As children, we watched Disney movies. As adults, we enjoy romantic movies where everything turns out well. And we all know that in life, it’s not like that. Yet, we continue to lose our heads over romantic archetypes that have nothing to do with reality.

We aspire to have Hollywood-type relationships, and they don’t exist. We live permanently dissatisfied with our relationships. We look for in the other what should be born inside us. And consequently, all our relationships fail.

Every time I think of our childhood and youth, I remember this Tyler Durden monologue from the film Fight Club (based on a Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same name.)

“Man, I see the strongest and smartest men in Fight Club. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered—G**damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, enslaved people with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s**t we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man: no purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very p****d off.”

I agree: our great war is a spiritual war. We walk through life believing everything we see on television and think we know how to receive love without knowing how to give it. Learning how to love myself and others healthily took me a long time and a lot of displeasure. In today’s article, I will explain my point of view about love and how we can know if the people around us love us or lie.

To know it, first, we have to know what love is.

What is love?

Love is an energy. The energy that contains everything and is not able to be contained. There is no container where it fits. And, yet, when you feel it, it occupies the whole room.

Love is a creative force that can do anything. It is so powerful that thanks to it, human beings have been surviving for millions of years, clinging to this rock that rotates at 1600 km per hour on its axis, which we call Earth. To love is to honor this force, which keeps us alive, generation after generation, channeling it to what surrounds us, whether it is a loved one, a family member, a country, or that little dog you adore so much.

But to channel something, you have to be open to it.

Love is energy

We have to open our channel. You have to become a superconductor of the energy of love. You have to emit in its frequency to transmit that electricity you feel when you are in love.

I am a fan of living in love, what you do, and the people around you because passion extends your life.

Once we know that love is an energy. And that we have to be open to it to channel it. We understand that anyone unable to love himself cannot access true love because true love is healthy and reciprocal.

Love starts with yourself.

We think a person who does not love himself can still love others, but this is not true because when you love something or someone, you don’t harm them. How many people who don’t take care of themselves as they should end up tearing us apart with their self-destruction?

They say they love you, and you love them back but are still destroying their life and making you suffer by seeing it, by knowing that one day you will wake up and they will no longer be there to honor that mutual love together; that is not loving, that is selfishness. That’s why I’m afraid of typical phrases like:

“I love you more than me.”

Excuse me?

“Love yourself more so you can share more love with me and not vice versa.”

Love can be passionate like a whirlwind, happen suddenly as a summer storm, but it is always adult. It is independent, never dependent or co-dependent.

Love is an emancipated and empowered energy gladly shared but not dependent on third parties. On the contrary, although it feels like love, it is not. It has many other names, like “obsession.” And it is not born from the same universal energy but a very different one: fear.

Fear

Fear binds, manipulates, makes us commit atrocities, and consents to them.

The fear generates insecurity and discomfort that you project on the loved one, and instead of wanting to accompany them along the path of life, you try to cage them so that they cannot escape so that nothing and no one can steal them from you. And it is a mistake because love is not that, and the only thing you get by becoming a jailer is to ruin everything.

There is no bird that, after living in a cage a long time locked up, knows how to fly; he forgot his wings, and if you love someone, you do not want him to forget his gifts; you want to enhance them. You want him to spread his wings and fly high, very high.

To love truly, we must be willing to let a mature and independent love flow through us and, towards the loved one, a love that does not oppress, nor is based on fear, and that nourishes the desire to fly.

Love has its times, but it has to be spontaneous. It is like the stream that flows from the rock in the mountain; It is natural.

Love is not possessive.

To love is a unitary force, never dual; you love or do not love. To love is not something you can do badly; that is why it is not wanting because wanting is dual and seeks the whim of possessing, and like every whim, it is temporary.

Close your eyes and think of someone you have loved for a moment and who is no longer with you, sure that still makes you vibrate inside, sure, that if he is alive, you wish him all the good of the universe, and if he is not alive, also and that your good wishes reach him wherever he is.

Love does not understand time or distances; you can love people who pass away and people who live thousands of kilometers away from our homes with such intensity that we feel them close daily, and love makes us transcend time, space, and death itself.

Love is respect

Another quality of love is that it is respectful and adapts to the circumstances; it waits for you unconditionally when you are late, listens to your silence when you do not feel like talking and never blames you for anything because reproaching is proper to the ego and the ego does not love because the ego has to do with the individual but when an individual loves it ceases to be an individual to become whole.

When you love, you do not feel part of something bigger than you; you think that this greatness is an indivisible unit, and for it, you bet all your body cells, from the feet to the hairs on the back of your neck, because you feel full.

How to know if someone loves you

You do not have to think. You have to feel.

Close your eyes again, breathe deeply, and perceive in yourself how that person you love makes you feel, not what you think for them, but how they make you feel. And if that feeling is like a warm and pleasant embrace that makes you smile or even cry, depending on how sentimental you are, or if you feel an immense sense of peace, that means they love you.

Remember:

• They cannot truly love you if they are not open to love.
• If they do not love themselves, they cannot truly love you.
• If they are not spontaneous like a summer storm, they are artificial, and love can never be that.
• If the love is not mature and independent, it is not loving.
• If it is born of fear, oppresses, and is not happy to see you fly, it cannot be love.
• It is not loving if it does not transcend space, time, and death.
• If love is not respectful and does not adapt to the circumstances, like the river that skirts the rocks, flowing along its course towards the sea, it is not loving.
• Love is tolerant and understanding; it does not compete and always waits for you; it is a refuge for your winters and a lighthouse that guides you to port in the storm.
• Love does not understand martyrs or martyrdoms. It seeks mutual happiness, joint, and personal progress; to be a team and as a team to improve the quality of life of the whole, compensate the shortages, and offer generosity without the need to ask or have an obligation to return.
• Love is a bank that gives you credit.

It is the seed for generations to come. It is everything, from the beginning to the end.

A virtual hug

AG