When do we feel better when we learn to love someone? Those are often the moments when we can and can be ourselves completely – with all our beautiful and perhaps less beautiful sides…
What do we look for in love relationships? A ‘rich relationship’, what does that mean? We want to be loved, known, and seen as we (actually) are.
Intimacy, trust, safety, and security are keywords. Many of us associate this with being ourselves, not having to pretend to be ‘better’ than you are.
The first step to learn to love is just “Be yourself with the other”
Being attentive, patient, not trying to send the other person your way of seeing your love as your property, as someone you can claim, that’s a way of ‘being in your relationship’. An attitude. You can (further) develop this attitude through practice.
The psychologist Erich Fromm wrote the book ‘The Art of Loving’ about this. He sees love not so much as something you bump into or what happens to you but as an art form. Love has to be practiced, learned. You have to be active yourself, build up fitness.
Shouldn’t you practice together with your partner? That would of course be very nice, but you can also start right away.
Practice giving
Are you convinced that your partner is not giving you your due? Then turn it around and try to give him or her what you think you lack: love, attention, appreciation, recognition, touch… Only then can it flow into you. Because everything you try to force on your partner can never reach you.
That attitude makes that impossible. This ‘practice in giving’ can initially feel very artificial or unnatural. But with that, you open yourself, or something in yourself so that what you desire can also flow into you.
Stop judging
Every once in a while, resolve: Today I’m not judging anyone, not my partner, myself, or anyone else. And all day long I don’t go along with my desire to ‘be right’. Not judging means: a ‘vacation from your ego‘, and that is the only real holiday there is.
Let go of fixed ideas
Try to let go of fixed ideas of ‘this is how it should be’ as much as possible. You free yourself from your ego. Let go of your fixed ideas about your partner (‘he/she is…’) and about yourself. That gives you both enormous freedom of movement.
Breakthrough automatisms
Big as well as small things that continue to bother you, can ‘pollute’ your relationship. Beware of holding grievances. You keep a list of costs and benefits in mind and you signal that you are deficient. And such an attitude to life will lead to more conflicts.
The first and most essential step in conflict and pain is to break through automatisms. See irritations in your relationship as a signal that it is time to ‘get out of your head’ and into your body, to become more aware of your feelings. Where do you feel the anger? Where is the pain?
Be open to love
Wondering how to learn to love your partner more also means: how can I open up more to the love that the other person wants to give me? In other words: how can I learn to receive better, to open up? Receive the attention and time your partner gives you, don’t take it carelessly. Get every present you get.
Be alone regularly
Make sure you regularly spend time alone and bring ‘quality’ into those moments. This is always of great importance whether you have a partner or not. A love affair is much more likely to succeed if you’ve learned how to feel good and calm when you’re alone. Then you don’t have to ‘get’ things from your loved one that he or she cannot give you anyway.
Take responsibility for your happiness
It is important to (continue to) take responsibility for happiness in life as part of the way you learn to love – and not to hold your partner responsible for it.
