Houses haunted by past loves

The NY Times has a fun piece today titled; The House That Love Built before it was Gone. It features three unique and notable homes built by people long ago for someone they had fallen passionately in love with. Frank Lloyd Wright, Eileen Gray, and Monica Vitti, were either those who designed and built them or the objects of the passion that inspired them. For each, their love affairs all ended in these homes, just 3 years after each had begun.

These were people with money and opportunity, those who could follow their passion to wherever it led. One couple fell in lust with other people while married—and followed their hearts to a new home he built for (and inspired by) her. But she died in a fire there that was deliberately set and killed several others, including her children. For another, the passion died a natural death, they split, and the house had a new mistress in it. The third couple was an older woman and younger man, she having built the home with exquisite details of their union designed into the stone. When they split following much absence by him, she left him the house and moved to another, apparently hoping for a new love. The house would later be the setting for murder and tragedy—a dark place is how it is often described.

If houses really do reflect the people who live in them—do they also contain the energy that was once there? If so, this is what people must mean when they talk about the personality of a home—that which is shaped by those who built it, lived in it, loved and even died in it.

Do you ever dream about past places you have called home? Are you tempted to drive by and see if any evidence of you and those you loved has remained? Do you wonder about the people who lived in your house before you—what their life, work and passions were all about? Do you wonder if any trace of you might be found years from now through some small memory or object you left behind?

Houses are so much more than buildings—and this is demonstrated every time we walk into an old home and feel the ghosts and hear the stories of those who came before. This is not haunting—it’s just a home holding onto something of those who once lived and loved there.

To go the article, click here

Author: Toni Coleman

Toni Coleman, LCSW, CMC is an internationally recognized dating and relationship expert and founder of http://consum-mate.com Her expertise is sought frequently by local and national publications and top ranked dating and relationship websites and she has been a guest on a number of radio and TV programs. She is the featured relationship coach in “The Business and Practice of Coaching,” (Norton, September 2005); the author of the forward for, “Winning Points with the Woman in Your Life, One Touchdown at a Time;” (Simon and Schuster, November 2005) - and her popular relationship articles can be found in several magazines and a number of self- help, personal growth and dating/relationship websites. Toni holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Social Work, is a licensed psychotherapist in the state of Virginia, and earned a certification in life coaching.

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