Haven’t we Love experts (Medium Certified!) just confused you so much about which instinct to trust and which not to? How would you even know if what you feel is true love or just infatuation? To make it easier, I hope this might help.
You maintain the ideals of a healthy relationship
True love is more than those initial butterflies you feel when you are attracted to someone, true love is constant work.
Honestly, love is just a feeling you experience but to speak in the context of how that feeling manifests in a relationship, we look at the ideals of healthy love. When you truly love someone, you do certain things that help them grow and become a better person. You become their teammate, companion, and home that they can return to after a long, tiring day.
Here are those ideals:
UNDERSTANDING: Everyone is different and flawed. The more you get to know someone, the more you realize how different you are from them. Conflict is a fundamental part of relationships since differences lead to disagreements, but the only objective of such differences should be mutual understanding.
When you truly love someone, you do two things:
- you see disagreements as an opportunity to get to know the other person better; you try to see where they are coming from and seek to understand their side of the story. You are aware that no other person will be your clone, and the only loving thing you can do is to bring your worlds together by building bridges of understanding,
- you give them space to be who they are. If your partner is a night owl and you are an early bird, you do not let that become a hurdle for the two of you to spend some time together, and you work with them to find a creative solution; you let them pursue hobbies that are unique to them and at the same time, put the effort in finding activities that the two of you can enjoy together.
SUPPORT: In a relationship, support refers to the expectation that your partner will stand by your side during good and bad times. More importantly, during difficult times. When you love someone, you are there for them. You may or may not be able to offer them a practical solution, but you will be there for them to support them emotionally. And if giving that support would require just being there without enforcing your opinions on them, you would do that.
TRUST: The only way to know if you can trust someone is to trust them. When you truly love someone, you put your guard down and open up about who you are. You bring your true, vulnerable selves to the table, and even if there is always a risk of getting hurt by the other person, you take that risk.
However, you are not naive about expressing your complete self in one go. You invest gradually, and if the other person does not match your levels of investment, you withdraw.
MUTUAL RESPECT: The truth is that love is not enough. True love makes you feel respected and accepted for who you are. So when you truly love someone, you deeply respect them. You consider them and their opinions worthy. Even if you disagree with them sometimes, you do not belittle them for being who they are.
You choose the other person over and over again
Nobody is perfect, and sooner or later, you will come across the parts of them that are not very pleasant or attractive to you. The initial attraction will fade away, and for your love to last, you must choose to be with the other person every day, despite their flaws and imperfections. If you do that, your love qualifies as true.
School of Life has said it better than I could: Love means, above anything else, benevolence and gentleness towards what is failed, disgraced, broken, unappealing, angry, and foul in other people and in ourselves. Love is not about admiration for strength, it is about directing sympathy in a most unexpected direction: at what is messed up, lost, and in pieces, and what we, at times, dislike. It requires forgiveness and cutting each other some slack.
Anyone can express an interest in perfection; to love is to choose others despite their imperfections.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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