A loving relationship
Valentine’s Day is a time when we talk about and celebrate love a great deal. But how much do we really understand love?
If you ask a priest or a clergyperson about love, they will likely describe the apostle Paul’s view, outlining the three kinds of love he described in his epistles. These are sexual or erotic love, friendship or family love and spiritual or giving-of-oneself love. When love can mean such widely different things, no wonder we often get confused.
I like to refer to love as being a relationship of mutual caring and commitment. This is best described as being when the needs and well-being of the person you love are as important to you as your own well-being and needs. Healthy love is balanced. One-way love tends to be neurotic, easily leading to someone being abused.
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Love is an ideal, which can be difficult to live out in reality. Yet there is nothing wrong with working at an ideal as long as you accept it as being something you are working toward, but may never reach. Perhaps this is the important reason for celebrating Valentine’s Day. It is a reminder to reach out with love.
Giving and sharing are wonderful ideas and an important part of love. And most of us are able to do this a great deal. But we need to be able to accept when our partners can’t meet our needs, without pouting, getting upset or punishing them. And equally, we have to avoid being hard on ourselves when we aren’t able to give and share as much as we would like.
Love is a two-way street, but we only control the traffic in one direction. True love, if such is possible, is when you give love because you choose to freely, without any pressure, coercion or price attached to what you give. This is often referred to as unconditional love.
The only condition I find necessary to apply to unconditional love is that the person who is doing the loving is not the target or victim of abuse. If love is to be experienced in a healthy balance, then taking care of yourself is as important for you as your choice and decision to love the other person.
