An Understanding Love

Love isn’t a fairytale. It’s not a Disney movie. There is no meeting your person, falling in love, and living happily ever after. Don’t misunderstand. You can in fact have a happy life with someone you love, but it’s not as easy as the story books say. Yes, there can be an abundance of good times, but there’s a lot of work involved. Over the years the media has shown us a warped and untrue sense of what love is.

So what is love? At its root, love is understanding. While that sounds simple enough, there’s a lot to unpack with that word within this context. That’s why this week in Deeper Thoughts we’re going to get an understanding on just what it means to say love IS understanding.

1: To love someone is to take them as a part of yourself and care take their needs. In doing so you understand that to hurt them and cause them pain hurts you and causes yourself pain as well.

2: You take time to learn and understand the other person’s needs and how you can provide them. Are they needing a provider? Are they needing a nurturer? Maybe they need someone to lead. Perhaps they need someone to be their safe space at home so they can go back out into the world the next day. Maybe they need a protector. Loving someone is understanding what their needs are, and if you’re not already providing those needs, finding out how you can.

You can see how meeting the other person’s needs feeds into the first point we made. If you understand what their needs are, but you’re not meeting those needs, that causes them pain, and if you love them, you feel that pain as well from not meeting those needs.

3: Understanding the results of your actions is crucial. Is going to the bar after work instead of coming home going to upset them? Is using rent money to buy the latest iPhone just because you want the latest tech going to upset them? Are you still talking to that coworker they don’t trust behind their back and lying? 

You understand your actions in a relationship affect more than just yourself, they affect your significant other and any children that are involved.

4: When there are ruptures you have those uncomfortable conversations so you can understand what can be done to begin repairing those ruptures, if repairing them is possible. This is especially important if you caused that rupture to begin with. Talking with each other to open up and understand how each other feels and so each of you are seen, heard, and validated is important to knowing just how to fix the issues that may have arisen and how to make sure those issues don’t happen again.

5: You understand if there are workability issues or compatibility issues. Many people think love is about compromise. With compromise you give up one thing, and typically they do too as a trade off. Workabilities are the things you can possibly make compromises with. But to try and compromise on an issue that’s a compatibility issue causes one, if not both of you, to betray your core values.

For a better understanding of the differences here’s some examples of workability/compromise: Having Mexican tonight and having Chinese tomorrow, going to see that musical this weekend and next weekend going to Comicon, or staying home tonight and postponing date night to the weekend.

Now let’s look at some examples of compatibility issues. One of you wants children while the other one doesn’t, one person getting a promotion at work that requires moving to another state while the other person wants to remain close to their family, or living in a more rural environment that's more community based vs. living in the big city.

Compatibility is based on important key things you and your partner are in alignment with. They’re based on core values you each share. Workabilities are by comparison, much smaller in scope. You can compromise with workabilities because they involve minor concessions you’re okay with giving up. They’re not giving up parts of your core values.

Understanding where you and your partner are not compatible is important, and the earlier you can determine this the better.

6: Receiving and giving love. Understanding how your partner receives is incredibly important. Not everyone receives love the same way you do. You might receive it via physical touch and words of encouragement while your significant other might need small thoughtful gifts, or intellectual conversations. Understanding they way they receive love and giving it to them in that way helps them to feel seen, validated, and heard.

7: Understanding that as time goes on, needs and even compatibility can change. As we grow up we change as people. We’re not meant to stay stagnant. We’re meant to expand and as we do things about us, and our partners will change as well. This means understanding if the changes with each other still mean compatibility or if we can still meet their needs.

These are just 7 ways that show loving a person is understanding them. It’s not a fairytale that’s easy to maintain. Being in a relationship and in love takes work. You have to understand the person you love.

Thank you for reading. Take care and having an enlightening day.