Love is selflessness

I have been thinking a lot about love today. What is love? How is it defined? How do you know if you are truly loved by someone? How do you know if you truly love another person? I have read the 5 love languages book several times over. I think there is a lot to say for his perspective on love, but for some reason it doesn't feel completely accurate to me. It is still missing something. The five love languages are Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Physical Touch, Quality time and Acts of service. I grew up completely not understanding how any soul could possibly feel loved by acts of service. How does mowing the lawn translate into love? Dishes? Laundry? Any of it? It seemed like the most unromantic of all of the languages to me. Today I was thinking about that a lot. Acts of service really has grown on me exponentially throughout the last 4-5 years, yet up until tonight I still held on to a piece of my past feelings. It's great and all, but not the way I prefer to feel love.

 

Not anymore. I have been converted and I want to tell you why. True Love is selflessness. When you really love someone you want what is best for them. You want to make them happy. Your thoughts change from self centered to centered on that person. Their needs become more important to you than your own needs. Their dreams become your dreams because you want to see the look on their face when they realize their dreams. Love has been made over in this world of ours to look like something other than what it should be. All of the movies and magazines and articles scream at us that Love is all about sex. They tell us that looks should be the primary factor in love. Physical touch is made to be the primary love language. Movies often show the physical progression of a relationship without much in the way of the emotional and cognitive sides. But that's just the thing. Physical touch isn't a bad thing, but it comes back to one basic principle. Love is selfless. If there is any other motive, it becomes lust or manipulation. Not love. Affection is important in a relationship. It is essential in a healthy relationship, but it the key is motive. The minute our physical relationship is about what it does for me instead of for you it has turned from lust to love. The same principle is found in all of the languages. They can be a show of love or a manipulation depending on the motive behind them. The words "I love you," for example, when said while a spouse is neglecting his or her companion are not an expression of love. They are a manipulation that says instead, "I know that I am spending my time on something or someone other than you, and I don't want you to be mad at me, but I don't want to put you first, so I will use these words to try to placate you." Yet those same words when said by a spouse who has just cleaned up the puke of their pregnant sweetheart carry more weight. They say, "You are my companion through better or worse, and though throw up is nasty and makes me feel queasy, you need me right now and I will be here to take care of you because you mean the world to me." The same principle can be carried through all of the languages.

 

This leads me to conclude that the difference is all in the motive. It is in the selflessness. I now proudly say that my primary Love language is Acts of service. What is there that is more romantic than that? I have been that wife who carries more than her fair share of the work load in the household. Dishes need to be done. Laundry needs to be done. Bathrooms need to be cleaned. The lawn needs to be mowed. The list is never ending. A household has chores that have to be done. I think when I was younger I didn't understand that. The reason must have been that I didn't know what it takes to keep up a house. How can you truly appreciate all that your mother and father do for you when you've never had to do what they do yourself? After having been in a marriage that required me to do all of that, I fully appreciate the work load. Now that I have the privilege to live with my parents I get the unique opportunity to watch my parents again as role models from the perspective of an adult. I see the kind and tender things they do for each other and for me and my babies and it is enough that it brings tears to my eyes. The trash doesn't walk itself out the door, yet somehow, it makes it out and every time it goes out that I wasn't  the one who had to take it I recognize that it is someone in my home screaming their love to me. Someone, whether it was my mom, my dad or my brother, someone loved me and this family enough that they put our collective needs before their own. Before sitting down and relaxing they took the trash out. There is nothing that means more. Why? it's not a matter of worldly romance. It is a matter of one soul placing the needs of another soul above their own. A husband going to work 40-50 hours every week to put food on her table and a roof over her head. A wife taking the hours to prepare his favorite meal at 5:30 PM sharp. The husband who nearly kills himself during the week with his workload who then uses his Saturday to mow the lawn instead of go golfing. The mother that stays up all night with a sick baby so the husband can function at work. The wife who goes stir crazy in the house all day without a car so that her husband can use it to go to work. Examples could go on and on. These people making sacrifices of themselves because they have MADE THE CHOICE to actively love their spouse by serving them. There is nothing more romantic to me than that, Than the active choice to selflessly love and serve another person. So yes, Acts of Service is my primary Love language. I think it always has been, I just never understood it before. I still love and appreciate all of the others. After all, who doesn't appreciate any gesture that says, "I was thinking of you, so I bought you your favorite treat/took the afternoon off so we could go fishing together/wrote you a love letter/gave you a foot and back massage?"

 

I have been so scared of the idea of being in a relationship again. I think this understanding ties right in to that. I think I was scared because nearly all of my dating/marriage relationships have been with men, or rather boys, who romanced with their own interests at heart. I think at times I probably had my own interest at heart as well. But as I am contemplating this true definition of love I realize that I DO know how to love in that complete and total selfless way. I realize also that if I found a man who loved me by caring for my interest needs above his own, I wouldn't have an ounce of fear in being with him forever and a day.

 

That is the man I am looking for. That is the relationship I am looking for. That is the self that I am striving to become. So how to proceed? Work to become as selfless as possible so when Prince Selfless himself comes along he sees a mirror of himself in that way in me. Ready. Set. Go.

 

 

 

Quotes that fit:

"Being in love isn't a feeling. It is a choice. It is an action. It is a habit." -Unknown

"Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense. It is not resentful." -A Walk to Remember