It’s Valentines Day – Do you feel the love?

Lovely Rie got us thinking this week as she made some suggestions of things that we might question this Valentine’s Day 

How do you know that you are loved? 

  • What do you want your partner, or lover to mean when they say “I love you”? 
  • Is love for you a simple one stranded thing or is it multi-faceted?
  • How many strands does it have?
  • What are they?

It is so strange that someone can love you truly, madly, deeply but unless it is expressed in just the right way so that you are able to receive it then you will simply not feel it, you will not feel loved.

I sit down with many couples in relationship therapy and commonly, at some point in their past, they both shared their love for each other. The problem, that only came to light later, was that they did not understand what each other meant when they used the word love. They both felt that their partner meant the same as they did. Later they discovered that they were wrong.

Love, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

It is not being loved that is important

It is feeling loved that counts

Example: A common sort of problem

First person: “I feel unloved and hurt when you fail to put a X on the end of a text”

Partner: “That just feels like you a trying to control my emotions. I only put an ‘X’ there when I am really feeling it. It is meaningless if I always put it there because in the end it just means nothing.”

Therapist: “How about if it is important to your partner to see an ‘X’ and if you do love her and care about her would the act of simply adding an ‘X’ be something that you know would make her feel happy and good. Is it therefore not worth doing?”

Sometimes showing your partner that they are loved isn’t egocentrically based around your need to be honest it is about ensuring that the person that you love feels it. To go out of your way, to put yourself out, to get something or do something that you know will make your partner happy is an expression of love.

If your response to the above is something like, “Well, my needs are as important as their’s and if I need not to put a ‘X’ at the end of a text and they love me then they will respect that”, then you are either emotionally immature or need to be in another relationship.

Once you get into relationships it can happen that love becomes a demand and not an act of giving. Success in relationships comes from both people giving, it is then that both people will receive. If both people expect to get love without giving it then neither of their needs will be met.

If it becomes a battle it ceases to be love and becomes acts of possession. Think about your relationship and how do you both share your love.

In relationships we sometimes need to fake it to make it. 

Maybe your partner has really cheesed you off for some reason but you still arrange their birthday party and have risen above the difficulties. If your partner loves you in the same way they will do the same for you. It is to do with whether or not your love is conditional and demanding or unconditional and giving. In a world where there really is no right or wrong, where there is only a consequence to your action, you need to take responsibility for who you are, for what you do and how you show your love.

I guess I should add that pouring out your love, time and energy into someone who does not love you back is like standing in an ice cold shower tearing up twenty pound notes. Not to be recommended.

Love is the magic glue that holds the whole of the universe together. It may be expressed as the law of attraction, as gravity, in the relationship between particles and atoms, it might be shown in the caring for the sick and needy or it might simply be in the giving of a bunch of flowers.

However you share you love, I hope that Valentines Day confirms the love that others have for you.

Take care and Happy Valentine’s

Sean X

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