Today I want to explain to you what is love.
To do this, I asked Leonardo Felice Buscaglia for a hand, an author who died a few years ago, who made love the center of his interest: Love, in fact, it is the title of the book that I consider the most beautiful I've ever read.
I will share with you the most significant of the many wonderful phrases that the author has been able to write, so we will understand together the true nature of love.
But before I start, I'll offer you my torque test.
It measures the health of your relationship and it will allow you to figure out if it is healthy, strong and positive, or not. It will also help if you are single, answering questions based on your previous relationships.
It will allow you to understand if your relationship has the characteristics to last or not.
What is love: What we know is (almost) all wrong
I start with a sentence that, if we want, could also conclude here everything I want to tell you about love, but which obviously is only the beginning of today's journey for us. A definition of perfect love: Love is love only when it is given without expecting anything in return.
Which said in other words means that love is only true if it is a gift that does not expect to be returned.
That's right, I'm telling you that if you love you don't have to expect to receive anything in return, much less to receive love from the people you love.
Perfect love should be one that gives everything and asks for nothing in return.
For what I see every day, in my life and in that of so many people who share their challenges with me, this is not just perfect love, but it's love.
In reality they taught us that love happens, that love is a couple relationship, above all, that love is a relationship in which you have to receive something.
We live with the certainty that being loved is the secret to a happy life, and we are wrong.
We are wrong because we do not even want to be loved, we want to receive the things we believe are indispensable for our happiness.
I'll let you read an example from my book, Emotional Independence, Learning to be happy, to show you how much we can be deluded that it is the love of others that makes us feel good.
It's your birthday and your partner has prepared a surprise party for you: all your friends and loved ones are there.
After a wonderful evening there is another gift: an unforgettable night of passion with the person you love, and who has done all this just for you.
In the morning you wake up, the sun comes in through the window and you hear the chirping of birds outside the windows. What a wonderful life, right? What a lucky person you are to have found someone who loves you in such a special way.
The only problem, which you do not know, is that before the surprise party, on your sofa, your partner and the lover you don't know exists celebrated your birthday too! Yet you feel lucky, loved, happy.
How is it possible that you feel all these wonderful emotions, if the person next to you is cheating on you and does not really love you? How do you feel love if you don't get it?
Wait, get this.
Luca has been married to Patrizia for five months and everything was fine, until, moved by his jealousy, he peeks into his wife's cell phone and discovers messages from Giorgio, a mutual friend who was making a connection to Patrizia before their wedding.
Luca has no doubts, the tone of the messages is sweet and ambiguous: she betrays him. He makes a scene, shouts, gets terribly angry.
He can't stand being made fun of, and finds it absurd that it happened so shortly after they got married. She assures him that she has done nothing, that she loves him and would never betray him. Luca, however, does not trust.
He begins to suspect Patrizia every time he goes out with her friends, who hold her game for him, while she does everything to convince him that she is sincere: she often hugs him, telling him that she loves him, she is always kind and understanding, she does not rush him. and respect his doubts.
The truth is that Giorgio is a friend of Patrizia, she has never betrayed Luca but everything she does for him is not enough: Luca does not feel loved, although she really gives him love in every way.
For him they are fake and false gestures, ways to hide a betrayal of which he is certain, but of which he does not yet have proof.
Isn't it curious that you, betrayed before the birthday party, feel like the luckiest person in the world while Luca, who is really loved by Patrizia, feels betrayed, hurt and disappointed?
What is it that makes you happy, that makes us happy? To be loved or to receive the attention, gestures and words that we expect and desire?
What does it mean to love?
To write the guide that I highlighted above, I have come up with a list of possible gestures of love that we make towards a person we feel we love.
I take it as I wrote it several months ago:
- You want him to be happy. I think this is obvious but also fundamental.
- Forgive your mistakes, when he is wrong.
- You are available if he needs a hand.
- You care what he thinks, What does he say.
- You dedicate part of your time, your attention.
- You respect his ideas. You may not agree, but accept his views.
The list, in my opinion, could be very long indeed.
Nothing to complain about, I guess.
Now the point is that these actions, such as those performed by Patrizia or your hypothetical partner in the example I took from my book, can derive from two different motivations.
We can forgive, accept, understand, help, respect, support, encourage, advise, listen, understand for love or interest.
What do you do it for?
If you do this because you expect something in return, it is not out of love, but out of interest.
Imagine if it was a friend of yours who was kind only for the favors you can do him, for your money, or because you keep him company.
Would you feel loved, or loved, by a person who is present only because it suits him and earns something? Or would you feel used, or used?
Are you a selfish person?
Answer the 7 questions in my selfishness test.
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The best definition of love possible
Here is how Buscaglia explains it: Perfect love should be that which gives everything and asks for nothing in return. A love, of course, ready to welcome all that was offered to him in joy. And the more it would be given, the better it would be.
But he should not solicit anything, since those who do not ask and expect nothing do not experience disappointment and disappointment. Only love that demands a counterpart brings pain with it.
I would say that the counterpart does not bring with it the love it demands, but the interest pretending love, which disguises itself by deceiving those who receive it and those who give it.
Every day I receive messages from people who say they suffer for love (I explain it well here), and suffering is always linked to the pretense of receiving something. People who wonder how to forgive a betrayal (or if it is right to do so).
Have you ever thought about unconditional love (read this page)?
Actually, love is just that: a gift that asks for nothing in return.
If you expect something, there is an interest behind it that annihilates love.
I'll tell you in the words of Anthony De Mello: How can you love people when you need them? They can only be used. If I need you to be happy, I have to use you, I have to manipulate you, I have to find means and systems to conquer you. I can't set you free.
How can you really love me if you pretend Am I being kind, for example, or respectful or helpful with you?
What if I'm not? If I didn't behave kindly, Would you still love me or get angry because I'm not nice?
The problem, the real big problem of all of us, is that we don't understand what love is and we persist in thinking that the bartering with which we live our relationships is love. And from here comes every couple crisis, every human being.
True love is an unconditional choice
Change perspective: if you switch roles e you are receiving attention from others out of interest, you don't call it love.
With sincerity: do you also have an interest in those you say you love?
Don't you love them because they love you? Don't you love them to get something in return?
What?
Love, for example, and then happiness, security, attention, courtesy, sense of importance, value, closeness, company and I could finish tomorrow morning 😉
I'll let you read another key point from Leo's book: We love because we want to love, because it gives us joy, because we know that the discovery and fulfillment of ourselves depends on love. We know that the only certainty rests in us.
What I'm telling you, which Buscaglia wrote in his books, first of all "Love", is just the opposite of how we usually experience love. Because we usually confuse falling in love and love (I'll explain the difference here).
Love is the only secret to becoming happy
I always say, in my courses, in the guides I write, if I talk to those who want to find happiness, that you need only two things to get it: eliminate pretensions and act with love.
They are two, but if you think about it, finally understanding what love is, the secret is only one, because if you really love, that is, without asking for anything, that is, without pretensions, you are doing everything.
Do you want to become happy? He loves.
Don't look for who you love, it won't make you happy.
You have to love if you want to be.
Do you remember the sentence I made you read a little while ago?
Only love that demands a counterpart brings pain with it.
Here's something that can change your life: loving never hurts. True love never hurts.
Suffering has nothing to do with love.
You don't suffer because you love someone, you suffer when you demand something in return and don't get it.
Here's what you need to learn right away: Expecting something from another because it is within our rights means running for unhappiness. […] Only when we stop placing conditions on our love do we really begin to understand what it means to love.
- I love you if you love me.
- I love you if you will always be close to me.
- I love you if you behave well (i.e. how I think it is good).
- I love you if you tell me the right things (the ones I want to hear).
- I love you if you respect me.
- I love you if you make me feel safe, or safe.
- I love you if you make me feel good.
- I love you if you will always be sexy and attractive.
- I love you if you make me happy.
Continuous?
We can say I love you (read this page where I talk about it), but do we really love?
These are not normal things in love, these are requests that deny love, they are interest and they are all claims, conditions that make it impossible to love.
If you have these "ifs" you will not be able to love, but you will only use people to satisfy these needs and get what you want.
It is not love.
True love is something else: I love because I owe it, I love because I want it. I love for myself, not for others. I love for the joy it gives me, and only occasionally for what this joy gives to others. If others strengthen me, well, so much the better, but otherwise I will be paid anyway, because in me love is an act of will.
Loving is a choice that is up to you.
When it depends on what others do, it means your actions are based on their reactions.
Have you ever wondered, or wondered, why this happens?
For one only: you love or not according to what you think of getting out of it and based on what others give you: they are just exchanges, barters.
This however means have an interest, ask for something and expect to receive what you want.
If your love is conditioned by the actions of others, it's not really love.
And this must be clearly distinguished from undergoing others or indulging them. you can love without being used.
Love without suffering, without being influenced or hurt by anyone.
To explain how I created a path that lasts at least 2 months and that you can find on this page ⇒
Does it make sense to continue your relationship as a couple?
Answer my test questions to find out.
It will allow you to understand if your relationship has the characteristics to last or not.
True love is what we all seek (conclusions)
It is not easy to think that love is something totally different from what we have become accustomed to believe, from what everyone suggests that we thought we felt firsthand.
I was wrong for many years before I understood what love was. For real.
Here is what Leo says again: We must commit ourselves to love all men, even if we are not reciprocated. We must love for love, not to be loved.
The phrases that I could quote you are still many, my copy of Love it is full of highlighted parts, underlined sentences.
Obviously, I certainly could not copy the entire book here, but I hope that the few lines I have reported to you have helped you, together with my words, to understand that the nature of love is different, very different, from how we usually understand it. .
Understanding this, understanding what love is, it has changed my life and is changing it for many people who want to question themselves and understand the most important lesson: [...] if we love all men and are rejected by a man, this does not mean we have to distance ourselves, ask ourselves in our isolation and let ourselves be conditioned by anger, fear and pain .
That man is not to blame. He was simply not prepared to accept what was offered to him. Our affection is not given under conditions.
Love is not a relationship of a couple, it is not a relationship with one person, or a few, but it is a way of life, a way of being, a choice.
It all depends on you and this choice you can do it every day, everything can change, whatever has happened so far in your life.
Love is the answer to the problem of human existence, why we are here, why you are here.
I am sure that the pages of Love will offer you the opportunity to question yourself and understand yourself better.
Go to the bookstore and buy it today, if you have read it and have not thought about what I have told you, read it again, with new eyes.
