The thing about love is that we use one word to describe a million different feelings, a gamut of experiences, a choice, a goal, and a way of being. We love ourselves, we love our friends, we love a joke, we are in love with our partner, and we love our hair… It’s an action and a verb. It’s permanent and it’s passing. It means a lot and it can mean a little.
And we wonder why we are confused about love. Why when one person says that they love you, it means something different than when you do…
I’m one of those people that “love” love. I feel like it’s the answer to the age-old question “what are we here for?” I think that people find purpose in caring deeply about our planet, and there’s something about feeling so strongly for another human being that we risk being heartbroken.
And as I’m sitting here days before Valentines Day, where love is certainly in the air, I wonder what love truly means to me and how my perception of love has changed and developed through the years. I mean, it has changed, hasn’t it?
I remember the first time I fell in love. I was 19, and it was my first boyfriend in university. I remember this sort of passionate, impatience to how I felt- we literally spent hours, days, and then weeks solid together. I experienced my first fight, first makeup, first intimate moment, first “I love you”, first betrayal and first heartbreak. I got it all in that relationship. And I quickly after met the guy that would be my longest-term relationship so far. 4 years that finally ended in a bittersweet realization that we had outgrown each other. Tears flowed on and off for months and I literally felt like I might not make it. I felt physical pain, I questioned my decision, regretted it, then accepted it. And he soon found somebody new, and 6 months later when he told me he was getting married, I relived it all once more.
I remember thinking “I will never feel like this again”, and meaning it. I remember the moment- crystal clear, that I decided to never get hurt like that again and I haven’t. I’ve played my game defensively since then. Always careless at first in my excitement, “forgetting” the lesson I learned, and then when I noticed what was happening, I would pull back just as fiercely. The guys I have stayed with are the ones that were willing to deal with the dichotomy, and that would endlessly forgive my ambivalence. Those guys, though unbelievable people, I’ve realized aren’t actually the right ones for me.
So now with that awareness has to come change. If there isn’t change then it means I am operating with the same mindframe as a hurt 23 year old…
The coach I work with uses a quote “what’s in the way is the way” and I think it applies here. The way to truly be in love is to put ourselves in a position to truly be hurt. For people that have had similar situations to me – every instinct will have us do what we’ve always done, and so it’s important to notice our instincts and feelings, but honour our commitment to changing.
So upon reflection about what love means to me and to answer my initial question – yes, it has changed. For me, love used to be a feeling that I had. I needed some way to describe the warmth, connection, and vulnerability that I felt. Now, it’s changed a little. It still describes that feeling but unlike a passing emotion, love for me is a choice to keep doing actions that cause me to feel love. It means choosing to treat my partner with respect even when I’m frustrated, it means making sure people are taken care of and it means deciding not to pull back when I start to feel like I may get hurt. And it’s the only way, in my opinion, for love to last a lifetime. I let anger pass, sadness floats away, but love is what I’m committed to keeping.
So this Valentine’s Day I am going to remember how far I’ve come from the 23 year old who decided to be tough. And maybe after the cinnamon hearts and chocolate truffles and sappy love songs, we can all take a moment to reflect about what love actually means to us and what we want our experience of it to be. And then do it – put in into action… because at the end of the day, doesn’t Valentine’s Day always end with a little action anyways? 😉
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