We grow up believing a lot of things about the concept of love and
what it means to us, though this has generally come to us from other
people’s points of view and primarily from movies and books and
television. Especially love stories and fairytales!! The happily ever
after kind…

I know that as a young child and teen I LOVED the love stories – the
movies where girl met guy or guy met girl and through whatever
circumstances they fell in love and lived happily ever after…

Well I did try that – on many many occasions – in fact I became known
as the girl who dated guys for a few months then moved on… Haha I
actually remember hearing from one of my friends that my most previous
boyfriend had warned my latest boyfriend of this… The funny thing is
that we are still friends. So funny.

I was on a perpetual search for this LOVE. And you know what. It went
into my 20’s and then I met my husband and then after 16 years we
finished up and then I continued on this search for LOVE…

So there are two conversations here.

1) So what is love? Is it real? Or is it something that we define ourselves?
For me love is something that is not generic. The truth is that we say
I LOVE YOU to many people in our lives – to our lover or partner, to
our wife or husband, to our children, our parents, our pets, our
grandparents, our friends, our family, and ourselves.

But is that definition of LOVE the same across the board? No. The way
you love your parent is different to the way you love your kids, to
the love you have for your partner.

Can you see how things can get mixed up and confused?
Because every person you tell I LOVE YOU to also has THEIR own point
of view about what that means TO THEM.

So if what YOU MEAN by I LOVE YOU is different to what they RECEIVE
from you saying I LOVE YOU…things can get kind of mixed up and
misunderstood.

What I find is a kinder and also in general a much more realistic
thing to say is I AM GRATEFUL FOR YOU.

Because at the end of the day the deeper version of loving someone is
being grateful for them. If I look at the people I am saying I LOVE
YOU to, beneath that or at the core of that ‘feeling’ is this sense of
‘wow I am so very grateful for you’…

Love can easily turn to hate. How many people ‘fall’ in love, get
married and have kids (or not) and then things change and it turns to
hate.

Gosh I am working with a client at the moment who was obviously in
LOVE with his wife when they met and had kids and now the HATRED
between them is so intense – well more so from one of them – and it’s
like wow as I sit in on the court hearings I find it really hard to
believe that this couple had even EVER loved one another…

So what IS love?

2) The second thing is here is LOVE of yourself. For if you do not
love yourself, then how is it even possible for you to love another? I
wonder…

• Would you like to learn more about what is BEYOND and DEEPER than love?
• Would you like to meet a partner with whom you can create a LOVING
  relationship?
• Or are you already in a relationship that requires something else?
• Maybe the love that was once there has gone or there is something
  missing?
• Would you like to create LOVING relationships with people all around
  you? With family and friends and also colleagues and partners?

Then register here for my upcoming telecall series ‘WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO
DO WITH IT?’ and we will explore the possibilities a relationships
BEYOND love... ❤ all types of relationships…