Love is too big a topic to cover, even if one wrote for years on end, because it is endless, timeless, vast, unmeasurable.
It is impossible to fully understand, as a human.
Yet it is also so mundane, simple, and easy. Effortless, natural. It makes sense.
Love is such a strange experience, perhaps due to this dichotomy. I used to think love was overrated. The version of love I grew up understanding was that love as controlling and superficial, yet something we should all strive for. I used to think being loving meant abandoning oneself. I have thought I have been in love before, and I have been in loving relationships and not “in love”. Perhaps though it’s all a spectrum, and my version of “in love” was merely infatuation and trauma bonding?
The times I have felt the most loved have come from my close friends, my brother, and my grandparents. These loves have come with no strings attached, nothing expected or needed in return.
I have always been beyond lucky with the friends I have in my life. They are the people I can be most myself with. They are beyond thoughtful, caring, loving, and kind. They are my role models, and the ones who taught me what it feels like to be cared for. They taught me to have strong relationships with other women, and people in general. They empower me, encourage me, support me, and lift me up no matter what phase of life I am in. They have seen or held me at my grumpiest, sloppiest, weirdest, cringiest times. So many times I have felt broken, and still they relentlessly love me. I have friends that I rarely get to see or talk to but when we do, it feels like a shot of espresso and sunshine for my soul. They are real with me even when it’s not easy for me to hear. They let me be honest even when it’s not comfortable. They have helped me love myself. I don’t want another romantic relationship until I feel at least most aspects of these friendships with that person. Of course friends are friends for a reason and it will be different but I want to be able to be myself, wholly, and show up and cheer for one another like my friends do for me.
My brother and my grandfather have shown up and supported me throughout my whole life, and in moments when I needed a family member, or some masculine energy to show up for me. I always like to think “I don’t need a man!” and “I can do everything on my own!” and while those statements may be true, my life would be a whole lot harder and look a whole lot different if it wasn’t for the support of these two. My grandpa and brother have helped and taken care of things in so many ways throughout my life and I am forever grateful. I believe women and men and people in general can both do whatever they want, and everyone of course has both masculine and feminine energy, and energy that is neither or both. I don’t want to be in a relationship again until the way I care for the other person and the things I excel at fit like the other half of a puzzle when it comes to skills and roles in the home and in life.
Each person I have been with in a romantic way has aspects of what I want in a partner, and aspects I do not want. The most important thing I am learning from this is how I want to feel when I am with them. If I look back on my life and think of partners A,B,C, and D, I want to have aspects of each of these relationships, all rolled into one. I want to be as attracted physically as I was to A, feel as cared for as I did with B, feel as comfortable being myself and being “weird and out there” as I did with C, and as held and honored as I did with D.
“Main boxes” which I may have ignored or glossed over in the past must be checked too…alignment of values, enjoying time together, (stability – emotionally, financially, mentally), etc. I used to think I could look past these things, which I can for a time, or with friends, but after having a child and experiencing several relationships, I know that is not the case for a long term intimate and romantic partnership.
I strive to be self-aware enough to truly notice how I show up in relationships. How do I want to present/am I altering who I really am to show up for them in a certain way or try to control their perception of me? What are my thoughts towards myself and towards the other person? Am I rearranging my schedule excessively or compulsively doing things to try to please them (whether or not they are asking me to)? Am I experiencing jealousy or a fear of abandonment really early on in the relationship and then showing up differently because of it? It’s been both frustrating and eye opening to notice these things in myself, and then oddly difficult to not be like that.
We are familiar with the love languages, with love as action, and love as sacrifice. However, I feel I am learning that the highest expression of love is letting someone be fully themselves, while also being fully yourself. It may seem like the loving thing is self-abandoning or toning down your true essence or desires in order to make the other person more comfortable but, especially if it’s a relationship that the goal is longevity or depth, if you are not honest you are either prolonging a pure connection or the inevitable fact that you are no longer a vibrational match.
All this being said, that doesn’t mean that you need to brag about how many tequila shots you took to your 94 year old grandma, unless she’s cool like that. Of course if she were to ask you, you could be honest, but it’s okay for different relationships to bring out different sides of you. We most likely all have friends or family who bring out different sides of us, and that is okay and honest too. I have come to believe that it is important just to make sure you are not changing who you are or being someone you are not. In this phase of my life, a goal of mine is to show up as one and the same person, wherever I go, and with it the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Lets touch quickly on two things that may or may not be “common knowledge” to you or things you already are deeply aware of. I feel they should be mentioned in this space and light in case you have not thought about them in this way.
1 . Many of us have already done work on saying “no” when we mean it, and listening truly to our guts and hearts before saying “yes”. We know that saying “no” when things aren’t in alignment is the most loving option for ourselves, and can be empowering. Let’s remember that this is also the kindest thing for the person we are giving the “no” to. If something is not in alignment for us, it isn’t in alignment for them either. Many of our loved ones will understand and would want you to say no if something wasn’t a good fit for you. The others, well maybe their opinion shouldn’t matter to you quite so much, even when that’s a hard pill to swallow. Think of how you would feel if someone said “yes” when everything in them was saying no. If you find yourself trying to justify a yes when you mean no and are using the other person’s feelings as an excuse, consider how it could potentially trigger feelings for them of guilt, anger, embarrassment, and maybe not wanting to ask for help again. We are all in the end responsible for our own feelings. So please, do the work, for yourself and for others on saying no. If someone gives you a hard time or guilt trips you about it, that’s even more of a reason to start putting those boundaries in place.
2 . “Toxic positivity” has seemed to be a buzzer word recently as well, and it is a theme I have had to overcome many times and still work to overcome. It is important in this space too, because it is a form of honesty, kindness, and love towards ourself and others. If someone shares something hard with you, perhaps refrain from offering your opinion at all unless it is asked for. Certainly though, only highlighting what could be worse, or the silver lining, or even offering something that that person could do differently, could risk making the other party feel unsupported, invalidating their feelings and experience. In the same way, ignoring abuse or poor behavior or situation could lead to perpetuation of the problem.
Do you believe in soulmates? Twin flames? What do you initially think of when you hear “soulmate” and what does it mean to you?
I believe we have many soulmates. They may come in the form of friend, lover, family, or pets. Perhaps even our “enemies” are soulmates because especially if we are present, they teach us to see ourselves within them, to highlight our pain points, to teach us. Perhaps some people really do have and want and need one life partner, but I think for many of us, that is not the case. I believe that when I find my life partner, it will be someone who feels expansive, free, to be around. Someone who if I experiment in my life, flirting with new and different versions of myself, will love each one of those versions and will be able to fully express themself as well. We only have one life, so I truly don’t want to spend it with anyone who makes me inhibited in any way, because that is pain and disconnection from our highest self. We are meant to grow and change and evolve, and therefore our life partners will with us, or without us, and both are okay.
Eclectic Purpose was founded on the basis that we all are multidimensional beings with multiple aspects to our purpose and path. Instead of resisting the change and growth, we must learn to accept it. It’s going to happen anyway, with or without our consent. If we choose to surrender, to work with the evolution instead of against it, we can expand beyond our wildest dreams, creating a beautiful life. Our mindsets are meant to be ever changing and growing, and when we learn better we must do better.
I recently was going through the “36 questions that lead to love”, and finding several of them rather difficult to answer. Or perhaps “too easy” to answer? Nothing seems to be black and white. Lots of gray. Lots of “it depends”. One of the questions prompts you to describe a perfect day, and although I am so far from where I want to be in the future (and I don’t believe perfect days can be “planned” really, they just happen), many of the parts of a “perfect day” are things I am doing right now. Parts of my daily rituals and routines that make me feel like my best, happiest, healthiest, most expansive self. Some of the things I would add to a “perfect day” list are things I am already doing everyday. The goal is to focus on the energetics, the desired way you want to feel, right? If we are journaling with the motivation of “we should” or to check “journal” off our list (which I admit sometimes I do), then we are missing the point. If you want to journal, great! But why? What does it do for you? How does it make you feel? Of course this can go for everything in life. As someone who is obsessed with lists and checking things off, this is something I have to remind myself of a lot. A topic for another time, but my point of bringing this up now is that we can bring the energy of how we want to feel, on a “perfect” day or in an ideal relationship, right now to where we are, by showing up the way we would, acting as our highest self would, and then trusting that the more we show up in this way, the more the universe responds accordingly and matches our vibrational frequency. It isn’t *always/usually* instantly, especially depending on the situations and relationships we are in. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better, clearing out the old, even if it is painful or challenging, to make space for the new, but the more we can incorporate this, the better we will feel.
Each of our thoughts and actions stems from either love, or fear. At the core, our motivations, decisions, and circumstances are a result of one of these two. Without going deeply into this here, just consider for a moment how we might reframe each moment to see through the lens of love, as opposed to the lens of fear. A challenging practice at times, especially when the secondary emotion of anger is involved, this can be both very difficult and an eye-opening way to change your life. Sometimes it is hard to tell, which is the root feeling, but with practice, time, patience, and awareness we can begin to reframe our entire life in this way.
Even as I write this, my inner critic asks “Who the do you think you are, writing about love? You are selfish. You make mistakes and fear-based decisions all the time. Look at your past relationships. Look at your inner thoughts. You know nothing.” I don’t know anything about love, but I also know everything. We all do. Love is where we came from, and will return to, and the essence of our very being, regardless of how connected and in touch with it we are. Darkness and pain and fear are real, just as real as love. As humans we get to make endless choices every day, to align or stray from love. I could never summarize all that love is, even just to me personally, but what I have written here are recent musings, that could each be their own chapter…or whole book, even. My hope is perhaps some of it resonated with you, or reminded you of something you had forgotten.
If you are reading this, I love you. I love you. I love you.