What does love look like?

I posed a question on my Facebook page yesterday and was overwhelmed by the response.  The question was "What is real love? What does it look like? What does it feel like?"

I didn't expect a clear answer.  Philosophers and poets have been trying to define love for centuries, coming close, but never quite hitting the mark.  Why?  Because love looks, feels, sounds, smells and tastes different to every soul in the universe.  It can't be defined.  I know this.  So why, then, did I pose the question?  For several reasons, I guess.  Because sometimes people who aren't philosophers and poets can sometimes come up with better answers to the really tough questions and because I think I wanted some solidarity.  To know that there are some others out there who are just as lost as I am.

I was amazed at some of the beautiful answers I was given in response to a very difficult question...


Rachel Clemons Guarino It's like when you had your babies and there's a moment (however short lived) that you are overwhelmed, amazed, and surer then you've ever been about anything.. Embodied with devotion and love. I found my love two years ago and thinking about him is overwhelming to me.. Sometimes so charged I feel nauseous! It's the only thing I can compare it to is that moment a few days after having Lil just knowing my life and love is hers. It's bigger then me, it's the universe, it's magic. It's everything.



Candace Todd 

Real love is involuntary and unstoppable. It will find you when you least expect it. It will begin w/ only a spark and keep burning hotter and growing stronger! It's when you've learned every mistake someone has made, every flaw they have, and all your differences, and still think they're absolutely amazing! An addiction that completely consumes your heart, mind, and soul. The feelings you feel are genuine, unique, and above anything you've ever felt. It will make you go against anything you promised yourself, and change any plans you had. Your biggest desire is to do whatever it takes to keep it and protect it. It has no certain look, or description.... It doesn't have to because somehow ( that cant be explained ) you just know!

Loretta Lewis Real love is what you feel for that child you carried in your stomach and close to your heart for 9 months. It looks like that baby you hold for the first time, that toddler you chase after, that teenager you worry about and that young woman you give away to be loved by another person. It feels like your chest is going to explode with happiness, sadness, fear, and wonder everytime you think of your child, see your child, hold your child, leave your child.


Star Peimbert Like being ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!


Karen Allen Poole It feels like home! No matter where you are or what's going on around you. If that person is beside you, you are home! That goes for spouses, children, parents, who ever makes you feel like you are at home. ♥


Random Thoughts n' Lotsa Coffee Real love. It is knowing, without knowing, it is that fit, the melding of souls that can't be seen only felt. It is the feeling of a part of your soul becoming whole as it seamlessly fits with another. It is not work, there is no effort... it simple happens on a karmic level. It is the feeling of coming home, of finding some part of yourself that you didn't even realize it was missing until you find it. There is no question, there is no doubt. True real love simply, is. You hear it in a sigh, you see it in a gaze, you sense it while in its presence. Like air, it just simply is. It is the feeling of being whole. ~Jenn




Here's my problem though...These are all beautiful answers and I get them on an intellectual level, but on an emotional level, I draw a complete blank.  the only ones that come close are the ones about a mother's love.  That one I get.  I would maim, murder and destroy anyone who hurt my child and knew that in my core the moment the nurse handed her to me (and I don't even kill bugs).  But even that one only goes so far, because I am just waiting for the day that she realizes that I, in fact, did not hang the moon and that my kisses won't heal every hurt.  What happens when she figures out that mommy is a deeply flawed human being and she doesn't like me anymore?


I asked my very patient husband the same question.  I laughed at the answer he gave me, because I interpret it in a very different way.  He said that love is like a black hole.  You can't see it.  It's just there.  And it's huge and sweeps everything into it.  To be honest, I don't remember anything else he said because my brain got lost in my own version of that analogy.  I am a black hole for love.


I suck love in and it can't get out...it's lost forever.  No one knows what happens to it, it's just gone.  I don't know how to give it back.  I have this unexplained gravitational pull surrounding me, calling people in.  The smart ones get out before they get sucked in and lost forever.


And that right there, is why I am in therapy.  


I will say this about love... There is one way I know unconditional love exists and I feel it every day.  I think the only soul capable of truly unconditional love is a dog.    

What happens when she finds out I didn't hang the moon?