Real Love Is “For Real”: A Guide for Teens, Young Adults, and Others in Search of Authentic Love: Reflections, Stories, Examples, and a Plan to Help You Find Real Love.

By Pam Heil

If you believe in love, you can make it happen! Through the use of stories and insights, you can discover practical ways to create a healthy dating relationship, and to grow in self worth. This honest and heartfelt book is written in three sections: The Ideal, The Struggles, and The Plan. The first makes the seemingly impossible possible by reflecting on the ideal of authentic love and citing real examples from our world. The second section candidly addresses the challenges, the struggles, and the confusion associated with sex, dating, and love. In the third section, The Plan, outlines practical suggestions to assure that all of your relationships are healthy, and to help you date wisely. Family life is imploding, and this book can be a catalyst to change the world, one relationship at a time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504390750

Pam Heil

Pam Heil is a motivational speaker who believes in the power of love. She started her Empowered to Love speaking platform to inspire adolescents, young adults, and parents to become better at loving one another. She has been a teacher, coach, campus minister, and youth minister and has spoken to thousands of young people on matters of sex and love. Pam is motivated to restore the family as a safe place to empower, guide, and love teenagers into healthy adulthood. She speaks and inspires parents on relational and family matters, supporting them in this challenging world. Pam is a Certified Christian Counselor, a Nationally Certified Youth Minister, and a national speaker for Youth to Youth International and for the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministers. She is a wife and mother who continues to learn about love from her growing family. She is an avid tennis player who loves the sport because no matter how far behind a player gets, he/she can always work his/her way back and win the match: much like life!

Book preview

REAL LOVE IS

for Real

A guide for teens, young adults, and others in search of

authentic love: reflections, stories, examples, and a plan to

help you find Real Love.

PAM HEIL

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Copyright © 2017 Pam Heil.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition© 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-9076-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-9077-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-9075-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916787

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/27/2017

A wonderful extension of her message from her speaking engagements which empower teens to choose chastity: formulating a morality based on love, not sex.

Contents

Section I. The Ideal

Chapter 1: Is Real Love Possible in Today’s World?

Chapter 2: Love Is What We Need

Chapter 3: I Tried It, and It Hurt!

Chapter 4: Looking at Love a Different Way

Chapter 5: Can the Greatest Commandment Really Help?

Chapter 6: Loving Me Is Not So Easy

Chapter 7: Not So Sure I Even Believe in God

Chapter 8: God Is With Us and in Us

Chapter 9: But Relationships Are Hard: Love My Neighbor?

Chapter 10: The Simple Wisdom of Children about Love

Section II. The Struggle

Chapter 11: Sex Sells

Chapter 12: My Views on Sex

Chapter 13: The Dating Game

Chapter 14: My Thoughts About Love

Chapter 15: I Only Want What Is Good for You

Chapter 16: You Have to Choose!

Chapter 17: Should My Values Hurt Me?

Chapter 18: Another Choice for a Personal Morality Based on Love

Chapter 19: A Third Choice Is Still Complicated

Chapter 20: Suicide Is Never the Solution

Chapter 21: The Joy of a Committed Morality

Chapter 22: Things That Work against Love

Section III. The Plan

Chapter 23: You Can Do It!

Chapter 24: Be the Best Version of Yourself You Can Be

Chapter 25: Find an Accountability Partner

Foreword

The world in which you live is vastly different than any other. There is very little considered sacred. Advertising and social media have left no subject taboo. What does it means to be a man? What does it means to be a woman? How to dress? How to talk? How to date? These used to be questions with clear-cut answers. Behaviors used to have boundaries: everybody knew where and when certain things were appropriate, and when they were not. Some things were actually considered wrong.

Today, there is so much confusion: about how to establish relationships with the opposite sex, about being gay or straight, about if we should have sex on the first date or wait a few weeks, or even what constitute sex. Locker room talk, profanity and vulgarity, previously acceptable only in single gender situations, have gone public. Pornography is now a multibillion-dollar business generating more income than all professional sports. Commercials about condoms, feminine hygiene products, and erectile dysfunction are so commonplace that most of you don’t even know that those things used to not ever be talked about in public, or at least in mixed company.

Regardless, of how we got to where we are, downward trends in our society might suggest that we should consider some changes. Teen pregnancy, depression, teen suicide, sexual transmitted diseases, AIDS, divorce, domestic violence, sex abuse, date rape, and varied addictions are just a few of the real problems which are bringing so much pain to our world.

Today, we live in a world in which most of us are so busy, we feel disconnected and frazzled. Most feel lonely and unloved more than we feel safe and secure. The numbers of us who are taking pills to alleviate our pain or mask our unhappiness are making pharmaceutical companies wealthy. We are trying to fill our voids with all kinds of things, which begin to control us, like food, alcohol, gambling, sex, and other addictions.

What we all need is to feel loved. We need to love ourselves enough to restore a respect for ourselves and for one another. We need to recognize that none of us is perfect, but that we all possess different gifts and talents. Because of that reality, I believe we’re going to find happiness as a human race, only when we discover ways to fill each others voids and to share each others strengths: my strengths should fill someone else’s weaknesses and their strengths should compensate for my weaknesses. In order for that to happen, we need to find each other, to meet each other, to know each other, so we can complete one another. We can only discover the beauty of being interdependent by being in relationship with others. We need one another to grow physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

When we become less threatened by others, when we become less competitive, when we learn to build each other up rather than to tear each other down, we will have learned how to support each other on this difficult journey of life, and life will become easier for us all. If we are going to peacefully coexist, we must learn to love one another.

What the world needs most is real, healthy, love! This book is a conversation, which I hope, will help you to accept the call to do your part to save our world by being better at loving.

Introduction

People asked why I would want to write a book about love. Aren’t there enough of those around? Probably! However, this book is geared to helping you find authentic love, real love, in a world deprived, in so many ways, of our fundamental need as humans: to love and to be loved.

This book about love is written because I am concerned about the vast number of us who struggle with the belief that we are unlovable, unworthy of being loved, or incapable of loving. People need help to heal and to connect with those in their families, schools, places of employment, neighborhoods, and churches. Relationships are broken, and people do not know how to fix them. If we don’t believe love is possible, then we can’t create it, or spread it, or share it.

I am genuinely concerned about the disconnect in our world. Even though people are plugged in by the media, the most dominant emotion for both young and old seems to be loneliness. How can we overcome this emotion that leads people to various ways of negative coping skills? So many of us have turned to food, material possessions, alcohol and other drugs, both prescribed and illegal, to deal with our pain. The source of that pain for many is the desire to be seen, valued, and respected: so many people feel invisible and unloved, even insignificant.

I believe each person was created good and gifted. If all of us believed that about ourselves, perhaps, we would take the first step to sharing that goodness and giftedness with our world. If we don’t do our part to create the beautiful mosaic that would exist if we each recognized our gifts and shared them with our world, there will be a gaping hole in our universe, which could be filled with anger, frustration, aggression, and downright meanness, instead of peace and love.

In scripture, St. Paul calls us one body. If that were true, when one of us hurts, we all would hurt. When one of us rejoices, we would