What is love

Love is a word we live to understand, walking our paths we plead to comprehend. Our eyes will search and our ears will listen, for what we hope we will find bliss in,” taken from my poem entitled “Learning Lessons.”

Movies and fairytales have been stereotyping love for centuries with scenarios such as:

“As the Princess awoke from the gentle lips of her Prince Charming, it was love first at first sight…”

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Into the Woods” is a musical that intertwines the plots of several Brothers Grimm fairytales and flows them further to explore the consequences of the characters’ wishes and quests. The two princes in the story get bored of their marriages to princesses Cinderella and Rapunzel, and then lust after Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. It gives an ironic feeling to happily ever after, doesn’t it?

Love can be distinguished between two realms: romantic love and universal love. Romantic love is the essence of inner feelings, while universal love has no boundaries and it is conscious and loving with total harmony. There is love between a couple, love and mutual respect for family members and friends and there is love for the world around us, shown by something as simple as holding a door open for a complete stranger at the local coffee shop.

Margit Herburger is a body-centered psychotherapist, whose goal is to help her clients find their true potential so they l can lead lives worth celebrating. Her treatment approach includes family systems therapy and family/marital therapy. She helps sort through relationship issues, both romantic and mutual loving respect between family members, so that love can be as natural as it is meant to be. In this article Herburger helps explain what love is from a psychological mindset.

What is love at first sight?

Love at first sight can be a healthy opportunity to heal. Herburger says, “Someone’s soul sees a part of your soul that is so beautiful. It’s the loving part of one’s spirit. And the beautiful soul attraction can also be an opportunity to heal. It can be very tricky to fall in love for the right reasons.”

If falling in love provides us an opportunity to heal, then why do people pick certain partners and end up having to deal with the same issues relationship after relationship?

“It’s like the person has unfinished business in themselves, so they have a particular pattern (or archetype) to eliminate,” explains Herburger. “In an extreme case, some women choose abusive men because they are familiar with abusive behaviour, either within their families or other relationships.

“Unless we’ve done the work and we know our patterns, very often people will mistakenly think they are in love. I think we choose love depending on our level of awareness, which is an energetic connection. The more awareness we have, we understand our patterns and love ourselves.”

What is universal love?

“The word love for me means openness,” says Herbuger. “Love is appreciation for what is. It’s a totally free feeling. It’s knowing I don’t have to change no matter where I am.

“Love is the appreciation of everything around us, including a person or partner. Whoever is in my inner circle of love, however they show up, is the best they have for me in the moment and there is no judgment. It requires us to have our ego out of the way.”

In family relationships love doesn’t have a percentage, although Herburger has found with select clients that parents often want their kids to choose sides and love one over the other.

“Love is undividable. Your mom can’t demand you love her 100 per cent and only love your dad 10 per cent.”

What is true love?

We must be in love with ourselves before we can truly be in love with another person. This takes the main ingredient: To be able to truly be yourself, which means loving yourself.

“If you’re not able to love yourself, you’re asking the partner you choose to love yourself for you,” Herburger explains. “That’s too much to ask from a partner and it builds resentment.”

You can’t allow your partner to also be your father or mother, so someone loves you an extra amount, where you aren’t providing that for yourself.

“If you’re able to love yourself, this allows your partner to love you and not have to rescue you,” adds Herburger.