Love is both an action and a feeling. The action of love generates a blissful feeling called by the same name. When the action stops, the blissful feeling is replaced with pain. There is a similar feeling called lust which may be confused with love. You need to decipher between the two in order to have a healthy heart. Every person is capable of great love (and its opposite, fear, which generates all painful emotions such as hate, greed and jealousy).
While there are many different ways to define love and there are many different ways to love someone (or even yourself), here is a general guide to loving.
STEP IN LOVE
- Say it. When you say the words "I Love You", they should carry with them the desire to show someone that you love them, not what you simply want to feel. When you say it, make sure you really mean it and are willing to do anything for that special person.
- Empathize. Put yourself in someone else's shoes. Rather than impose your own expectations or attempt to control them, to understand how they feel, where they come from, and who they are. Realize how they could also love you back just as well.
- Love unconditionally. If you cannot love another person without attaching stipulations, then it is not love at all, but deep-seated opportunism (one who makes the most of an advantage, often unmindful of others). If your interest is not in the other person as such, but rather in how that person can enhance your experience of life, then it is not unconditional. If you have no intention of improving that person’s life, or allowing that person to be themselves and accepting them as they are, and not who you want them to be, then you are not striving to love them unconditionally.
- Expect nothing in return. That doesn't mean you should allow someone to mistreat or undervalue you. It means that giving love does not guarantee receiving love. Try loving just for the sake of love. Realize that someone may have a different way of showing his or her love for you; do not expect to be loved back in exactly the same way.
- Realize it can be lost. If you realize that you can lose the one you love, then you have a greater appreciation of what you have. Think how lucky you are to have someone to love. Don't make an idol of the person you love. This will place them under undue pressure and will likely result in you losing them.
Realize it can be lost. - Never stop loving. Even if you have been hurt before you should not stop giving love.
