The Spiral of Love
Jun 03, 2025
The Spiral of Love
By Dr. Flavio
Whether you’re single, in a relationship, or recovering from heartbreak, you’ve probably noticed that certain feelings come around again and again — longing, joy, conflict, pain.
In my work helping thousands of people heal and grow, I’ve come to see these as part of what I call The Spiral of Love. Understanding these stages can help you move forward — especially if you’ve been feeling stuck.
Here’s how it works…
Our love journey doesn’t move in a straight line. It moves in a spiral.
We call this "The Spiral of Love"; we keep returning to four emotional “stations” again and again — whether we’re single, in a relationship, or somewhere in between.
The Four Stations on the Spiral of Love:
Ready – when your heart is open and longing. This happens both to singles and couples in a relationship yearning for more depth, passion, or connection. You are not in pain or in conflict necessarily, but you are ready for more Joy and Flow. If you're single, you're not hurting, but you definitely want a partner.
Joy/Flow – that beautiful stretch where love feels easy, life-giving, and right. Life seems timeless, you smile without a reason, you become generous even toward strangers - and something else: even gene expression changes favorably, improving your health.
Conflict – whether it’s quiet resentment or explosive arguments, this is where friction lives. We call "passive conflict" when a couple is not communicating - sometimes gray-rocking, stone-walling, ignoring or blocking one another. Singles would seem sad and depressed - they are not interacting with others... they shut down to various degrees. In contrast, "active conflict" ranges from simple arguments all the way to violence - in the extreme, death (sorry, but true). The key in active conflict is that the more people try to talk it out, the worse the conflict gets. Have you seen this?
Pain/Heartbreak – the raw ache after betrayal, loss, or deep disconnection. This is a tough one because when a person is in true heartbreak (not just sad or bummed out) the very "hope" or "drive" that causes us to move forward is injured to the degree that it no longer functions. This renders the person literally "stuck". It is like saying: the only way to get out of the hole is using the rope, but the rope broke.
We all move through these stations again and again. The degree to which we experience each station at different times in our lives varies. For instance, you may be in a fantastic relationship, but something happened at his office that you did not like. You feel hurt and disappointed... you will get over the hump together in time, but for now you are in Pain/Heartbreak, albeit to a minor degree.
Sometimes one station grabs hold of us - things get tough, and we do not seem to get out of that station and climb the Spiral of Love into Joy/Flow. This happens, for instance, when a person has been single for an extended period of time and either does not meet anyone romantically, or keeps on meeting the "wrong person" repeatedly.
Of course, when we are in Joy/Flow time seems to stop and we want to extend that experience indefinitely "forever, and ever" - we are in Love!
We have all experienced Joy/Flow - even if that was when we were infants, peacefully being held and drinking milk that seemed to pour into our mouths effortlessly. In fact, it is doubtful that a human being could survive without at least some degree of this experience. (I will tell you more later about a study on infant death that illustrates this idea)
People often reach out to me when they are in Joy/Flow, but for someone they care about who is in one of the other three stations of the Love Spiral. People have actually done experiments to show that we actually become more generous when in Joy/Flow, accounting for the inquiries I receive about "someone I know... can you help?"
And the answer is, yes I can help - for real. This is an important point: I do not just sit and listen to people's problems because today we know that the more we talk about a problem, the worse it gets. There is a neurological reason for this: we reinforce the brain pathways that have to do with a problem, each time we describe it. (This is why people sometimes ask me if conventional talk therapy can be harmful in this sense)
When a person is in:
Longing for love that never comes (Ready).
Fighting, avoiding, or walking on eggshells (Conflict).
Grieving, hiding, or numb (Heartbreak).
they need more than talking - they need effective access to the subconscious mind in order to actually make changes - FAST. Yes, it must be fast because the longer we linger in these three painful stations, the more they become our new normal, the more our brain adapts and remodels in that direction.
So how do we return to Joy/Flow?
It starts gently.
The first step in moving from Ready, Conflict, or Pain into Joy/Flow is to relax and journey within.
Next we learn to imagine the result we want, joy and flow in this case, but a couple of nuances are important here.
The imagination when we are in a state of relaxation is different from what we imagine when we are agitated. When we relax deeply, imagination is much more vivid, and multi-sensorial - which is awesome actually. You want to actually feel what you are imagining as actually happening in real time - we call that intense imagination ‘visualization’.
We want to emphasize the joy and flow within us, rather than attaching it to an outcome or another person. In other words, we do not want to visualize ‘my wife agreeing with me’, but me happy and joyful. This is specially important for those who are ready for love but single who may be enthusiastic about a new love interest - who may not be their person!
A third point is worth mentioning here. The mind will do all it can to distract you away from the visualization. The most common ways the mind does that are:
Feeling tired or sleepy
Feeling distracted with tasks to get done
Remembering and feeling the pain, or the problem
Ruminating about the supposed causes of the problem or pain
The key in all of these cases is to forge ahead. Each time you notice that you fell off the visualization, return to it… no matter how many times it takes. Eventually, like a muscle you have been training, it does become easier.
In subsequent posts, I will expand more on each station of the Love Spiral and how to progress from each. For now, if you have questions or comments, or if you know of someone experiencing any of these issues, please let them know there is a way into Joy and Flow.
Blessings,
Dr. Flávio
Awesome Relations Coaching & Hypnosis
PS: Here is my calendar in case you want to set some time to talk:
https://calendly.com/flaviob/ccweb
On the website, we now have much more information on these processes, in case you want it: www.awesomerelations.life.
Recipient of the 2025 IACT Author of the Year PEN & QUILL Award
