Do you love them or are you in love with them? The question presents an opportunity to dig down and deeply understand what being in love is all about.
I love: love! There is no other way to say it.
I love the giddy stomach-churning, heart palpitating joy of a loving connection. I even enjoy the heart-wrenching struggle of overcoming the inevitable disappointment that comes with it. You know, the cosmic turn of events that require you to champion the fun love that seems to have briefly disappeared, so you can get it back? Yes, I even love the work that love, at times, requires.
There are many phases to a relationship but there are only two intertwining phases to love. One, is the initial connecting of the body, mind, heart, and spirit. The second is the succession of choices made over and over that contribute to the living love that two people end up with in their relationship.
Make no mistake about it: Love is no joke. It’s a lot of work. Working to overcome your fears of intimacy, trust, and even a dawning happiness. I know that sounds strange but being happy can be a daunting task. So, I’d like to take a moment to simplify love.
The Experience of Love:
People connect on many levels: mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. You can fall in love with anyone when you connect on any of these levels. Because the idea of falling in love is the experience of being receptive to the connection and allowing it to happen.
However, people falling in love with each other first fall in love with themselves as they see who they are or who they wish to be in their partner. We experience the falling feeling of love as each of the following elements open up, but when they inevitably close again—as is the way of the universe—the feelings of love are temporal. We are then left with the opportunity to choose love based on our relationship to each element, individually.
More specifically, we connect with another person through our sense of: security, power, open heartedness, communication, values, and ideals. We fall in love as we connect on each level and the more we acclimate to that new experience and the newness of it leaves us, so too, might the love—with only a choice left behind to champion what once was.
The experience of security in a relationship comes when a person feels stronger because of the connection of the relationship or because they feel taken care of and safe that their most basic needs are met.
The experience of power in the relationship is present when at least one of the partners has confidence and the other partner benefits, leaving them both feeling powerful for a time.
The experience of open-heartedness in a relationship comes when two hearts connect for any reason: compassion, sympathy, empathy, joy, grief, or love.
The experience of communication in a relationship happens when there is an easy flow of expression or the support, education, and permission that someone needs to do so.
The experience of shared values with another in a relationship comes from common knowledge and experiences whether they be; geographic, cultural, racial, experiential, spiritual, or emotional.
The experience of shared ideals with another in a relationship come from either a deeper belief in humanity or the shared recognition in a higher power, or at very least, a focus on anything outside the self.
The Process of Love:
Loving somebody is a series of choices we make daily for the opportunity to experience the original rush of love. As we fall more deeply in love with ourselves, we are able to cultivate the most powerful tools required for an enduring, loving relationship to another: trust, kindness, patience, motivation, inspiration, and joy.
Trust is your ability to know that you can recover from anything.
Kindness is your ability to choose a firm graceful boundary where necessary and forgoing the need to be right all of the time.
Patience is the willingness to let things happen in their divine timing rather than the timing that you hope for or expect.
Motivation is the underlying set of beliefs that support a person’s reasons for being in relationship.
Inspiration is the set of cosmic ideals that perpetuate going outside of traditional beliefs in order to keep the loving flow to a relationship.
Joy is the mutual experience of power combined with happiness that creates confidence in a relationship.
Hopefully this mini tutorial has cleared up any confusion on the concept of love. Now, it’s up to you to manifest the action and choice to love. Everyone can fall in love, but having and sustaining the opportunity to love someone, is a privilege.