The Meaning of Love

By Irish Eyes

I've written about the Definition of Sex recently. Now, I'm learning about the Meaning of Love.

What is Love? Sometimes it's easier to talk about what it isn't. Love is not owning someone else. Love does not mean that you can "fix" the other person. Love doesn't even mean that you can "make" someone happy.

Love, the only true love, is unconditional. You can be infatuated with someone, but that means that you are in love with what you want someone to be, with the imaginary person you want to love. Infatuation is not love because you can't truly love someone unless you know who they are and then you love them anyway. When you are infatuated with someone, you have picked something about them to love- their looks, their talent, something they've done or said, some little piece of who they are. You choose to love them because they are smart or sexy or look like the person you always thought that you would love. That's not the real person. That's a tiny part of who they are, but that is not who they are down deep.

Love is when you really get to know a person, the part they show everyone else, and the part that they don't. You love them when they are happy and beautiful and everything is grand. You love them when they are sad, or unhappy, or confused. You don't always love what they do, but you love who they are. The real person.

Love is showing them who you really are, also.. Your good days and your bad days. Being able to tell them that you love them is important, but it's also important to be able to tell them when you don't like something. You have to be able to be honest and say how you feel. Not being honest is lying to your partner and lying to yourself.

I've read a book recently by Don Miguel Ruiz entitled "The Four Agreements". These are a set of agreements to live (and love) by. They are very simple, implementing them can take a lifetime. In order to follow them, you must consciously choose them. The first rule is "Be Impeccable with your Word". This means say what you mean and mean what you say. Be honest above all. Don't gossip maliciously. Don't talk badly about people. You must realize that your words have power and you have to be careful with them. Your silence has power as well. Sometimes not saying something important that is necessary can be as bad as saying something cruel.

The second Agreement is "Don't Take Anything Personally" This one is difficult for many of us. When someone hurts me, I don't show anger easily.. I hold it inside myself and feel bad and get hurt. There are times when expressing the anger would be the best thing, but I've always been afraid of saying something that would hurt or anger someone. With a lot of help, I'm starting to learn that that doesn't really help anything. Keeping my anger inside myself just makes me feel bad, but it doesn't address the situation. Using anger constructively is one of the things I'm learning. At the same time, I have to learn not to take things personally. If someone is angry with me, it has much more to do with their own attitude, their personality, their way of dealing with things than with what I did. Now, this is assuming that I am being impeccable with my words and speaking honestly and directly. If I am saying how I feel, not blaming someone, just describing my own feelings, I am only responsible for what I say. I'm not responsible for how the other person feels or responds.

The third Agreement is "Don't Make Assumptions". It becomes clear that these all complement each other. If you want to know how someone feels about something, don't assume- communicate with them. If you have a relationship with someone, don't assume that the other person feels the same or has the same rules for the relationship that you have-ask. In order to love someone, you must communicate well. You must tell them what you want and what you don't want. You can be in tune to their mood, but don't assume that you know what it means.

The fourth Agreement is "Do Your Best Always- Knowing that Your Best Changes Always!" This is an amazing rule. Doing your best one day may be just getting out of bed and out the door. Another day, your best may be going out and changing the world, even if only in some small way. If you are honestly doing your best, whatever it is at that moment (of course, this implies understanding yourself enough to know when you are doing your best), then that is enough. Doing your best means that you can't feel guilty or inadequate or incompetent. You have done your best, that's all you can do. In your relationships, doing your best means being honest. Give the other person exactly what you can give at that moment. Accept what the other person gives you at that moment. It is what it is. When you are honest, you can't expect things to be something they aren't. You accept your partner as they are, because they are also doing their best.

Examining the Four Agreements in the context of your relationship can help you determine the differences between infatuation and love. In infatuation, you are not truly honest (impeccable) with your word. Infatuated people lie, to their partner, to themselves.. You may think you are in love with the person, but you are only in love with the person that you want them to be. In love, you accept the person just as they are, honestly. In infatuation, you may take things personally- if you are not secure in yourself, and you are in love with an imaginary person, it's easy to take blame on yourself (how can you blame an imaginary person??). All infatuation is based on assumptions- there is no honest communication, so it is all assumption. In love, you communicate, you say what you need, what you want, and you don't assume. The last agreement is critical to all of them. In infatuation, you aren't doing your best; it's not possible because you are living in a lie. In love, you want to give your best. You need to give your best. It is necessary for your own happiness.

This leads me to the other important part about love. The only way that any of us can actually love anyone unconditionally is when we love our own self unconditionally. To love yourself also involves knowing yourself and accepting yourself as you are. None of us is perfect. No one has a perfect body. No one is everything that they wish they were. If you can accept that you are exactly as you should be right now (faults and foibles included), then you can love yourself. This doesn't mean that you don't want to improve yourself- if you want to exercise more to be healthy, that's great. If you are trying to work on becoming a better person in some way, because you want to (not because you are trying to prove anything to someone else or because someone else is demanding that you be different), that's fine. We all need to grow and change to live. But unconditionally loving yourself right now is the key.

If you love yourself, completely, without conditions, then you can open yourself up to loving other people in the same way. And if you can love one person unconditionally, you can love more people!! That's where the idea of polyamory comes from. The more you love, the more love you have to give. It's a basic, non-linear idea. When you love someone, ie. a spouse, and then you have a child, you don't love the spouse less or the child more. Your love grows to encompass them both. If you have another child, you would never even consider having to decide which one to love the most. They are unique individuals and you love them for who they are. This kind of love is easy to understand. It's only when you start thinking about sexual relationships that people get more divided. There are the people who are strictly monogamous and can not imagine any other way. On the other side, you may have the absolute polyamorists who wonder how one could ever expect one other person to meet all their needs. In between, are all the shades of gray. There is no right way or wrong way; people love how they love.

I recently re-read "A Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein. This is a science fiction book, arguably one of the most famous science fiction books of its time (written in 1961 and revised and re-released in 1991). But, like most good science fiction literature, the story is really about social ideas, philosophies, and how we live our lives. This particular book has an interesting way of looking at love- it talks about polyamory, sexuality, love, religion, and philosophy- and the ideas are still valid and meaningful now. In fact, it was very enlightening reading it again after over 25 years. I found that a lot of my own personal philosophies seem to be based on the ideas in this book , but I had forgotten where I learned them and in what context.

The most important lesson from "Stranger" is that "Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." How many of us really learn to love that way? How many of us learn to love with everything you have, putting it all on the line, because, in order for you to be truly happy, you wish for another person to be happy? It involves knowing the other person, knowing what will make them happy. Merely giving them what makes us happy is not enough; you have to connect with your lover and feel their happiness. It's not about tangible goods, giving money and gifts. It's about learning how your lover feels when they are happy and giving yourself, unconditionally, to that purpose. When you feel their happiness, you are happy! Seems simple, but most people never experience it. They are too afraid, too worried about being vulnerable, too worried about being the first to say "I love you" to someone. Real love requires a little vulnerability.

I always kiss with everything I have, all the love I feel at that moment for the person that I am with. I can fall completely into a kiss, lose all track of time and place, only being aware of the person I am kissing. Some days, I may give it all, and the other person can't or won't give as much as I would like. That doesn't make my experience less, because perhaps the other person has given everything that they can (who am I to judge?). If I truly love them (at that moment, for you can only love someone in the moment), I am giving myself unconditionally to them. I accept them for who they are now, not expecting them to be anything other than who they are, not expecting anything more from the situation than what it is right now. And that is all I can do.

My favorite Shakespearean sonnet (Sonnet 116) also helps me understand love.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This sonnet is about the timelessness of love, the constancy of love, but also about loving unconditionally. It does not falter when challenged. It does not change when circumstances (age, physical appearance, time, etc.) change. When you love, truly love, someone, the other things don't matter. You are fully present with the other person, and you are involved in a "marriage of true minds", whether you have only just met or known each other for years.

As I said in the beginning, sometimes it's difficult to define love. Sometimes, all you can do is feel it, hope for it, believe it, and know it. I think the saying may be much overused and often misunderstood, but "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.... And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." --

The End