Twice weekly reminders that love is real; for lovebirds only
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What is a lovebird?
You, my friend, are a lovebird.
You're someone who values connection, intimacy, and transparency. And you know that while love should be simple, it’s certainly not easy.
Oh, sure, it might be easy some of the time, but real love requires work, consistency, and willingness.
You’re the hopeless romantic, the love nerd, and you wear it on your sleeve.
You know that love takes work. And that relationships take work.
You’re not afraid to do the work (well, actually, you might be, just a little, and that’s OK.)
You’re willing to do the work it takes to make sense of one of the most confusing and powerful concepts that exists.
Love (and the sex that comes with it.)
It’s powerful because it’s fundamental to having fulfilling relationships and something we all strive for.
It’s confusing because you never learned how to love growing up (I know I didn’t) because no one taught you how to love.
You didn’t take Love 101 in school. And when it came to sex, you can forget about any useful education.
If you were lucky, you had parents who modeled what a healthy relationship looks like (I sincerely hope that was the case). And let's be honest, that's a big if.
No matter how loving and well-intentioned your role models were, they probably fell short (just like we'll fall short raising our children, but let's not get into that right now.)
They learned to love from their parents.
Open, honest, and intimate communication about what it means to be loving towards yourself and others wasn't a priority back then.
Surviving was.
They didn't talk about what it takes to develop healthy connections with people.
They didn't explain the importance of setting healthy, loving boundaries with those close to you so you could feel safe.
And they surely didn't show you how to speak openly about your sexual desires and needs (and if they did, kudos my friend.)
We learn how to love by watching the people close to us, and those people did the best they could.
And, sometimes, the best was kind of crummy. That's OK.
You're not content with repeating the past. You're here to improve on what you learned and deepen your capacity for love, transparency, and intimacy.
You want more out of life and out of love. You insist on living a fabulous, whole-heartedly loving life.
Somewhere along the way, you realized that love was crucial to living a fulfilling and deeply connected life.
Even though some people didn’t value love the way you did, you knew it’s significance in every part of your life.
And you also knew that falling in love was easy (when you found someone to fall in love with), but staying in love was hard.
Erich Fromm said this years ago (in 1956, actually):
There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which starts with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. - Erich Fromm
That’s because to love is hard work. And whoever tells you it's not is deluding themselves.
Love takes discipline, humility, presence, and a willingness to be vulnerable.
And we know that vulnerability = the possibility of getting hurt.
And not just a little bit hurt. Fucking hurt. The almost mortally wounded kind of hurt.
And that’s scary.
Because if you believe in love, you’ve been hurt before. There’s no way to love without exposing your soft underside to someone who might hurt you (and has).
And there's no way to make love safe. Once you make it safe, it ceases to be love.
And yet, here you are, lovebird.
Getting back up and turning towards love instead of away from it no matter how complex and painful it's been in the past.
You found that love was more important than money, power, and status.
And you also found that while you valued love, you sometimes weren’t that great at it. You've been clumsy, you've hurt people along the way, and you did the best you could.
You know that you can’t do it alone.
You take your time to learn, to read (this manifesto, for example), and to lean in.
You know that find-love-quick schemes and hacks to 'call in the one' are bogus.
You value the long game, the road less traveled, and the unbeaten path.
When it comes to love, you don't take shortcuts (and nor do I).
As a human, you are born with the inherent right to love and to be loved.
Here at The Love Drive, I believe that:
Love is our birthright
I also believe that self-awareness is crucial to developing a healthy view of ourselves and our behaviors.
I believe that you are an expert on your life and hold an incredible amount of wisdom within.
I believe that sex is part of love, and communication is essential to loving connection.
Our currency is emotional intelligence.
The ability to recognize our feelings, deal with them in healthy ways, and learn how to communicate them.
I believe in learning how to self-soothe and self-regulate our emotions and finding ways to meet our needs.
Which means identifying what our needs are, how they differ from our desires and learning how to express them.
Like the late Mary Oliver said,
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves[...]
If you have a desire to learn the relational tools and communication skills to have badass relationships and sex lives, then I think you’ll love what I have for you here at The Love Drive.
I connect best-in-class experts in the field of sexuality, intimacy, and psychology to help our lovebirds love more deeply.
I have public conversations with everyday people about the struggles of love, sex, and relationships.
I create workshops and group programs to help lovebirds like you become better lovers (in every sense of the word).
So that you can better serve yourself and your loved ones.
MY MISSION: To help people develop the emotional intimacy required to have loving and connected relationships.
As lovebirds, we lead with understanding, empathy, and love - for yourselves and others.
If this resonates with you, stick around.
I’ll help you cultivate more love in your life.
I’ll help you develop the kind of emotional intimacy that will pay dividends for the rest of your life (and in all your relationships).
And I'll help you carve out the kind of love and sex life you can be proud of.
I’m so glad you’ve stopped by; it means the world (I know, I say that often, and I mean it.)
Listen to my podcast episodes. Learn about one to one love coaching. Take the Intro to Modern Dating Workshop. Reach out and say, “Hey!” anytime.
If you care about intimate, authentic, and abundant love, I'm here to help.
Welcome aboard, lovebird.
-Shaun Galanos
Head Lovebird (and proud of it)
Twice weekly reminders that love is real; for lovebirds only
The Love Drive is made with 
in Montreal by Shaun Galanos and Roger (the dog)
© 2014-2019 The Love Drive, LLC