What I’ve Learned About Love

Here I am at 49, and for the last 11 years I’ve known True Love. And perhaps because I now know True love, I’ve also come to understand what love is not.

For much of my young and early adult life I struggled with love; what love was, what someone meant when they said “I love you.” “Love” can mean many different things to many people in so many different circumstances. One can love a great meal or piece of art, a job, or one’s cat, self, wife, friends, family– humankind, even. And then there is “being in love,” “falling in love,” “falling out of love” and so on. For years I resisted using the word at all, because I thought it was over used and misused. I didn’t trust it, or anyone who used it. Later, when grappling with the end of my first long-term relationship, I wrote out the various definitions of love in my journal as I struggled to understand what “love” was. And each word in the definition, led me to more definitions, as I attempted to parse out its meaning. I can’t recall what, if any, conclusions I came to, but feel it’s safe to say that my understanding of love is quite different and more complete, today.

M. Scott Peck wrote in The Road Less Traveled that love (genuine love) is not a feeling, but rather an action, a choice. He defined love as “…the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own and another’s spiritual growth.” He suggests that genuinely loving people will behave in constructive ways. In contrast he points out that many people possessing a feeling of love behave in all kinds of unloving and destructive ways. I see that “feeling of love” as being driven by desire, which is self –focused. Such love seems necessarily flawed, and incomplete. We desire things. So at its base level, such love, objectifies others. As Hannibal Lector said in the Silence of the Lambs, “What do we covet most, Agent Starling? We covet that with which we are familiar. We covet that which we see." It took me a long time to recognize genuine love versus everything else that society calls “love.”

And after many years of seeking (inside and out), I have found someone who loves me, completely, totally, as I love them. And from this place of Love I see more clearly the flaws in my past thinking about love, about relationships. While many of the following statements may seem clichéd or hackneyed, perhaps obvious, and quite possibly said by others far more eloquently, this is a short list of the Truth of Love (or True Love) as I know it today.

• There is no fear in Love.
• Love abides even when it is not easy, convenient, or required.
• Love encourages.
• Love requires work, and yet may at times feel effortless.
• Through love comes great joy and passion.
• Love accepts and appreciates the other rather than seeking to change them.
• Love requires discipline.
• Love requires commitment; it is a promise kept.
• Love requires sacrifice and compromise.
• Love is dependable and trustworthy.
• Love does not require agreement or consensus on all things.
• Love is active.
• Love is consistent.
• Love is safe.
• Love makes one vulnerable.
• Love does not diminish.
• Love fosters growth.
• Love does not fear change.
• Love does not control.
• Love is courageous.
• Love admits mistakes.
• Love seeks forgiveness.
• Love forgives.
• Love is giving a gift of oneself and requires accepting such gifts from others.

The above aspects of Love are present in the best kind of loving relationships, whether romantic or otherwise. It is this kind of love that nourishes us, helps us grow, that allows our best selves to come forth. I believe these aspects are also the essential basis for lasting relationships, because love based on desire alone, is often fleeting.  Genuine love isn't without great emotional intensity and passion, rather it is the foundation that makes it last.

I’ve read that fear is the opposite of love and that if our actions are guided by love (of self, others, and the union of the two) then good things will grow from that genuine love. My best self strives to act out of love…but I do not always succeed. Sometimes the fears of a wounded soul crawl out of the past and challenge me (often with faulty thinking or perception). And in those moments, when my own resources fail me, I have the love of others (and in particular my wife) to see me through. I’m thankful for the Love I share with the love of my life, and for the love of good friends.

Suppose that’s the end of my musings on the topic of love (at least for today).