How Do I Define Love? 

What is love? The Bible says love is so many things –patient, kind, selfless. But is it really? Is love a verb or a noun? How do we form these ideas and what do we do with them once we find out? There is such an enthrallment with love, while in it we seldom consider what to do with our hearts once love has run its course. Does it always run its’ course? How does one describe the outward action of loving? Do we express how someone can make us feel like air while also causing us to hyperventilate? Is it beneficial to describe ones’ capacity for bullshit while loving? Is it adoration? Is it selflessness? Does love hurt?

1 Corinthians 13 was recited before my ex-husband and I exchanged vows. We were told what love was and what it was not. We vowed to be all of the things. Patient. Kind. Not envious, not boastful, not easily angered, not proud, not self-seeking. We vowed not keep a record of each other’s wrongs. “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love. Never. Fails.” But instead of using the verses as a roadmap for the type of love to strive toward, we took that shit as a guide. A guide for impatient, unkind, boastful, quick to anger and slow to forgive…roommates.

My ex-husband and I had all the bells and whistles of a relationship. We just weren’t music. He told me that he loved me first in college. Ready to love me regardless, he said I didn’t have to say it back. But when you’re 20 and desire nothing more than to be loved and the guy you’re dating says he loves you…you surrender and you say it back damnit. I grew to love him. I loved the way that his mouth turned sideways when he laughed real loud or smiled real big. I loved the way he brought me coffee in bed every morning –exactly the way I liked it. I loved his family. I loved how he sat between my legs when playing video games and said I was good luck. I loved the passion he had for film and fitness. I loved how we looked with one another. But when we were alone, and on opposite ends of the couch that may as well had been different continents, I knew I did not love him. At least not in the way a wife should love a husband. I loved the idea of him, but I did not love him. I loved that sometimes he looked at me, “like I hung the moon.” I loved the title of being someone’s wife. But I did not love him.

I did not love him because at 22 I had no idea what love was. I have learned at almost 30, that I get to choose what love looks like for me. I get to define love and revisit and redefine it for myself as I learn and grow and experience life. Love is simply the adoration and affection we feel for ourselves. How we regard (or love) other people is a reflection of that.

To me, love is filling myself up with all the good things I need emotionally. Love is how I treat myself, how I speak to myself. Love is an action. Love is not something that we can lose because it’s in us.

Once we have developed a practice of self-love and conquered the fear of loving another individual, then what? Well, for me? I run, skip and dive straight into that shit. Why? Because as Don Miguel Ruiz said in The Four Agreements, “If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.” I give love to other people without the expectation of receiving it in return.