This past year has been interesting. I reached a point where I felt like I didn’t have a clue what love was. After having been in a few long term relationships, that was just strange, but I felt like I didn’t have a clue. And I soon discovered that some of the most remarkable, open hearted women in my life were feeling the same way. ‘What is love?’ we kept asking each other, only able to rest in the comfort that it was OK to not know, and we weren’t alone in having all our ideas of love shattered.

And I know it is a definition that keeps changing, evolving. But it has been a journey of great discovery and I put it here hoping that it can help someone else in the world find deeper love too.

There is SO much we confuse love with. We confuse addiction with love, we confuse obligation or responsibility with love, we confuse financial security or sexual attraction with love, we confuse longevity (in relationships) with love, we confuse drama with love. And most importantly, we confuse relationships with love. Katherine Woodward Thomas lovingly said one of the most profound statements to have ever fallen on my ears –

Love is unconditional. Relationships are not.

One thing I do know about LOVE is that it is freeing, liberating and expansive. When you love someone, their presence – even if you speak once in a few years, makes you a better version of yourself. In powerful relationships this is even more obvious. Your health improves around them, you feel emotionally healthier, and you might work better, think better, live better. So that’s a big one to look for – after getting into a relationship, or around a certain person, are you a better version of yourself? Failing health, gaining/ losing weight in a bad way, or losing focus in work are all signs that something is amiss.

The second thing I’ve noticed is that in loving relationships, giving is effortless. I’ve never heard statements like ‘I do so much for you’ in loving relationships. You naturally want to do things for the other person – because doing those things make you happy. So even when you get nothing in return, it doesn’t hurt at all, since you already got the return on your ‘investment’ in the joy of doing what you did.

This is not an idealistic statement – I’ve very much seen it in action in my own as well as many other lives. Yes, sometimes there can be phases where responsibilities are extreme and the sharing of burden is not equal, creating anger and fighting, but it is still not going to create a feeling of not getting enough in return.

Love vs Abuse

It has taken me many, many years to learn that when there is love, you know.

SO many of us get into relationships where there’s attraction but no love, and then we spend months, sometimes years, stuck in relationships where nothing we do is ever enough. It’s a couple where every fight is about ‘I do this and this for you, and you do nothing for me’, it is years of trying to meet the expectations of the other person, trying to be good enough for them, trying to make them happy.

When the real problem has always been, you’ve been seeking proof of love because you know deep inside that there is none. You can go years without any proof sometimes, but when there is love, you know. You can be hurt by a person, you can be betrayed, you can be hated for a while, but when there is love, you just know.

I know from experience that there are very few things more devastating than realising that a relationship – especially a long term one, is loveless. But it is an understanding that is worth inculcating, because it allows you the space to open up to really loving, and to really being loved.

I find it fascinating, because where there is love, there can sometimes be cognitive dissonance along the lines of – ‘he clearly doesn’t love me, or he would have done this or that’ and it is confusing because you still feel loved even though you don’t see proof. In abusive relationships you’re confused and lost at why the other person – as they often claim – does so much for you and yet it is never enough.

The price to pay for a loving relationship is never too high, and you’d gladly go through all the pain for them all over again if you need to. Abusive relationships tire you out, being in the relationship overall is painful (the frequency of the ‘highs’ reduces over time) and it slowly sucks the life out of you, leaving lesser and lesser energy for other areas of your life. It’s a constant struggle, and you cannot figure out what you need to do more in order to make the relationship fulfilling.

Love vs Addiction

What IS love? To me it is this underlying thing that makes pain in a relationship worthwhile. It’s a little different from addiction though, where people confuse relief, or the high (between cycles of abuse) as love or bliss. There can be layers and layers of damaging patterns that need to be healed before people can rest in truly loving, so even when there is love, the journey is not necessarily easy.

There’s a powerful connect between two people even in addiction though and this can easily be confused with love, because this kind of ‘love’ is very blinding, since people use addictions – in relationships as well as in life – to essentially run away from their unpleasant inner reality. The other person through the pain they expose you to, helps you distract yourself from this unpleasant inner reality, which is why the addiction is so great.

A telling difference would be that in addiction, one allows for persistent violation to happen and both people are not rooted in their personal power. In love, there is no waiting for the other person to change, you love them as they are.

Love Vs. Relationships

Love enriches, regardless of the direction the relationship itself takes, because love just is. Relationships are expectation. In the total absence of expectation, like in platonic relationships, love can be a lot more free sometimes. The most powerful experience in my own life was when a friend looked deeply into my eyes as we said goodbye, with so much love that I cried the whole way to the airport and wrote a poem while still weeping.

One can have life long, love-less relationships – most people do, and one can learn to co-exist without much distress. One can be stuck in abusive, love-less relationships. One can have long-lasting, deeply loving relationships, and one can also have short-term deeply loving relationships that cannot last for a variety of practical or emotional reasons. Ultimately the harmony of a relationship depends on the maturity of both people. The depth of it depends on the love. The longevity is a matter of fate, and in case of unhappy relationships, possibly a lack of courage.

The Foundation

While love itself can be there, underlying the external drama in a relationship, to be able to co-exist peacefully in a loving relationship, one needs the foundation of powerful self-love. Learning to listen deeply, learning to self-soothe, stand in our own power and draw healthy boundaries, all form the foundation for a strong, balanced relationship. When this combines with a deep love for each other, it then becomes very powerful and empowers both people.

Love is Quiet

Except for a few highs in a romantic relationship, love is mostly quiet, almost like a substratum lying beneath the surface of our emotions. Without drama, the highs and lows disappear and with drama, this love can remain hidden. This can also cause people to walk away from actually loving relationships and into abusive ones because abuse offers a lot more excitement.

Love Goes Both Ways

Now, this is admittedly arguable and I speak from my own experience here. However, I am yet to come across one-sided love. If it is one-sided, it is usually not love at all. It can be lust, it can be addiction, it can be a lot of things. But not love.

People can also sometimes choose other things over love, since sometimes patterns of addiction and abuse can be too heavy for a person to actually break free and choose love over fear, but the love is still, undeniably there. There may be a lack of commitment, interest or acknowledgement, but the love will still be there, underneath everything.

So if you’re in a relationship thinking ‘wow, I never actually felt loved’… look carefully. Chances are that you never loved, either. It’s a hard one to digest, but it also sets you free. Some connections just are.