How to Love Better

How to Love Better

Chapter 1

How to Help Love Flow

Love is one of the clearest feelings a human being can experience, yet it is too enigmatic to place a concrete definition on. Like trying to grab water with your hand, the exact limits of love are rightfully elusive, but even so, we can get close to giving words to its depth.

Love is a powerful and liberating feeling—­one that radiates throughout your body. Love is a light that can shine brightly from within you even when you are alone, and it is also a light that intensifies between two people when the magnetic feeling between them has proven to be undeniable. Love is an energy that motivates you into action. It helps the mind see clearly and selflessly. Love helps you come in contact with your strength and courage. It helps you say the things you were once afraid to voice. Love can help you say no, and, equally, it can help you full-­heartedly say yes. It helps you clarify what is and is not important.

In the pantheon of human emotions, love stands as the most prized experience. It is something we seek actively and passively. We may seek it in the form of self-­love as a way to heal and free ourselves or in the form of a healthy and nourishing partnership. In either case, arriving at one of these forms of love provides a great level of rest, solace, and happiness to our being. All of the friendships and close relationships we pour energy and attention into are also included in the foundation of our lives. We are relational beings: We not only depend on others for survival but thrive in relationships with others.

Love is not something small. It is the energy of love that often changes lives and even history. Love has the power to break down walls and open doorways. It also has the power to preserve, create boundaries, and make tough calls. Love is deeply personal and highly situational. The way one person loves themselves can be totally different from how another activates self-­love in their life. The way one couple expresses love can be miles away from the next. Even though love can look different for everyone, it always has that warm feeling of safety and freedom when it is brought to life.

The purpose of this book is to deeply explore how love manifests in partnerships and to answer the question, “How can I love better?”

Where We Struggle and How We Rise

The deep truth is that most human beings do not arrive into a relationship unscathed from the ups and downs of life. From childhood to adulthood, life leaves its mark on your mind many times over, and these marks morph into patterns that are often coping mechanisms or defensive tactics you picked up while you were in survival mode. The hurt you have accumulated ultimately shapes the way you perceive reality and can even form walls that have to be broken down so you can fully love yourself and others.

To be able to love your partner well, a deep reckoning needs to happen where you realize that how you love and heal yourself has a direct connection to how you show up in your relationship. The relationship between you and yourself has a clear impact on the relationship between you and your partner. If you want to love your partner better, then you need to develop a two-pronged approach:

1. Improving your relationship with yourself by letting go of the heaviness that your mind carries

2. Working to outwardly shift your behaviors so they can be more conducive to a harmonious relationship

Love is not easy, and it is honestly a lot of work. Love is a powerful mirror where you cannot help but see yourself clearly; it will show you how you have grown, and it will show you in which direction you need to grow next. Being in a relationship is not about living in a constant stream of pleasure. Even the healthiest relationships will be full of ups and downs and unforeseen challenges. A relationship should certainly provide comfort, joy, and a sense of safety, but it should also become fuel for your evolution. Once you embrace your growth, the new harmony that starts flowing within you will help support the harmony in your relationship.

One of the biggest internal things to overcome so that love can flow better between two people is attachment. The human mind has a powerful drive to crave for things to exist in a manner that is to our liking, but sometimes this drive will turn an unproblematic desire into a strong attachment that has gathered so much mental tension that we feel upset when things diverge from what we initially imagined. The drive to set things up the way we like them can become controlling if it remains unchecked. Love is meant to support the feeling of freedom when in the presence of your partner, but attachment can squander that feeling when you demand things happen the way you want them to.

The key to harmony in a relationship is finding a balance between making sure that your genuine needs are met, and establishing clear and voluntary commitments that help support each other’s happiness. You both know that you cannot directly make the other happy because happiness is something that emerges from your personal mindset, but together you can create the conditions and environment where it is easier to feel joy and fulfillment in each other’s presence. A partnership can bring so much delight into your life, but only you can clarify your perspective so you can let joy in and experience happiness more often.

Establishing these commitments helps reduce attachment and confusion. Commitments are the application of honest and open communication so you both learn how to love each other well by voicing your needs. When you hear each other’s needs, you can then check in with yourselves and see what feels good to commit to. This lets you both show up in your relationship in a way that feels driven by your desire to love your partner well as opposed to feeling pressured by your partner to behave in a certain way.

Forcing, controlling, possessiveness, manipulation—­these are all variations of attachment. They are unmistakable blocks that stop love from flowing and they create pressure on a relationship in a way that eventually breaks the connection. Love is meant to uplift, a partnership is meant to nourish—­attachment does the opposite. It is a self-­centered approach to a relationship that can end something great before it even really begins.


If you think a relationship
is meant to be an escape
or that it should only be blissful,
then you’re missing the point.

Love is soft and nourishing,
but it is also hard and revealing.
It will show you the sides of
yourself that you need to work on.