Love Is Not Enough - If We Can’t Express It

The capacity to express love is a skill that all of us need to develop to be emotionally healthy. Most of us do not know the best way to express love and many of us know almost nothing about it - but that is something we will need always.

Maybe we can start by understanding what is required for a “love transactions” to be really successful.

Love is not the problem

We can start by identifying what our problem with love is not.

• Lack of love?

No, it seems most of us have enough love to give

• Lack of will?

No, it seems most of us have the desire to share it.

In fact, we could even say the problem seems to be the opposite because we have so much love to give that we don’t know what to do with it.

And we need so much to receive the love that we are constantly feeling we need more and more of this essential nutrient in our life.

If a group of economic specialists would do an extensive study about these “love questions”, probably would come to the conclusion that — in economic terms — there is no real problem. There is sufficient demand and offer in the “emotional market” for it to work. The only issue may be our lack of skills to make the “love transaction” happen in a satisfactory way to all parties involved. It’s more a regulation problem.

The real problem

The origin of these difficulties seems to be our inability to express love in a way that is balanced between us and the one we want to share it with.

To achieve that balance, maybe we need to admit first that all the intervenients have to be considered as equals in this “transaction”.

We may need to keep in mind they all persons involved have the same importance and value. Most times we forget that and assume that our position, as it is based on love, is the right one and the only possible.

We want others to agree with our opinions and behave according to it. We think they can only give us one correct response — to agree with us. That reaction will be the only we will accept as a recognition that they have accepted our love.

Send love, not pressure

If we take a deeper look, we may not be seeing things as they really are. In fact, by doing so, by demanding the only reaction we will admit as the correct one, we may be delivering more pressure than of love. And we may not be recognizing the other as equal.

“Love means little if the major way you have to express it is to pressure others to conform to your views of how they should be or what they should do“. - Jon Kabat-Zinn, “Full Catastrophe Living”.

Maybe we need to change the way we analyze these situations — if we want our love to really reach others.

We want others to love us, not to fear us, right?

For that to happen, we must prepare ourselves to accept different reactions, to accept that the end result may not be the one we anticipated.

"You know it’s love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you’re not part of their happiness". — Julia Roberts.

However, this is not a pessimist point of view. That does not necessarily mean the final result has to be worse than our dream, it just means it can be a different result.

If we open our minds to the possibility of different outcomes, we may be surprised by something wonderful in the end.