In a recent article entitled "Need Disguised as Love" I make the point that individuals generally confuse love for something that is actually driven by need.

For instance, "the need to be needed", "the need to not be alone", "the need to be validated", and "the need to be taken care of" regularly pass themselves off as "I love you". In other words when two individuals enter into a relationship their motives for doing so are often not genuinely motivated by feelings of love.

Now I know that many of you will be upset by my saying that. If you are please don't trust me on it just recall the last time you experienced a failed relationship and why it failed. I think that 9 times out of 10 it was because your partner "failed to meet your needs", correct?

So I rest my case!

So why is it that love plays such an insignificant role in relationships? Well that is a complex issue but let me try to explain.

Love, true love originates and is felt in the Heart of the individual. It is associated with feelings of joy, light heartedness, inner peace, contentment with life, a sense of being care free, an deep inner wisdom and a child like attitude towards life to name a few.

It is something that we are all born feeling but with time and age the Heart starts to close down. This shutting down occurs each time we experience something that the Heart gets hurt by. Now by "hurt" I mean two different things.

On the one hand there is the common definition i.e. being hurt equals being disappointed when something that is desired doesn