LOVE
Love does not result from just fun times together. In many relationships we spend too much time on activities which sometimes can be an excuse to avoid a deeper caring intimacy, which once experienced is much more meaningful.
God tells us to love others as ourselves. Self love is not for our ego but ability to more fully share a growing love with others. Each person is very special and unique, yet society and often the church discourages inner growth of our unique selves, melting us into the crowd. Result can be boring unfulfilled life. You can develop your own unique loving self - An exciting rewarding experience!
Development of Love
You can not appreciate what you do not recognize. Be receptive to love. With open arms allow love to flow in and out. With closed arms you hold only yourself.
Perfect love gives and does not expect. When love expects pain results since our human response to love will be imperfect.
Love is patient. Each person has a different capacity to love based on their experiences. Love risks rejection - but love is worth giving even if it is rejected.
Love is spontaneous, shows emotion, can cry, laugh, hug; love is a great human emotion.
As a loving person you do not need to be perfect -- just human. Recognize the needs of others and admit your own need to love and be loved. Accept others as real people even if you do not like some of their actions.
Love is not jealous but desires the best for the other even if that hurts us.
To Love is to be real, to be human and to be fully alive !!
Levels of Love
Casual Love for all
Love every inner person. Separate bad actions from love for persons soul/ self. Can hate murder yet love the murderer. Often bad acts are the result of a unfulfilled inner need.
Singleness
Singleness often results in maximum growth in love since it results in flexibility to develop, mature and share with a number of people. Yet must be willing to narrow in on a few most meaningful relationships at any given time. The quality of friendships is more important than quantity. The goal is lifetime deep, meaningful intimate friendships yet without jealousy or the need to prove our love by becoming married unless really wish to marry.
Marriage
An ideal marriage can be the most wonderful relationship yet seldom is as fulfilling as it is a fantasy. Too often couples marry and instead of becoming one, each become only 1/2 a whole person. Love alone is not reason to marry. In marriage, each should maintain own human identity combined with unity of purpose for richness of life together - yet still sharing casual love (which may or may not mean intimacy depending on couples agreements).
Other Brief Love Thoughts
Love and intimacy is a deep human hunger and necessity God gave us for our best gift to one another. Without love we are often very lonely in life.
Maximum love is a learned skill, a growing process in a relationship of Trust, honesty, respect and kindness.
Trust is knowing another will not hurt or reject me if I reveal my deepest weakness but will try and be actively involved in my growth.
Love invites, encourages, smiles, makes each other feel good about ourselves. We can go out in the world and do what we wish and have the courage to be all we can be. Results in accepting ourselves when we fail, knowing we are still loved which brings us the self confidence to try again and not be overcome with fear of failure.
Emotional responsibility is the loving response to the vulnerability in openness to each other. The more one is able to say "Hey, this is me, I don't have to hide or pretend", the more there is true love.
Sometimes we reject a loving friends advice because we don't want to hear the truth. With love we can still be friends and discuss the concerns of life and share each others visions from their perspective and respect their views. We must listen with an open mind. We must desire honesty in others and stop the games we often play.
Love is sharing when passing through pain to deeper understanding. When we get to a hard place in life, full of pain, we want to go around it not through it. We want to ignore the problem. The energy we want to spend on escaping can instead be used on revelation -going through the problem finding solutions and becoming stronger because of the tough times of life.
A loving person is sensitive and looks for wounded hearts around us. A hurting person often needs a loving arm around the shoulder, or a sincere hug and "How are you really? Want to talk ? A hand held out, an invitation to join in, into love, into a loving group, into sharing, into involvement and growth.
In a loving friendship giving sexual pleasure can be a wonderful expression of love. In true love sex is not selfish, which is lust. Loving sex is when both are emotionally ready to share this deepest and most fulfilling level of intimacy and is not just physical passion.
In love we must each still maintain our own unique individuality. Loves does not control or dominate a person but seeks what's best for the other.
There is no such thing as perfect love because we are all imperfect people. We will not be perfect, we can only work on growth.
Only those who feel good about themselves can experience the best of love. We should help each other build confidence in our self image. When we are down on ourselves what we see in the mirror becomes distorted - we are unable to see the beauty in ourselves that is truly there.
The best gift we can share with another is the experience of love, in a friendship, casual relationship or in marriage. When we give love we usually receive even more love . Love doesn't need to be saved, it is like knowledge, the more we share the more we get by interacting with others. When we give love away, we don't have less but more.
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