Love

The L word…

So a friend of mine, 20 plus years older than me, decided we should do a post on love together – or, rather, one each and compare. I thought it fun, especially after reading his post. We do indeed have different approaches! Today I am posting mine and tomorrow his. It took me quite some time to put this together, and you may want to save it for the coffee break – it’s rather long – I mean it’s the most grand topic of all! I’d love to hear your thoughts about it!

Isn’t it funny how something as universal as love can be perceived differently by people? Is the core of love the same for all of us, or is it a truly unique experience? I don’t know. In fact I don’t know anything to be absolutely certain in this life apart from the fact that I don’t know anything to be certain in this life.

It is my belief that you can love anyone if you understand him, or her. If you truly understand someone, feel what they are feeling and see life through their eyes, I think you will feel compassion for them and, hence, be able to offer your love to them. However, I do not think you will want to be in a relationship (friendship, romance, work) with everyone you feel compassion and, therefore, love for. To me the two are different, if still connected in many ways.

So what is love? I think I sort of just defined it above – it’s something you offer, a feeling, a sort of energy, which is only made possible when you have compassion for something. It is my personal belief that that energy can create miracles. We feed off energy in so many ways and to feed off the energy of love… You know how appreciation lights people up? How you feel different when someone looks upon you from a perspective of compassion and love? How you feel different when you do that yourself – when you come from that place, whether it is to look upon others, or yourself? Sometimes, I don’t even think you have to know someone loves you, so if they are just sending you their thoughts, that will bring you something. Of course, we all need hugs and compliments too though!

Now falling in love with someone is a different cup of tea (and in many ways similar to the reasons why you would start a friendship, or a work relationship with someone). I still believe you feel love for them, but the “in love” bit springs from a variety of things. I think we fall in love with people who we have a strong connection with. It is either because they have an energy that is complimentary to our own, they have tendencies that suit our past emotional patterns, we have similar values, or we have a connection with them within one or more of four centers: emotional, intellectual, physical and sexual.

So what do I mean with complimentary energies? Well for example, if you meet someone who is just like you, they have the exact same energy (personality), then nothing happens. There is no chemical reaction. There is a sense of belonging, but no fire, no lightening, no spanks…I mean sparks…

As for emotional patterns, an example would be if someone who is used to being “the kid of the family” (always getting a lot of attention and care) meets someone who is used to being “the carer of the family” and the two “click.” This doesn’t mean that the two are good for each other, but they are likely to be attracted to one another. I also believe that within the category of emotional patterns, you can add that you attract people who prove your own self-image and your image of the world to be true. For example, if you think you aren’t good enough, you date people who make this a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if you think men/women are this that and the other, you will attract those kind of people. Basically, there is a connection because someone fulfills your beliefs and so you feel drawn to them, but too late you may realize it was the wrong beliefs that attracted you to them. It also happens that we behave in such a way so as to provoke others to behave as we expect them to, or interpret their behavior to fit our ideas of what we think it must be; literally forcing them to fit into our view of the world.

(Just a note: you can change negative emotional patterns, you just have to become aware of them and simply catch yourself when engaging in them, seeing them for what they are and letting go. E.g., say you have a negative pattern of not knowing what to say amongst certain people. It’s like you freeze. If you sit there panicking about it, it isn’t likely to let go of its grip of you. However, if you sit there thinking “Ok, so it’s happening. I have frozen. Alright.” suddenly you see it, but you aren’t engaging with it, you just accept it. That’s the day the fear dies and you unfreeze. It’s similar if you have a fear of dating people who will let you down. The day you face it and accept it, the fear goes, it loses its grip and so it dissipates and hence your attraction to those kind of people will go, because your mind is no longer sensing a connection with them. It also helps to think about what you’d truly like to think/how you’d truly like to act.)

Similar values are simply common beliefs about life and how to live it, that you have in common. It’s your outlook in life. I think we can all agree that we enjoy spending time with people who fit into our morals and the way we play in life. However, if any of the other elements are strong enough, sometimes we end up with people whose lifestyle we don’t necessarily agree with, but that have strung a chord with us nonetheless.

The four centers: physical, emotional, sexual and intellectual. For you to connect with someone within a center, obviously there has to be an understanding and I think it has to do with you feeling you compliment each other, or are similar to each other. If someone floats our boat in all four, then I believe you have what feels like a “divine” connection. This is maybe what we call true love if it is mutual. In fact I believe both energies and values boil down to this as well, but it depends on how you see it.

Isn’t it that we can have a crush on someone who fits into any one of those categories, but not necessarily the rest? If we stick with them we may end up loving them and being very attached to them, but not being in love with them. At other times we know someone isn’t good for us, but we are so attracted to them because they fit so many things that turn us on that we choose the ignore the negative. In movies we love the criminal who has a winning personality and so also in life at times.

Of course it happens that you fit a person perfectly, but they don’t fit you (or vice versa). Then the true connection never happens, but for them it feels like they are losing some really good candy when you explain that, because they so badly wanted to connect with you. At other times I think we are all wanting love a tad too much and go out and dream up fairy tales about people so as to make them fit us and then we have our heart-broken as a result.

Now relationships, I believe, again, are a different cup of tea. You can be in love with a person, or greatly admire them, but that doesn’t mean that you will love your relationship (be it a romance, a friendship, or a work relationship).

I have mentioned this before, but Don Miguel Ruiz says in The Mastery Of Love that most of us behave like we have a skin disease and whenever someone touches us we scream from pain because of our wounds. We all have a past with one or two unpleasant events and they may get stirred up if someone pushes our buttons, unless we have healed. For me, anything negative someone said about me brought me back to thinking like I did as a 12-year-old, when I thought I was unlovable/there was something wrong with me and as a result I’d beat myself up about it, thinking I somehow had fucked up. Therefore, close relationships used to be painful. As I realized that I am OK, I stopped beating myself up and the wounds healed. So as to avoid blaming others for our past wounds, or walk around believing in lies that do not serve us, I think it’s important we heal in ourselves. Love ourselves.

We all need different things to feel loved. I have mentioned The Five Love Languages a gazillion times before, but that book revolutionized my life. The website does not do it justice. When I read it I started believing in relationships again. Because for the first time I could understand what makes people feel loved, why they have fun together, and why I did not feel loved by some of the people in my life that clearly loved me. They loved me in their way, but it was not how I needed to be loved. Some people need a lot of physical touch, others gifts. Some need words of affirmation, others quality time. Yet others need acts of service. You can buy me a hundred diamonds, but it will never make me feel loved. Nor will I be happy to sit next to someone in front of the TV, or eat breakfast together whilst reading the papers. No, I’m a Leo – it’s all about attention. Play with me. Pay me undivided attention. And hug me. Hug me a lot =)

I believe we all want to be loved in all five ways, but some are much stronger than others. Some couples never discover what their partner truly needs to be happy within the relationship, whilst others forget with time – they both take the other for being part of the furniture and all the romance dies. So sad. There are so many things you can do to spice up your life. We may only live once, so remember to play.

Of course you have to understand how the other person communicates. People, sadly, don’t come with instruction manuals (I know, I complain about this a lot). You have to ask them what they really mean with what they are saying (love may mean different things to different people and so may just about everything else as well), what matters to them, what they truly want in every area of their life, etc. Gary Chapman also wrote The Five Languages Of Apology, pointing out that different people need different things to feel that someone truly apologizes to them.

When do you know if someone is right for you? I think you have to have a bite of the cake, as I have said before. If you don’t try something out, how will you know? And what will you regret if you don’t have that bite?

Some people give up their life for someone else. Some people hold onto their loved ones with a grip of steel. I don’t think that’s a relationship, nor do I think it is love. If you love someone, you set them free. I can’t remember who said it, but it was a Swedish author: “To love is to release she who has been frozen in cement and see her dance, even if she dances away from you.” And if two people are truly in love, make sure they set their goals and evolve their lives together (and have a grand adventure and a lot of laughter doing so) and put in the effort to make each other feel great, they will be like magnets.

It takes two to create a life. Everything springs from two forces meeting – two chemicals reacting together to create something new. Maybe relationships are hard to master, but when you master the relationship with yourself, others and the world, I believe you have the greatest gift of all – an ability to connect and an ability to create.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi

That, dear readers, is my take on love. Is it right, or wrong? I’ll ask Mr Darcy when he appears…until then – happy frog kissing, lol!

What is love?..

So as promised yesterday I am now publishing my friend’s (he’s French by the way) take on love…oh, and just for the record, I’m not believing in the bimbo and creep thing…but this isn’t my post, so now I will be a good girl and shut up…lol

L’ Amour, toujours L’ Amour

Recent studies on Love happen to be extremely interesting; they explain that the happy state we experience through Love is really magical.

Love takes us into a Euphoric mode where everything around us is more pleasant, where you and I become less stressed, more content and yes the expression we see the world through “pink lenses” is absolutely correct so when Edith Piaf sang: “La vie en Rose” she was right. There are enough physiological changes in our bodies to allow me to call the sum of the changes a Tsunami. When we are in love physiological changes make us more dynamic; literally happier.

The question is, were these physiological changes triggered by the increase or decrease or creation of chemicals in our body or by what we call Romance.

What is Love or Passionate Love?

As long as we agree in this essay that the word Love means strong, romantic, passionate true Love we will not have the need to use another word.

Love is when feelings for another human being overpower our ability to use our reasoning system. Love is when a tsunami of feelings and their chemical agents overpower the part of our brain that normally allows us to use reason to survive or simply to live everyday lives that are not completely chaotic.

Knowing that we will be swept up by completely unstoppable behaviors when we fall madly in love, the absolute survival rule is not to fall in love with a dangerous creep or a weird bimbo. Remember what your mother and your friends told you: “Stop seeing this guy or this girl, they are not for you” but you did not stop seeing them after a while even though it was evident by now even to you that this person was a horrible person. You tried but you could not, it was too late you were hooked. Well, there is an explanation. Continue reading here!

I wanna feel you moving within me…

Yes, yes…so I was thinking about that, but it’s not what I meant. Well….maybe that too. It’s a brilliant metaphor though, isn’t it? I mean love is to have someone move within you, in more ways than one…to start off with it’s the tongue…just kidding, just kidding…

It has happened more than once that I sit next to someone and I know they know I am there, because they are talking to me, they are looking at me, they might even be holding my hand, but I know they can’t feel me. They are not experiencing me. They are not fully embracing me, either because they have forgotten how to, or because they are simply too busy keeping their mind on everything else, or because they are scared, or simply because they don’t like a part of me so they refuse.

People think that to allow someone into your heart you first have to know that they will be a great friend or lover, so they have put a little judge by the gate to their heart. They will scan every person they meet, checking if there is something about them that they do not like, so as to be sure they don’t let the “wrong” person in. Sometimes they are even more inventive – they let part of a person in, but not all of them. They’d like to keep a little piece out as they don’t really like that piece. No, no, NO!!!

Imagine standing by the beach, watching the sunrise, hearing the birds singing and the waves breaking against the shore. The air is still a tad chilly, but the warmth of the sun is already embracing the morning. The sand is slightly damp and gently tickles the soles of your feet. As the wind touches your skin, a smile touches your face. You can feel your inner being stretching towards the sun, towards the new day that is dawning. You feel as if the beauty is almost overwhelming – your heart is expanding inside your chest to the point where you think your chest will explode and a sensation of happiness fills your body; making you tingle. If you just did that, you embraced the morning – you opened your heart to it and fully experienced it with all your heart. You are not scared of the sunrise, so you let yourself enjoy it.

When you have a boss, or a colleague, or a friend, or a lover, or even a stranger, you are scared, aren’t you? You are scared that they will judge you. That they will say nasty things to you. That they will reject you. So you don’t open your heart to them to start off with. You analyze them – you have a list of pros and cons in your head related to them. You accept the parts of them you like, you reject the rest. You fear if you let them into your heart they can hurt you so much more than if you don’t. You even fear opening your heart to yourself as you fear you have wounds you will feel.

If you truly open your heart to someone (and no matter how many fairytales there are about people sweeping someone off their feet, by the end of the day, it is YOU that must open your heart for them) you can feel them within you – you can feel who they are and how they feel. You can truly indulge in them. Some people don’t taste very good, I have to confess to that, but once you feel them, for real, not just part of them, you cannot help but loving them, because you understand them, just like if you open your heart to yourself you will understand yourself and therefore love yourself. You will also feel all they do towards you, good or bad, because your heart is open. If they say something nasty, you will feel it.

If you have a closed heart and someone throws a nasty comment at you, you are likely to get angry and tell the person to fuck off. It will still hurt you, but you aren’t thinking about that, you are thinking about what a cunt the person was. You allow your anger to totally fill your mind. Your heart is aching within its closed gates, but you are not thinking about that. Instead the anger makes you feel forceful and you quite like that. Usually we discovered this as children and we adopted it as a survival strategy – the anger numbed the pain as it shifted your focus. The pain is still there though, you are still wounded, even if you don’t think about it.

When you allow yourself to open your heart you will feel everything – you will feel the wounds in your heart when they happen and if you have suppressed wounds from your past, you will feel those also. Opening your heart though, allows you to heal your own wounds, by accepting them (that’s right, no putting yourself down), seeing them for what they are and loving them. On the other hand, when you get angry the anger will shut the gates of your heart, so the heart won’t be able to do what it does best: send healing love. Because love truly does heal. So instead of accepting the pain and sending love to it so that it heals, you will end up with a really bad scar that aches all the time, if not as much as when it first happened. What’s more, as soon as something else happens that relates to it, it will tear the scar open and you will bleed. You may be able to use anger to fuel yourself on a daily basis and get your energy from that, get kicks from that, but anger does not feel quite as good as love, does it?

People mistake an open heart for being open to abuse, but it has nothing to do with that. Abuse is holding onto something or someone that is not good for you, or isn’t giving you what you need to be happy. On the contrary, having a closed heart is abusing yourself, as you never truly get to experience anything.

To love is to accept. If you love yourself, you accept yourself. If you love someone else, you accept them and you send loving energy towards them. You may not want them in your life, but you accept them for who they are. You have no need to change them, as you understand life formed them into who they are and you feel them as they are in your heart. You understand that pain made them nasty or love made them great, so you have acceptance, just as you have acceptance towards yourself. You love. You may not feel they make you happy and that you want them next to you, but you love.

When you were a child and someone hurt you and you chose the defense mechanism of anger instead of love, it was because you thought that someone being nasty to you meant that you were nasty, so you felt hurt and got angry to cover that hurt, or retracted and got shy. You may also have wanted to prove to them how good you were and do anything to deserve their love (that would be me). You didn’t know that if you loved and accepted yourself, very little of what they said to you would have had any meaning – it would just have been an opinion you did not believe in. You don’t get upset if someone throws you a comment about your ugly red hair, when your hair is blonde. The sad thing is that a lack of love leads to a want to please others so as to feel good about oneself, therefore constantly needing them and constantly getting hurt as not everyone will like you, shyness or anger, that leads to…a lack of love as you closed your gates.

To feel love the way you felt the sunrise – to truly feel it in your whole body, you have to open your heart. If you are OK to live for other kicks – for success, anger, whatever…then you are OK with a closed heart, but if you want love, you have to open your heart.

I believe I have only ever dated guys with closed hearts – they enter my life, they play around a little bit and then they don’t know whether they are staying or leaving. It has made me frustrated every time, yet I kept running after them. Why? Because I was not wanting to let anyone into my heart, so I felt comfortable longing for that which was not mine. If it was mine, I would be too scared to let it in and/or find faults with it and reject it, until I was about to lose it, then I’d run after it again, as then I’d remember the good things about it, plus I needed their “approval” or love to feel good about me. I needed to prove I was good enough, whether I liked them or not. What’s more, I did not accept myself, so when someone else tried I thought that they were mocking me, or I’d get claustrophobia from their love. What I never managed to figure out was that instead of trying to help the guys open their hearts, I should focus on opening mine. Like attracts like.

Why is it that we enjoy a vacation, but not our day to day life? Why is it that we embrace a city we visit, but not the one that we live in? Why do we remember a passionate three day affair as better than a three year relationship? Since I got back to London I have enjoyed the city I used to hate. Why? Thinking it’s not forever I relaxed and I soaked up what I enjoyed as I wanted to make the most of it. Things that would usually bother me I just shrug my shoulders at – I didn’t have time for them. When you are on vacation, or you are having a three day romance you don’t have time to sit and ponder and analyze everything – you just go for it. You are there to enjoy yourself and your mind is focused on that, so you allow your heart to be open. I was walking home the other night thinking what a great summer it was, how cute the street was and how much I have enjoyed the good things about London since I came back. I felt so good. I was texting someone and wrote something about being a playful monkey. Then I read an email and I got so upset I didn’t know where to turn or what to do as I realized I may have to live in London for a year or two. It took me two days to recover because my mind judged and it judged harshly – it refused having me enjoy anything. I shut the gates. It then hit me that I had never fully embraced any city as I am always on my way somewhere else. I have never “worked it out” with a city, just like I have never accepted myself or anyone else, unless I knew it was unattainable – vacation only. I know I will never feel at home in London the way I do in France and LA, because they are more on my wavelength – I can feel that in my heart. I know though, that when my heart is open I cannot help but enjoy this town and that, as I used to fear, does not mean that I will settle here and be so tied up I don’t dare to have a second, or third home, somewhere I love, but London, believe it or not, is home too. There are things here I love that are nowhere else.

In the same way you allow yourself to feel a passionate short romance much more as you aren’t judging. In your heart you may have known that the two of you weren’t on the same wavelength, yet you had more fun with them, than with your partner that is much more on your wavelength, as you truly embraced them. You weren’t scared. They weren’t as important as your partner. But just imagined if you truly dared to embrace him or her that is on your wavelength, the person that is most important to you? What then?

When it comes to picking The One…I don’t have a fucking clue, but I have a theory… I don’t know which comes first…either you fully love a person, or you fully love you – I think one will lead to the other, but both are essential. So, I believe you have to open your heart to you – explore and love you. Acceptance is love. See who you are and send love to that person. Don’t do it with your mind. Don’t say “I deserve love because…” Feel you. Feel the human in you. The heart that is beating. Feel the person that is deserving love. Then send yourself the love. No one can love you more than you love yourself, because you won’t allow it. So love you. Secondly, people who don’t think with their hearts write lists about how well they fit together, pros and cons, they check their hormone levels to see if the sexual energy is there, they check their egos to see if they are being praised enough by the other person…it’s all very cleverly worked out and once they work out if someone is right they will open their heart to them. Then they will get a divorce. If you don’t explore someone with your heart, how the hell are you going to know if you want to spend time with them or not? You are accepting some hallucination your mind created, usually fueled by ego and hormones. I’ve said it before, but it’s like looking at a cake instead of eating it. For the love of God, open your heart to them. Taste them. Do like you did with the sunrise – allow them to fill your heart – feel them inside you. When you are around them – feel them (not physically getting high on hormone kicks from shagging them, but with your heart). Be open to them. Allow yourself to show them all of you. Be truly free. Don’t use your mind. Just don’t. Not your hormones either. Or your ego. They will all mislead you. Just use your heart. It will not tell you in words why or how, or anything, but you will feel if you would love to spend your days with them. It doesn’t take a mathematician to work it out, it only takes your heart.

For someone to love you, they have to let you into the secret chambers of their heart where they can feel you within themselves. If you open your heart you cannot help but to love yourself as your heart will feel you, understand you and love you. We think someone else will open our heart, but it is us that must open it for ourselves and for them. Once we do so we can feel them within us, they become part of us. Until then, they are but strangers on a strange path. Once they are in our hearts we understand and we therefore accept them. If you could teach people to feel each other in their hearts, there’d be no wars. If you love yourself, you cannot kill what lives within you. You cannot hurt what lives within you. If people had open hearts, they would not judge others with their fears, their belief systems, their thoughts….they’d just feel them.

Imagine if your boss thought you were them. Imagine how different they would treat you. Imagine if you thought you were them. Imagine how different you would treat them.

And just imagine…instead of fearing the people we care for the most and the things we care for the most in life…having a fucking blast feeling them moving within us…