What does it take to love?
When relationships don’t work out, you think it was because you picked the wrong person.
But love isn’t something that just happens to you when you find the right person, it’s an act of will. It’s not just something that you feel, but something that you have to actively do.
What makes making and maintaining long-term connections difficult for a lot of us is that we don’t know how to love. We don’t know what love really is and what it requires of us.
So what can we do to understand love and learn to do it better?
1. Address your unchosen beliefs about love
Chances are, love feels pretty innate to you. Something primal drives you towards it, and you can just feel it when it’s good or bad. Your feelings about love are your internal compass. Everyone tells you you’ll “just know” when it’s right, and to trust your gut and intuition.
All this gives love a very mystical air. Something magical that can suddenly come into your life or go out of it. Because you can’t see what love actually is, and how it works, you’re left to its whims. To the mercy of some higher power who can grant you love or take it away.
Will I meet the love of my life at the grocery store? At the park? On an app?
Will today be the day that I meet them? What will be our story?
What if I wake up tomorrow and I don’t love them anymore? What if they don’t love me?
It doesn’t matter if you’re single or not. You’re always waiting for something to happen. You can’t fully trust love because you don’t understand it.
You think your feelings and intuition point to some higher truth, but in reality, they’re just a manifestation of your internalized beliefs. Your intuition is your brain making rapid guesses based on previous experience. This makes what you believe about love extremely important.
What does love look like?
Where does it come from?
What makes it last?
If you examine your beliefs about love, you’ll see that at least some of them are unchosen. Things that you don’t consciously believe, but have still internalized from your culture, your family or past experience.
Maybe your beliefs are that you have to be a certain way or do certain things to deserve love. Or that you have to settle or sacrifice on things that are important to you. Maybe you have unrealistic expectations about what love looks like, or think finding love in your life is out of your control.
Whatever your unchosen beliefs, when you take the time to notice them, and to say yes or no to them, you recalibrate your internal compass. You allow your feelings and intuition to point you towards a life you consciously want.
2. Understand what love is and what it requires
When you don’t understand what love really is, you can’t effectively pursue it. You’re guided by an innate desire for connection, and you let “feeling connected” lead you from one partner or experience to another.
It’s almost as if you’re chasing a high or a quick sensation, letting your understanding of what love feels like be defined by specific moments. A glance across the room, a hand in the small of your back, an electric conversation, an intimate embrace.
When you see these moments as love, you look for them all the time, and you place a lot of importance in them. When they’re there, you think you’ve found someone special, and when they’re gone, you think the relationship is stagnating.
But what you’re really experiencing in those moments is the thrill of connecting with someone new. German psychologist, Erich Fromm, describes in his book, The Art of Loving,
“If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life.”
What is thrilling is the act of moving from separateness to connectedness, from being apart to being together. By its nature, this feeling is transitory and fleeting, and to continually chase it means to never cultivate a longterm relationship.
So if love is not the feeling of connection, what is it?
Love is an act of will. A purposeful attempt to see and understand another person. To know them not just in terms of who they are to you, but as fully formed individuals.
To turn fleeting connection into real, lasting love, you must make the effort to truly know your partner. To fully consider them on their own terms, not just in terms what they can offer you or what they might take.
It’s only when you move beyond your own self and needs, and see and appreciate another person in all their complexities, that you learn how to love them.
3. Embrace the paradox of love
Pioneering zen philosopher, Alan Watts, defined love as a kind of spiritual practice, in which we become more attuned to our own nature, and help others do the same.
This makes personal growth intrinsically intertwined with loving someone else. Your relationship becomes a vessel for you both to help each other develop, to become more at home in who you are, and to bring your inner selves out into the world.
When this happens, you and your partner can become more fully realized versions of yourselves, overcoming insecurities and developing an attitude of love towards yourselves and the world at large.
The paradox here is that this growth can also mean that you’ll grow apart. It’s possible that you’ll continue to grow together, and keep wanting the same things as you move through the different phases of your life. But it’s just as likely that one of you will develop more, faster or just differently than the other.
The point is that you have no way of knowing which will happen until you get there. You don’t know how long you’ll grow together, or when you’ll start to grow apart.
The key to loving, according to Fromm, is to embrace this paradox. He says,
“In love, the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”
To embrace this paradox means to understand that what makes love special and meaningful is the way it helps you grow. The way it lets you, through the act of understanding and accepting someone else, to understand and accept yourself. The way it teaches you to move beyond yourself, so you can connect with the world around you.
To embrace this paradox means to understand that just because a relationship ends, doesn’t mean that it failed. That to truly love someone is to see them for who they really are, and to help them grow in their own way, even when their way doesn’t include you.
To understand your inner nature, fill out our personality test at Hello Iris. You’ll get a detailed report on your inner experience, as well as personalized guided meditations that let you dig deeper into that experience.
