Romance – what’s love got to do with it?

February is the month of St Valentine’s Day, the day of red hearts, red roses, chocolates and greeting cards. Some call it the day of love. And above all, it is great business.

For many people this day is about the celebration of romantic love. Falling in love and romance are all very exciting events in our lives. We feel loved, important, attractive, and fulfilled, it feels like paradise. And we hope this state may last forever. Some people go from one partner to the next hoping the passion or this romantic love would last once they find the right person. But they never seem to find the right person. Why is that?

It is because romance is not love, it is short-lived. In romance we “love” the other person because they fulfill our needs the way we like it. We get the compliments, the attention, the physical pleasure and emotional security. They show us that we are the most important person for them. They please us. That’s what we “love” them for, not for who they truly are. We care more about them, so they can better care about us. This is conditional love, which is not love, but disguised self-interest. It is a precarious relationship, because anytime they may slip up and give more attention to someone else, or they may forget to buy us a birthday card. We then get angry at them and feel fully justified to blame them for our bad feelings. As if they were responsible for our feelings. When they don’t fulfill our needs the way we want, we may get anxious: What if they stop loving us? What if tomorrow they change their mind? We then try harder to be nice to them, or we may attack or threaten them. This fear-based dynamic is rooted in the unconscious belief that we are lacking something and that we need to get it from others. We thereby make ourselves dependent on them, by giving our responsibility to make us feel good over to them. Doing that, we create a relationship of mutual manipulation, based on the fear of abandonment and lack. When they are kind and nice with us we feel good, and when they forget us or have other interests, we feel bad. Does any of this sound familiar to you? It sounds harsh, but let’s be honest. That is the way we relate to people most of the time. It is important to not judge ourselves for it, let’s just look at it with understanding.

The process of dependency I am describing here is based on the false belief that we get happiness from sources outside of ourselves. We not only do it with people, but also with work, success, money, drugs, food, TV, internet and anything else you can think of.

The good news is, there is another way of relating to ourselves and others: It is the knowledge that we are not lacking anything, but are whole and complete, and that our basic nature is love.

From this perspective we see all human beings as equal, regardless of their role in society or their age. Being equal, nobody has anything we don’t, and vice versa. We can then practice to love and accept ourselves and others by being aware of our own love, even with our partners. In this way we can see them more as our companion or fellow-traveller, rather than as need-fulfillers. Imagine you are a shining light radiating love, regardless of how others are. This is truly stepping into our power and it is the direct opposite of what we would do automatically. When others are rude or obnoxious, we can know it’s because they are acting out of a fear of lack, and we know that sometimes we behave that way too. W can choose to still be loving with them.

Once we live fully from the knowledge that we are love, all we see is love and peace. Enlightened beings live like that: They only see the light in us; they don’t see the fear in us, because love does not know fear. Every time we remember that we are this shining light, whole and complete, we contribute to our healing and internal freedom. It is important to acknowledge that we are all the same: We all have a split mind with one belief system based on fear – hence the belief in lack and manipulation, and the other belief system based on love and wholeness. From the loving perspective we understand that we all struggle on our journey between these two “worlds”, the fearful world and the love filled world. We all are flip-flopping between these two belief systems, between fear, manipulation, dependency and blaming on one hand, and remembering that we are love and compassion on the other hand. On this life journey, we basically all want the same, even though we take different paths to find it: We want to feel love and joy. The great news is that it’s already in us, it is not out there. To love is to be that love and joy and share it with others. Let’s celebrate that on Valentine’s Day!

Marlise Witschi, M.Psych