14 Ways To Rethink The Love In Your Life

14 Ways To Rethink The Love In Your Life

1. Your feelings are not an all-or-nothing-deal.

You can love someone just a little. You can love a lot of people just a little. There’s no switch that goes on for every single person you meet that will tell you whether or not you will love them for all of eternity. Sometimes it’s a mystery to uncover, and that is a process that should be enjoyed. You will not always be certain that someone is either your soul-mate or just a friend, because not everybody falls into either of those categories; there is a spectrum when it comes to love, and there will be many people in your life who fall along all different ends of it. Love is not an all-or-nothing deal.

2. The heart and mind should work in tandem.

Love is not logical, but at the same time, you can’t just let your feelings run rampant and allow you to make irresponsible, harmful or dangerous decisions, like staying with an abusive partner. It is a tricky equilibrium, but it’s important to learn how to listen to your heart first while still considering what your head has to say about it.

3. It will probably never be defined, so don’t try to identify it by making a list and checking off if someone makes you feel a certain way.

Love is to be experienced. You do not love someone just because they fit into a set of pre-established criteria that you thought would be necessary to have feelings for someone. As aforementioned, you have to let your heart navigate and your head copilot for a little logic and reasoning now and again. 

4. Fulfilling love is not just romantic.

Love is also the essence of who we are. You are not unloved because you don’t have a romantic or sexual partner, this is another way that love can be experienced.

5. Sex and love are different, but are great when they coincide.

Just because someone wants a sexual relationship with you, or vice versa, it does not necessarily provide much indication of where they are at emotionally. You can have fulfilling sexual relations with people you don’t love, and likewise, you can be very much in love with someone without being sexually compatible.

6. Likewise, marriage and love are different, but are also great when they coincide.

People expect that if they marry someone it will confirm that they are in love and will be forever because they are legally bound to be. Marriage is not a grand and glamorous exclamation of love everyday of your life. It’s paying bills and taking trips to Costco and cleaning up after each other when you’re sick and unable. Some people consider that love, and others consider it obligation. Realize that “happily ever after” is not necessarily marriage, and you have to consider the realities of life post-nuptials.

7. It is something you do, not just something you feel.

It’s a verb. You can have feelings that you define as love, but you do not “love someone” until you act on that, and put them before yourself: their happiness, well-being etc. You should apply this to the people who claim they love you but don’t act like it. Words mean next to nothing unless they are backed with action.

8. It is easily and often confused for lust.

It’s hard to differentiate between feelings, since they’re usually all bundled up and packaged into one little body that can’t make sense of things. But love and lust are different in one key respect: love puts the other first, lust puts the self first.

9. There is no end-all-be-all when it comes to choosing a partner.

You can have a fulfilling life with many different people. There are, however, some people who will do more for you than others, this is just the reality of being alive. It doesn't mean, however, that you've lost out on love for the rest of your life because it didn't work out with one person, nor does it mean that you’ll never love someone that way again.

10. It grows with time, it is not stagnant.

It’s sometimes easy to think that facing challenges means that your love is depleting, but really, if you want to work through those issues with someone, and you come out on the other side stronger both individually and as a couple, you've got something good going on.

11. It will change you, if it hasn't already.

Love is not something you blindly experience and then come out of the same. It is transformative. If you’re having trouble identifying whether something is love or not, something to consider is the effect it has had on you. I’m not saying that love is selfish and solely about what it does for you, but rather when you love someone with all that you've got, and you let it reverberate through you and impact you completely, you will come out a different person… or more aware of who you really are.

12. It is not always certain and definite. You are allowed to be unsure.

I think sometimes people get more upset about not knowing than the fact that they don’t know. Embrace the uncertainty and see it as part of the journey… try to understand why you are uncertain, and what matters so much to you that you are considering how other options could pan out better. More than anything, though, realize that there is no “right” and “wrong” necessarily, the universe will autocorrect, just be ready for the plunge.

13. It is very rarely smooth and flawless.

It is more often all messed up because real love impacts you at every level and brings forth everything you need to deal with. The real fairy tales are what happens when you find someone who changes you and you’re able to live happily ever after with yourself.

14. It cannot, should not, and never will be what gives you your sense of self.

If that’s what your love does for you, and that’s what keeps you in it, it’s time to leave until you can fill yourself with love first.