LOVE IS
If I say ‘I love you’ to you, I mean it, deeply, and it is unconditional.
It is literally not possible for me to feel differently, no matter what you do or don’t do, and regardless of who you ‘really are’. We’re so used to living in fear that if people knew the truth about us, we’d lose their love.
That’s not love.
If love can be lost, if it’s conditional, it was never true love in the first place.
Not too many years ago, it was very very hard for me to tell somebody I love them.
In my first serious relationship (he became my first husband), I DID say ‘I love you’ a lot, we both did, but that relationship went down a not so fun pathway … love started to feel like pain … it seemed safer to not express it and eventually to not receive it, either.
From there, mostly I stayed in a place of feeling that love is high-risk, painful, not safe, and that it’s too scary / vulnerable to SHOW love as it somehow exposes or weakens you.
This impacted my ability to love in all areas.
I don’t remember saying ‘I love you’ to friends … I said it only sparingly with my parents … not really with my siblings at all … and certainly not with clients.
Now ‘I love you’ or ‘I love you so much’, these are phrases I use daily, often.
I truly and deeply love my friends, and I tell them often. One of my besties mentioned to me yesterday how important this is to her, how much she appreciates it as not everybody she cares about is able to say it to her … I feel the same way and I easily now RECEIVE love from the people in my life.
But, it took some practice.
There have been many times friends have said ‘I love you’ and I kinda just didn’t respond. It felt so uncomfortable, scary, I felt like it made me, yeah, I guess somehow weak or something to say that. I don’t know. I couldn’t even analyse it, no need to.
It was just hard to say.
For some reason it still feels a little hard to say to family (!!), but I do. I’m noticing as I write this I could / desire to express it to my family more, as it’s definitely TRUE.
Maybe I feel … hmmm, here’s something coming up right now … I think I feel that my FAMILY might love ME conditionally, and therefore it feels unsafe to show love to them.
Or it feels like it’s not fully true.
Yikes.
This may or may not be based on truth from their perspective. I do know I’m deeply loved by them … but at the same time, yes – I still feel there are rules of behaviour and I’m not living up to them.
Something to work on
So I suppose for me, receiving as well as giving love has to be based fully on complete love and acceptance in both directions.
Which of course begins with complete love and acceptance of SELF… in fact my ability to give love unconditionally woke up when I first began to practice giving it to me. Of course.
I tell clients often I love them as well – and I say it ONLY when I feel and mean it.
I feel like a lot of mentors say this as a throwaway statement. I do not do that.
If I tell you I love you I fucking MEAN it, it’s real, it’s what has come through me and I say it WITHOUT CONDITIONS.
I even say it collectively at times, to my community – this is because I collectively FEEL it. It’s REAL.
At some point, I fall in love with every single one of my private clients.
If I didn’t see that happening when we first met, you wouldn’t have become a private client
So, when you worry that maybe you message me too much … or that I think this or that about you and how you’re showing up, or that I judge you, or am impatient for you to be this or that or the other thing …
I don’t.
That’s not love.
And, of course, it’s the same romantically.
Love doesn’t judge.
It doesn’t have rules.
It’s not based on ANY sort of conditions.
Of course, if how somebody lives their life doesn’t feel good for YOU, you may opt out of that / have boundaries / etc. But, if you loved the person / love them, then that love is still there.
The biggest thing I’ve learned about love is that it just IS.
There’s nothing else to add to it, and it’s based on nothing except that, well, it’s there.
It’s the most freeing thing in the world, actually, to love with full abandon and no expectation or requirements in return ..
Try it
You are safe to try it