What does love feel like?

Nrdsb4
Sat, 04 May 2013 22:51:32 +0000

Are you talking “romantic love?” Because there are different kinds of love. The love I feel for my husband is different from that I feel for my daughters. It also feels different from the love I feel for my Dad (Mom died this year), and that feels different from the love I feel for my siblings (and those feelings are different sibling to sibling). Then there are the loving feelings I have for girlfriends of long standing, and those of male friends I’ve known since childhood.

It just depends…

Shakespeare had his take on it:
sonnetCXVI



Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.



This I do know: regardless of the kind of love we’re talking about, there is a common denominator. Love feels good and makes others feel good. It does NOT torture you, make you feel crappy about yourself, make you feel insecure, unworthy, or miserable. It doesn’t compel you to control or dominate. Love doesn’t require or inflict upon others the constant requirement to prove itself. It just is…and once you’ve experienced a healthy, selfless yet reciprocal love, you forever after know it when you see it.