He loves me. He loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not. The notion of love can be so confusing. Nonetheless, many people throw the word around without regard for its true meaning.
In an environment where the word love is used to describe feelings of lust, attachment, and infatuation, you may be wondering how anyone can possibly identify pure love. The easiest way is to first identify what love is not.
Beware of Attachment
Love is unconditional; whereas, attachment comes with many conditions. When you’re attached, you may require a person to remain accessible at all times, to meet your expectations, to provide you with physical pleasures, to tell you what you need to hear, “fix” their flaws, or to change their ways. When they oblige, you may feel that they are “showing their love.”
However, when that person is no longer meeting the conditions, you feel distraught or claim to be “falling out of love.” This isn’t really falling out of love, because love exists despite circumstances. Instead, this is the typical dissatisfaction that stems from unhealthy relationship attachment.
This is not an issue that is limited to romantic relationships, as it often shows up in relations with family, friends, and others that are close to us.
Attachment creates a sense of anxiety about what is to come—a fear that something is going wrong or will go wrong. Whereas the purity of love allows peace of mind with what is.
Here are a few examples in case you’re not sure how to identify attachment disguised as love:
The feeling that you can’t live without someone
Feelings of jealousy, anxiety, or worry regarding your partner
Inability to let go of a person without falling apart
Depending on a person to make you feel loved
The feeling that a person’s actions or words control your happiness
A need or desire to control
A need to keep your partner around so that you aren’t lonely
Inability to feel peace of mind when your partner doesn’t comply with your wishes
Desire to manipulate with phrases like, “If you loved me you would…”
Don’t be alarmed by the list above if you noticed that you have an attachment to someone. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you do not love them because it is possible for attachment to exist with someone that you love.
The key is to distinguish between the two, thus allowing love, if it exists, to flourish and create a healthy relationship.
Infatuation and Lust
Many people grow addicted to the feeling of what is referred to as “new love.” Most of us are familiar with it. The thought, smell, or touch of your new lover puts you on cloud 9. You feel “butterflies” in your tummy, your heart skips a beat, your body temperature seems to rise, or you get goose bumps. You think about him or her constantly and can’t seem to get close enough. You want to be near this person every chance you get, to enjoy the natural high that comes from your interaction together. And before you know it, you’re saying those 3 words: I love you.
But what does any of this have to do with love? Nothing. The “new love” feeling is nothing more than infatuation. And I’ll be the first to say that it feels great. I’ll also say that I believe you can have some level of infatuation with a person that you truly love. However, it is important to recognize the distinct differences between love and infatuation.
There may be hot and heavy sexual attraction with someone that you love, but the relationship isn’t defined by it and pure love won’t subside without it. There may be a feeling of butterflies in the stomach when seeing the face of your beloved. But the butterflies are a cherry on top of the pie, while real love is the pie itself.
When lust and infatuation are present in the absence of love, it can be disheartening to watch the relationship’s demise. With time, the frisky new mates find themselves faced with real life. And oftentimes those real life issues cause the butterflies and hot sex to die down, leaving behind two confused people who have no idea why their “love” fell apart. Well, what really fell apart is the lust and infatuation. And there’s very little to salvage if the relationship was built on a weak foundation that had nothing to do with love.
Cheating for New Love
When relationship commitments are built around something other than pure love, it becomes tempting for many people to seek partners outside of the relationship. After all, unconditional love isn’t a factor in such unions and the conditions that were set are not being met.
This can lead to both emotional and physical cheating as partners choose to experience that “new love” feeling outside of the relationship, thus satisfying their cravings for lust and infatuation while maintaining an unhealthy attachment to the partner that they’re “falling out of love” with.
The Act of Love
It’s nice to remind ourselves that love is more than just an emotion. The word is also a verb, and the action should coincide with what’s in the heart.
Love is not painful, selfish, anxious or demanding. Instead, it is gentle, patient, boundless, and free.
Love does not seek to deceive, belittle, or manipulate. Instead, love uplifts, cherishes, and respects. Knowing this, it is helpful to ask ourselves before making decisions in matters of the heart, “What would love do?”
The answers won’t always be what you want them to be and you won’t always follow love’s guide. However, having the answer will help you to realize if it is truly love that motivates you at all.
More Love and Relationship Goodies
Magic of Making Up – Get Your Partner Back
How to Use Law of Attraction to Make Your Spouse Change His/Her Ways
Law of Attraction Love and Healthy Relationship Advice
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Nea, It seems that describing what love is not can often be easier than describing what it is. I thought you might find these additions interesting since they dovetail nicely with what you have said: “Love is not jealous, it does not brag, does not get puffed up, does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury. It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-6)
What a perfect addition to the article, Jonathan. Thanks so much.
“Attatchment can be a huge road block in our lives. That emotion alone makes you crave things, and soon after the craving has been satisfied, it makes you afraid of losing whatyou have achieved. Nothing makes you happy for long. Attatchment makes you desire things, objects or people. It also sends you down a path of greed, envy, jealousy, lust, depression and a feeling of being deprived, spinning you into a negative web of disatisfaction, envy, hatred and bad actions.
Get rid of atatchment and you will be able to go with a positive energy flow. Instead of creating tension, you will be creating a feeling of calm detatchment. This non-attatchment to objects, ideas, and people is a powerful magnet for good fortune. By releasing yourself of attatchment, you will have destroyed the worry, pessimism and dissatifaction in your life.
Detatchment gives you immense power because you are no longer vulnerable to the lure of temporary satisfactions.. You will recognize that nothing gives you lasting satisfaction and that it is a waste of energy if you crave and lust after people, things and outcomes.
People, things and outcomes are the 3 dimensions of attatchment, all of which never give you permanent happiness, and all can become the source of dissatisfation if you give them too much power. When you place the thought of detatchment in your mind, and contemplate it seriously, you will have started the process of destroying the poison of attatchment. By not placing excessive emphasis on wanting something so badly, you immediately free your psyche of excessive negative energy. This releases blocks inside your flow of positive energy. Then It will bring what you want nearer to you. Freeing your mind of excessive craving removes the negative energy that usually attatches to it. The surest way to attract any kind of outcome that you desire is to be so confident that it is coming that there is not even the slightest hint of doubt or worry that it will not come. This way, not even the tiniest morsel of negative energy is attatched to the thought of what you want.
Detatched confidence leads to an absence of mind-induced desperation and worry. There is no fear of negative outcomes because the mind knows that when you cannot get the object, person or outcome you wish for, it will not hurt you because there are other objects, other people and outcomes waiting around the corner. And these alternative objects, people and outcomes may be even more pleasureable” -Lillian Too
25…. your insight is definitely appreciated. Thanks for sharing.
Love has been misinterpreted these days. Most are commonly anchored on lust; once it’s consumed, the so-called love falters. It is important to know the true reason behind loving someone.
So true, Walter. Lust can leave us under the illusion that we’re in love.
I was very moved by your post and feel that I was probably in ‘attachment’ for some time last year, what i have discovered although I love this man unconditionally, I realized I can take away that list of yours and I feel that all of that is now about “ME”
thanks so much for posting, I found you while stumbling and will add your link to my site. Looking forward to many more.
I’m so glad you found some inspiration in this article. I know that you’ll find the courage to love yourself enough to make the right decision about your relationship.
If a couple really love each other, There’s would not have the urge to find lust from third party. Most today’s teenager do not know the difference between lust and love as they are still in the curiosity state of mind. So any teenager reading this article, take time and think, is it true love or lust?
Hi Nea, I have a question for you. Long story short the longest relationship I was in lasted for 10 years then we separated and went our own ways. Since that relationship I don’t think I have ever healed because I find myself in unhealthy relationship attachments based on what you have described above. I’m one of those people who have grown addicted to the feeling of new love and once the feeling has gone then I feel this emptiness and want to move on to receive that new love feeling again. I also a person who, even don’t I don’t care to believe it, I know it is true, that I depend on a person to make me feel loved and I have the need and desire to control and along with that I like to feel like I’m winning the person over. For example in my crazy mind if I’m not accessible to my love and I make it so he has to go all out of his way to get me or spend time with me then I feel as though I have him right where I want him. The thing is I don’t understand why I do this or why I’m drawn to the feelings of wanting and needing the new love feeling. But what else is crazy is that I also long to be in a healthy long term committed relationship based on a foundation of true love without the attachment & other issues. Even after reading what is said, I still don’t know how to correct my problem. Go ahead tell me I need psychological help or some type of extensive counseling. What do you suggest Nea from what I have told you?
Very insightful, Nea. Your blog is one of the few I have seen that offers compassionate realistic information, and not just a hard sell for lonely people. As a caring health care professional for over 30 years – Kudos to you!