Take Love To The Next Level
Here’s 5 simple steps to help guide you toward healthy love.
Step 1: Love Yourself (seriously)
Many people may believe that loving someone is about giving them anything and everything they could possibly want or need. This, however, could not be further from the truth.
Love, whether it is romantic, platonic, or familial, does not mean jumping whenever the person you love snaps their fingers. You can listen to their needs, but make your decisions based on your own feelings and well-being as well. This approach to love is called healthy attachment, where you exhibit confidence and self-respect in order to have a balanced relationship with your loved one.
The opposite of healthy attachment is an anxious attachment in which you would walk on eggshells and do anything to keep someone around. A good partner will love and encourage healthy attachment, while a bad and/or narcissistic partner would prefer for you to be anxiously attached because it makes it easier for them to manipulate and/or control you while you're in an insecure mental state.
Someone who loves you will want you to love yourself, and loving yourself will help you harbor more love so that you can then redirect it outwardly.
Step 2: Learn Them
What are their routines? Goals? Things they want to change or improve?
These are just a few of the many questions you can ask yourself about your loved one that, once answered, could lead you to ideas about ways you can provide for your loved one. Whether you help them with a one time scenario, or an ongoing thing, identifying gaps in their life and filling it is a great way to show your love for someone, and in turn improving the love within that relationship.
Be an asset.
Step 3: Learn Their Love Language(s)
I would suggest simply asking. However, this may be hard for some people so here’s an alternative option:
Experiment.
Try doing things that fall into each of the love language categories (quality time, words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service, gifts) and see what your loved one responds best to. Through this, you might just discover a new way to make them feel special.
Step 4: Communicate
Again, this may be difficult for some people but I highly suggest giving it a try. Asking your loved ones how they feel about the things you do/ have done, is an amazing way to see things from their perspective, which is important because we are all individuals who process things differently.
For example, something meant to be loving could be taken that way to one person, but taken as overbearing to someone else. Good communication can let you know if your acts of love are coming off wrong, or if it’s being received in the exact way that you intended.
Step 5: Be Yourself
Amazing love has to stem from authenticity. If you force or fake who you are to receive love, it will become extremely tiring, and you don’t want this.
You should want to receive love from people who love you for who you actually are, not because of superficial or selfish reasons.
Disclaimer
Although these tips are to “take your love to the next level” it is important to note that love is not something you can coax out of someone if they do not want to love you. Because of this, these tips should not be used to try and make someone love you. They should only be applied to enhance the love you’re giving out to someone who is willing to love you back.
Lastly, if you are reading this in an attempt to learn to be better to and/ or for someone, I want you to know that you deserve the world.
Happy loving, and thank you for reading!
