LOVE? How Do I Know When I Love Someone?
It took me a long time to understand what love meant to me. I reflect on whose safety and happiness I would put before my own, and what that tells me.
LOVE?
LOVE? How Do I Know When I Love Someone?
It took me a long time to understand what I meant when I said I loved someone. I could feel strongly drawn to a person, enjoy their company, or miss them when they were away. All of that told me how much they mattered to me. But I still wanted to know what it meant for me to love them.
The answer that finally made sense to me was this: I can say I love someone when their security and satisfaction matter so much to me that I am willing to put them ahead of my own. Their safety matters to me even when protecting it costs me something. Their happiness matters even when what makes them happy is different from what I would have chosen for them.
That gave me a question I could ask myself: If it came to it, would I give up my life to protect this person? If I can honestly answer yes, I recognise that as love in its deepest sense. I hope never to face that choice, and I cannot know with certainty how I would act in such a moment. Still, asking the question tells me something about the place that person holds in my life.
Can I love more than one person in this way? I believe I can. I may still have to decide whose need comes first when two people need me at the same time. A child who cannot manage without my help may need me before an adult who can wait. That decision tells me whose need comes first in that moment. It need not tell me whom I love more. Even so, I think the number of people I could love in this deepest sense would be small. I can care about many people, but I do not form a bond of that depth easily.
The nature of love also changes with the relationship. The love between life partners is different from the love between a parent and a child, between siblings, or between close friends. I can also speak of loving an idea, an institution, or a country. In those cases, the word may describe a deep attachment to what something stands for. If I am willing to sacrifice for it, I still have to ask who will bear that sacrifice. I can choose to give something up myself; I should be careful about expecting the people I love to give it up with me.
Most days, love asks much less of me than giving up my life. It may ask me to listen when I would rather speak, to change a plan because someone needs me, or to respect a decision I would not have made myself. The hardest question helps me understand how deeply I love. The ordinary choices show me what I do with that love.
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