Lean into Love

Platitudes about love and happiness make me shudder. Those uttering such statements imply they are easy to acquire. Love and happiness require thought and determination and, like most things, they take effort to achieve. Positive emotions may come naturally if you were fortunate enough to have parents who modeled them, but for many, they are obtained by setting goals that are reached by trial and error.

Emotions are difficult to understand. Many psychologists consider romantic love not to be an emotion at all. They call it a drive associated with feelings produced by activating neurons in the midbrain that secrete dopamine. Sound romantic? Rage, hate, and revenge fall into that category, though anger is considered an emotion. Whether a drive or emotion, it is buried within, and can be triggered in positive and negative ways that influence the meaning you give to life.

Negative emotions (and drives) are difficult to change. Directives that tell you to “Lean into love and love will lean into you,” or, “Have fun and you’ll be happy,” mean little to a person who is sad and has no idea how to make them happen. And, as most people know, happiness is not the same as contentment. Behind the directive is the implication that success is simply a matter of mind over matter.

During my short career as a mental health counselor, I spoke to a mother unable to control anger. She lashed out by shouting and slapping her young children and was brought to the attention of social services. Warned by a judge to control herself or have the kids taken away, she stared at him fearfully and hopelessly. She didn’t know how to stop the rage that welled up inside. The judge thought his harsh words would inspire the woman to change. She wanted to be kinder and hated being angry all the time, but his advice was difficult to follow as a single mom. She was stretched thin by poverty, exhausted by a manual job, and faced rowdy children the moment she arrived home. She was overwhelmed and her brain had stopped responding to reason. 

So, how do you help a stressed woman generate positive emotions? How does she go about turning anger into love? My client’s stress was alleviated with counseling and acquiring time-management skills. She childproofed her apartment and rearranged cabinets to get dangerous products away from little hands. She joined a babysitting co-op that gave her time away from children. Though it meant bringing other children into her apartment, they became playmates for her children, and reduced the burden of being constantly on call. She was advised to hug her children more, which she did, and eventually came to my office with a smile brightening her face.

Platitudes do not help a person who lost a loved one get over the fear of being hurt by loss. It doesn’t help someone find love in a pandemic. And, they can’t help you find happiness, though some may try by resorting to drugs or short term solutions. A vacation or a party might make you happy, but those moments are fleeting and don’t bring about a lasting sense of well being. 

What tools do you need in your arsenal to go from apathy to love, from depression to contentment? They are not as easily obtained as watching a blossom open on a magnolia tree. People can’t just turn a switch or wait for the season to change to find love or happiness. Whether by meditation and looking inward or by reaching out, action of some sort is required. 

Let’s focus on love. There are rewards to being loved and giving love. Love brings about feelings of well-being and fosters emotions that keeps us in good spirit. There are tangible health benefits such as lower blood pressure, reduced anxiety, improved immunity, less pain and longer life. Love is good medicine, but to have it you need to seek out positive relationships from a spouse, friend or even a pet, and avoid loneliness, a current day health hazard. If you don’t have love and want it in your life, it requires you to change your behavior.

Love is something you have to make yourself capable of giving and receiving. It is influenced by the way you deal with others and often starts by helping friends in need with their problems. Love evolves from appreciating someone else’s successes and being grateful to those who reach out to you. It means thinking good things about a person and acting in a way to make that individual feel comfortable. It can’t be demanded or preserved. It is the opposite of possessiveness.

Reaching out connects you to other people, provides stability and security, and removes fear of being alone. As relationships mature over time they have the chance of turning into loving ones. Doing good deeds tends to generate feelings of love. Doing them often, intensifies them and leads to a higher level of spiritual growth. The opposite is also true. Love won’t flow over a person filled with ego, anger and selfish tendencies, for negative emotions suppress the inner urge to love.

Love is a feeling that fills us with happiness and triggers emotions derived from an inner need to love. Sadly, the object of your love may not love you back. Irrespective of how the other person feels, the feeling of being in love resides in yourself alone. The object of your love can only be a facilitator to bring out the emotion that makes you happy. And, it cannot be taken in or felt unless you are open to it. But when you are, when you open your inner self, you feel light and joyful.

Love and happiness, like life, has ups and downs. They require adjusting to changing situations and taking them in stride. Doing so affects relationships to others and the quality of your life. It is a mistake to think that love is trouble and pain free. It is not. You can love and lose the object of your affection due to circumstances beyond your control, and unrequited love can hurt. Yet, learning to live with its problems, understanding differences that arise as relationships mature, making changes in life style, and becoming tolerant are skills that can be learned. They take us beyond physical attraction to something deeper, and provide a contentment that flows through the days to give life meaning.

References:

Murphy, J. (2020) health benefits of being in love, according to researchers. MDLinx. retrieved from https://www.mdlinx.com/article/health-benefits-of-being-in-love-according-to-researchers/73jp3DJFZypxPMMBf2aawt regard, B. (2015) 

What is Love? (No, Really. What is it?) Psychology Today. retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mysteries-love/201502/what-is-love-no-really-what-is-it

Cooper, A. (2018) The Emotions of Love-more than meets the eye. Drive Global. retrieved from https://thriveglobal.com/stories/the-emotions-of-love/#:~:text=Love%20is%20a%20feeling%20of,to%20love%20and%20be%20loved.