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The power of love…..
……a force from above…. cleaning my soul……a skyscraping dove……as in the words of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, is as vital for 
our mental, physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing as it is for oxygen to be readily available for us to live and breathe! It is imperative for us to have access to this power in our lives – it really is as simple as that.
It means that the more connected we are to others, the healthier we will be in mind, body, heart and spirit. Conversely, therefore, the less connected we are to ourselves and others, the more we are at risk of being out of balance. It is also true that the less love we have in our lives, the more likely we are to experience some form of depression, or even addiction, be it mild, moderate or severe.
Love is probably the best cure or anti-depressant there is, simply because one of the most common sources of depression is that of feeling unloved. Most people who suffer from any form of depression don’t know how to love themselves and, consequently, do not feel loved by others. They can also spend considerable time being self-absorbed or too self-focused, making them appear less attractive to others, depriving themselves of many of life’s golden opportunities…. opportunities that appear all the time to teach us how to learn the skills of love.
There is a myth in our culture that love “just happens”. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to magically appear to love them……but, as we all know, love simply doesn’t work like that. To get love and to keep love, we must go out and consciously ‘look’ for love. It is only then that love is given the chance it needs to ‘find’ us!
Most of us formulate our ideas about love from movies or romantic literature. We come to believe that love is something that’s supposed to be all-consuming, sweeping us off our feet. Unfortunately, this idealised notion of love or romance consists of some totally unrealistic and really unhelpful images, admittedly created for the purposes of entertainment, and which is partly the reason why so many of us become and remain so disillusioned when love doesn’t seem to work out.
It’s a bit like junk food, when the media bombard us with images of instant gratification in order to stimulate our appetite. In the same way, having been conditioned with years of the perfect love image, we think that this feeling we’re experiencing right now must be ‘love’, when what it may really be is something else entirely: how about a ‘distraction’ or an ‘infatuation’?
Consequently, when we’re lucky enough to think we’ve found love, we become upset or disappointed because there are many things that don’t seem to fit with this cultural ideal. Some of us become demanding or controlling, wanting the other to do what we think represents this ideal image of love and romance, without realising this ideal is totally misplaced.
It is not only possible, but essential, to change our approach to love if we are to ward off excess feelings of disappointment, or even depression, in our lives. When it comes to love, sometimes being hurt is part of the deal, I’m afraid.
Consider if these findings on how to love and be loved provide some food for thought:
- Know that love is a learned skill, and not just something that comes naturally by instinct or from our hormones and emotions. Erich Fromm calls it ‘an act of will’, and Robert Holden describes it beautifully with his definition of ‘lovability’. If you don’t learn how the ‘emotional bank account’ works or any of the other skills required in love, you are virtually guaranteeing yourself a life plagued by disappointment, not only because you are not connected enough to yourself and others, but because you will continue to experience the same painful situations.
- Learn about Stephen Covey’s ‘maturity continuum’, as the way to achieve, not a life filled with compromise or unhealthy co-dependent relationships, but a life where synergy and willing co-operation are the keys to inter-dependence. This is the only way to develop trust and intensify connections. The more you can share how you feel, authentically, showing your human vulnerability, the less defensive and protective you will become. You will feel known and understood as you start to feel worthy of both giving and receiving love, so avoiding the ‘Games People Play’, as defined by Eric Berne, or the roles within Karpman’s ‘Drama Triangle’.
- Appreciate the difference between love and lust. Lust is the psychological state of deep infatuation. It may feel good, but it rarely lasts! Lust involves that first stage of mad, passionate, animal attraction where nothing matters and the hormones are in charge of everything. It all feels perfect, the world is your oyster and anything is possible! As wonderful as this may be, we’d be foolish to assume that it will last forever. There is no way anyone can keep up the honeymoon phase indefinitely, so the truth is that it simply must change! In any case, the euphoria would end up as utter boredom, our becoming desensitised to such pleasures, if indeed it went on and on……. remember how familiarity breeds contempt!?! The lust phase lasts, on average, from anything up to, and sometimes even longer than, six months, and it can indeed progress on to love. For those of us lucky enough to have found true love, it may indeed have started out as lust, but I’m sure you’ll agree that the latter doesn’t always turn into the former!
Remember, there will always be a whole range of core differences between people, no matter how close we are and, if the relationship is a healthy one, these differences are bound to surface on a regular basis, because we’re all very different individuals and, ideally, we’re just doing our best to remain true to ourselves.
The crux is to identify these differences as they arise and to work through them, in the moment, however difficult this may be. Don’t be scared that the hostility could distance you or that it may even destroy the bond altogether – there’s no such thing as a failed relationship! If it’s meant to be, it will cope with, and survive the friction, becoming even stronger as a result. Talk through the dynamic and use the conflict, whenever it appears, as an opportunity, the way it’s meant to be used: to help us grow as human beings and to become even closer.
It can seem wonderful when everything in the garden is rosy because we all know how easy it is to be in love when life is going well. The extent and true test of the power of love, however, is in our being strong enough to remember to self-reflect often, especially when times are tough, so we also cope with the storms, both individually and together.