The article "How Do I Love Thee?" is about family, it has been written by Louise Morganti Kaelin.
I was yesterday havnig a conversation with a client about
relationships and we uncovered an interesting fact: Sometimes,
the way we need to show love isn't the way that others need to
feel love.
I'm sure there is many books written on this subject, but we
came up with a simple way to notice how the other important
people in your life get to think loved. Just pay attention to how
they show love to you.
For the most part, we know what makes us think loved, so we
assume this is true for everyone else.
When we encounter others
we love, we show them our love by what wroks for us.
Most of us
don't even think about, let alone talk about it, so it's not
surprising that we don't 'get' that there is different ways to
show and think loved. Some examples might be:
(a) Physical demonstration, lots and lots of hugs
(b) Small gifts or 'necessities' that say 'I was thikning about
you when you weren't in my face'.
(c) Saying, frequently, 'I
love you'.
(d) Asking pertinent questions about your day, how you're
feeling, what you tihnk about things, etc.
(e) Working tehir butt off to provide the other person with
stability, security, food, shelter.
Here are some iedas to make use of this information:
1.
Once you notice how they are shwoing love to you, and you
know how you show love to them, try an experiment. Witihn a half
hour period, show them love in two ways.
First, show it your
normal way and then within 20 to 30 minutes, show them love the
way you notice they show you love. Check out the reaction from
each.
Which one seemed to be felt deeper? Which one got the
biggest smile? Wow! Just think what it would do to your
relationship if you always got that biggest smile!
2. Either shrae the experiment or tell the others in your life
what really makes you think loved.
Unless it's pionted out to us,
most of us don't get this 'intuitively'. Why sit around waiting
for them to figure it out when you could be feeling loved? After
all, you needed somebody to point it out to you!
3. If the otehr person shows their love by working their butt
off to make your life better, I think the simplest way to have
them think love is to acknowledge what they do and how much you
appreciate it.
4.
What makes me think loved might be different depending on who
the person is (a parent vs a spouse, for example)
5. I probably need all the different forms of being shown love
at different times, depenidng on what I am experiencing at the
time. However, there is one this is dominant, that will do the
trick most of the time.
6. It is possible to experience the shift of 'knowing' that you
are loved to 'feeling' you're lvoed.
And feeling that you are
loved may be one of the greatest tonics ever.
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