Make Love, Every Day

As Valentine's Day approaches, we become saturated with commercialized ways to show your love to someone. It is everywhere. Stores, radio, television, and the internet.. become hyper focused on one day out of the year where we are told that the BEST way to show our love is to purchase something for someone. While, gifts can be nice in a minor way, this is a critically wrong impression of how to show love.

Let me explain, if you will.

Love can not be fostered by a single event on a single day. Love is not the grand gestures of giving material items.

True love is action. It is made with our own two hands, our words, our behavior towards another.

We can not expect a relationship to grow along with us if it is not made a priority every single day. It will wither up and turn to dust. Just like a plant, it needs attention and caring for.

We live in a society where it is portrayed that love just happens. Two people meet each other and there are instant fireworks and they live happily ever after. This couldn't be more wrong. It is laborious, it is time consuming, it has to be MADE. It is not something that just occurs and then lives on because of attraction.

We have to know, in a very real way, that love entails every human emotion at one point or another. This includes the not so happy feelings, like fear and anger. To expect that it is as glamorous and easy as it is made out to be, is a joke.

And here is the important part to take away from the difficulty of maintaining a healthy love.. easy is not good. We don't grow and evolve when things are easy. It is the very hard times that can, if handled correctly, make love grow. To appreciate what we have, we must work for it. To be proud of what we have, we must work for it. To enjoy what we have....we must also have the hard times to help us appreciate the good times.

Our lives move fast. Many people have learned to live on impulse, with no thought about the long trek that is really living or loving. Impulsively, if it doesn't seem easy or feel easy from the start, we consider giving up. This is why relationships fail in many instances. Once that initial burst of flames between two people dies down, people become disinterested and seek out that fire again. This is a cycle that you can repeat all of your life.

Alternatively, you can keep love's fire going by adding fuel to it on a constant basis. It doesn't have to die out. We are like seasoned fire wood. We can choose to fuel the love we are given, at any time, and it will continue to warm us.

When talking to couples, I often explain that we have to make love, everyday. We have to use every part of our own selves to show our investment in another. We have to listen with open hearts, speak words of encouragement, take one on one time to connect..no phones, no distractions.. simply sitting with the person you love and creating a space where the two of you can breathe together.

The best gift you can give the person you love does not come covered in chocolate. It does not come pre-written from Hallmark, its not anything that can be purchased. That is the easy stuff. The best gift is your dedication to working hard, every day, to show your love, to cherish one another, to fuel the fire that started easily but threatens to go out when not fed.

Humans are not disposable. There is no gain from acting like they are so that we don't have to do the hard work of creating a real love.

Love is raw. It is every day life. It is offering to help with cleaning. It is paying attention to the subtle needs of our partner. It is touching them, not just sexually, but in a way that lets them know that you are there... in that moment... you are present. Love is understanding one another when a misunderstanding takes place. Love is forgiving and forgiving and forgiving even more. Love is ASKING for forgiveness and admitting when we are wrong or have wronged someone. Love is building each other up instead of focusing on the negatives.

Make love, every day, and it will last as long as both people want it to.