What is true love? Well I hate to break it to you, but it's not what you see in the movies. In fact, love is not an emotion. When people say they feel in love, they are really feeling a chemical reaction in their body. This chemical feeling is designed to ensure that you mate with the person you have feelings for.
If after two years, you and your lover have not produced a child, feelings of love may begin to diminish. This is probably to help us move on should our partner be unable to bare children. If the couple does have children, then love is suddenly rekindled through the bond between the child and parents.
It seems love is an evolutionary system that ensures pair bonding and the survival of our species. Parents who are in love will stay together long enough to raise their offspring, thus increasing the chances of its survival.
Lust is a perfect example of a type of chemical reaction that we have all experienced. Lust encourages you to mate with someone you find genetically compatible and have an uncontrollable attraction to regardless what situation you may be in. But since lust is also a chemical reaction, it will also not last forever either.
And lust surely isn't necessary the best way to gauge a healthy relationship by. With the population of the earth reaching over 7 billion people, the grass will always be greener on the other side. Relationships based on lust will surly ended up in ruins.
So what happens when someone says they love someone who they don't lust for? In that scenario, the person is simply reacting to a stimulus that they give value to. They feel in love because they have allowed themselves to do so because that person they love fits certain unconscious criteria.
So instead of lusting for the person, their love accumulates over time and under certain unconscious conditions. These people love someone when everything "fits just right," with their current situation, thus their body rewards them with good feelings. The thing is, people change over time, so do their situations, and so do the things they want and need.
Should this person or their lover change, these feelings will go away. Yet people claim that love is real and lasts forever, but why do they say this? If they are saying love is a feeling, then they are basing love solely on emotions, therefore breaking up is inevitable.
Emotions do not last forever, otherwise you would have been stuck feeling just one your entire life. They change minute by minute, throughout the day, and each emotion lasts about 90 seconds until they are "fired" off again when you think of something similar.
So, if love is not an emotion, then what is it? Love is acceptance. It is a state of mind that is unconditional. Love is the higher understanding of both sides. It is the encompassing of all that is, as it is now. It is harmony.
It is the balance between light and dark, positive and negative, good and bad. It is a unison of all things as one. Hate is the resistance of what is; it is conditional, and it is the rejection of the opposite.
Hate is the opposite of love. So how can someone say they love and hate their partner at the same time? These "love-hate," what I like to call "re-hate-shun-ships," are really just two people who are emotionally addicted to the ups-and-downs of defective relationship.
They love the unpredictability, the drama, the make-up-sex, the times of peace, and the feeling that someone else needs them - all of which are based on fear of loss, ego, insecurity, and are at the mercy of chemical reactions.
These addictive relationships are not based on true love. These people become attached because they share the same empty hole in their soul which they believe can be filled by their partner. This is by far the most needy and destructive relationship one can have. It is like two energy vampires feeding off each other, like parasites, taking turns sucking out life.
They go through emotional high and lows; hurting and healing each other, taking turns being someone else's savior in a cycle that makes them "feel" good about themselves. Relationships like these are doomed from the start.
True love is everlasting and accepting of the truth because it does not change due to conditions, in fact, it accepts all conditions regardless of emotional state. Truly loving someone means that you are willing to accept that they may change, do wrong, or even leave you, and that is ok because it is part of life as a whole.
However, you have to also learn to love yourself unconditionally as well, and know your boundaries. Love doesn't mean you should endure wrongs done to you or even accept negativity. It is accepting yourself as you are and being true to that. True love is aligned with the truth. If you are not honest with yourself, then you do not love yourself, and can't possibly love anyone else.
Resisting your true self is in fact hating yourself. Allowing others to hurt you is allowing their self-hatred to infect you. If you do not stand for violence, but allow your husband to beat you, then you are rejecting yourself and in turn are allowing yourself to get beaten.
If you do not accept a cheating, but your wife is cheating on you, then you are rejecting yourself and in turn allowing yourself to get cheated on.
Loving someone is not owning someone. It is a decision where two individual human beings have decided to share this concept of fully accepting each other as they are together. Notice how many people today drop their lover when conditions suddenly change. How is that love? It isn't.
Another important thing about true love is the understanding that nobody is yours. The only thing that is yours is the other half of the relationship commitment, and if you cannot live up to that, then it is time to go. Sometimes people stay in dysfunctional relationships based on the fact that they believe the person is theirs or that they have committed so much time that it's too late leave.
Some people don't want their lover being happier with another person because it would make them feel even worse about themselves. If they truly loved their partner, then they would want their partner to be happy no matter what; even if it meant leaving them. Reasons like these are based on fear of loss, jealousy, and are concepts of the ego.
Practicing true love can be difficult. It will take time and patience. Sometimes you have to let people go in order to respect what is best for them and yourself. People will come and go in this cosmic dance we call life, therefore, there's really no reason to be afraid of letting go of someone.
True love isn't easy because it is a concept of selflessness and looks at the big picture rather than the egocentric smaller one. But knowing this concept, in time, you will become stronger and learn to live life fearlessly.
Loving unconditionally can test your ego in many ways. The secret is you need to silence it in order to know true love. It is only then you will no longer judge things by "good or bad," rather, you will be aware of what is and accept life as a river which goes with the flow.
Angelo John Gage | Elite.
Angelo is the founder of www.psychronicity.com. For more information contact him directly at info@psychronicity.com
