How to Know When to Listen to Your Head or Your Heart
Being in love can be so confusing! Instead of the typical angel and devil, it’s like you have your heart on one shoulder and your mind on the other. They are constantly arguing about the love in your life.
Your heart says, he’s perfect, and I just can’t get enough of him. I’m miserable when he’s not there, and it seems like it’s meant to be! I’ve never been as happy as I have been with him. Then your mind speaks up, yeah, right, that’s what Sarah says about her loser fianc. Love is blind, remember? Try to think rationally about this!
Especially at first, love often feels this way. Your heart is racing and so deeply in love. All those sappy songs on the radio actually make you cry. You wonder how you got so lucky to be with this impossibly great guy. At the same time, your mind is screaming slow down! Think this through! You look at your parents and their miserable marriage. They describe their meeting very similarly to your present circumstance. Are you blindly heading in the same direction, though you promised yourself you would make your marriage different?
Who should win the battle? Should you listen to your illogical but happy heart, or your rational but impersonal mind? You should usually listen to both. God gave you each for a reason. Your mind will notice the problems that your heart will quietly ignore. Yet, you heart will help you take the plunge and will not let you give up when things are going different than you had planned.
However, there are times when it is important to ignore either your mind or your heart. All of us know someone who allowed a perfectly good marriage fall apart because they didn’t listen to their heart enough. Somehow the little things like house chores, hobbies, or differences in style were made all too paramount by the mind, and the big things that made the relationship so beautiful got lost and forgotten. It is also very common to see someone only allowing their heart to guide them in their relationship. These are the people that end up with players, liars, and other risky types, but continue to stay in the relationship because their heart keeps telling them that they love them and will someday change.
How do you know if you are listening enough to both your mind and your heart? Often it takes being able to step outside of yourself and see things as everyone around you is seeing it. Getting an outside opinion every once in a while can also do worlds of good, as long as they are someone who knows and understands what a good relationship looks like in the first place. Another person can calm your heart to a more rational state, and assist you in easing the mind’s discomfort.
Find ways to look at him from someone else’s perspective. This will help you notice things you wouldn’t normally and help you figure out who he is really beyond the infatuation of your heart and the perfection that your mind demands. Then, you will find the answer we all deep down want to know without a shadow of a doubt: is he the right one for me?
Filed under: Dating