Love IS…
Most of our definitions of romantic love are constructs of love dictated to us through the use of media and our experiences from our childhood that defined love. Both of these ‘ideals’ are inaccurate and often have nothing to do with love at all, but are rather a reflection of our needs and wants in a relationship. Which is to say; that ‘love’ is what we feel we need reflected back to us through our significant ‘other’ or from any intimate relationship. We are actually ‘in love’ with an ideal of what we believe we can receive from another.
We tend to search for ‘love’ to be reflected back to us in all the wrong places hoping for our ‘ideal’ and then settling for not being alone. But what are we actually searching for?
We are searching for someone to meet our ‘needs’, our conditional expectations that we have set and we have often come with a list of these needs. Yet the only way we can actually have these needs met would be if we met them ourselves.
We ask for physical descriptions, romantic notions, and worse: we ask for the very things we are lacking within ourselves. An example of this would be after experiencing a long list of men who had commitment phobias we want someone who is committed to us. A worthy goal. However, if we have had a pattern of men (or women) who couldn’t commit to us, it is more likely that we have the commitment issue and our partners are just mirroring it back to us. And why would we do this to ourselves? It may be that we do not feel safe in relationships and therefore choose men who can’t commit!
However, this doesn’t mean that our mirrors are exact replicas; rather it means if someone lacks commitment we attracted them or requested a ‘soul’ contract so that we can learn something about our Soul’s path. When we don’t learn it, we get more opportunities to open us up to the learning our Soul’s choice for us. It may not be commitment that is our issue. It may be self-confidence or it may be that we are learning to love ourselves and in both of these cases having someone with a commitment phobia would be perfect. And something as ‘big’ as self-confidence or self-love would take life times to learn.
“Our search for love has a motivation that we need to identify and understand so that we know what we are attracting and what our Soul’s purpose is.”
Love isn’t about meeting our ideals or giving us what we need or believe we need, like more romance, safety, commitment or “characteristics” that we often desire in a mate. Love is our ability to share, to give unconditionally, to accept a person for who they are and to take our needs out of the picture. Love is about the other person. Love is about letting go of all of our fears, beliefs and idiosyncrasies that we often blame ‘others’ for and about taking responsibility for all of who we are so that we can love others as well as ourselves. Love is knowing who we are and expressing this to another. Love is infinite without conditions, judgments, fear or resistance. Love is!
And lastly, our search for love has a motivation that we need to identify and understand so that we know what we are attracting and what our Soul’s purpose is. Our Soul in its infinite wisdom chose this life and all the circumstances that have occurred in our life to assist us to know love. All of our relationships are steering us towards our purpose. As I have said many times, relationships are what help us grow the most on this journey. Since we are moving towards love our relationships are all teaching us something about our purpose. So if we could view all of our relationships as a message instead of failure and look at what they are showing us from a ‘bigger picture’ we would be able to have a glimpse of this purpose.
What is our motivation for desiring a healthy relationship (either new or getting a current one back on track)? What are the fears that motivate us to desire love? What hasn’t worked in the past? And what do we feel we have learned through all of our relationships? These are all messages our Soul has designed to move us towards who we are and for the quest for Love to take us to all the right places.
I invite you to take some time this month and examine your choices and desires towards love. Know that everything is perfect for you to grow towards who you are and to express Love in its infinite wisdom. Love is something you share and give to the world. Find a way to express it and Love will find you!