It might seem to sound like a contradiction. How can you be emotionally independent while you are supposed to be "in love". By common definition love would seem to be a condition wherein two people feed each others need for joy and happiness. But no one can really be for another person a constant supplier of pleasure.

It's hard enough on any single individual to cope with all that life brings from day to day. To also be expected to attend to the mental and emotional needs of another person is neither fair nor practical, and more often than not situations wherein there is such an expectation end ugly.

Personally I don't think we can ever blame anyone else for our unhappiness. At the end of the day whether we are happy or not comes down to how we perceive our lives and what is going on in our lives, and also how we respond to the trials we have to endure.

In love we all make choices. First we choose the person we are going to get involved with, often times based solely on those initial feelings that overwhelm our mind and body in favor of being with that person. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with starting a relationship because you find that someone stirs a passion in you and you feel a desire to be with the person in a close and intimate relationship.

However, most of the time we are expecting that the person is always going to make us feel good, always going to want to be around us, always going to be thinking about us and needing nothing else in life but to be with us.

In reality we all come down from that high of being in love. And for many of us, mostly women, when the relationship enters the plateau phase, the struggle begins to get back what we think we have lost. Suddenly we're not getting the attention we were getting before and we can't handle it. Many of us in relationships attach ourselves in an unhealthy way to a person, placing very unrealistic expectations on that person. Basically we expect the person to provide happiness for us, to no longer think of themselves as an individual who had individual likes and dislikes and tendencies before getting involved with us. And when they don't act the way we expect them to we become unhappy, angry and resentful.

The plain fact of the matter is that no other human being is responsible for making you happy. It's nice when people do things to please you; but no one, not even your partner, owes you. And before you can be happy in love you must recognize and accept the responsibility that you have to yourself to be the one who tends after your mental and emotional well-being, who feeds your heart, mind and soul what is needed to keep you happy and who strives to keep out contaminants that thwart your happiness.

By understanding that happiness comes from within and that no one but you has the ability to make you happy or unhappy, you are more likely to avoid the unfortunate mistakes that people usually make in love. Of course people can do things that affect you; but your reaction to someone else's action is what determines how you feel, not the action itself.

People who take responsibility for their own happiness are not usually unhappy in love because they don't stay in situations that do them no mental or emotional good, beating a dead horse, trying to make someone accept responsibility for making them happy. Usually, because they don't have this expectation to begin with they can be happier in their relationships because they are able to be more reasonable and more emotionally independent.

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