What Being in Love Means

From someone who has zero experience of romance

Mahvera
Mahvera
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

One day, a good friend gave me a set of Singaporean playing cards that aim to be played within a family. Each card basically consists of three questions that can be asked by one player to another. They also have the difficulty range, so in each card we can find: 1) a trivial-easy question, 2) needs a more descriptive answer, and 3) a deep self-reflection question that would reveal someone’s views or opinion.

I played the card with a group of friend, and we found a question that was interesting enough to be answered by all the group, not only the one who got the turn. When I played the card with another person, that card came again and we also talked about that privately on a separate occasion. It was “What is being in love means for you?”

Let’s say this post is a benchmarking study, I’ll try to remember and record other people’s perspective on what ‘love’ means for them, and finally define what it is for me — because apparently, I haven’t found a comprehensive definition that can capture all my thoughts about what it is.

So those are how they said about that:

Love is giving and helping.

One of my friend admitted that when she is in love, she always want to give and help her loved one. It suddenly reminds me of five love language, which includes act of service. I am pretty sure that act of service is the primary love language that she has.

Love is when you can grow together, without too many interventions that violate each other’s privacy.

Of course being in love that doesn’t improve your wellness is nonsense, but she clearly draw line for privacy purposes, that someone still need to be able to define their own life and not to be too intervened by their loved one.

Love is a mutual and reciprocal act to each other.

When you don’t expect anything in return, it’ll just be the same like ‘friend’, that was how it is said. Love is mutual and reciprocal act, specifically when you treat someone in a special way, when you’re attentive, etc.

Love is going extra miles.

It’s doing things you don’t usually do to your friends, because you truly care and wants your loved one to be happy.

Those are how love means from people around me.


How about what being in love means for me?

I ever said, love is when you agreed to grow each other together, and be the better version of each other during the journey of loving each other. I also ever said that love is about encouragement and empowerment, because we usually open up our deepest vulnerability to a significant other. Love means something that makes you feel alive. Somehow I also think that love means compromise.

To put it into general context, I think I’d go with one sentence how love is defined for me:

Love is a learning journey of adjusting our ego.

Adjusting our ego, because we honestly admitted that life is indeed happier with our significant other around. Adjusting our ego, because we know somehow, their happiness is our happiness too, that’s why we want to give anything in our love language — words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, or act of service.

Adjusting our ego, because we need to be ready of receiving feedback, since they will be the one who knows us very well, and be exposed to our vulnerability and weakness — as the first step of growing up each other together. Adjusting our ego, because things are not as simple as tit for tat. Adjusting our ego, because both of the couple are different individual that are shaped with different experiences, so it is important to have deep understanding to each other and compromise when necessary.

Adjusting our ego, but not suddenly lost it to the hand of someone we love, until we forget our worth and let them 100% define how our life should be. Adjusting our ego, to know the limitation of each other and be okay to communicate about it. Adjusting our ego — as what someone ever said when he describes the component of good marriage — by treating our loved one not by the way we want to be treated, but by the way they want to be treated.

Adjusting the ego — by realizing life is easier to be lived alone, but is more meaningful to be lived together.

Mahvera

Written by

Mahvera

Writing is the way I capture thoughts and emotions. Afterall, those make us a human.

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