What is True Love?

The Qualities That Make Up True Love

There are all different types of real love, and lust, and like, and everything in between. But when it comes to the type of true love that has the capacity to change your world, that kind is hard to miss. Here are some of the qualities of true love and how if differs from the others.

Calmness.

True love invokes a feeling of calm that’s a lot different than the chaos that go along with dating. Not that every day is all peace all the time, but you might notice that you’re falling for someone by the fact that you don’t need to rush them or rush anywhere else. You’re not trying to control anything because for the moment things feel like they’re in the right place and you’re simply happy to be by this person’s side no matter what it is that you’re doing. True love isn’t obsessive.

True love has a sensation.

And it isn’t the same sensation as lust. The sensation of true love tends to grow more over time the more you get to know someone, even if it was there from day one. It’s a feeling in the body that might stretch across your heart, or make you feel warm, or like your arms are melting a bit. You know it’s love when it comes out of nowhere and not necessarily when you’re with the person. It washes over you when you simply think of them too.

Kindness.

There are all types of relationships that don’t involve kindness, but people are only capable of opening themselves up to true love when they truly know and love themselves. People who are happy and confident are kind to other people and have enough self love to share their abundance with others. It’s not that unhappy people can’t love, but being unhappy can take up a considerable amount of time, and unconditionally loving other people can threaten to compete with that. Of course that’s a great thing if you’re in the place to let it happen. But the purest forms of true love comes from pure places.

True love allows you to give without expecting anything in return.

When you really love someone you would gladly take care of them while they’re puking no matter how disgusting that concept would generally feel to you. Like the way we take care of babies when they do gross things, they’re inherently pretty lovable. True love is doing those things because you care, not because you want to show them that you’re good, or prove that you’re lovable, or because you’re expecting them to return the favor. You’d do it anyway.

Sometimes that kind of true love also means letting someone go who doesn’t love you back. It’s a special kind of hell to feel that unrequited love and to know that you do in fact truly love someone. But it’s also a gift to feel love even if it doesn’t look like what you thought it might be. Especially if you had never felt it before. Now you know it exists. You know that you truly love someone when you’re willing to give in and them let go if that’s what they think will make them happy. You know it won’t make you happy, but you also know that you can’t control or force them into feeling something that they don’t, and that ultimately their happiness matters to you even if they’re no longer in your life.

It’s active.

True love isn’t a passive thing, it’s an active one. It has a life of its own because love is an energy that can move and change shapes. It’s always out there whether it’s in your heart or not. It’s hard to ignore true love when it comes into your life, and it isn’t likely that you’ll be able to set it aside forever even if you’re not quite ready for it now. It continues to pulse forth and it will change the way that you see the person that you love, as well as everyone and everything else in the world. There’s a softening by that, you can’t help but be slightly moved in a new way when you feel it, and it’s wonderful and enlightening.

True love asks you to grow.

If a relationship isn’t slightly uncomfortable and offering you some growth edges here and there then it probably isn’t the real deal. Relationships challenge you to grow because you care and you have an investment of wanting things to go well, which sometimes means that you have to change a bit here and there. All relationships can be uncomfortable in certain ways, but there’s a big difference in just feeling uncomfortable like “that was awkward” as opposed to wanting to make something better. There’s healing involved in that process which is asking a lot of us, but it’s worth it. True love is what has the capacity to come in and make the healing process a seamless one.

It’s effortless.

There’s an effortless involved with the feeling of true love. It’s not the relationship will always be easy, but there just isn’t a question of whether what you’re feeling is love or not, you just know that it is whether you can explain why or not. There’s not the feeling that something is missing. Even when there are real things missing in life true love will always feel whole. You feel affection towards the person that you love that goes beyond attraction, it’s natural and effortless for you to care about them no matter what shape or form they’re presenting themselves to you at the moment.

Intimacy.

True love usually involves sex, but it might take on a more intimate quality. We express ourselves differently in the bedroom depending on how we feel about someone, and what comes up can surprise us sometimes. We often feel a tenderness for people that we truly love, as well as an intense passion that is different and deeper than a purely lust one.

Companionship.

True love will give you companionship. You’re friends and partners in addition to being lovers. You will always be individuals but within the relationship you come together and make something that’s even stronger than you are as individuals, while still recognizing and appreciating the individual strengths. It’s like your personal power is amplified when it comes together with that of the true loves. You can trust and count on them, and enjoy being them and doing nothing as much as you do going on adventures and seeing new things with them.

True love feels like home.

We’re not always stress free when we’re home, but there is a totally different feeling of safety and comfort that you might be aware of when you’re in your personal space versus someone else’s space. Being in like with someone might feel like you’re having a good time in someone else’s apartment, but when you feel true love there’s something solid and safe about it that feels like it’s your home. It belongs to you in some sense, in the same way that a house might. It won’t necessarily be there forever and you certainly can’t stick it in your pocket to keep it safe from intruders, but when you’re there you’re there.