On Love

We all want to love and be loved. All of us, all of society, needs to know love and to know how to love.

So many books have been written about love in relationships, how to keep a relationship going, what star signs are compatible, the difference between men and women. Still there are so many unhappy people and our society has higher than ever divorce rates and single people.

Love relationships are a challenge because of what they show about ourselves. Many of us go blindly into relationships unaware of their purpose, unaware even of ourselves, and much of what we do is what we have unconsciously learnt from our parents.

Many relationships fail because of why they started in the first place. They could have started with the wrong reasons. For example, people often look at what they can get out of a relationship rather than what they can put in. They might go into a relationship because they are lonely, they want love, to fill a gap, to have someone to love, to end their depression, to improve their sex life, or worse, because they are bored.

Most people do not realise they go into a relationship to fulfil a need. Some say they were nothing before the other came along, that that special other makes them feel complete. However, the purpose of a relationship is not to have another complete you, but another with whom you can share your completeness.

For a relationship to be successful, we need to love ourselves. If we don’t, how could we possibly love another. Some people hate themselves because they feel no-one loves them. They don’t believe us if we say we love them, and instead think they are being manipulated. They want us to prove that we love them and often they ask us to change our behaviour.

Then when they do believe us, they start to worry how long we can love. They want to hold onto this love so much that they start changing their behaviour. So what we have then have are two people not being themselves. And when we cannot be ourselves, we start to resent it and become bitter about the relationship.

For a relationship to be successful, we need to be concerned about ourselves and what we do or are in relation to our highest vision of ourselves or who we really are. Too often we are overly concerned about the other and whether they are living up to our expectations. We need to honour, cherish and love ourselves before we can truly fall in love with another.

One thing we do in relationships is demand – demand time, attention, that the other says “I love you” over and over, demand gifts, be taken out etc etc. We also get offended if none of these things happen, and we play out this offence. We miscontrue or misunderstand another and create dramas. We can understand then if someone doesn’t want a relationship because what they are often getting is a whole lot of emotional baggage – the games, the manipulation, the false emotion.

Imagine if we needed nothing in the relationship. Imagine that we simply wish to give love and pleasure. How could the other person not want to give us love and pleasure in return? And if that person doesn’t, is there any reason to hang around despite how much we claim to love that person. We have to honour ourselves.

Be a gift to whoever comes into your life, and to those whose life you enter. Give and expect nothing back in return. Don’t have expectations. Expectations about what the other should or shouldn’t do. Expectations about what love is and how it should be expressed. Expectations that if you love me, you must marry me, give me a ring. Gosh we are a mixed up society!

If you need nothing, you have no expectations, no demands, no fear. Needing isn’t loving. I like this saying:
Enjoy everything
Need nothing

Some people use fear to control others. They say they won’t love you any more if you don’t lose weight, if you don’t marry them, amongst myriads of other reasons. These people are themselves fearful, fearful of losing someone, of being alone. These are not reasons to have a loving relationship.

Be aware of tendencies to own or possess someone. Be aware of not limiting, controlling, restricting each other from true expression and celebration of who you are. A relationship is an opportunity to grow, to become better as a person.

The important thing about relationships is that you love yourself. If you don’t, you allow yourself to be abused and destroyed by others. If you have compassion, understanding, love and kindness, these are things you can express in a relationship with another. You can be these.

This is why being aware of yourself, of your emotions, how you react is important. It helps to know if you are being truly loving or something else.

If another causes hurt, have the courage to admit honestly to yourself and to another exactly how you are feeling. Often we feel that we’ll look bad if we do. We hang on to the feelings of anger, upset and want to hurt the other. Acknowledge that you have these feelings and then disown/discard them if they don’t represent who you are.

Sometimes we are very accomodating – we ignore being mistreated, or ignore certain behaviours and problems and then we readily forgive and are eager to show compassion. Loving someone does not mean you have to be accomodating or that you should allow people to treat you anyway they like.

Decide what is best for you and speak up. Put yourself first. Be prepared to speak truthfully and openly using kindness. You are then being true to yourself and by being kind you are considerate of the other.

Love has been described as freedom, unlimited, and eternal/everlasting. Most of us want these qualities whether in a relationship or not. We want the freedom to be creative and to express who we are and not to be limited or constrained, and for it to last forever.

Marriage has attempted to ensure these qualities in a relationship but has failed on the freedom and unlimited qualities. Marriage has ensured eternality through vows of promise or commitment. The problem with these vows is that things change – we change – we grow.

We are not yet able to predict our future with such accuracy as to know whether we can keep our promise truthfully to be always the same. It is therefore unrealistic to force someone to keep a promise – think of the agony, regret it can cause. We cannot use legal or religious constructs in a way that run counter to our true nature. Otherwise at some point, we rebel against them.

We cannot guarantee love or security – this is lowering what love is. Love has no requirements. Vows are used in marriage, but love does not require them. Love exists separately from marriage. However because we are confused about what love is, we believe we need requirements.

Marriage isn’t working – the vows or the promises are not producing what people want. Instead marriage is producing bitterness, anger, regret and high divorce rates. The promise has become an obligation. We are not obliged to love. When we experience promise as an obligation, we will resent it.

Being obliged takes away our freedom. Love does not oblige us to do anything. If we express our love as a free choice, we don’t resent it.

We’ve been taught to make judgments and often it is on the basis of these that we love. But judgments are the cause of our problems. Love does not make judgments as judgments are a condition, eg “I don’t love you because…”. Love just is. It doesn’t use judgment to decide who to love or not love.

Love will stop you from hurting others, from hurting yourself. Hurt others and in the long run, you hurt yourself. This is simply the law of cause and effect. Cause something to happen and it has an effect in some point in time. Whatever the basis of the cause, the effect will be attracted to it.

In other words, you may have a particular emotion, such as, fear, spite, jealousy, love. All emotions and thoughts create energy. Because you have created that energy, it hangs around (in your energy field), and a similar energy created elsewhere will be attracted to the originating energy. Like attracts like. This explains why certain things happen repeatedly to people.

If negative things happen, look at what you are thinking and unconsciously attracting to you. Become aware of your thoughts and change them so that you start attracting what you like or what will make you feel good. The aim is to feel good (although not at the expense of others), so anything that helps to get that feeling is good.

Note that some marriages work because they are clear about the purpose. This is not to say there aren’t challenges, but if you know the purpose then it makes it easier to satisfy that purpose.

In general marriage is not for security, not in owning or possessing nor in being owned or possessed, not in demanding or expecting, nor in hoping that what you think you need will be available through the other. You have everything – wisdom, love, insight, knowledge, understanding, nuturing, strength, compassion within you.

Marriage isn’t to limit, control, hinder, nor restrict each other from true expression and celebration of that which is the highest and best of you; not as producing obligation, but in providing opportunities to grow to your full potential.

The same goes for any relationship.

Sex is an expression of love. The love we have for the other, and love of life. Sex is for pleasure and joy but these are absent when love is based on fear.

Believe that you are love and that love is unlimited, eternal and free. And if you are love, then you are unlimited, eternal and free. Think on this, meditate on it and decide for yourself; find your truth.

On Love by Lynn Berry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.lynn-berry.com.