“Is it all right if I plant wet kisses on the surface of your flesh? Would you mind if I touched every inch of you?

How about if I counted all the curves of your body and made my own map of it—would that be okay? What if I found something about you that I loved so much that I could not let go of it? What if this turned out to be all of you?

Well, I have. Does this scare you? 

If unconditional love means that I adore every corner, thought and quirk of you, well, count me in. I now know what this means.”

I didn’t used to know. Historically, I was a fixer, a “helper,” I would claim.

I saw my position as assisting my partner to attain their higher self. Yuck. That role licked, and not in the good way. Who wants to be (a) counselor to their lover? Apparently, I did.

I have compassion for people who experience being in a relationship with a fixer. More so, I feel it for those of us who play that part: the person who feels they need to be in control because they are continually afraid they are not powerful enough.

This persona has begun to disappear from my experience…slowly. And I would like to accept a new title: lover.

That other woman, she was afraid. Petrified of loss and of not having value. Being the advice giver meant she didn’t have to show vulnerability. Always being in command had its drawbacks—a lack of intimacy with her heart.

I am sorry, dear.

I can’t say I am completely fearless now, but I am prepared to love.

We know when big things shift inside our own flesh. We feel it in our bones: a snap, click and screw. Our head becomes clear and clouds move aside.

We are prepared for the big stuff: l-o-v-e. We thought we were before, but we were only using dependency tactics to feel safe.

It isn’t until our backpack of relationship tools is full and our self-love hip sack has begun to burst that we get it. The time is here. We are really prepared to love.

Loving someone does not mean molding them into our idea of who they should be—oh right, we are used to this because it is what we did to ourselves for the past 20, 30, 40 years.

This love thing means we stop meddling. More and more we repeat the phrase, “let bygones be bygones,” and then we carry on, holding each other’s hand. To love unconditionally means we cease making war. We learn to stop attacking by allowing each other to be our mirror. To understand how hard we are on ourselves, we ask our partners how hard we have been on them.

This is what wakes us up.

We may be quite the bully—are we prepared to drop it?

We being by showing unconditional affection to each other—even when we don’t agree , and especially then (I am sure the Dalai Lama said a few things about that). We have to learn to show ourselves this love, first.

When we learn self acceptance, we finally have the credentials to ask truthfully, “can I love you?”

Love is not quantitative or qualitative, but just is.

Our love is not perfection. It is the courage to plant wet kisses even when we are scared, but possess the bravery to no longer be in command. It is not turning away when they do what we don’t want them to. It is the humbleness to be a lover and nothing more.

Our ability to love is less about them and more about how we treat ourselves.

When we are ready to stop attacking—even ourselves—we can we love every inch of you.

“Will you let me?

Why wouldn’t I want to love you? Your soft skin touching mine, another heart that bursts out truth and your separate head with its own, special thoughts. More often, it is the preciousness of your slow breath beside me, reminding me, my universe is shared.

It takes honesty to love you. Isn’t that what I have been working toward?

Love, when we actually understand how to give it, is gold. Let’s ask: would it be okay if I loved you?”

 

Author: Sarah Norrad

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Editor: Catherine Monkman; Travis May