Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.Tom Robbins
Love can seem like a difficult thing. The expectations, the anticipation, the hopes, the vulnerability. All of these can be met with disappointment and disillusion, causing heartbreak.
This is the great misconception about love: That it entitles us to own someone — body, heart and mind. That isn't what love is. The pursuit of ownership over someone only creates suffering. Ultimately, it can even create a mental and emotional prison that persists long after the relationship is over.
Love isn't ownership.
The nature of love is to simply be, of its own accord. To radiate outward, to find connection, to be unconditional. To be free.
We start creating a tangled mess when we begin to impose our own fears and insecurities on someone else in the name of love. We want someone to be a certain way, to behave in a certain way, and we even want them to think in a certain way. There is nothing rational or sane about that. However, our culture is deeply rooted in the idea that is what love should be.
Our fears and insecurities can be useful indicators, showing us where some of our most profound work lies. Attempting to bury them in a relationship may seem romantic, but this is a delusion. They will live on, burning and smoldering, and eventually they will resurface. Unfortunately, this process often involves a good deal of pain and suffering for everyone involved.
True love begins in You. It becomes unconditional in You. Then, and only then, can it radiate outward freely and unconditionally. Your sense of completeness comes from the realization of your own worth — not from someone else. To put the responsibility of completing you upon someone else is a tremendous and dangerous burden.
When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.Tom Robbins
What if we let the work of reconciling our fears and insecurities point us inward rather than outward? What if we let that work be our own work, and not pass it onto the one(s) we love?
What if we agree to love with reckless presence and wild freedom? Without timelines or ownership? Without rules or the expectation of merging into some kind of single entity?
What if instead of completing each other, we give each other the honor of enhancing our lives with beauty, richness and the kind of sparks that only come from iron sharpening iron?
Perhaps our most beautiful experience of relationship will be when we agree: My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.