Love is one concept, word, atmosphere and even more of a personality that is never truly understood without unintentional efforts towards grasping it. The feeling of love is mostly described as complex and multifaceted and can vary greatly depending on the individual and their experiences. It can be romantic or platonic, fleeting or enduring, and can bring both joy and pain. However, true love goes beyond the “feelings”, it’s more of “choices” than it is of emotions.
Everyone is looking for true love and nothing more because we all believe it is real and carries all the good stuff along with it. According to the scriptures;
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Finding true love or the manifestation of all these qualities wrapped up in one human can be difficult.
Using culture as a parameter or lens through which we see what relationship or true love should look like, will be like a moving target. Reason is that, a target(true love) is meant to be stable and finding true love should be a definite goal, but culture over the years has provided distinctively alternating and misleading methods for finding true love. And I believe the best way to find true love is by looking to no other than the personality of love, which is GOD.
The Perspective Of “Self”
The keys to finding love stem from a place of self-preparation even before the person. There are elements that need to be deposited within an individual and in their life before they meet or even get into contact with the person.
A lot of relationships today, are unstable because of the inability of each individual to outgrow habits and
Having standards before chasing love in a different place will save us from the possibility of potential partners creating the standards by which we live in any relationship.
Authenticity is a great factor in finding true love as it is as real as love is and cannot be outdone or catalyzed even after years of living. As an individual, knowing and understanding your identity can be defined as having a firewall for your personality.
Developing a strong sense of self-identity helps individuals navigate through life’s challenges, make important decisions, and maintain healthy relationships. It also provides a sense of purpose and direction and helps individuals find meaning and fulfilment in life. It prevents others from manipulating you or tossing you to and fro by any form of doctrine(having others define who you are).
Let me probe a bit. Our world today presents us with people who live seemingly perfect lives on the media, but only hide behind the camera full of imperfections and utter gloom. The result of this fake presentation is that many pick up on these seemingly perfect patterns, wishing and working by any tip/hack thrown at them to have the same.
It becomes literally impossible to find true love or build healthy relationships with a negative self-identity. Because there, the feeling of inadequacy and low self-esteem chokes positive energy and growth. It masks the true potential and the reality of an individual, making it hard for an establishment of a strong connection towards another. Not developing a true sense of identity is like losing touch with oneself, like breathing but not really living.
I can only see how it’ll be like having someone in a life that’s literally non-existent.
“As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health — food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first, I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is, “LOVE OF ONESELF.” ~ Charlie Chaplin
The famous author, C.S. Lewis wrote, “to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one.”
Self-love has to do with self-building, prioritizing one’s dreams and making efforts to light them up, trusting your intuition and knowing your own truth.
Easy there, don’t lose me, I’m not totally speaking in your favour. Self-love I believe has been wrongly defined and hailed with great misconception today. I’ll tell you what, self-love is not conceited, self-love is not selfishness, and self-love is not narcissism. I say this because that is how many people define self-love today without even realizing it.
There’s so much more to self-love. Self-love is sacrifice, self-love is discipline, self-life is fearlessness, and self-love is taking risks for the good of oneself and extensively the people your life affects. Self-love is preparing oneself towards substantiality in a space of selfishness.
When you love yourself enough and can discipline and sacrifice pleasure for everlasting or long-term gratification, that same sacrifice becomes a language of “love” you end up giving to others.
A scenario, if you have a great physique naturally, or as a way of self-building, probably for the purpose of nurturing a good habit, healthy living and fitness, you have grown to build yourself with great stature.
The reward of satisfaction found by this sacrifice was for self, even though it contributes to some of the characteristics by which others get attracted to you. Loving yourself makes good habits stick and removes temporary acts of people pleasing which has a severely deteriorating effect on relationships.
Work on those intrinsic strings of beauty. That is how you know you can be attracted to or rather, be attractive to someone in the same light of love-beauty.
Self-Worth & Self-Respect
Mostly, finding true love is difficult because of the vulnerability that comes with it.
In the pursuit of finding true love, vulnerability tends to pose a threat because we get exposed and open ourselves up to the possibility of being hurt. The sense of fear or anxiety about the future of the relationship is inevitable.
Self-worth and Self-respect are different but directly proportional to each other. Self-worth is accepting yourself for all of your beautiful and not-so-cool quirks and qualities. Valuing oneself allows us to focus on valuing others as well as, becoming relatively impossible to be a threat to someone else self-esteem or confidence level.
Self-worth refers to an individual’s belief in their intrinsic worth and value as a person, regardless of their accomplishments or external factors. It involves recognizing one’s strengths and positive qualities, while also accepting and learning from one’s weaknesses and mistakes.
Self-respect, on the other hand, refers to the way an individual treats themselves and expects to be treated by others. It involves setting healthy boundaries, standing up for oneself, and refusing to tolerate disrespectful or harmful behaviour from others.
They contribute to healthier relationships with others, as individuals with a strong sense of self-worth and self-respect are less likely to tolerate mistreatment or engage in unhealthy behaviours in relationships.
Practices that can help enhance self-worth and self-respect include practising self-care, setting and enforcing healthy boundaries, engaging in positive self-talk, seeking support from others when needed, and practising self-compassion and forgiveness.
Erroneous/ Unrealistic Expectations
Relationship goals these days are misconstrued. True love is complicated by our self-interest. And disappointment will wrap its arms around you if you have unrealistic expectations.
A lot of people have a specific picture in mind, especially physically about what or how they want their loved ones to look like. They have a view of fairy tale features and just as fairy tales, they are unreal.
What we miss by looking for these features is true and intrinsic beauty that resonates into eternity. Save yourself from a fatal cardiac arrest just because you picked a monster dressed as a lamb.
