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23: All things love during and after divorce

Love - the greatest topic on earth other than perhaps how to make a lot of money.

How to get love, feel love, stay in love, heal from lost love, find love again, love yourself, love others, receive love. 

And then there’s the different kinds of love like parental love, partner love, love of mankind, love for friends, family. Love of life and self-love.

So much love available to us and so much love to give. So where to start?

It’s probably pretty obvious why I chose this topic for today as it’s Valentine’s Day next week and for many many people this is a very triggering and difficult day. Possibly the loneliest day for most of the population. It’s the day when if you are single you might feel like the only single person on earth and that no one else is without a dinner date, a dozen flowers and a joyful plan for how to celebrate. But if you think about it for more than a few minutes you will also quickly realize that of course you aren’t the only one living in the misery of being single this Valentine’s day.

There is no question that it’s a tough day for the women I work with as they are all going through separation and divorce. This day emphasizes the reality that they have lost their person, their valentine and the one who is meant to make this day special for them. And I say meant to because I see a lot of this heart ache as being symbolic of the loss they are going through every day since their relationship or marriage has ended and not really about Valentine’s day - because let’s be honest for a moment - was Valentine’s day really such a special day when you were married or were you married to one of those guys who fought it? I was.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

  • Love means a lot of different things to different people. Because what we find special about someone varies a great deal as does what we like to do, experience etc.

  •  Love is liking the person for who they are without wanting them or wishing for them to be different. It’s liking them even when we don’t like what they are doing.

  •  Love is respecting who they are, what they believe in and knowing they won’t really change.

  •  Loving someone is not about you. It’s not about what they do for you or how they make you feel. It’s about how they feel. Period. And how it makes you feel when they are happy and feel loved and safe. That is love. It’s about loving how they butter their toast because it’s different. It’s loving how they love their family because it’s their way. It’s loving how they love you because it’s how they do that. We get tripped up when we need our partners to love us a certain way in order to feel loved. Yes, we have different love languages and yes, our partners will give us that at times because they love us, but we have to see how they love us their way as well. When we expect them to show love by doing for us, by being as we want or demand then it isn’t love anymore, it’s ego and it quickly becomes about winning.

  •  Love is seeing them. Seeing their fear when they get triggered and turn it on you. It’s knowing what is happening because you have made it your business to know their inner workings. 

  •  Love is allowing them to feel different than you, wanting different things than you and being different than you. It’s not about being one. It’s about being two who can come together as one. Stepping into the other when needed to strengthen that one and knowing that they will do the same.

For me this is love. 👆🏻

SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF:

  • What is your definition of love?
  • How do you want to show it?
  • How do you want to receive it?
  • What will feel like love for you?

Are you beginning to see that if you don’t know the answers to these questions then you are kind of searching in the dark? 

Maybe that’s why you have had such trouble finding someone or perhaps because you don’t know it feel scary to even try.

So how do you define love for yourself? You can use mine of course if it resonates with you, but that does feel a bit on the easy - you didn’t really do a lot of soul searching side of things.

 

LINKS MENTIONED (AND OTHERS NOT MENTIONED: