You don’t have to watch the new HBO series, “Tell Me You Love Me,” very long to see we still have a long way to go when it comes to fostering meaningful love in relationships. I say meaningful because everybody has slightly different ideas of what love is so it’s not really love unless it is meaningful to them.

We all learned to love by watching those around us like our parents. Many of you are cringing right now, I can tell, as you remember the love your parents demonstrated for you. We also learned a lot about love from television, our churches and society as a whole. Those love examples, for better or for worse, became our idea of what love should be, and ultimately of the kind of love we should seek.

Just like in the television show, many of you are caught up in the process of searching for, finding and then destroying relationships. They end because it wasn’t the love you were looking for. Women, here’s how it plays out for you. You go out looking for a Mr. Right that meets all the criteria of what you think will be the perfect man for you. Never mind that millions of other women are searching for a man with exactly the same traits. And never mind that some of the traits you are looking for are the same ones you saw in your aunt’s relationship with her husband.

Then you find him and everything is wonderful…until. Until you notice he leaves his clothes laying all over the place, or he’s not very good at home improvements, or he likes spending too much time with the guys. Now you begin destroying what you’ve built by mentally picking him apart…until. Until you just want out of that relationship.

For you men the process goes like this. She is so hot you just feel a blush of excitement when you see her. You can’t get her out of your mind and you imagine her sliding from the car as you hold the door, moaning in pleasure in your bed and wearing one of your shirts with nothing on underneath while she cooks up some eggs for a late breakfast…until. Until you discover she prefers to open doors herself, she’s not entirely thrilled with your sexual performance and she doesn’t cook.

To make a great relationship it takes a lot more than “someone telling you they love you.” The first thing you have to do is realize that you have patterns when it comes to the type of person you attract to you. Then you have to do some soul searching and find out where the pattern originated and try to feel what you felt when you were making this pattern your own. You might discover along the way that you observed pain in other relationships and subconsciously began to accept patterns that would lead to pain in your own relationships. If you watch enough television shows like “Tell Me You Love Me,” you’ll begin to accept the concept of having painful relationships rather than joyous ones. You really do become what you feed your mind. So, begin today to discover why you seek people with certain traits and do this before you start looking for Mr. or Ms. Right.

There is much more about this in the video ,“Choosing A Relationship With Your Eyes Wide Open.” It’s there that you can start to discover your relationship model and also begin to redefine it so it suits you.