dumped me. I lost love over the events of one night.

But, when I think back on what really happened, the events of the bachelor party were really a reaction to our discussion of more commitment. I seriously don’t think I would have behaved the way I did if I really wanted her to move in. I lost love because I wasn’t ready for the direction it was taking.

I’m glad I had the chance to be in a relationship with my ex. But I don’t think she was the love of my life, my soul mate. Instead, she was someone with whom I genuinely enjoyed spending time. I loved her. I still love her. But, she is not the person with whom I see spending the rest of my life.

I went through a period of mourning the relationship and analyzing what went wrong. I really was hurt when she said she wanted to end things. Sure, I understood that I had hurt her. But, I didn’t want her to leave my life completely.

I guess what I wanted was for things to continue on the way they were. But, every relationship has to grow or die. Because I wasn’t willing to let it grow, it had to die. In every relationship, there is a time to die. And, for me, this was it. That’s how I lost love.

Instead of buying a book on relationships, there is plenty of free relationship advice out there for you to take advantage of. Make sure that advice comes from trusted resources first and foremost. Some great free advice includes ways to keep your relationship strong, how to show love in difficult times, what to do when times get hard and who to turn to when times get tough.

There are several ways to keep your relationship strong, the most notable of which is communication. Communication is the cornerstone of a great relationship because communication is how your partner shows love to you. Communication doesn’t have to be just talking, it can be actions as well. Remember, the body has 5 senses: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and feeling. Learn how to communicate in all of those ways, and your relationship will be more stronger by the day. Also, be honest right from the outset with our partner. They will thank you for it. It doesn’t do anyone any good to lie just to get them off your back because eventually the problem will rise again and you two will have to face it. Stay honest and true to yourself, and your partner will be true to you as well.

One great piece of free relationship advice on how to show love in difficult times is to show your partner that you trust them. If there are tough financial times ahead and you are acting like your partner can’t pull his or her own weight, that will cause them to feel discouraged and dejected. Instead, work with your partner to make things better, always saying and doing encouraging things along the way. Also, agree to disagree on certain points of view your partner may have. Let’s face it. You both may not have all of the same opinions. That’s okay. Acceptance of this is an important part of making the relationship strong during the hard times.

If times are really hard between you and your partner, sometimes it’s good for both of you to take a breather. Agree to pick your discussion up at a later time in order to give both of you a chance to collect your thoughts. This is to ensure that neither of you risk saying something you will regreat later. When times are tough, reach out to your trusted family, friends and church family. Also a church couselor or community counselor can be a great resource.

Self confidence is one of the many things we think everyone else have expect us. Don’t be harsh with yourself. Of course you are in equal footing with the person standing next to you. If he has the confidence you admire and you loath for not having the same confidence then don’t get caught with the idea that you can’t be like him. In fact, if you just set your mind to gaining confidence then you are sure to be like him someday.

People are not born with confidence. We have to develop it and there are many interplaying factors that must be put to balance before we can actually create an ideal self confidence that would guide us through our achievements.

Self confidence stems down from within and in how we think and feel for ourselves. Its development is affected by things that we normally don’t have control of. Say, the models we had who either encouraged us or who watched us fall face flat. It is also affected by the events in our life to which we either reacted positively or negatively, thus our anchors for developing our own sense of self. It is also dependent on how well we were able to maximize our potentials.

Here are some guidelines that you can follow to lead you in gaining your self confidence:

If your past bothers you and you think that it has greatly affected the level of your self confidence (which is by the way a solid truth) then just remember one thing- anyone can begin something at any given moment of his life. You can always start gaining your self confidence even if you are already staring to have those dreaded lines in the face.

The past is a stale check, the future is a blind hope. You can only bargain on the “now” that you have. Build your foundations on it and start anew. It is never too late to gain back the confidence you have lost or the confident you never actually have.

Take stock of yourself. From the moment of our birth to the day we die, our gifts would remain in us. The difference though lies in the way we were able to accept and enhance these realities. If we would only recognize the innate genius that lives in each of us then we would be able to achieve far more than our wildest dreams would command.

We only have one life and we only have one self to live with. Why waste this life because the self did not believe in the potentials he has? Now, if you don’t want to fall into history who is someone who failed to start dreaming then you must act now and be convinced that dreams don’t starts with “d” and end with “s”. Instead, it ends with reaping the fruits of your achievements and starts with believing in yourself.

Sometimes, lack of self confidence is only a product of our imagination. There are people who believe in us, only we don’t believe in what they believe. We choose not to listen to their encouragement because we find no hope in things. We make ourselves believe that we are not capable of doing anything good when actually, there are those people who stand in awe of our subtle achievements. You won believe it but sometimes, these things do happen. And when they do, the people who are caught in these instances are often unaware of their value to the other person caught in the same event.