How to Love
Love is a myth, built on a dream, broken by desire and bound to every man’s heart.
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I’ll break this down in two sections, finding love, and being in love.
How to love is hard. Love is a hard word. To begin, you can’t love anyone until you learn to love yourself. Not a narcissistic love, but a feeling of contentment with yourself. You must know who you are so you know what your value to someone else is. I’m not saying you should relish being alone, but can you be good at it? Again, loving yourself is not a self-centered love of ones-self. It is about knowing what you want out of life, where you are going, how you will get there and whatever journey you may be on you are comfortable with it.
YOUR LOVE WILL FIND YOU
To love, you should be worth something to someone. And perhaps the best you are is just an every day man or woman that simply wants no more than to be a housewife or working man. But remember this, you will draw a like person depending on the world around you. If you want to marry an actress, you don’t stand much of a chance working on the corner dime store. You may need to face up that the love you search for is a love you have not set yourself up for. I’ll speak of this more soon but lets stay with the point of drawing like minded people. There is saying I learned of when I sang in a band years ago, “Your audience will find you.” That meant that we needed to play the music and style we loved, and the people that already had that sound in mind were already seeking us out. They would find us. That goes the same for your personality in love. Be who you want to be, and the person like you will be drawn to you.
FORCE FATE
I wrote a song about this and it is very true in my mind. You see, with all I’ve said above about being yourself and your love finding you, that concept can only take you so far. You have to still put yourself in your true love’s path to find you. So you can’t make a woman (or man) love you, but you can put yourself in their path to be exposed to you. If you love to skateboard, paint or read, then going to a skate park, take a painting course or joining a book club may be the place you find your true love. If you love volunteer work, then keep your eyes open, someone that likes that type of person may be drawn to you.
DON’T CONFUSE INFATUATION FOR LOVE
There is old saying I learned from a mentor in business years ago, “It’s not how you get the job, it is how you keep the job.” I drew from that remark and applied it to women and love. You can apply it to women or men depending on your sex. While God made us to be drawn by looks and there is no disputing that; don’t confuse your love of someone’s look for love. I’m not saying looks don’t matter but remember that real beauty is under the skin. So how did I apply that business saying to looks? Like this, “Looks may get a man’s attention, but personality keeps it.” You could also say “what’s inside keeps it.” Love is not about looks. Love goes beyond what is on the surface. Without a respect for each other on so many levels, the look of a woman or man will only lead to confuse you and leave you open to hurt later? So many bad things can come of just focusing on the look of a person. From leaving yourself vulnerable because you are infatuated by the look of your partner, to you too becoming a bad person to them when their beauty has faded.
DON’T MISTAKE BEAUTY FOR LOVE
It is about seeing the true beauty of someone’s soul, of the beauty inside another person. How many times have you looked at a man or woman and thought, “Wow, he/she is beautiful!” Only to go, “Oh no.” To yourself after they utter only a few words. Beauty is often discounted by ugliness on the inside.
LOVE TAKES TWO
Love is when two people feel the same way. One person can’t carry love alone or it becomes a burden that will only serve to break your heart. Science has proven that broken hearts have resulted in death. You can die of a broken heart.
Oh my friends, how I could write a book on this subject. I was in a marriage of 10 years. In it I found where love could be strong and where it was non-existent. I won’t dwell on this point as I don’t want to look bitter because I’m not. I’m happy for the love I experienced, for the time I had it. Call me a glass is half full kinda guy. But know this, if you are in a relationship where only you are trying, even if you go to a marriage or relationship councilor and only one of you is trying, then love is futile. Love takes two, and when both of you are seeing the same goal in front of you ...then love conquers all.
NOW YOU ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP BUT IS IT LOVE?
HOW TO LOVE TAKES A MORAL COMPASS
Love is so complex. Very few people have the moral compass to really love. Oh, they think they are capable of love but their view of love is based on their own selfish needs and therefore they don’t abide by the same standards in love that we “real” people live by. For instance, people that cheat on spouses or lovers. People that don’t have compassion, and certainly people that place more value on money than they do the simple bond of time in a relationship. There are many other examples.
LOVE TAKES TRUST
This is the starting point of love for a lifetime. For that lifetime love, you must trust the person you are with. Real, out and out trust. You could give them access to your checking account, you would defend their honor, stand by them if someone challenged their word, and you would allow yourself to be truly emotionally vulnerable in your care for them. Your soul now belongs to that other person, and you should know the same is felt for you. This is the truest barometer of love I can give you. The keywords are trust, and vulnerable. Can you trust yourself to be utterly emotionally vulnerable to the person you are with? That is love. Love is when you are utterly able to be vulnerable without any fear.
HOW TO LOVE TAKES COURAGE
You cannot love without courage. Anyone can love during the good times. Loving someone when they are not at their best or during a life struggle takes courage. It means you have to admit to yourself that you care for someone that is no longer measuring up to your standards. Perhaps more blunt, at that time of their weakness or not measuring up as I said prior, that person in your eyes is no longer as “good as you”. It can be hard to care for someone that you feel is less than you.
It takes courage to stay the course of love and see through a tough time with the foresight that better days are ahead. There can no better satisfaction then to be able to say to yourself, not the one you love but to yourself that “we” made it through the worst of times. Morally you stand on higher ground.
Love takes courage. Courage that enables you to sacrifice which leads to the greatest appreciation for the person you love. Love is about forgiveness, sacrifice and so much more.
HOW TO LOVE TAKES FORGIVENESS
Love takes forgiveness. I’ve spoken about this in many other articles. The courage to love someone takes an element of forgiveness because without it your love will erode into contempt. Love is such a hard word. Love for another person separates that person in your world from all others. You place the person you love in a space where they are held to a standard different from all others. You are with each other at times when you are not always “nice”. Nice isn’t always possible even while you are being good. Being good doesn’t always mean being nice. Biblically speaking,
I learned from marriage that you learn everything about the person you are with and that means you learn their flaws. You have to learn to forgive those flaws or your love for them becomes contempt. If you can’t forgive someone for their mistakes and flaws, love will not survive.
WHEN LOVE BREAKS DOWN
Love is possible when you both share the same values and interests. When these are lost, love breaks down.
Yes, because during your lifetime you change. The person you are with changes. When I was 19 I met a wonderful girl that was adorable, witty, kind, spunky and down-to-earth. She was my best friend that I fell in love with. She loved me too. But over time we found our path in life. Mine was more business oriented; hers was a back to nature and drop out of society manner. We lost our common ground and love broke down. Then there was a woman I knew in my late twenties, she pretended to be someone she was not and later her core personality came through, we were different people with different values. Most recently was someone that from everything I’ve been confronted with post relationship, a machine on an agenda. It was from this I learned that a one sided love blinded me. I fell victim to outward beauty, bartering and worse yet because we shared a child, I put their needs ahead of my own which I left me even more vulnerable.
Love breaks down, and you must accept that there is no fairy tale finish. Some of us may get it by the luck of fate. But don’t expect it.
I say you enjoy the love you have for you don’t know how long you may have it. Look back on your past and learn to love better. How to love is an idea, a concept, but is never a guarantee that life will not throw you curves. Enjoy the love you have while you have it.
