True Love Doesn't Need

The smile of a loved one. Their laugh. Their embrace. All bring about a sensation of warmth we receive in their presence. This is the reflection and refraction of the essential energy of love. It fills our bellies with warmth and purpose, and can just as easily engulf our minds with worry, responsibility, and judgment. We often confuse love with expectation in simple human relationships, feeling entitled to certain care or appreciation. We unknowingly attach our love to some lived experience we believe we deserve because we offered that love in the first place. These critiques are a normal movement of the mind, but they offer excellent opportunities to see through our illusions about love and relationship.

Just the other day, I felt this tangle of love and expectation with my partner. I was out with my son, delayed getting home. We had plans to watch a family movie, but time was getting tight, it was getting late. Driving home, I secretly thought, I hope she has started dinner, often something I do in our relationship. I did not communicate this desire in any way, other than telepathy of course.

When I walked into the house, I saw the kitchen empty and my heart sank. I found her in the bathroom, taking a shower, and I felt betrayed.

I am chuckling as I write this. Betrayed. Really? But yes, that was the emotion in the moment. The mind can be a silly prick.

Thankfully, even if a bit late, I recognized my story, my illusion, my ridiculous expectation, and the judgment I placed not only on her but on myself for not anticipating her needs, coupled with the reverse expectation that she should anticipate mine.

And that is the core of it. In relationship, there are often countless unspoken expectations. When we offer love, it is so easy to expect a return on our investment. A need, unsaid but felt, that it be reciprocated in some specific way. But that is not love. That is the human experience confounding the essence of love with the complexity and unspoken terms of interaction.

The illusion is the belief that love requires reciprocation. That any terms or conditions must be placed on love for it to exist. And that is simply not true.

In my experience, love is more like a core energy of being, a warmth from deep within that we can open at any moment to another person, place, thing, moment, or experience. It is pure and soft, connecting us all beneath the cover of human complexity and masking.

Deeper than romance or responsibility.
Before lust or language.
Love is the opening of our true self to others,
a vulnerable, open-ended wish without outcome.

True love does not need reciprocation.
True love does not require reflection.
It is the beginning, happening over and over again.

Can you see where in your life you have allowed love to become contingent? Where expectations have seeped into the release of your core energy? By offering love unconditionally, we free our loved ones from the chains of conditional love, and we free ourselves from the self-judgment and criticism of how their love is, or is not, returned.

Can you see the exponential effects of releasing love without keeping score?

It is infinite.