Dysfunction in love is genetic: you get it from your parents. And also from your friends and lovers, and the people around you. If the people are unloving, you learn from your environment that there is no love, that people will betray you, and so on. 

But it's true, basically, that fear of love splatters from one generation to the next and the next. Two abusive and unloving parents show their children a model of unlove, the failure of relationship. Dad kicks mom. Mom's mother kicks mom. Mom kicks her daughter. The children become skeptical, bitter, hostile. Daughter kicks her next boyfriend. They beat the hope out of you. 

That heritage of abuse is a torch that passes from one generation to the next, from one person to the next, through role models of disease, dysfunction, unlove. 

And nowadays, the chances for success in love seem slimmer than ever. Young people laugh in your face if you talk about love. Their concept of enduring love is mostly endurance. Sow your wild oats on Saturday night, and pray for crop failure on Sunday. Otherwise, there's enduring, then failure, then moving on. All things being anywhere near equal, you just get ground up in the gears of “the way things are.” Love is for fools, that's what fools think. But it's not true. 

Under such abysmal conditions, not too many people escape despair, and resist the temptation to give up on love. Statistically, you're unlikely to be an exception, a person for whom love succeeds. More likely, you will reinvest robotically in the losing loves that your parents and friends invest in, with the same horrid results: disappointment, frustration, failure, hurt. On that path, you eventually collapse into morbid depression.

Here's how it'll be: Either you follow the old, tried-and-blue paths, OR you recognize you have to find something that's unique, off the charts.

So you see, there's no way off that treadmill other than daring. None at all. Because obviously, if you don't dare respond positively when love is delivered to your doorstep, your fate is sealed -- and history can only repeat itself in ever more disturbing iterations. 

How does a person get off the treadmill? You must dare your way off. You must dare to be rare. You must hugely care. And you must -- absolutely must -- have the courage to accept your answer when it knocks on your door. 

Only the bravest souls respond properly when their bluff is called. And only they get it out of the hell, and are healed.

Actually, escape involves several steps. First, dare to pray. Not very hard, that part. Your heart prayer goes up to the universe that there should be real love. You pray for something exceptional, knowing that for love to viable, it must be exceptional.

If you pray sincerely, your prayer will be answered, because God answers heartfelt prayers, absolutely. Again, when it comes to love, the demand for real lovers is far less than the supply. And a demand that small is nothing for God to fill.

But then comes the critical part: When God sends your answer, you either accept it or reject it. This is the answer that came from God, this person who was given by God to you, as the true and actual answer to your prayer.

The answer to prayers is a given, but to accept the answer is rare -- VERY rare. People say, “A person who could really love would be a one-in-a million person.” To that I say, “That's true, but the supply exceeds the demand, because a person who could receive love is one in ten million.” 

Good news! -- the supply of love exceeds the demand ten-fold. 

So the person who's going to get out of the cycle of despair will be the one who not only prays for the right thing, and gets the right thing, but also accepts the right thing. Everybody else stays on the treadmill, generation after generation. What else could happen? Nothing -- except daring. 

If you want love, dare to embrace your answer when it comes. And dare to admit you recognize it. Even that takes courage, you see? Cowards think, “If I admit that I recognize the answer when it comes, then I'll feel obliged to love. Won't that put me at risk? And then I'll be used and abused and betrayed. Therefore, why should I admit that I recognize the answer when it comes?” 

Such fearful thoughts, as automatic, demonic, logical, and safe as they seem, effectively abort God's mission to heal you. They send God's answer packing. 

Isn't that something?