This blog entry is a reflection on Paul Hudson‘s post on Elite Daily. His article really makes me reflect on 1) what love is about, 2) if I am really ready to love and 3) if I really understand what “ready to love” even mean. My takeaways are as followed:
1. Know thyself first! And know your lover. Why? Because Love is a choice. REALLY!
- The majority of people you’ll meet won’t be compatible.
- Out of those compatible few, the majority won’t be available at the time of interest.
- Out of those who are available and compatible, only a select few will have real potential.
“You love because you choose to love!” In order to make that sound choice, you’ll need to know who you really are in terms of what you value most and least, what your deal-breakers and deal-makers are, what your needs and wants are and your communication style. “The person you can be with forever is the person you decide you love. Deciding to love someone every day of your life can be difficult, as our lover’s flaws become more and more evident over time. So, the only thing we can do is make sure to understand what we can and can’t live with. 
What’s your minimum viable life partner?
What traits are necessary? What’s the order of importance?
It may seem like we’re objectifying a person. But I think each and all of us do have preferences, our own value systems, likes and dislikes that sometime with some people, it just won’t click. So to make ourselves happy, we can choose what clicks best.
2. “Love is something you create.”
You create love. You MAKE love. Love requires attention and needs work. Again, you love because you choose to love.
What matters is that you stop nitpicking on all those little flaws that really aren’t important to you and instead put more focus on loving all the great things about your partner.
Love needs attention. Love does require work! In a relationship, love requires work from both partners who choose to love. It’s a learning process. It is not only an ends in itself but also is a means.
I believe the same goes for self-love; if you love yourself, it’d be best to stop nitpicking on all those little flaws that really aren’t important to you and instead put more focus on loving all the great things about yourself.
3. Love is NOT an answer to our problems – if it does, it won’t last.
“When love exists simply because it happened, the love is more likely to last.”
4. Reality Check: the perfect individual doesn’t, never did and never will exist.
“We are all intrinsically flawed; it’s what makes us human. We can’t aim for perfect, but we can aim perfect for us. The more you get to know a person, the more you come to realize how flawed he or she really is.”
5. So…LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY!
It may sound a bit scary. But the point he makes is that “love should not come attached to any conditions. It should be an entity, a life of its own. It has to be something that survives no matter how much things change outside the relationship or how much more difficult life gets.”
“As the relationship matures and as all mental and emotional intensity begins to numb. The excitement will wither, just like any other once novel experience. When it does, staying in love requires consciously choosing to love – deciding every single day that you do love this person and he or she does mean the world to you.”
Now that we’ve reached the end of this post, I’ll leave it with a hope that all of us can learn to love ourselves better and also that we can learn how to love better with our significant others.
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