“Love shouldn’t be exhausting. It shouldn’t leave you feeling stressed out, less than and underappreciated. Love is supposed to be free, natural, a release from the monotony and routines of life. Love won’t leave you drained; it won’t leave you depressed, lost or distraught. Love is a healer, love is a friend, and love is a protector. Loving isn’t easy, it’s a challenge, but when it’s good, it’s a treasure. Real love won’t break you, it will build you. It will bring out the best in you.” ~ Rob Hill Sr.
.
Love is always free—it’s relationships that often become the cage.
Everywhere I look, I see dreams in the eyes of lovers and tears upon the faces of those who just don’t understand where things went wrong.
We fall into love and think it will somehow save us from ourselves—from who we are and from the insecurities we wear—all the while, projecting our weaknesses onto our partner, hoping they will heal what we have been unable (or unwilling) to do ourselves.
It seems that many of us forget that our partner is supposed to be our complement, not our redeemer.
Yet each time a relationship ends, most of us spend more time pointing fingers at each other than we do looking within, and realizing and owning what we could have done better. We fail to look in the mirror and see that (most usually) the reason our relationship fails is because of ourselves.
We enter into relationships to help us learn more about who we are and how we relate to others. We grow through our experiences in relationships, yet if we continually fail to absorb the lessons, then we will find ourselves going through the same type of experiences with different partners.
But every once in a while, it seems the stars collide, and we get it.
We understand where we went wrong, and we own our mistakes, our shortcomings and all of our fear-based projections. We finally see that who we were in past relationships isn’t who we truly are—yet, we wouldn’t have seen that if the other person hadn’t triggered that within us.
So, we can see all along that it wasn’t just them, but it was us too, and only when this realization happens can free love be manifested.
There’s a possibility that love can exist without borders or walls. It can exist without titles or expectations, and it can be free to travel on the wings of hope and adventure.
Love can simply be free.
Because when two people have learned their lessons in love, and sat with their darkness, fears and wounded inner child, the only thing left to do is piece it all together, so that they might become the people they were destined to be all along.
They will be able to choose each other, without possessing one another.
Because free love doesn’t have any rules, or at least not the kind of rules that those who judge their relationships by conventional standards would understand.
Instead of possession, there is freedom. Instead of boundaries and ill-fitting expectations, there are wings. Not just because one person requires them, but because each person desires them—knowing that the freer they both feel, the more possibilities may grow.
It seems that those who have a difficult time fitting into conventional society may gravitate toward this type of love more often, because what they are told they should strive for leaves them still feeling unfulfilled.
With this kind of love, it’s not about a relationship at all—it’s about what can be built for each person individually and the mutual parts that may overlap. A free love wants each person to be able to grow, change and succeed—and to find their way in this life, and also help support the other in doing that.
The difference is how these two people can affect each other for the better—and how they can simultaneously bring out the best in one another.
In order to truly support someone’s growth, we have to also separate our ego and our own vision for them, so as to not taint their process. This means we want them to grow; that is the goal—and so, if it means they grow away from us, then that is part of the process.
It also means that it may be that these two people will grow even closer together, and maybe in a nontraditional way—and this type of love is accepting of that progression as well.
Maybe there is something beyond love—some characteristic beyond simple togetherness that few achieve because they lack the vision to build something unique together.
Maybe some people are just meant to break the rules together.
Once two people have done the work on themselves, a different possibility of enjoying of shared moments comes into play. However, it only happens when each person can be upfront about their wants and needs, based in their own authentic experiences, and not the compilation of their shared experiences of hurt.
It’s simply about owning our sh*t enough, so we can stop expecting someone else to clean up our mess.
Love has many different flavors, and maybe not everyone craves a love that is free—but for those who have been through all 31 flavors and still not found their favorite, perhaps this is the reason why.
And maybe it’s not about how free someone else encourages us to be, but rather, how much we’ve been able to free ourselves—from expectations, from hurt, from the beliefs of others and from the disbelief that somehow we are unworthy of what it is that we want most.
So, perhaps it really just comes down to the fact that if we were born free, then there isn’t any way for us to settle for being caged by love.
~
Author: Kate Rose
Image: Instagram @penelopep81
Editor: Yoli Ramazzina
Read 3 Comments and Reply
Read 3 comments and reply