To love someone is to know and understand them. It takes time and experience, so that means we have taken the time to care, trust and respect. Love is an action, mentality and attitude, not just a feeling. We can only know the truth and extent of our feelings when we’re supporting it with loving actions and thinking. This means love involves feeling all our other feelings so that we keep it authentic. Anything else is just going through the motions and simulating intimacy and love because we’re too afraid to risk the real deal or to admit we’re in less than a loving relationship.
When we love, we allow ourselves to be seen and we let ourselves see the other person instead of focusing on the picture we’ve painted in our mind. We are capable of loving and caring for ourselves as well as someone else. We give without an agenda because we don’t want guilt and obligation to poison the autonomy in the relationship.
Loving someone and ourselves means being willing to have the appropriate boundaries for the relationship because love isn’t about agreeing and saying yes all the time. It’s knowledge that we’re not perfect and that we are going to piss each other off but loving each other anyway.
For more on authentic, loving relationships, check out my book Love, Care, Trust and Respect.
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