True Love?

I remember pleading with God once asking why he couldn’t just send me a man that would love me unconditionally. I remember hearing the answer as clear as day, “I did…. I sent you two”. That’s right he did…my boys. It was then that I started to question what true love really was. Was it just limited to the romantic vision I had conjured up and believed most of my life, or was it way bigger? Was it even possible once we are gown ups to experience unconditional love the way a child does? Isn’t that an example of true love? Maybe we need to be that trusting to see it. I don’t know any of these answers but I do know this: you are either in fear or you are in love but you can’t be in both places at the same time…or should I say, I can’t. And if fear is permeating your life, it’s hard to imagine even having a shot at true love….whatever that may be.

I grew up thinking true love should be a combination of perfect intellectual foreplay and rousing companionship. I thought that if this “soul mate” of mine and I were completely in sync, we could virtually breathe one another in. I also somehow arrived at the notion that true love meant my beautiful one was supposed to love me unconditionally for who I was ….all of me. However, I never once acknowledged that I would be doing the same for them. In fact, looking back, I had very rigid views of the box they needed to neatly fit into. And in order to escape my constant disappointment, they needed to adhere to the version of them I had created. And I had no problem listing the criteria for them as if they were filling out a job application. So it’s no surprise that’s how it often ended up feeling, like a job.

These days, after surviving half a lifetime of both excruciatingly painful hanging on to one leg as they leave love, as well as deliciously wonderful I can climb any mountain love, I have safely arrived at a new point in my ability to define. Now, please note, this comes from a single gal. I have yet to learn how to gracefully survive in a committed romantic relationship. And in retrospect, my search for love looked more like a long determined trek, chasing what I believed to be utopia, only to find a mirage disappearing as I arrived. But after being able to surrender my outdated version of romantic love, I believe I am a lot closer to my truth than I used to be.

Today, for me, true love means loving someone for who they are, not for their ability to fill my agenda. It means wishing someone the most happiness they can find, even if that doesn’t incorporate me in the way I had envisioned (or at all for that matter). I believe true love includes listening to the other person with an open heart. Maybe even listening to them from their experience, not my own. Because even when I believe I’m listening, but I’m spending the whole time trying to tie what they are saying to my own experiences, I still do not hear them. I think to really know someone, I must be able to hear them from where they are speaking from without me all tied up in it. I believe only then can I see them for who they really are. And If I try to love them without really seeing or hearing them authentically, then I am only honoring the parts that appeal to me or that I have created. In the past, that’s how I did it. Inevitably, I was always caught off guard when that person turned out to be someone different than I had so beautifully painted them out to be in my mind; which ultimately led to punishing them for letting me down.

They say when a heart breaks; it grows back stronger….and perhaps, if you let it, even bigger. It sure seems to have worked that way for me. My ability to love is constantly evolving. I do seem to be getting better at it. I have come a long ways in understanding expectations and how dangerous they can be. I understand how perception works now and I am flexible in learning from others rather than being stuck in the rigidity of how things “should” look. It used to be about the search to find someone that fit the secret list I had hid under my pillow. Now I understand, most of the people that come into my life are just a reflection of me and where I’m at. So now, my relationships and interactions have become more about the expedition of truth, a discovery of my own light and love, and the attempt to steer clear of fear.

Looking back, I think to date the most selfless and true love I have ever really experienced was when I loved someone enough to let them go. In doing so, I was able to honor what they needed and where they were at. I remind myself today that real love isn’t holding on with an iron grip. I believe when I am stuck in my self –centered thoughts, all I am able to see is what I could or should get from someone else. I know now that is just being in fear. It’s a way of grappling to hold on to what I believe to have been robbed of throughout my life. Because I carried a backpack of pain for so long, I unconsciously approached love from a place of entitlement, always searching for compensation.

But perhaps I had it backwards for so long. Maybe when you challenge yourself to step off that edge, stop coveting love, and find it in yourself to give it all away, that’s when there’s change. It’s changing for me, right before my eyes with each time I am able to bravely try a new way.

Today, I practice loving people the way they need to be loved, not the way I need to love them. I try to love them for exactly who they are, not who I prefer them to be. And as I feel myself open up and freely give, I watch it all flood right back as if there’s no end to the source. And somehow in that, I am experiencing more of what I believe to be, true love…. every day.