Love is a process

[Openheart1]

Hi All,

 

I have written a great deal on other topics in here, mostly reflective of my attitudes on love and the nature of love. I have thought more about love as I progress through life and I've come to some realizations that may shed light on my other theory, that "falling out of love" is a myth.

 

Often times, we feel as though love takes work. Of course, it challenges us and propels us in new, sometimes uncomfortable directions that allow ourselves to feel a part of the world and expand our emotional horizons. As individuals, we feel the need to connect on so many levels with others, spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectually, and the list goes on.

 

On reflecting on the nature of love, I've come to realize that love is a process. While so many people believe, as I do, that love can be an instant look accross the room and a meaningful connection with another person is sparked, I digress to say that love, not necessarily a relationship, is a process. Relationships are potentially formed accross the room, but not love.

 

Let me explain. In my own experience, I sometimes think that I expect too much from love and the person to whom I am significantly bound with, myself. I sometimes expect that love is just supposed to "be there," as if it is a universal element of nature. I heard a quote that struck me today, hit me like a hurricane actually. Love is sharing one's life with someone else. It isn't the gifts, the ratio of happiness to sadness, the special, albeit fleeting moments of laughter during a nice dinner out. No, it is more than that. Love encompasses the laughter and the low periods as if they are an enhancer to the bond that two people mutually share and reciprocate to one another. Love is not immediate, but grows, matures, dips, wanes, slides, etc. along the hazards that I call life, but in the end it is the sharing of one's life with someone else and revealing yourself in a meaningful way that defines this thing called love.

 

For those of you who are breaking up or have broken up, trust me, love does not break apart two people and the notion that someone "fell out of love" with you is one who has a skewed idea of what love actually is. Love is courageous and risk-taking, it drives two people to handle situations together and does not allow fleeting doubts to creep up and boil over into an emotionally distorted and superficial idea that love must "lead" somewhere or else the relationship must dissolve and break up. Love is not the idea that you did or did not do something to "ME," thereforeeee I must break up with you. I faced this fact a year ago, though I didn't know it, that love does not define itself according to two people's status, marriage or otherwise, it is shared between two people who embrace each other's lives as mutually fulfilling, not destructive or based on fear. If someone blames another on how they feel, as I've done in the past regretfully, that feeling is based on a deep fear of of something unique to the individual that should be understood and reflected on before true love can flourish.

 

Finally, love is a process because there are so many people think that love is just engrained in us and we know how to love. No, the reality is that you must learn how to love well just like anything in life, through experience and unfortunately heartbreak.

 

I wish you all the best. Cheers.