Love

Love is an emotion. It is very vulnerable. Imagine your love for a child or a partner as a separate entity living within your relationship. For it to thrive, it needs constant care.

Sometimes I start to think that there aren’t different emotions, but only one. And this one emotional entity has many facets: joy, fear, anger, anxiety, sadness, and love… For this entity to live and flourish, producing more love, all its facets need to be cared for. Love exists when people “love” all feelings or understand the value of all emotional facets in themselves and in their loved ones. Then love becomes stronger.

If you have a good attitude towards all emotional facets in your relationships—irritation, jealousy, doubt, resentment—then love thrives. To achieve this, one must learn only one thing: to understand what need or problem lies behind these emotions. It is important not to shut yourself off from them but to respond to them. For example: “He is angry. This is the same emotional entity as love. We need to figure out what anger is trying to say. Perhaps there is a problem that needs to be solved to strengthen our love.” And love needs to be strengthened all the time if it is valuable to you. Of course, it’s also important not to shut yourself off from your feelings and to share them honestly.

If you don’t understand, criticize, or devalue feelings—neglecting your own emotions or those of your loved ones—then, unfortunately, the number of “unprocessed” unpleasant emotions becomes too great, and this large emotional entity stops producing love.

Love exists where there is awareness of one’s own feelings and those of a loved one.

Author: Katrina Markova