What does love mean to you?
Yes, really. What does love mean to you?
This thing that you find so elusive, that comes and goes in ways you never seem to see coming. This thing you’ve banked all your hopes and dreams on. This thing you’d give anything to experience firsthand.
Is it love?
Or is it the idea of love you’re chasing after?
I ask this only because I thought I was looking for love.
I’d have argued ostensibly with anyone who tried to tell me otherwise. And yet when I finally figured out what had been going wrong with every single one of my relationships, I realized I had only been looking for my own idea of love.
The definition of love that had been put on me through my earliest experiences with fairytales and books, then movies and music and the rest of our pop culture. And of course, my own parents’ experience of love.
Back then I would have told you I knew exactly what I was looking for.
I would have felt that in my experience that only knew how to feel, I more than anyone else, had put in enough time and paid enough of my dues to know exactly what love was all about.
Sure, I felt everything. Sure, I knew what it felt like to experience the feeling of love.
And I knew from all the opposite of love experiences that I’d had, that I was going to know exactly what real love would feel like when I found it.
I would know it. I would just know. Just like I would know it when I was with him.
Except that I didn’t.
Except that what I called love would always end in such intense heartbreak, I would never understand what real love was. It wasn’t until I found love that I realized it was so much more than a feeling, so much more than romantic love, so much more rewarding and fulfilling and loving than I had ever previously imagined it to be.
That’s the point, Beautiful. Love needs to be more than anything else, loving.
But how do we know love except for what we’ve been told by the loudest voices in our culture, for what we’ve been shown, for what we’ve had modeled for us?
How could you know any other way?!
Today, let’s look at what love means to you.
What does it look like?
Is it hot sex? Is it companionship? Is it someone to take away the loneliness?
Is it someone to share your heart with? Is it someone to stand up for you? Is it someone who takes care of you? Is it someone to look good with now? Or someone to grow old with? Is it someone to take you places and buy you things and show you the finer things in life? Or someone to live on the edge with?
What does it feel like?
And more importantly, what does it represent to you?
How does it treat you?
What does it say to you?
How does it speak to you?
What does it show you, how does it reveal itself to you?
Know what you call love. Own it. Embrace it. No one can judge you for what you own every part of!
When you’ve answered those questions with your own, true heart, take a closer look at how love was modeled for you. Was it loving? How was it shown to you? And most importantly, how much has that particular view of love influenced you?
The more you can define what love really means to you, the more you define your own view of love and not just the culture’s or someone else’s view for you, the more closer you’re going to come to finding exactly that kind of love, Beautiful.
The more we get clear, the more we move in that direction.
The more we become clear, the more we call on Heaven and Earth and the entire Universe to move in our direction to meet us right where we are and reveal that love we’re just beginning to believe in!
It’s in the clarity. It’s in our vision.
Write down that beautiful vision you hold for yourself of just what that love is, and watch with believing eyes as you open up the door to creating that love right there in front of you where you least expect, where it happens just for you!
Love,
Jane
I’d love to hear what questions resonated the most with you! Share with all of us which ones really got you thinking in the comments below. You’re not alone!
I've realized that for me, love is safety. No wondering about what's going on, what he's thinking, if he's going to leave me soon - just a simple, secure feeling of having a partner in life. Someone to listen to, and who listens to me.
I was recently dumped by a guy I had been dating 6-7 times pretty intensely. He eventually told me he didn't feel any fireworks. It didn't matter that he was attracted to me as more than a friend, loved who I was as a person and was always looking forward to seeing me again. He didn't seem to understand how on earth he could be leaving me, but he just had to have fireworks. I felt like we could have made it, and now I'm sad to see him throw this opportunity away because he wants this fairytale feeling on top of everything else we had. I wish we shared the idea of what falling in love can be like. I wish I could make him see what I see.
You're not alone, Ellen. We all do.
Oh Jane, I just realized that I have no idea what love is, I have no experience of it. and all of this is because I have never experienced love as a child, growing up I was never told that I`m loved, let alone being shown that through actions. the only thing I remember is rejection, and abandonment, having been abandoned by my biological mother at the age of two. So I grew up only hearing in my head "you are not good enough"....And that now explains why I`m only attracted to emotionally unavailable Men.
I am now working on determining what real love means to me, I know for a fact that I am now looking for the opposite of what I`ve been through as a child, love has to be there no matter what, it must be sensitive, protecting, caring and most of all it must never make me feel like I have to work very hard to sustain it. yes I do know that one has to put some work however it should not be draining.
Thank you so much for such a great article it`s an eye opener for me, I just need to have more confidence to be able to walk away on any situation that doesn`t feel like my own kind of love. I know it will happen slowly but surely.
Slowly but surely, Lolly. "... on any situation that doesn't feel like my own kind of love". That's the key part here. When you're crystal clear on what your "own kind of love" actually is, that confidence will come!
To love is to feel and act lovingly. Love is the most powerful emotion a human being can experience. Love is why it's so difficult to find love.
Ironic, isn't it, Olive?!
This article is spot on, Jane. After taking your course and reading your articles I had a shocking realization. I have never actually fallen in love in my entire life! I fell in love with the idea of them. And the way we treat each other with my former boyfriends or love interests was anything but loving. For me, attraction is very important and without it, it just feels like a friendship. I think another important question to focus on is ''what creates real and permanent attraction?'' I have a hard time answering that question because I don't have any experience with it. Maybe I will learn by experiencing it because it is the only way to learn.
It's the only way most of us learn, Gizem. I'm not surprised this resonated with you - I had that same shocking realization myself! Love your question - "what creates real and permanent attraction?" Imagine yourself 20 years down the road with someone and imagine what will be most important to you then - and you'll have a big part of that answer!
How does love reveal itself to me? What does it show me?
Love shows up. Love shows me it will be there for me.
Love doesn't judge me. Love shows me so much understanding.
Love reaches out to me to assure me. Love shows me that assurances are not always enough.
Love is so playful. Love shows me that life is fun.
Love doesn't always do what I want or expect. Sometimes love does more than I could have ever imagined.
Love never fails. Love presses on.
Love this, Maggi. Thanks for sharing.
The question that really sticks out in my mind is how does it reveal itself to you and what does it show you? Can you elaborate more on these ones, Jane?
So how do you recognize it? And what are you recognizing? And does it show you something about yourself or something about someone else? We're usually so used to putting love in a box the way we've come to view it because of our programming, that it can be so easy to miss the part about how it reveals itself to us. As in when we're so programmed to only see it one way, we don't recognize it when it actually appears in front of us in a different form or a different person than we were expecting, so we miss it, or we don't even consider it because it "looks" or "feels" or "smells" or "sounds" different. Even when we say that we have no idea and that we'll just know it when we experience it, we still have an idea in our mind of what that is. This has been such a big one for many women, including myself, to focus on as making such a difference in actually finding the personalized kind of love we, ourselves, are actually looking for. In fact, just this one thing - questioning any part of our construct of love - leads to the healthy process of questioning so many other things, and it's this combination that I've seen throw open the door on what has been blocking our efforts at love all along. So, Holly, I don't see any one of these questions I'm asking here standing out as being the most important, rather, I see it as whatever question(s) resonating with you personally being the one(s) you need to sit with, to think about, and go deeper with if this is where you've come to. I hope that helps! We can talk more about this in our next Engage! group session as well! 🙂