Maybe it is my very jaded sense of being from past injuries that gives me the chills when I hear the words I love you, or perhaps its the hurtful imprints have opened a space for me to really look at what the bleep love is.
How do you love?
What do you really mean by saying I love you? As little girls we were taught that it’s the ultimate goal to have your boyfriend say I love you. It had some sort of deeper commitment attached to it.
After my divorce at 21 years old I started writing a list of all the things I thought love was. Then later on in my 20’s I came to the conclusion that love can only be a gift. But now in my 40’s I find that I have a strange longing to say words as they relate to a relationship even though I find them to be the biggest amount of avoidance of communication we have. That’s right, I’m calling bullshit on ‘I love you’ being words of intimacy. Love is NOT a gift. I can’t give someone my love no more than I can give them sobriety, happiness, sadness, or my connection to God. Think about it for a moment. Love is an emotion and I can’t give you my emotions. I can give you a flower, or candy bar, but I cannot give you my emotions. I can receive a flower, a candy bar, but I cannot receive your emotions.
I have a relationship in my past that failed partly because this ex had an insane desire to make me happy during a time in my life when I was completely angry. I love him for this, now. I didn’t back then. All I knew was that nothing in my life was the way I wanted it to be. I was feisty and passionless. I was riddled with resentments. He could have told me all day long that he loved me and none of it would have made a difference. Why? Because just like you, I am not designed to experience life through another persons body or perception. Empathy is a great tool isn’t it? But even though I may feel another’s emotions I am still seeing and feeling those emotions through my own experiences and perceptions. I knew and could feel that he loved me but it didn’t make a difference in my happiness. Now when I said I love him for this today what I really mean is that being able to think back on those memories I now feel joy, happiness, and his love that he experienced for me… because I’ve healed that anger.
In the book The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz he talks about how in marriage the giving and receiving of rings is like saying here is my happiness and I am putting it solely in your hands to keep. This creates nothing but a continual breaking down of the relationship. This is partly why the thought of marriage for me (regardless of having a clairvoyant vision of a wedding in my future) gives me panic attacks. It really does. The thought of being married sends me into a space of panic because of a lot of reasons, but I still desire a partnership.
Being empathic as part of my psychic abilities kinda makes early dating tiresome. The emotions are rarely ever balanced with mutual affection that has any kind of consistency. Sure both people can have a great first couple of dates and then shortly thereafter one persons fears start to creep in or they just aren’t feeling it any longer. How about feeling those emotions for yourself and the other person??? OMG, by the time either person gets past the initial stages of ‘do I like this person or do I like that person?’ I’m over it and lost interest pretty quick. It really is hard enough to figure how I feel about another person I am getting to know, let alone adding their emotions into the mix. However, I really think that my panic comes from never understanding that I needed to take more time for myself to understand if I actually liked hanging out with the other person. I never did that growing up. No one in my family had the awareness of needing to teach that, so in turn I didn’t have the awareness of needing to learn how to be picky or discern in dating especially if our lifestyles matched, how I felt about myself around them, and so on.
It is hard for the soul to remain contained in the human body. We are here to experience expression of emotion. To be in a moment of love is saying I’ve opened myself up to be present and reveal myself to another. I’ve allowed my auric field to be touched by yours. I’ve allowed myself to show you my happiness. I am allowing my heart to flex. I am receiving you; not your gifts, just you. For me to say I love you means that having you be present in my auric field is in harmony with my with me and actually activates and aligns my chakras. For me to say I am in love with someone means that I have spent time revealing parts of myself that are painful and joyful. For me to say I am in love with someone means that I have spent time receiving their pain and joy. For me to say I am in love with someone means that their presence in my life allow me to experience myself fully.
Love is not a gift but a reflection of self-expression. I cannot give you how I feel about myself. I can show you how I light up because I’ve fully received you, good and bad, into my life. I can sparkle for you because I’ve allowed you into a place within me that is juicy, divine, balanced, and uplifting. I cannot receive love because you feel it. I can receive love because I feel it.
To boil the experience of love down to a simple ‘I love you’ is lame because to have the awareness of those experiences and to be able to share that verbally with another is so much more meaningful and intimate than I love you, and yet I have an intense desire to hear those words from having that experience.