How do you know it’s really love?

Lately there have been several women I know, either in my private practice or in my personal life. These women all have something in common and I think it yearns to be explored here. The common thread in their voice is a yearning for more. They each are in relationship to someone that they have viewed as somehow holding them back, unworthy of trust and generally unable to meet the needs they have on a spiritual / emotional level. Each one came to me with the proclamation that they were ready to move on from this relationship. They sat before me and talked about the emptiness they felt, the pain that past mistakes were holding, the inability to move on and forgive the indiscretions of their men. They (as if one collective voice) spoke to me of how painful it was that they had to mold and shape themselves in this relationship to suit “him”, they felt that they were not living truthfully to who they knew they wanted to be. They each had a similar story, he had betrayed them once and they found it impossible to forget and therefore stayed afraid to love more. Their solutions. Leave him.

I know that is never an easy choice to make. I wasn’t sure that any of them were really wanting to make that choice, but they weren’t sure they didn’t want to either. Of course, i did not coach them to stay or to go. That’s not my role in any of their lives. What I did instead was ask the questions that I knew it was hard for them to ask themselves. With each one those questions were different, but the answers seem to be the same. They wanted more from life. They wanted more from love. They wanted to be free from the pain they felt. The interesting thing is that each one of them left me with the self assured answer…in order to be me I must leave him

Well, as life would have it…or love would have it…they were unable to hold themselves to that commitment. They each came back to me with all the reasons they couldn’t leave. The main one was…I love him.

Love is a powerful thing.

These collective experiences got me to thinking. What does it mean when we say we “love” someone? What should it look like when we can trust that they really love us? How do we know we can trust someone not to betray our love?

I am reminded by my teacher often that love is strong. It can bounce and is not broken easily. But trust…trust is fragile and shatters when dropped and can be difficult to repair. So here, yes is one of the issues for us to look at. Trust. How do you repair trust once it has been broken? The simple answer is trust more. Not less. Not necessarily the person that betrayed you but love itself. Often we throw out our ability to trust love because our heart holds the memories of betrayal. That inhibits us and closes the door to love. It’s important to learn to trust yourself as well and your choices. To know that your inner wisdom will kick in if you are in a situation that isn’t worthy of your trust. It’s important to have that relationship with yourself so that you can be clear about your choices. Clear about where you place this delicate thing called trust.

That leads me to the second issue of concern. The collective voice of the women I speak of here was a familar one to me. I too knew what it felt like to have given myself away to my relationship. I knew what it felt like to change me in hopes of making them happy. What it felt like to hide parts of me that I didn’t think they would accept. They spoke to me of the terrible loss they felt and how much they missed themselves. They spoke to me of hiding out often behind their issues with food. They spoke of how the unhappiness with Self lead to more self destruction.

So my question here for all of us that seek to love more. Why would you love yourself less in order to love someone more? My thought is, it’s not love that creates this dynamic but the lack of it. The lack of self love. We all seek to accept ourselves through others at some point in our lives. Most often when we are teenagers and trying to figure ourselves out. But that condition can last long into adulthood when we are lacking in self love. So, I believe it is difficult to answer the questions asked above unless you have been willing to look deep into the soulful eyes of your beloved self. That place where I speak of that knows who to trust and recognizes love over attachment.

Yes, love is a powerful thing. Especially genuine love. Lazaris, a great teacher of love suggests that genuine love is love that cares, is willing to be intimate, gives without thought of getting, truly takes the time to know another, really know them, respects by honoring their emotions as well as your own, has the courage to commit and stay committed through the pain of love’s lessons, being courageous enough to love more. And love responds, it encourages you to be responsible, showing up and taking ownership of you, your feelings, your truths, your obstacles… Yes, genuine love is easy to recognize…these things are present. Without exception. Anything less in a relationship to self or to other is missing the very components that make love what it is. A force that equates to magic in my book. A force that draws to it more love.

I didn’t say perfect or flawless, or without stress or strife. I simply suggest that in order to assure ourselves that the relationship we are in is truly love it must have all of these things. Even if we are talking about the relationship to self, higher self or simply the object of our love.

Charlotte Scott