15 Things Love Is Not

1. Love is not irrationally jealous in the name of passion. That’s not passion. That’s distrust. Love is not explosive anger. Love is not ownership. Love is not force.

2. Love is not needing to be with each other every single moment to the detriment of other friendships, interests, or life experiences.

3. Love is not smushing your two independent identities together to become one unit who is not capable of existing without the other person.

4. Love is not uncertain about where it stands. It is open and honest and transparent and communicative, because love does not restrain or constrict or conceal.

5. Love is not a panicked need for each other. It doesn’t say: “I love you because I need you.” It says: “I love you right now and that’s enough.”

6. Love is not dishonest. Love is vulnerable and unfiltered. It is not built on the foundation of deceit.

7. Love is not a forever promise. Love does not need to be forever for it to mean something. Love can sometimes last a day, a year, ten years, a lifetime. Love doesn’t need to last a certain amount of time for it to be real and true and pure.

8. Love is not resentful. Love creates an environment to express or air hurt feelings or grievances. It does not build and store up grievances over years only to explode like a bomb in destruction of the relationship.

9. Love is not unsupportive. Love desires the highest good from each person, knowing full well that when both people are independently happy and bring that happiness to the relationship, the highest love can be felt.

10. Love is not unequal or unbalanced. Each person is valued equally. Their desires, dreams, hopes, feelings, and thoughts are equally heard and accounted for. Love does not center on one person in order to sideline the other. No matter the achievement, burden, or experience: it is felt equally.

11. Love is not guaranteed. It requires nurturing and care and attendance and the daily practice of gratitude. Love requires that you show up fully and completely to it, each day. Love is an every day choice.

12. Love is not a scorecard. Love does not see favors or keep score about who did what and when. Love is generous with its time and ability. Love is not concerned with who did the dishes last time or whose turn it is to vacuum. Love is fully aware that it all equals out in the end when each person respects the other’s time and contribution.

13. Love is not concerned only with physical gratification. Love sees the many, many facets of intimacy and spends time cultivating all of those, instead of putting emphasis on only one aspect of intimacy. Love sees many opportunities to connect both emotionally and physically and basks in those.

14. Love is not petty. It is not particularly concerned with battling out over the teensy issues that have no real bearing on daily life. Love knows how to fight the good fight and when it’s time to choose compromise.

15. Love is not unaware. Love knows that it exists within the tiny fragments of moments, that it’s not always big and romantic and showy and magnanimous. Love is in the whispers. Love is in the day to day. Love is understanding and kind. And, the more love there is to see, the more it multiplies. Love multiplies. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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