Only Love is REAL

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

With Valentines Day just around the corner Love is in the air. The average Brit spends £35.06 on gifts and cards for their partners – on average men spend £44, compared to £26 for women.

We use that money to let our love ones know how much they mean to us, the unconditional love we feel for them, expressed as a box of chocolates or a bunch of red roses. The one day of the year that we are ‘supposed’ to demonstrate our LOVE. What about the other 364 days of the year (being a leap year it will be 365 in 2020)? Is it acceptable to not express our love on these days?

And what is LOVE? Is it the butterflies that you feel in your stomach when you first meet someone or the twinkle in someone’s eye when you have a connection which cannot be verbally communicated? Is it a warm embrace or a passionate moment? Or maybe it’s a level of intimacy which is reserved for that one special person in your life?

If all of the above is true, how is possible that a box of chocolates or a bunch of flowers can represent that. And what happens if your love one chooses not to buy you a gift or send a card? Does that mean they do not LOVE you unconditionally? And once the chocolates have been eaten and the flowers have passed there best, finding there way into the bin what of our unconditional love then?

Unconditional LOVE is Love without condition’s. It is understanding that you LOVE someone without the need for them to LOVE you back. It is loving someone for exactly who they are, not for who you wished they were and placing limiting expectations on them. Or loving someone believing that they have unlimited potential and perhaps believing once they reach that potential your love for them will increase. It is LOVEING the person in front of you as they are.

Anything else is fear. If you catch yourself saying ‘I will love this person once they have shown me that they love me first’, there is fear. Perhaps you say of your long term partner ‘I love them dearly but…’ then there is fear. This fear comes from our own individual limiting beliefs, our own hidden needs expressed as a void that others must fill to enable us to love them, or so we believe. Maybe you have expressed your love to someone else and that love has not been returned. Instantly the love diminishes, and we blame the other person for their inability to love us. Instead we turn to resentment, jealously, gossip and criticism as the fear takes over and our vulnerability makes us feel exposed. We cover this quickly by pointing the finger of blame outwards rather than accepting and loving our own vulnerable parts and asking ourselves ‘what was the need I was hoping the other person would fill?’

Once we start to understand and accept our own vulnerability and stop looking at others to meet our needs we are free to LOVE unconditionally, ourselves and others. Unconditional love is our birth-right. Only LOVE is real, everything else is fear.

So, this Valentine’s day give without condition. Whether that be a card, chocolates, flowers or even a loving word. Express your feelings without attaching any needs and expect nothing in return. Allow unconditional LOVE to radiate from you, to all those around you that you know and those that you don’t. Be the LOVE that you would like to see in the world.

I LOVE YOU.