What About Love?

Valentine’s Day is a time of love, a time when people express their love to one another. It can also sometimes be when they reflect on the relationship they have or would like to have. A common question people often ask themselves is “how much am I loved in a relationship?” But is this a useful question? Following are two little stories that that offer some perspective.

A long time ago I was in a relationship. My partner wanted to get married. It occurred to me that he was rushing us into marriage, but being young and inexperienced, I went along anyways. It felt good to be chased and loved. I was 24 when we got married. After that, I felt very confused. It was as if he didn’t love me as who I was, but he married me because he needed a wife, and I was conveniently available.

We got divorced when I was 26.

Today, if I could meet that younger self of mine, and if there were anything I could share with her, I’d ask her, “Why did you marry him? How much did you love him?”

When we consider whether to marry someone using as a measure how much that person loves us, it’s very confusing. It’s confusing because it’s fundamentally unknowable. We can hear what that person says in the moment they say it; but what they say and what we hear can be very different. Things get lost in the interpretation because the same words can mean different things for different people, let alone that “how much” may be constantly changing, as the other person is also taking measure of how much you put into the relationship.

Who loves whom more?

There is no solid foundation to build your “love relationship” on, when you stay with a person because that person loves you very much.

The only thing that is knowable in a relationship is how much you love that person.

A few years ago, I was working with a client I’ll refer to as Cindy. Towards the end of our Past Life Regression session, Cindy started to talk about “true family”. As that past life body died, and the spirit was guided to the light by a spiritual helper, she was momentarily alone, and she came up with this desire of finding her “true family”. I thought she meant her soul family or soul group, and thought that that would be a great segue into a Life Between Lives session, which Cindy had expressed interest in. So I gave her suggestions to come back to the same light-filled space when I counted from 10 to 0 the next time we work together.

Cindy came back for the next session. And I proceeded to count from 10 to 0, indicating for her to go back to her “true family”. To my surprise, Cindy’s inner mind literally took us to a house, bright, clean, and modern. She’s standing in a kitchen. There’s another man working in the kitchen. Two children were running around in the living room.

“They are my step children. I like them very much.” Cindy said.

It took me a while to realize that Cindy obviously hadn’t gone to an in-between lives state, and that she didn’t just go to another past life, but she took the cue of “true family” and went to a future moment in this life as Cindy.

At the time when we worked together, Cindy was married with Chris, and I knew that the man in the kitchen was not Chris. In previous sessions, we had already talked about Chris. Cindy was feeling disconnected from him, even though she would always couch her descriptions about their life together in language stating that she’d never leave him.

We went on with our session.

Cindy could describe in details the carpet and the furniture. She was happy with the man, who treated her as precious, and who always encouraged her to pursue her art. In that “future” scene Cindy stayed at home, taking care of the two stepchildren and painting, while her partner worked.

Cindy appeared to me, consciously and subconsciously, very artistic, but she didn’t think she’d be good enough to do art.

Moving along in our session, with the help of this partner, Cindy had her first show in an art gallery. She is naturally shy, but she managed to make a speech there. Cindy also met some of her partner’s friends there.

It was through looking into the eyes of her partner’s friends that Cindy found they might be judging her, or him. As if they told her one way or another that her partner had many girlfriends before. And Cindy believed what they were perceiving was that she would be just another “girlfriend”.

Cindy started to doubt her partner’s motives.

I was witnessing a typical moment of “Does he really love me as he says? How much does he love me? Am I making a fool of myself?”

So I asked Cindy, still in trance, “Do you love him? Have you ever loved him?”

“Yes I do.”

“Then that is the answer. You are together with him because you love him.”

“But how long does it last?”

“It lasts as long or as short as it lasts.”

“I shouldn’t waste my time if it doesn’t last.”

“You cannot waste time. Whatever you do, or whatever you don’t do, time goes. But a time that you are in love is a time well spent.”

And I asked Cindy, when the inner feeling and the outer thoughts are in conflict, “Where do you turn? And where would you rather turn?”

Cindy was having a moment of silence.

I instructed Cindy to turn inward, as outer thoughts do not produce clarity, but we can go with the inner feelings, always…

It took Cindy a while. Eventually, towards the end of our session, Cindy gradually opened her eyes. Upon that, Cindy told me, “I know what to do now, and what to do with my husband Chris. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not scared.”

I looked at Cindy with a smile, “Love is an adventure, is it not?”