Rather than trying to hold it captive.

Love is not supposed to hurt

If it hurts, something somewhere is off and needs to be reconsidered.

When you are in love with someone, everything that you see is colored by that love –including your relationship with that person.

If your love is hurting you, something is wrong.

If this is the only thing you’ve ever known, you accept the hurt as part of “being in love” or “all couples fight”.

I don’t blame you. Because, how are you supposed to tell the difference?

You even say, convinced, “all relationships take work, so the hurt is part of the work.”

Sure relationships do need work for their survival and development — but overall, the good must always outbalance the bad.

Everything, everything we love is free

“Anything that we hold tightly, we lose. Real love is the one that sets us free. That supports us to be the best, fullest possible version of ourselves.”

What you push will push you back

Have you ever tried to hold a butterfly on your hand — not with open palms but with a tight fist? 

You can’t. Technically you can but you will kill the beautiful creature if you hold it captive.

Love is the same way.

Love wholeheartedly. But without pushing or manipulating a certain outcome.

Trying to push something has a bad intent. It doesn’t protect you. It diminishes you.

Do not feed your love by plotting, planning the frantic hope that this love will stay forever, and the millions of expectations and the frenzy of your love.

By not pushing, you will be better for having him/her in your life.

One of the lessons I have had to learn over and over again is that I must not hold anything that I love tightly.

I cannot love when I am pushing. I cannot love when I am taking away the oxygen from the thing I love.

Whenever someone shows his/her love this way, I wonder why we hold something we love with a tight fist.

We are killing the very thing that we hold dear.

Why? Why? Why?

As such, the question becomes

“Why do we hold anything we love with a tight fist?”

To me — both you and your partner have equal power

I don’t remember the name of the book but I have read years ago in a book that a person who is loved has more power than the person who loves him/her. I understand why the author said such a thing. I see it in my surroundings. She knows that he loves her very much and so she waits for him to do her bidding. All the time.

This is not love for me. There is a word for it — manipulation.

Here is what a relationship means to me.

I am my own person. So is he. I have my own needs. So does he. Sharing my happiness with him makes me happy. I don’t want my love to be co-dependent. It’s never “the two of us are one.”

I know I don’t need him, and he doesn’t need me. But it is awesome to have him around.

To me, if at any point in my relationship the word “power” is mentioned, I say it doesn’t have a home in it.

If in our relationship we give any thought at all to who had more power or less power, we must reconsider its entire construction.

Remember the butterfly on your hand. If you try to hold it with a clenched fist you are showing your power over it — thus killing the thing you love.

If at any stage in our relationship the notion of power is mentioned, it is time to disassemble our relationship brick by brick and begin again.

Related Link: Love Is Not A Quid Pro Quo

To your inspirations,

Banchi