What is Deep Love? This is a topic that swirls in and out of my life frequently and something I seem to share the same idealisms about with my close friends and family, even when we don’t agree on anything else.

Deep Love to me is a delicate, recycling, harmonious balance of respecting -by being truthful- to yourself and a consistently chosen action to respect -by accepting truth- from another human,… and loving one another through all these truths and into greater truths, together.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. — Lao Tzu

I remember a time when I didn’t deeply love myself sufficiently enough to understand how to give that kind of love away. I remember the first time I felt deep love, also. Even if I don’t remember whether or not I knew what it was at the time. It didn’t feel like supposed romantic love and it wasn’t something I sought out or forced. It just washed over me like a wave and left me wondering how I could feel so fundamentally connected to and emotionally involved with one person. I had recently become great at and was beginning to enjoy dating more than one person at a time, so I didn’t know how this was possible. I only knew that I wanted to keep telling them everything about myself and I knew that I wanted to know everything about them. I wanted to know the truth of their life and all the reasons they had to blame for their imperfect appropriate-for-me self. I remember thinking that it was unexplainable — the initial feeling of sparks complimented by serendipity, as people often describe Deep Love to be. I knew I would always love this person and it didn’t matter if it was ever going to be romantic or play out like a Disney Movie. Deep Love is enough. It makes almost every other circumstance disappear. Experiencing this kind of love for the first time was synchronistically when my standards changed. People are always telling other people not to “settle” and this is the reason why, I felt.

I’ve had hours of conversation revolving around this topic with a variety of folks from all walks of life: friends, strangers at bars, clients, family members and mentors,…. and we all agree on one universal thing: Deep Love is truth. That’s it.

The thing about truth is that it’s scary. Truth is vulnerable. Truth is the only thing that’s real, so what if your reality isn’t good enough for someone else? I personally think this is why people lie to those who they claim to love. They are scared that the person won’t be able to love who they really are or won’t, even if they are able to. This is superficial love not yet evolved. Deep Love is fundamentally equal in truths.

Then there are those people who once shared Deep Love for a period of time until it faded because of infidelity, dishonesty or withdrawal — which I’ve experienced first hand (not sadly though, as I also believe that in order to evolve and sincerely appreciate truth, which is the same as Deep Love in this case, you sometimes must know what the very opposite feels like,… as to file that feeling away in your magical intuition). Deep Love that is tainted is not Deep Love anymore, as it requires equal truths to get back to the deeper layers.

The fear of rejection, the dishonesty, the infidelity. This is the biggest catch 22 of aspiring for Deep Love. I don’t think you can get somewhere worth being, or experience Deep Love, by not being able to admit where you’ve been or where you go — emotionally, physically, mentally. One of the biggest misconceptions about Deep Love is that you “should” or “shouldn’t” feel, think, or act in a certain manner to achieve it. Your truths need to be owned first,… by you.

By not exposing the truth or by replacing the truth with lies, an individual is not sincerely loving deeply and will not receive the kind of love they crave deeply. Deep love. That’s what most of us want, right? I’d like to believe so.

Other people I’ve met, who I’ve chosen to not keep close because of this, are okay with superficial love. Selfish love. Give and take, give and take, give and take,… as if their relationships are being recorded on a secret scoreboard that both of them gaze up at every chance they get or when it starts feeling unfair or one sided.

I think Deep Love differs in that it never feels unstable. This is the beauty of consistent effort, or ‘work’. Insecurities about whether the relationship is equal go away because you both know your truest truths, and you’ve chosen to respect each other’s truths and keep loving and keep loving and keep loving, regardless of them.

Deep Love is the unique ability two people have to consistently recognize the rhythmic beauty in each other, regardless of all singular, common and universal truths.

So what’s the point of Deep Love? Why would you ever want something or someone that requires so much consistent effort to remain truthful to and vise versa?

Well, why wouldn’t you? It’s probably one of those things that gets easier with practice anyways.

I think this is the only kind of love that can grow and create and last — the kind of love that you cannot swipe left to. The undeniable factor that Deep Love breeds is what sets it apart from flings, temporary trysts or random affairs. I think this is the point that our generation’s hyper-aggressive, human-disposing, technology-centered and over-all rushed dating scene is missing as a whole. If you want something real and deep and meaningful, you’re going to have to work, and primarily on yourself. To know your truths > To succeed fear > To tell your truths> To Love Deeply > To finally welcome Deep Love with an open heart.