So, you want love?

thank you for such an inspiring post. i agree with you.

love is unconditional and i have to admit that i have never been able to open my heart all the way to any man. came close once, but was crushed and have never been able to love a man as much again. i know what love is because i love my kids. unconditional, non judgemental, would die to protect, would never walk away from, true love. no other emotion comes close. is it possible for some people to only feel this kind of love for one or two people in their life?

thanks again sqr, so wise you are.
i wish you all the best
take care
grace

Love is brave.....being brave enough to love yourself as Tigr put it and then being brave enough to reveal yourself to others so that they can love you too....i constantly try to be brave...in love and in life in general...nothing ventured..nothing gained...even the pain...

I do give love with all my might and it feels great to love somebody and care deeply about them and want them to be happy and doing well in life. That's about the other person. Giving love to them. Unconditionally. No matter what mood they are in, whether they are having a crappy day, whether they are sick or well, whether they are poor or not. It's not always a guarantee to love somebody unconditionally regardless of what happens that they'll return it the same. You can't force someone to love you if they don't. I gave that love, I still have it to give but it's not wanted nor is it returned anymore. This has left me with the firm belief that I will never have unconditional love given back to me. I'm simply unlovable in that kind of way no matter how much love I give with a free heart. The love I have is never ending regardless of circumstances. I do give love away with all my heart but it doesn't mean it's going to be received by who I give it to. And it isn't. It makes me very depressed when the love that I give with all my might is rejected. And it is. What am I now supposed to do with all this unconditional love I want to give with all my might that doesn't want to be received. You can't just shut off that kind of love like a tap. I still have it for him and I always will, unconditionally. But he now rejects it and I'm left with still loving him with everything I have and not knowing what to do with it. It's not the same kind of love that I could redirect and give to someone else, it's for him and him alone. Rejection and abandonment is a very horrible thing to deal with. If this is what unconditional love is always going to bring me, what is the point anymore. My love is for him. I can't make it stop even if I wanted to. It's killing me inside. I constantly wonder how he is physically, emotionally, and mentally. But not only is my love for him rejected, so is a friendship with him. I get absolutely nothing.

LOVE HURTS, IT HURTS BAD!!! I wish I could stop loving him and caring about his well-being but it doesn't work that way. It just doesn't. I'm totally heartbroken. Unrequited love. Unconditional. Unwanted. Rejected. Judged. Devastating. And yet I still love him with all my might and not knowing how he is doing is simply killing me. I'm not meant to have unconditional love. Unconditional is a very strong word and that's the kind of love I gave and still have to give him. Now I'm alone, so very much alone without his love. So you don't always get what you sow. I'm living proof of that. Things will never be different for me. I have no hope anymore. Absolutely no hope whatsoever. Without giving love, what's left in the world. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm wasted space and it's been proven once again to me. I don't know why I bother to even exist anymore. There's just no point. When the greatest gift you have to give is rejected...it's over. You're worthless, without any purpose to be here anymore. My life is mistake. I shouldn't even be here. I wish I wasn't. I'm nothing more than wasted space.

Love is in every corner of the universe. Always there for you to hold, to share, to give. Love is inside of all of us.

You can share love with your partner, your lover, your children, your friends, your pets, it can be in anything your touch or see in every thing of nature. It is for each of us to disguise love as we chose. We can give it or recieve it or simply chose to block it. But it is always there.

nightdream

So aptly put, Sqrl! Love is an activity; an action, a decision and a choice! It won't work if you don't work on it.

I feel I worked on it and it didn't work. I guess I don't know how. I blew it.

Love: I want it; I need it; and it's totally outside of my control. I can't make someone love me. I can't even make myself love some one else — or stop loving them!

How can something so central to my life be so beyond my control or understanding? Because I need love so much, I let myself be fooled by imitations. If I own more or have a more important job than most, or am more beautiful then people will admire me. That's sort of like love. If I have sex, I have the attention of another person, and I give and receive pleasure. That's sort of like love. If I indulge myself by buying luxuries, or by being meticulous about my diet and exercise, I feel as though I am treating myself well. That's sort of like loving myself. If I overeat or smoke, I am comforted. That's sort of like love. But none of it is love, and the need doesn't go away. Because I need love so much, I try to deny it. I separate myself from others, telling myself that I'm superior or inferior -- it doesn't matter which because it's just an excuse anyway. It's an excuse for avoiding the whole problem of love, as though love could just go away without taking some of my humanity with it. I tell myself that I don't need other people, but my heart cringes as I say it. What I need is to know without a doubt that I am treasured, valued, and desired. Nothing can substitute for that. Accepting the imitations of love, denying the need, thinking I can force love to exist — all of these interfere with getting the love that I need. Imitations allow me to tell myself that I'm OK, even though my heart knows differently. As long as I accept imitations, I'll never find the real thing.

No one is ever going to love me enough to give me complete confidence that I am loved. No one has that much love in them. So it truly begins and ends with me. I want to be free to love someone without it having to be perfect. And probably more importantly to receive love however they are able to give it. How they are able to give it is outside of my control.

Thank you to all of you participating in this conversation. It truly thrills me to be able to get our hearts out in the open together. It's good excercise if nothing else, yes?

I'm going to try to answer each of you individually because I want this to be as meaningful to each of you (and more so to myself) as possible. I think this is one of the better things we can explore together. It is my labor of love.

I'm going to seem rather persnickety about what may seem like semantic nuance, but only for the sake of narrowing our focus to what I am specifically referring to when I say, "love." So hang with me here, and don't anybody get your knickers in a twist over it, let's keep talking.

I may try to combine some responses depending on how time goes this morning. I counted them and I've got about 16 responses from 12 or 14 people. I better get busy!

beautiful. xo

TY Butterfly, and I only hope you know how much love you've shown me in your support of me. Such sweet pm's i've received from you when the time was right. Your intuition is sound, and your heart warm.

Not planning on leaving any time soon! I hope the same for you.

I hear you Dolfin, and I know you're still smarting from your recent break up. There are so many ways to feel hurt, and disappointments in matters of the heart are some of the sharpest pains we ever feel.

But, (you knew there was a "but" coming, huh?) for better understanding what I'm driving at here, let us consider that love is actually not an emotion, but an activity. I'm relegating "love" to verb status in this conversation. The attendant emotions are huge indeed, but are not by themselves "love."

As to control, there is some truth to what you say as to not beaing able to control it. But my experience is that what is uncontrollable about love is the wild fire nature of it's spreading when released.

My own ability to love is much enhanced by isolating it in my mind and heart as an activity which I choose, and one which has no expectation attached to it. Make no mistake, I enjoy being loved by another. We all do. But that longing for it, is not love itself. (remember, semantic nuance.) Lonliness, is an emotion, but love is something we "do." The control we have is in the choosing to do it or not, the choosing to cultivate it inside ourselves.

One of the things that challenges us too is maintaining the connection to our love in the midst of emotional upheaval and, in your case and mine, the brain chemistry fluctuations we experience as bipolar. It's tricky sometimes, but the more I focus on it the easier it gets to see it through the fog of my mental illness.

Dolfin, I'm really happy to see you on this thread. I won't get out the bucket here. lol.

Rem, you are so able to express your heart fearlessly, you bowl me over. I've really come to cherish our mutual admiration society. LOL.

Your heart isn't locked up, look at the expressions you make here. But the retreat from pain is very real. Confusion is difficult in the trasitory spaces like you are in currently. But your "love" is separate from all of that, and you are maintaining it well in my humble estimation.

I hope this thread continues to hold your interest. Your input is wonderful.

You said, "Thanks for lifting me up again." I wonder if you can possibly imagine how that expression lifts me up? That, my dear friend, is the nature of love. You need no education in love, perhaps your struggle is only in separating the emotions from the fact of love's ongoing expression which thrives inside you. ?

Yes, CCL, it's that simple. Good news: it's like riding a bicycle, it all comes back as soon as you get back on the bike.

In the throws of agony in relation to our illness, it is hardest to recall what that activity really is. When I was in my break down, I couldn't recall a single thing about love which I had thought was my entire reason to live. Eventually, my reconnection to it was to lovingly take myself in hand and capitulate fully to the process of getting help. It was my expression of love for myself that enabled me to allow everything in my world to lapse while I received that help.

That's a lot like your situation it seems to me. You have this steady erosion happening in so many areas, and the cycling won't let up, and relationships are failing, the pit is yawning before you. Sometimes, the most loving thing we can do for ourselves is to let it fall, drop back and punt. (sqrl is shocked to see a sports metaphor come out, he doesn't even like football) What i mean is, fully embracing a system of healing which may mean a steady diet of therapy, a meds regimen, and maybe even a hospital stay. What ever it takes. If you look inside yourself with all the love you can muster, you will see what that course is for yourself. That part of you that is separate from all the pollution of cycles etc, speaks the language of love and will respond when you offer it.

You are in as deep a struggle with bipolar as anyone can be in. Your love for yourself is one of the things that will save you. You feel like you forgot how to love yourself, but love is an elephant and never forgets. Strike one little spark, and you will be on fire.

I'm so glad you are here, and trying so hard. I admire that in you so very much.

Thank you Grace71. Ah yes, perhaps our children are the best teachers of love.

Is it possible to feel love for only one or two people, you ask. Well, in the sense of "feeling" I think so. As to the activity of loving however, I find that that it quite naturally expands its own circumference much like a fire does. Those qualities of love which you enumerate, the unconditional, non judgemental, die to protect, never walk away from....do you extend those to your self? For me, it has to start with me, or there's just nothing but cerebral conceptualizing happening.

Does that make sense to you? Let's hang with this some more, shall we? I'm really glad to have your participation here, thank you.

Ahhhhhh, (sigh)
The Language of Love. You're bathing me in it sqrl, like the sun on an early spring afternoon after a long, long winter.
Purrrrr. xo

Ah, Grace, so nice to see you weighing in on this thread. I think you are right that love is brave. I think it makes us brave too. And love is no banishment of pain, to be sure. But to wax cliche, without the knowledge of pain, we would have no knowledge of joy.

The bravery thing can turn around on you though. You are at one of life's cross roads. At such times, we face things that wobble our knees if they don't liquify our very bowels. When that is happening, we sure don't feel very brave, and tend to retreat from the challenge back to the familiar territory where we "feel" brave again. Bravery and pride masquerade as eachother often enough to not trust them blithely. You are on the trail of your truth. When all the shaking passes, and it will, you will be the better for it. It is love that brought you here, let it guide you home.

Angel, you are suffering about as bad as i have ever seen anyone suffer. I'm truly sorry for your pain.

It seems to me of little value to debate the semantic nuances of love as action vs love as emotion. I would rather do something to help you. But short of recommending that you allow yourself a complete surrender to your healing process, I don't know what to say.

Your greatest possible act of love for yourself might be to allow yourself some hospital time. Not because you are suicidal, I hear you saying that you are not, but because it would enable your dr to really focus on you for long enough to make a difference. You're not really getting anywhere as things are, are you?

Your self talk matters. Yours is completely devoted to describing your pain and suffering which seems to me to only reinforce it. I'm not saying i'm tired of it, or hurt by it, but i'm thinking you must be. If you can't find the key to stop that, then consider doing something different in your healing process. Surrender to it Angel. You sound to me like you're losing ground instead of gaining when you are so near the edge.

Beautifully put Nightdream. Thank you.

Gold star and big kiss foy you september, mmmmmmmwwwwwwwwwaaa.

Emptyglass, thanks for getting in on this. Indeed, you describe what looks like an endless loop of tail chasing which all of us must know. What about some new terms to describe it to yourself? Can you differentiate between the act of loving found inside your self and the longing for reciprocity? I don't find them to be the same. It's a little like adjusting the contrast on your tv, trying different things to see more clearly.

Wow, what a great thread. My 2 cents worth. Love, I want to strive toward regarding each person I come in contact with, with love. To find something lovable in each of us and allow myself to have the feeling and express it. There are many times when there is a lot of lovin happening here. I am greatful for that.

another thread offerring....let's all strive to offer honest love and affection...and never resort to using other individuals and there particular problems or weaknesses to hurt them...you know...love = basic respect....grace

Wisewoman, you live up to your name once more, beautifully put. I'm grateful too.

Well said, Grace. I couldn't agree more.

Unconditional love is given even without the hope to be accepted.