LOVE is...

Love is knowing your partner so well that you can push the right boundaries at the right times to give them what they need, even if they’d never admit to needing it.
 
Love is giving someone the space to be his or herself without the threat of you leaving.
 
Love is bigger than you are. You can invite love, but you cannot dictate how, when, and where love expresses itself. You can choose to surrender to love or not, but in the end, love strikes like lightning: unpredictable and irrefutable. You can even find yourself loving people you don't like at all. Love does not come with conditions, stipulations, addenda, or codes. Like the sun, love radiates independently of our fears and desires.

Love is inherently free. It cannot be bought, sold, or traded. You cannot make someone love you, nor can you prevent it — not for any amount of money. Love cannot be imprisoned, nor can it be legislated. Love is not a substance, not a commodity, not even a marketable power source. Love has no territory, no borders, no quantifiable mass or energy output.

One can buy sex partners and even marriage partners. Marriage is a matter for the law, for rules and courts and property rights. In the past, the marriage price, or dowry, and in the present, alimony and the pre-nuptial agreement, make it clear that marriage is all about contracts. But as we all know, marriages, whether arranged or not, may have little to do with love.

Sexual stimulation and gratification, whether by way of fingers, mouths, objects, fantasy play, whips and chains, or just plain intercourse, can certainly be bought and sold, not to mention used to sell other things. Whether sex should be for sale is another question entirely, but love itself cannot be sold.

One can buy loyalty, companionship, attention, and perhaps even compassion, but love itself cannot be bought. An orgasm can be bought, but love cannot. It comes, or not, by grace, of its own will and in its own timing, subject to no human's planning.

Love cannot be turned on as a reward. It cannot be turned off as a punishment. Only something else pretending to be love can be used as a lure, as a hook, for bait and switch, imitated, insinuated, but the real deal can never be delivered if it doesn't spring freely from the heart.

This doesn't mean that love allows destructive and abusive behaviors to go unchecked. Love speaks out for justice and protests when harm is being done. Love points out the consequences of hurting oneself or others. Love allows room for anger, grief, or pain to be expressed and released. But love does not threaten to withhold itself if it doesn't get what it wants. Love does not say, directly or indirectly, "If you are a bad boy, Mommy won't love you any more." Love does not say, "Daddy's little girl doesn't do that." Love does not say, "If you want to be loved, you must be nice," or "Do what I want," or "Never love anyone else," or "Promise you'll never leave me."

Love cares what becomes of you, because love knows that we are all interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and empathic. Love knows that the "other" is also oneself. This is the true nature of love, and love itself cannot be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law.


~ Deborah Anapol

Love is the constant moon in a sea of shooting stars of sexual attraction. It may wax and wane, but it is always there when you wake from the nightmares dreams have a tendency to become. We don't get to pick who we love. It's got not a damn thing to do with the brain, but everything to do with the heart and balls...er, ovaries.

~ just me (so far as I can recall)
 
Love is unappreciated by the ones who have and greatly desired for by the ones who don't.
 
Love is compromise
Love is sharing of ones self
Love is complicated
Love is scary
Love is purpose
Love is baring all
Love is heartbreaking
Love is life giving
Love is beautiful
 
Love is inexplicable.

Love is, at once; frustrating and blissful.

Love is the potion which turns your partner's annoying habits into endearing idiosyncrasies.
 
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