Love?

I have been thinking about the word love and what it means. I have been thinking how it pertains to my past life….or perhaps lives and the many facets of the word. I have found myself questioning if I have ever truly been loved. I know I have loved, that I have been in love but have I ever truly been loved?

Here is what the dictionary says love is:
love [luhv]
1.a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2.a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection
3.sexual passion or desire.
4.a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.
5.a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour.
6.sexual intercourse; copulation.
7.a personification of sexual affection

I feel that this definition only defines being in love not being loved. I think there is a big difference. Being in love is all the feelings that you feel from the definition above but loving is deeper. You love your Mother, Father, Sister, Daughter, ect but you do so without any strings. You may not like how they act, what they believe or how they treat you but you still love them, unconditionally, its as if you have no choice and no matter what the love is there. If that were true in the relationships we have why would we ask for divorce, why would we leave someone we love because of things we don..t like. If sex, passion, a feeling of attachment, or a love affair defines love then why are there so many people who swear they have never loved someone. The truth is this definition doesn’t even begin to define the depth of what love is. The reality is that every one would probably have a different interpretation much of which would be influenced by how they were brought up, how our families loved us. Having put much thought into this lately I believe that I have only been loved once in my life from my past relationships. This comes from my interpretation of what I believe love is to me. Only once did I have someone love me for me, someone who was honest and understanding and accepting, unconditionally. It was my high school sweetheart and I broke his heart.

I believe love starts with an attraction to someone, chemistry between two people, if it is not there nothing will follow. I believe that honesty, sincerity and devotion are the next things that come into play. Truth between two people is a huge connection, Dishonesty breeds deception and although the feelings of love might be felt how can it be real if someone is being deceitful? This will always lead to a broken heart and is probably the most common frailty of love. For myself it has been my biggest hurdle…almost all those I have thought loved me have been dishonest. How can you be dishonest to the one you love. The next question is how can you love someone when you know they are being dishonest. As individuals we have one responsibility to ourselves and based on how we carry it out ensures our own happiness. That responsibility is making honest choices for what is best for us and no one else. We make a choice to be with someone, to accept them as they are but if they don’t meet our expectations rather than walk away we ignore our gut, our internal teacher and we hope for the best. We allow that little voice to brainwash us to believe its all going to be ok and our only reason for doing so is we want to be loved. When you think about it LOVE is the one thing we are all searching for, it is what we crave, what we need to be happy and to feel complete. The problem is we are so busy looking for it in someone else, hoping we will find someone to love us, to complete us that we don..t realize how important it is to love ourselves first. I keep hearing those words…if you don..t love yourself how can you expect someone else to love you. I am beginning to understand how true those words are. Looking back to all the relationships of my past I questions if my ex..s truly loved me but more importantly I believe they didn’t love themselves. Most were not honest or did not except me for who I was. I don..t believe they loved me but that they were in love with me and that is such a different thing. Maybe being in love is the step before being loved…if all the planets are aligned and the person in love has a deep devotion for the other person with no fear perhaps true love is born and it can be unconditional. Then there is the reality that if both people don..t feel the same the love has nowhere else to go. It all seems so confusing and so unlikely. The beauty of life is that we keep trying, we keep making mistakes and in return we experience life. With out all the experiences we would be pretty bored with ourselves.

I can think of three things that mean the most to me in regards to the kind of love I someday hope find. I want someone who can be honest, someone who adores me and someone who can accept me unconditionally. My favorite examples of this kind of love would be Ronald and Nancy Reagan, June and Johnny Cash and my dear friends from my past life, Mickey and Greg knowles….unfortunately Greg passed away a year ago in his sleep. These are all people that I believe were fortunate enough to find true love and I do believe it is a rarity only because most of us settle too soon and waist time trying under the wrong circumstances.

I am not sad from what I have discovered and I will continue to keep an open mind. I will find love again but it will take time because right now I am learning to love myself and I am finding great beauty in that journey. Being in love is a wonderful feeling in itself and the feeling alone is worth taking a chance on even if it does not last. With each broken heart comes a new opportunity as long as we don..t give up. God put us here to love one another and that is a beautiful experience no matter how we do it.