Simply Solo Spotlight: Some Call It Love
Today’s Simply Solo Spotlight is written by Dettie, who recently ended a four-year relationship and realized she had more time on her hands than she knew what do with. So, she started her blog where she talks about love, life, relationships and how to survive as a single woman in a coupled up world. After reading and commenting on today’s guest post, be sure to check out Dettie’s blog!
Some Call It Love
It is amazing to me how life’s experiences bring us together. We have different backgrounds, from different cultures to different countries, but when it comes to affairs of the heart, we are pretty much all the same. Our definition of fun varies. We love to laugh. What makes us laugh might differ from person to person, but who doesn’t enjoy a good laugh, particularly around good company?
Picture of Lloydette
But what makes us even more alike is love. Though our individual experiences might differ, most of us would have, at one point in our lives or another, loved and/or lost. I know I have.
From when we were as young as babes, we wanted to feel loved. We cried. We cried because we found out pretty early that if we cried somebody would come running to helpless-little-us, take us into their arms and fuss over us and rock us until we were calm … or at least until we felt that we should save some of our tears for the next 10 minutes.
The point is, that felt like love, and to our [then] feeble like minds, that was love.
But, we are now bigger. We now are the “shapers” (for the most part) of our destiny. How much different do we deem love to be now?
We still want to be held in someone’s arms. We still want to be fussed over. We still want to be rocked. And when we get that … Yeah … We still call it love.
I will not fool myself, or anyone reading this, into believing that that is all that love is about. Hell no! If that was the case, every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane would be in love. Love requires work. Love requires sacrifice. Love demands compromise. Loves requires admitting you were wrong. Love requires being vulnerable. Love requires trust … and for a stubborn horse as myself, love requires being flexible. Sometimes.
Let me tell you a little secret about love: nobody knows the love you feel but you. It might sound like a simple enough fact to accept, but we ever so often forget. I remember having an argument with my boyfriend about who loved who more. He believed he loved me more than I loved him. What was his basis for believing such? How HE felt. I laughed; I had to. How could he know how I was feeling? He could never, and I guess since I was the one to end that relationship, he is now certain that he was right. Maybe. I don’t know. We really can’t measure another person’s love.
How do you know if it is love?
After four years of being in that situation, I can tell you what I have learned. Love is not obligation. Love is not a burden. Love is not a bargaining chip. Love does not come with a flip switch. Love demands without dictating. Love needs to be showed. Love commands respect. Love helps to make you a better person. (Your) love should not be used against you. Love is a beautiful thing.
I refuse to subscribe to the ideology that love causes people to overlook faults. Listen, if you can’t see your other half’s faults, then that is not love. That’s something else, which I shall not discuss here, but will only say this: Love does not make someone perfect … It makes the relationship “perfect.”
I have loved. I know what love feels like and I also know what love doesn’t feel like.
So, I dare to be different, if only for a few minutes. I want all of that, the fussing and the holding and the cuddling, but I promise you, I WILL NOT call it love.
What you think love is? What is love supposed to feel like?
Copyright 2012. Simply Solo blog by Catherine Gryp. All Rights Reserved.
Simply Solo: Single girl starting over - follow the journey 
I don’t think you can really define what love is supposed to feel like, I could go on and on but it would never capture the real meaning or the real feeling.
But if I give it a go, I think it’s feeling a sort of special connection with a person, and you are absolutely right when you said it’s not an obligation or a burden. Everything you do for the person you love is simply because you want to, and just knowing that person is there brings you comfort, relief and happiness.
You are absolutely right when you said love should never be seen as a burden or obligation. If you truly love someone everything you do for them and with them is simply because you want to. In relationships it’s difficult to not have expectations, but real love works because both people in the relationship work on the relationship without actually seeing it as ‘working’. And everything that they do is appreciated and seen as a ‘bonus’ rather than an expectation.
It’s interesting to read this as a person who used to love being single and wanted to stay single forever until I fell in love (in a romantic sense) for the first time last year 😛
It is encouraging to known that even persons, like myself, that have become contented to being single, still have some hope of falling in love. 🙂 Thank you.
I love when you said work without seeing it as working… Because when it starts to feel like a chore then “Houston we have a problem”. In a relationship the things you do for love comes naturally, not forced.
So.. i have a new boyfriend.. Yay 🙂 We have been friends for a couple years, dating the better part of 7 months now, and “official” for a bit over a month. We have said i love a few times, but it always more like a friendly caring thing, than a “romantic” love. LIke the way i say i love you to my friends… or my mother…
THis post is kinda perfect because just last night we had a long conversation on the topic of whether we indeed did love each other, and i have been thinking about it all morning and if i agree with him or not. The conversation had started because i had had an awful day at work, cried lots, and really did need to be cuddled and fussed over.
He said, Love is a DECISION. Love is making the choice to open up, it is making the choice to show your vulnerabilities and insecurities, It is making the choice to make sacrifices and compromises for somebody else, and in return you get the rewards of knowing that you have a “someone” there to comfort you in return. He said that he was “choosing” to love to me.
It was sweet, very sweet actually, but it all sounded so scientific…. And he has never been in love before… so what does he know!?
I think that there has to be some aspect as to FEELIng love.. I would be ecstatic to jump on board to his whole theory, but I cant. Because I don’t really get the option to choose my feelings (cause If i did, Trust me i would use that power for many aspects of my life!!!!) And as much as i deeply care about him, i just dont think i feel it yet.
Did i mention my new boyfriend is awesome? He is. 🙂 But his awesomeness and patience for me kinda just illuminates how fucked up past relationships have made me. Qualities i have never possessed in passed relationships are suddenly a part of my personality… I’m insecure, i don’t trust, I’m always wondering when he will lose interest, i hide my feelings, and I’m so scared that i will be hurt again that have put up quite the emotional wall. And no DECISION will break the wall down. That will only happen with time.
And while i may not love him yet, i am making the decision to let him love me.. I am making the decision to work on my new found flaws. I am making the decision to not only like the relationship, but to like who I AM in the relationship. I am making the decision to care about him, to enjoy his company, to laugh with him, and to kiss him lots every chance i get. And i think with time, that making these decisions will lead to LOVE. ❤
THank you for this post by the way, It was a good one!!
Love is a decision? I’ve never heard that one before. That sounds so calculated and scientific as you said. I really can’t wrap my head around choosing to love someone though…. and I’m a very scientifc person. 🙂
I am happy, however, that despite your insecurity etc you have decided give love a chance. But remember that love cannot be forced. Love grows… So if your boyfriend is as awesome as you said he is, the insecurity and trust issues will go, and LOVE will come.
It is a fact though that our past really does ‘fuck us up’ for the future, it does influence us more than we think. But it is how we let our past shape us that determines the kind of relationships we have in the future.
So continue having fun. Continue kissing (for the both of us 🙂 )… and hopefully his love to you will become effortless and involuntary.
For me love ha a lot to do with being myself … if I love someone and they love me back there is n need for games or pretend. Love has to do with imperfection, only our flaws make us unique, our ticks make us who we are … and Love means loving someone in spite of things I don’t like about them. If i love someone I put up with those annoyances because they are more important to me than their habits etc. And I really do believe you need that special attraction first but then you need to make a commitment, your head and heart need a say in real love.
If love is true, then you should be allowed to be yourself. If you have to be someone or something else to be and stay in a relationship, then something is DEFINITELY wrong with that. Flaws are really what makes us unique and each relationship dynamic… no two persons are the same just as no two relationships are the same.
I tell my friends all the time that if I can find somebody whose idiosyncrasies I can accept, then I have found a friend/partner for life.
As for the communication between head and heart, you are spot on. They both have a say in real love… none really more important than the other. It is usually the case too that they don’t usually say the same thing… for me at least anyway.
I know my head and heart argue all the time and at times my gut chimes in … but I don’t want to compromise in love, I’d rather be on my own but true to what I believe than with someone just to have someone share the bed with
This is a really good post and I am not just saying that because you are my friend :).
Sometimes I hate talking about love. People will always define love differently – they always have and always will. I’d define love, or at least one aspect of it, the way Carrie did in Sex and the City. She wanted “…real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love…”. At least, that’s the type I crave and the type I’m willing to give to the right person. I think somehow that encapsulates so much. It’s about being romantic but also about being there to make me laugh, to laugh at me, to dry my tears, to stand up for me, to listen to me, to help me sort things out when they go wrong, to be all caught up with each other… That and so much more… Ridiculous, incovenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love… That’s love for me.
🙂
‘Ridiculous, inconvenient’…. Deep inside we all want that kinda love… but it is the expression of that love that will differ. The idea of not being able to live without another person bothers me a little though. I hate thinking that I can’t live without somebody.
“Love is not a bargaining chip. Love does not come with a flip switch. Love demands without dictating. Love needs to be showed. Love commands respect. Love helps to make you a better person. (Your) love should not be used against you. Love is a beautiful thing.”
Absolutely true, that love is not a bargaining chip. It must have taken you awhile to figure this one out with bf.
What does love feel like? Exciting, yet calming and nurturing. Sharing lots of thoughts verbally and in silence together. Helping each other grow in their individual strengths.
Yes. It did take me ‘awhile’ to figure it out, BUT the important thing is that I did. It should NEVER be that there comes a time when it is said “If you love me you would…” If that happens, something has gone awry. Some evaluation would need to be done, because that’s not good. AT ALL.
I completely agree with the sharing (both verbally and in silence) … If I am able to connect with someone even in silence, that’s something strong right there.
Do you believe that love feels the same way to everybody?