Our feelings are like weather patterns. They are changeable and act on the environment with great power. They inform and distract with their intensity. They reflect the nature of the moment with great accuracy.

Just as our changing weather patterns are shifting and changing the world we live in, our ability to experience and share our feelings in meaningful ways has the power to shift the emotional landscape of our lives.

Yet feelings are for many people a locked box: an experience that overwhelms and is difficult to express. We are taught in a variety of circumstances and for a variety of reasons to suppress our feelings. We learn to silence our feelings so well that the messages in our bodies are not even discernable. Suppressed feelings are not as invisible as you might think. They take on a life in our dreams and eventually become diseases in our bodies. Our inability to express our feelings cuts us off not only from our own experience but limits the connection we feel with the people we love most.

In the same way that we live in denial of the extreme weather patterns that are threatening life as we know it, we disconnect from our emotional life because we are afraid we will be overtaken by our feelings. Small children are frequently shaken by the enormity of their emotional experience. When was the last time you witnessed a temper tantrum in the grocery store- what better metaphor for a giant storm raging inside a little body? What happened when your feelings were too big to hold when you were a child? What happens now?

Jim Carrey was quoted in a Playboy magazine interview last year saying that “Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you’re sitting on the couch and you get up to make a triple-decker sandwich. It’s on the other side of that, when you don’t make the sandwich….It is about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. I am always asking myself 'What am I going to give up next?' Because I want to feel.” Learning to feel begins with a choice and the realization that authentic living demands the maturity to open up to your full experience, as messy as it might be.

This is, in fact, the do or die work of relationships; to have the courage to feel the full range of emotions that comes with intimate connections. It is literally the fuel for the fire of passion, the air that keeps a relationship breathing, the stuff of transformation and growing up. Just as our weaknesses and frailties are wedded to our virtues and strengths- the ability to express uncomfortable emotions creates the possibilities of discovering the love and passion that we want most.

How then do we make this choice to live a feeling life, to physically experience the internal storms of growing up and growing old? It is a practice, no different than learning a new musical instrument. Some days you hit the right notes, other days there is no melody at all. In agreeing to the practice, something opens and each moment gives you an opportunity to try again. Slowly you become comfortable with the weather systems of your emotions. Some days it is even comforting to know they are there.

There are days I long to look up and see an opening in the sky that would remind me of the truth about life. I work to see and to believe that life is good and our inclination to love is always one to be trusted. However, sometimes love and trust are not companions — affairs happen, partners are left, love goes unrequieted, and accidents of the heart happen as frequently as they do with dishes.

I hear of these stories of betrayal and rejection frequently. The accounts are in fact more commonplace than the accounts of love sustained. I am definitely working to reverse a significant social trend and I ask myself frequently if the current state of human intimate relationships is a more true reflection of our capacity to connect and build lives together. Certainly current statistics of over 50% divorce rate and the short duration of many relationships is testimonial to something. And yet idespite the odds, most people would say that they want to live in the embrace of a committed relationship.

The question of how to love again is the point of greening our personal lives. Holding onto the pain, resentment and anger of previous relationships makes it impossible to be open to new possiblities. Making the decision to forgive our previous partner. letting go of painful memories and angry ways of relating is the key to allowing light and new possiblities into our lives. The poisonous feelings we carry, justified or not, about our previous hurts do more to poison our own lives than any damage we believe we might be inflicting on previous partners.

Making the decision to open your heart to life and love after being hurt requires immense courage and a faith in one's own ability to love. It is the ultimate green experiment to realize how fertile and forgiving a soil that our souls carry through this life. It is a reflection of deep and abiding faith that somewhere above your head, seen or unseen, there is an opening in the sky that says yes to love.

Memories of childhood games on late summer evenings remind me of what the game of love once meant to us. As kids we understood that it was the play that mattered. Winning and losing both reflected their original root meanings which were “to desire” and “to be set free.” Capture the flag in the dwindling light of the sky or a full neighborhood game of hide and seek was an apprenticeship in freedom. Pretending was rich with excitement, as we all shared in the wonder of not knowing the outcome. And yet we all knew that no victory was ever final, there was still tomorrow night.

Lovers through history shared one secret; they all knew that it wasn’t about winning or losing, it was the play that was essential. Playing allows us to experience freedom from duty and necessity. It is a primary condition of creativity and allows us the self-conscious delight of living out alternative realities. It is what makes us so deeply human.

Nowhere does this ring more true, than in our most intimate moments. Adding playfulness to sexual desire invites new friends into the bedroom: imagination and fantasy. Invite these allies to any passionate encounter with an openness to play, a willingness to pretend, and the freedom to live in the wonder of not knowing the outcome. Saying yes to this game of love, keeps life green and alive. And while it offers no guarantees of long term winning, it does promise to share glimpses of what we all desire most of the magical influence of love.

Rewarding our instinct to love creates the self confidence to transform a private secret to a public force with the power to renew life and transmute human defects into loveable qualities. We are, after all, most loveable when we love. By staying in the game, the play itself teaches us how to sustain the wins and losses. In love and life it is the sustaining that makes us grow.

In the early years, as I drove in larger and larger circles around our community, I held fantasies of how all this driving and devotion to their development would pay off in college scholarships. As they grew and lost interest in one activity over another it became clear that the real benefit of all this driving around was in each of them finding some piece of themselves that made their lives meaningful.

But, each year it became more difficult to coordinate their activity schedules and figure out how I could drive across town to three or four different locations within twenty minute intervals. I justified the time I spent driving my kids as “our time together” and tried not to think about how frequently I filled up the tank. Yet, the stress of the scheduling and trying to sort out the routes occupied so much of my mind that I could barely focus on the time together. It wasn’t the kind of parenting that I imagined when I was making all the green choices that came so easy when they were little.

The gnawing doubts about my parenting choices and our driving lifestyle came to a head after watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Calculating the actual monetary costs of all those circles is mind-boggling even if I use only half of what employees get in their mileage reimbursement. What was worse than the close to 1000 gallons of gas per year that I was consuming in these concentric circles was the realization that I was producing 18,195 lbs of CO2 per year. Somehow in the practice of parenting, I got so busy accommodating everyone’s desired schedules that I lost touch with what I was trying to create in the first place.

I still don’t have the answer to this dilemma, but I have taken small steps towards re-establishing the balance between my kids expectations and our ever more essential environmental values. I have given up my time with them in favor of carpooling whenever possible. I limit the number of activities and sports each kid can participate in and I work hard to advocate for gaps in activities, for slowing down, even to experiencing boredom sometime so that they have the opportunity to discover themselves in quiet also. And thanks to this great job I learned about www.terrapass.com which is not only an incredibly easy site to help you learn about your own emissions levels but offers real solutions to helping deal with them.

Let me know how you have dealt with these issues in your family…

"Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing…I am not aware of any other factor in medicine- not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery- that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes." –Dr. Dean Ornish

These words began a revolution of thinking about the critical connections between our physical well being and our level of connection in life. As a heart doctor, Ornish paved the way in demonstrating not just a mind- body connection, but a heart connection which determines our well being, ability to heal, our most basic ability to enjoy life. That our physical heart is deeply connected and influenced by our relationships is intuitive and has been understood in this light since ancient civilizations, so in some ways the scientific studies only underline what we have always known. Love is the cure as well as the illness in our world, and evolving our ability to love, increases not only our chances of survival but creates a depth and meaning in life that only happens in relationships.

The healing affects of intimacy and connection extend deeply into the physical act of lovemaking. Hundreds of major medical studies have shown that an active sex life leads to a longer life, better heart health, a healthier immune response, reduction in chronic pain symptoms, lower rates of depression and even protection against some cancers. Men who have regular sex (only twice per week) have half as many heart attacks as men who only have sex once per month. In fact, a regular garden variety sex life has been shown to extend life by as much as ten years. People who enjoy a meaningful sex life are less anxious, fearful and inhibited.

If you are looking to green your lifestyle, why not start here. All the habits that you develop about sustaining your environment and home apply to your relationships. Feed your relationship with the same energy that you bring to the selection and preparation of your food shopping and cooking habits. Giving your time to composting and recycling is no different than finding the space to air out your feelings. Making commitments to simplify your life and reducing impact on the environment requires the same amount of mental energy as constructing the space and time for deep and meaningful touch in your days.

And just look at the sustainability benefits- Not only will you be happier and more optimistic as you take on the challenges of dealing with our quickly-changing biosphere, but you will likely be healthier and have more time to make a real difference. Greening your love has the power to extend out to the world in ways that we can barely imagine. It's a worthy practice that can only make life more sustainable.

This is particularly true about relationships. Frequently there is more that is unknown than what we see, and we often fail to even bear witness to all that we are missing. This was true for me this week, when upon the death of my mother's long-time lover, I realized how much of the relationship I had missed and misunderstood.

I judged the "affair" of it, and as a kid in suburbia, struggled with not only the illicit nature of the relationship, but also its interracial quality. The relationship went through years of on again/off again, and I sat smugly by with all the transitions. Then yesterday, with his death and the end of what might have been a new and more gentle version of the affair, I realized that I had missed the whole point. Responding to my mother's grief and breaking voice, I told her and realized as I said it, that the story had been about love. He loved her, as he could, and in the end that was enough.

Love that can sustain relationships is often hidden beneath layers of story line. Teaching ourselves to look for what lies beneath, whether good or bad, provides the opportunity to move beyond our often flawed judgement and to experience the richness of a wide range of emotions.

When you give your relationship the gift of digging deeper, and not going with the first judgement, you learn patience and the ability to be present. Allowing the process of uncovering what your partner is experiencing and how your relationship is changing gives you the time that we all need to catch up to our questions. This space where we see the whole picture are the moments where we can forgive and let go. Usually that is enough to find the love.

The air in your relationship flows from the communication that passes between you and your partner. It is the currency of your relationship. It has the power of a wind generator to capture the essence of what it is to be intimate. It is the source and fuel for physical intimacy.

Taking into account significant gender differences in communication styles and comfort is an important beginning. Women communicate with about ten times the number of words as men- knowing this fact will hopefully allow for differences without letting anyone off the hook.

Everyone needs to stretch themselves when it comes to learning to communicate. Our willingness to share of ourselves in breadth, openness and depth reflects our ability to be intimate. Self disclosure is literally a breath of fresh air for many relationships which limit most conversation to dealing with the mundane tasks of managing a life. It is easy to fall into this place where discussions remain on the surface, our busy lives often leave little time for processing our own feelings or the complex work of expressing them.

Having conversations of depth require not only time, but trust. First, we must trust ourselves. Low self-esteem is hard on relationships because we cannot really build a bond of trust with another if we are not comfortable with ourselves. Issues can easily become confused and communication easily muddled when it is continuously layered with a lack of self confidence of one or both partners.

For many of us, developing the skills for meaningful communication include not just being willing to express ourselves but also a genuine effort and interest in listening. There is little that makes us feel as deeply valued and loved as someone taking the time to truly be present and hear our story. It is an art that is often overlooked in all our dealings, but is particularly damaging in intimate relationships. Learning to listen actively and respectfully adds miles to the life of your relationship.

Trusting your partner enough to share true, central and meaningful aspects of oneself is a true aphrodisiac. It creates a continous cycle of deepening self disclosure and safety that is at the heart of thriving relationships. Consider building a wind generator inside your home if you are really committed to a sustainable life. The air is good in there and who knows how much energy you might be able to store up for some cold winter night.

Start by feeling worthy of your own love. Give yourself a break and trust your instincts. Enjoy an old favorite romantic comedy and laugh out loud or cry when the mood strikes you. Allowing and experiencing our emotions is both healing and invigorating. Allowing space for feeling life is a profoundly loving act that opens us up to new ways of seeing.

If you’re lucky enough to be loving someone else this Valentine’s Day- celebrate your gratitude not just with conscious green gifts, although a small measure of those is always nice. Take time to write a list of all of the remarkable qualities that your relationship brings to your life. Don’t expect that your partner should know. Even if they do, seeing it in your handwritten prose gives those thoughts gravity and reality that you can hold. Just so you know, money is not the issue here: a single rose or chocolate heart can speak volumes with a well written note.

If at all possible, pull out all the stops and actually invite someone into a candle-lit physical conversation. Change the sheets, rub each other with sweet smelling oils and feel the transformative gift of human touch soften the tension in your muscles, as well as some of the hard edges that live between you. Breathe together and feel the weight of arms holding you, the warmth of bodies touching.

If you are living among the lucky few of us who have an arousal function in working order, be bold and try it out. Allow desire to course through you and wonder at the remarkable chemistry that exists, so often out of sight, but usually close enough that it can surprise us with both its sudden availability and intensity. The power of sharing sexual arousal and climax is unparalleled in this life. It heals our physical body, our emotional connections and transforms our deep sense of connectedness to both our loved one and life itself.

“I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” Vincent Van Gogh said this hundreds of years ago. Think of his bold acts of love, almost every painting a testimony to his witness of love in nature and among couples. How desperate was his love at the moment he cut off his own ear? We all share a little bit of that larger-than-life desperation about having a fulfilled love life. There is nothing more satisfying in life than feeling loved, nothing that makes us more courageous, more generous, more fully alive or able to express our deepest selves.

Green your Valentine experience this year by creating a sustainable love. It is truly a force that can heal the world.

Statistically, the fire element is weak in our culture. Couples in our country struggle profoundly with sexual issues in their relationship and it is more normative to have a problem with desire, arousal or satisfaction than not. Indeed over 68% of "happily married" couples report problems with at least one of these areas in their sex life.

In my metaphor, "The Ecology of Love," I teach couples that there are several other elements of the relationship which will come to bear on your ability to builda fire in your relationship. The first and most powerful element requires a consideration of the ground to build it upon. The ground or earth of a couple's relationship is how you think of each other and your relationship. While there are often moments of frustration or anger in any relationship, if your primary mode of thinking about your current partner or relationship is negative than consider the ground of your relationship. Are you are trying to build a fire on barren land, maybe even playing with fire on a volcano?

Any fire builder knows that to sustain a healthy blaze requires air. The air in your relationship exists in the communication that flows between you. The quality and frequency of your conversations as well as the comfort and ability to self disclose creates the essence of your fire. It is not uncommon for members of a couple to have very divergent interests and ideas, which can actually be a great gift, but not if the result is a tuning out and disengaging. How do you listen to your partner? It is the act of love that fuels your sex life.

The smallest of fires can become a wild fire without water nearby to keep it in check. The water of a relationship exists in the ebb and flow of the time you share together. Togetherness means different things to different people, and not having a shared definition, can make the relationship both unsafe and unsatisfying for both people. This fact is essential in building a fire, because where there is no safety, people can get burned.

Good sex then, is both the result and the gift of positive thoughts in your relationship: a steady flow of together time and open and honest communications. If you can't quite sustain a fire in your relationship, consider looking at how the other elements in the ecology are functioning. Often once the air starts to flow, or a sense of safety is re-established, intimacy issues can often resolve by themselves.

Tending the fire in your relationship is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal to sustain them.

We finally have the scientific equipment to verify what we have always known: our drive to be social, to be connected to each other, is actually hardwired. Our need for connection and drive towards empathy is not a result of environmental influences but rather a function built into the brain itself. Daniel Goleman, PhD, a New York Times science writer and bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence, has taken his research to a whole new level and has published Social Intelligence.

Advances in neuroscience now allow us to observe brain activity while we are in the act of feeling. We can now witness that we are continuously forming brain to brain bridges- a two-way brain traffic system. In the same way that we can “catch” a cold from someone, we can “catch” their bad mood- or good mood. The significance of the relationship indicates how deeply we are affected and will stimulate actual physical consequences: hormonal response that magnifies stress (cortisol) or induces happiness (oxytocin).

Positive interactions and being surrounded by loving people actually works like a vitamin for your entire being. Negative relationships and interactions don’t just make us angry; they make us ill. As in other brain functions, this one also reflects our amazing neuro-plasticity. This is to say that our brains are continually building new connections- and no matter how young or old, anyone’s personality can be affected by other people. We literally heal each other through our social connections.

This news couldn’t come at a better time, as we continue to replace real interaction with techno-driven reality. Is it really dating when it is virtual? Are we connected to others when we only share words on a screen? More than any new technology, what we truly need is to develop a lifestyle which encourages deeper human connection. Overwhelmed with digital connectivity, it is easy to become oblivious to the people surrounding us. How often have you witnessed someone at a check out stand absorbed in some deep conversation on a cell phone and entirely oblivious to the person in front of them.

Real intimate connections don’t happen on the phone, in a text message or on IM: they require a real-life presence where we pay full attention to the people we live with. Empathy grows in our brain through eye contact, voice recognition, and touch–all of the time-intensive ways of knowing another person well enough that we can’t objectify them. Empathetic connections are the prime inhibitors of human cruelty. Scientists agree that the survival of our species depend on our ability to grow and develop this innate ability and a culture which encourages deep and true human connections.

So next time you’re feeling blue about the state of the world, turn off your electronic gadgetry and go for a walk, preferably holding hands with someone who loves you. Sustaining your love is not only good for you, but you may also be saving an endangered species!

Let's just admit it: its not just the environment that is running out of energy. We are all exhausted; our personal lives often mirror the over-extended and depleted state of the planet. All the digital contraptions which promised to simplify our lives instead keep us forever holding on, never fully able to close shop to our myriad responsibilities and commitments.

This fatigue often carries into our relationships. How many of us arrive home depleted and with little left to give? How much energy do we save for the hard work of sustaining a relationship through all the challenging phases of builiding a family? (If I am speaking out of turn here, please go on to the next how to, but I suspect that I am not alone in my quest to find a truly renewable source of energy to keep my relationships vital. )

The world is demanding us to rethink our lifestyle- as we all knew global warming and our collective lack of foresight are all catching up. Making green decisions about building a sustainable home and investing in renewable energy makes sense. Yet we rarely apply the wisdom of renewable energy to the part of our lives which I believe is the axis- our relationships.

It is easy to forget about the profound investment of time, attention and energy that we invest in the early phases of our relationships once they fall into a predictable pattern. I don't know how we can forget as there is little that compares with the initial heart connection and the excitement of effortless intimacy. But forget we do as the demands of life stack up and home is the last stop in our too long days.

Finding ways to keep this vital connection recharged is the work of making love sustainable. And thankfully many of the concepts of building renewable energy sources apply:

• Solar energy: our only passive source of continuous energy lives in our relationships too- the fire and intimacy of love carries the same transformative spark as the sun. Learning to access this power in your relationship could actually be more powerful than a roof full of solar panels.
• Wind power: the air which is always blowing around us is also the currency of our relationships. Do we stop and listen to the voices in the air around us? Do we take the time to collect the energy and wisdom that is shared in our daily conversations? These vital connections are at the basis of recharging our relationships.
• Hydro power: capturing the power of ocean waves or the rush of a waterfall happens in relationships when we take the time to recognize the power of our connection and time together. The energy and strength which comes from having someone at your back at the day's challenging moments revitalizes our commitment to be present. The presence that comes from being loved is as big as the ocean.

Begin with the center of your world at creating a sustainable future: approach your relationships with the idea of renewable energy and surprise yourself!

Wendy's "Ecology of Love" concept is available on her website. (in PDF)

Our world is changing quickly, and so it is without surprise that our relationships are shifting as well. We live in a culture that both supports committed relationships and yet urges us to live a self-satisfied life. Many people have more economic freedom and cultural flexibility to choose their lifestyle. The intention towards creating sustainable relationships which nurture our independence and ability to be ourselves is the best outcome we can hope for as we consider the recent census statistics on the state of our relationships.

Marriage is on the slide. The latest census stats confirm what most of us already knew: living in a marriage is now the minority experience in this country, and for the first time in history, more women (51%) are living without a spouse. The slow decline of married couples since 1950 is now a clear sign that there is no going back to the assumption that marriage is the defining institution in people's lives. In fact in 2005, married couples were the minority of all American households.

Certainly there are many explanations that come to bear on this topic, not the least of which is that we live in a time when women have more choices, flexibility and freedom to determine their relationship status than ever before. Several factors are driving this shift: people are marrying later in life, more people are co-habiting and not marrying, and divorced and widowed women are choosing to stay unmarried. Not surprisingly, racial differences are reflected in these statistics: only 30% of black women living with a spouse compared with 49% of Hispanic, 55% of non-Hispanic white women and 60% of Asian women.

Coming to terms with the fact that most adults will spend at least half their adult lifetime without a partner and allowing for the growth and acceptance of families of all configurations is a first healthy step to reconciling ourselves to the changing relationships which surround us. Divorce is more common than not, so it is helpful to recognize that not all relationships come into being for a lifetime. We commit to them with the hope of carrying us through the ups and downs of our lives, but this is not a realistic approach to all of them. And yet, if every relationship provides the opportunity to practice love and to learn something of being more human, then the relationship has succeeded for however long it lived.

Another healing approach to understanding this data is to consider the skills that might make a difference in extending and sustaining our vital relationships. Many studies show that happily married people fare better physically, emotionally and economically over the long term.

I believe that our relationships can only thrive as we learn to choose them, in both their easy and challenging places. Approaching our relationships as teachers, in one of life’s most difficult practices, they are often the most gentle and generous ways of learning patience, kindness and empathy. So let us evolve our families, but not refuse them: they are the foundation upon which we grow everything else.

Wendy's "Ecology of Love" concept is available on her website. (in PDF)

Sustainable relationships exist in an ecology of love. This includes keeping the air of communication going, building on a solid foundation of loving thoughts and showing up for your partner so that the water of connection flows between you. These are the basic requirements for building and sustaining a fire in your relationship. So yes, sometimes we will build a language and opening to explore healthy intimacy.

Love is the renewable energy from which all else springs in our lives. If we accomplish nothing else while here on earth, let us build relationships that will keep our hearts strong and our characters true. Sustainablity is about leaving enough for others and as far as I am concerned, leaving a legacy of love is our highest calling.