It’s Love Wellness: I’m Lovable, You’re Lovable

It’s still Valentine’s Week so let love prevail!

How we treat “falling in love” is important. In fact, it can be a dis-ease. A careless or rush decision can cause a painful lovesickness that may prevent the development of an enduring love or “opening to love.”   

As we grow up, we build walls around our hearts to protect our true feelings from fear of being hurt or rejected. What are these walls? We can easily identify some of them from experience – restrained actions, controlled feelings, numbed senses, cautious thoughts, timid glances, hypochondria, and if I may add, too refined behaviors.

Then we meet someone “special.” Suddenly, the wall protecting our tender heart begins to tumble down. We open up. We break our silence. And to borrow a phrase from Camelot: “We flung wide our prison doors!” We enter then fall into the presence of love. And because this experience of falling in love is activated magically by another person, we attribute the source of love only to that person.  

When we attribute our experience of love only to the presence of another, there may be a tendency to overlook or recognize our own love-worth or lovableness. If we are dependent on someone else for our sense of worth that we overlook our own perceptions of ourselves, we might lose discovery of our own value, something that can only be measured by our own perception.

When we understand that the love we see reflected in another’s acceptance is recognition of who we really are, then we begin to accept that we are truly loved, and we feel lovable. And as we listen to the ones we love with their deepest feelings and needs, they too will feel loved and be lovable.