Bonding in Love
Let’s think about the power of love to change us into better people.
When people fall in love, whether instantly or slowly, it is always a response to other preceding actions and events.
It might be a response to our circumstances and needs.
It could be a hungering and thirsting for a relationship to take us out of the problems in our lives.
Nothing wrong with this — if it works out, but it’s a bit troubling if there isn’t something more to the forming relationship than meeting basic needs.
That isn’t how bonding in love really works, but it also doesn’t have a chance if there isn’t something both are looking for beyond the moment.
Whoever decides to pour themselves into love, if it is real and sincere, begins to unilaterally change and improve their priorities and behavior.
We see this all the time when someone begins to “clean up their act” all because they have a new “love interest.”
Most relationships are not this intense (thankfully) and they operate more as cooperative arrangements (friendships) where there is a transactional give and take.
Nothing wrong with this necessarily, unless it begins to creep into the soul-mate making kind of love.
My point is, true love cannot be conditional. It is a complete giving of each to the other, and it is exclusive.
It isn’t playing games. It is in this context of complete commitment that magic life transformations can happen.
Love is patient and kind;
love does not envy or boast;
it is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,
but rejoices with the truth.