After successful first and subsequent dates with someone we really like, we accept with all willingness and excitement to be in a relationship with them. As we interact more and more with them, our feelings of joy, excitement, physical attraction and a wonderful sense of arousal also grows. The feelings we have for them can get overwhelming and even magical a times. We acquire this strong urge to fulfill and be fulfilled by our object of affection. Everyone seeing us say we are in love and we feel so ourselves too. This is because from childhood up to our adulthood we have stored loads of images in our minds from around us (much of it fed us by the media) about what love should feel and look like. We have received these strong images of happy, moon struck and ecstatic couples right into our subconscious minds. These images give us reinforcement that love is something you feel and so what we ourselves are feeling must be love.

There is this wide spread believes among singles that the moment they find the “one” they will know it right away. It is supposed to be a gut feeling. We see this played out all the time on television, we watch it happen in movies, we read it in novels and magazines etc we are convinced about this feeling we call love. At least until things go terribly wrong and this happens often. When unforeseen events rock our love boat and maybe threaten the way we feel or think we feel we finally begin to think. When the initial euphoria of emotional excitement and physical attraction starts to diminish, begin to fade or even wears off altogether, we finally begin to question our believes about love. According to Erich Fromm in his famous treatise “The Art of Loving”, “There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly as love”.

And why is that the case?

Gila Minolson answers that it is because many people believe love is a sensation (based on physical and emotional attraction) that magically appears when Mr and Ms Right appears and just as easily it can spontaneously degenerate when the “magic just isn’t there anymore”.

So what is love – real, lasting love?

Is it a feeling we have? Are we mistaken to think it is a feeling? Is it myth or is it reality? If it is not a feeling, what is it?

In my opinion it is difficult to capture the meaning of love in a single definition or statement because there are as many meanings and descriptions for love as are the number of people giving them. But according to Sheryl Paul M.A, love is action. She has counseled thousands of people through her bestselling books, her home study programs and websites. She says “love is learning your partner’s love language and then expressing love in a way that he can receive”. This is not just feeling something for him as we can see but acting on it. To her love is a set of actions we commit to doing with and for our partner. Sounds boring right? It is because we have been programmed to think love must be all excitement all the way. The truth be told, it is unreasonable to expect that in a relationship.

It is ironical that it is only when that familiar sensations we call love is not there and we still keep performing these acts that I call acts of love that we can say, we really love someone. What do I mean by acts of love? I mean when we act lovingly despite the fact that we don’t feel loving. When we still give, when receive from, listen to, attend to and still show affection to our mate etc without depending on the way we feel or are feeling at that moment. That is love. Understanding this fact shows readiness for a successful loving long term relationship. The truth be told, you do not feel loving all the time in a long term relationship. Sometimes you don’t feel loving at all.

Certain qualities help a relationship more than the strong feelings of excitement and attraction we traditionally associate with being in love. Showing optimism, maturity, empathy, generosity, tolerance etc all constitute acts of love. They build up the relationship and cement it concretely. The feeling of being in love fades or diminishes with the passage of time in many if not all relationships and cannot be a good measure for Love or being in Love.

Clarity about love helps you know what to expect, how to give and what to hope to receive in a relationship. How to love and be loved. Something richer and more sustaining can be made to exist in or relationships if we look beyond the first feelings of attractiveness etc. We grow together with our partner in love when learn together with them lessons of tolerance, forgiveness, patience, empathy etc. When the intoxicating drug of infatuation and great physical chemistry wear off, is really when the real work of love and loving can be said to really start. So don’t jump ship at the first signs of trouble in your love boat, hang in there and help prevent a ship wreck. That is when you can say you love someone.
Thanks for reading!


http://www.rosyside.com/pt/What-Is-Love-All-About.9-11-2013/blog.htm

Yawns