The 4 Key Elements of Healthy Love
Have you noticed all of the different paradigms that are being offered about true love, conquering, enduring, and being all of these things?
As I write this statement, I feel so much heaviness because in a way, I felt these feelings years ago on the many wasted relationships I thought I loved.
Imagine a flower…. Now imagine that flower having four pedals. Remember when you were little. If you cannot, let me paint you my picture.
When I was young and immature, I would pull petals from a flower and say, “he loves me, he loves me not.” For this exercise, the petals will be what intimacy looks like because for me, it took a very long time to understand that one.
Let’s walk through the four key elements of healthy love:
1. No exclusion.
No exclusion falls under trust. If you are so in love with someone, you should trust them to go to Vegas and not call them a hundred times because you know the other partner loves you too and would never jeopardize the trust in your relationship. Trust in not blind faith. You have to trust your partner to be exactly who they are, not expecting them to be something else. If you try to make them, they will be just that -what you manifest.
Here’s what that petal looks like in an unhealthy relationship:
In my first marriage, he would not even trust me to go to a damn purse party. Why? Because, he was drunk and had his own issues. Yet, I loved him for who he was and thought this bad behavior was healthy and that it was ok to shove me and yell at me and call me awful things.
That is not love. Love is an emotion, it’s energy. If he really LOVED me he would have let me go to the neighbor’s purse party and loved his kids. Instead, he continued to pull off this petal because he was unhealthy and was making me crazy in my own head because trust is knowing that you do this, and that, and that this person will probably just do that. In order to trust, the person must be willing to perceive, know, be and receive the other. So, I was destroying our marriage because I was trying to change him and he was not allowing me to be me. Make sense?
Third marriage. He allows me to travel and knows I am going to do whatever the hell I want but knows and trust I would never break our honor which trust consist of. Yes, sometimes I am not perfect and I do not trust but the petal isn’t pulled in the way it is in an unhealthy relationship.
One key element of trust is that you allow him to do what he wants when he wants and he will do the same. He or she is allowing you to be you. No exclusion. Don’t even allow any other crappy energy into your brain to soak in the negative energy that no exclusion holds. It’s heavy and I sure as hell would not like to live this way.
2. Energy.
When I think of Energy I think of sex because energy is fast and flowing and never stopping, sort of like an orgasm. Or you could look at it as putting two bodies together connecting, so if they were not connected their chemistry/energy would not align nor should you be in allowance of it….
Let me explain:
Energy…Energy of life…Energy is real, space is real, consciousness creates everything. Vulnerability falls under the energy petal too. When you are willing to receive anything and everything and do not have a point of view to block it, you will totally be able to receive it.
There is a beautiful synergy about communicating what you desire and want and vice versa, which creates mutual respect.
If you are with a person that has a mental illness or is putting you at risk, this is not love. It’s manipulation and there are three other pedals dying because he only holds one of those components.
3. No competition.
It doesn’t matter if you are right, it’s more important that you get along. For instance:
A relationship where the petal died because they took advantage. I worked my butt off while he sat on his ass using drugs. I became the bread winner and the momma of a grown man. I thought it was love and my vocation. There was no compromise. He never wanted to help the family or himself because of his addiction and I was not loving myself because I was trying to take on my role/devotion to this person who really did not care about me. He just wanted to get to his next high.Yet in my mind, I was SO IN LOVE WITH HIM. When finally the petal fell off and Jillian realized she needed to take care of herself rather than take care of a man who did not communicate with me about his issues, it was over.
Now, my current husband has no competition with me because we are a team. We are trying to work hard together because we compromise a lot for one another so the other can communicate their needs and desires to go further in their career because it is what we each love. I am an affirmative believer you should do what you love.
4. No judgement.
Forgive and see through the faults.
TRUE LOVE IS FORGIVING AND ACCEPTING ONE AS THEY ARE!
It is so enduring right, we want to conquer it repeatedly forgiving the ones we LOVE.
Why does LOVE have to hurt?
Accepting other’s faults completely and utterly without question.
This person I was with took every petal. He pulled at me so hard that even with the last one, almost killed me. That is not love.
After having my face brutally beaten and fractured, I went back to him. I went back and he fell off the wagon once more and I finally went to the father and ask him if he could help me find him. I was so in LOVE with this person who did not even love himself. The petal was taken from me just like it had before in other toxic relationships.
Finally, one day I had had enough and found love in myself.
In my current marriage, he sees me for who I am and forgives me if I ever walk out of our agreement. We forgive and love one another and it isn’t hard and that is why it is love.
Love should not hurt to the point you want to harm yourself or the other person is harming themselves. True love is breaking the bad or wrong behavior and enduring the passion of the energy that love creates.
Love in itself is not enough! The wrong relationships can have these qualities; with the right choices you can make them right, and your relationship can thrive and succeed. The toxic one will instead make excuses for our lack of health, it will show you red flags, and the toxic markers kill the beautiful seed God intended you to bloom into.
Here are some questions I ask my pedals;
- What do I do with this situation?
- Can I change it? If so, how can I change it.
They say distance from a love one makes the love fonder. Hmmm, I can attest that distance for a long period of time makes me pschyo…LOL.
I think love needs to first come from within so you are able to assess if these four key elements are being adjusted. If you are never putting up a barrier to who you are, you would never be afraid to allow anyone to see the good/ugly/bad part yourself. Most of the time we spend a lot of time trying to prove to the ones we love how amazing we are. Then, behind closed doors we beat ourselves up about how awful we may be based on someone else’s point of view -it’s so dumb.
If you can look at your petals and find gratitude for all of them, you have found yourself.
LOVE doesn’t need to hurt, should not be painful, and it should feel amazing. That is what love is.
