How Do You Show Your Love?

How do you show your love? Often where relationships hit their bumpiest patches is at that explosive point of misunderstanding between the way one person understands the expression of love, in contrast to their lover’s way of showing it. 

I express very much in practical action, I am a very pragmatic person. I provide. I hit all the executive tasks - who needs to be where when, what food has to be in the fridge for each of my children, how can I create systems that create ease in your daily life? I will make sure you have food, shelter, connect with your friends, you have function, warmth and safety. In all of those things I channel my understanding of love (although some days I want to throw the food right in your face!). My love is task oriented. And let’s be frank, a bit fucking boring. 

My partner’s love is affection. Loves a good cuddle. Generally when I’m in full swing toward an action and he steps right in my way, arms wide, like a serial hugging blockade that’s trying to crash tackle me in the opposite direction of my momentum. He’s doing an awesome thing, I’m doing an awesome thing but the two love things are contrasting to each other’s needs and the more we go deeply in our direction of love, the more the other fills the void with their way. Or worse still, everyone stops doing anything lovely at all!

Love in itself is utterly pure. Nothing but treasure. But like all of our human experiences it is wrapped up in our…well…human experiences. It becomes entangled, like a frog in a hair ball, with all of our hang ups, all of our hurts, all of our desires and all of our fears. Although not a single one of those things is love. So what are we to do?

1 - Become curious about your entanglements with love. What do they look like? Feel, smell or taste like? 

2 - Find your sweet spot. See where you oscillate toward tension in your relationships and where you oscillate toward laziness. What can you adjust to bring you back to a place at centre where you and your loved ones can meet?

3 - Do the work on you. Have a good daily routine for your physical body and your mind. Do the things that make you feel purposeful, do the things that make you feel safe, do the things that make your heart sing. Make yourself happy so that LOVE - the pure quality that is incorruptible from any human story - can begin to pour much more easily out from the cracks in your old harmful conditioning.