Do the people who are close in your life know how much you love them? Do you tell them you love them? If you do, is that really enough? We can say words all day, but if our actions don’t speak love, is our love significant? Is it even real? When we speak of someone loving people, it should mean more than we’re attracted to them or we like some characteristic or feature they have. Beyond what appeals to ourselves, real love should involve something we give to the other person that is for their good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In our culture, we tend to use the word “love” for too many things besides human love. Often people will say things like, “I love this food,” “I love this car,” or “I love this show.” In this context, the meaning for “love” seems to be that the person really likes some features of the thing being discussed. I am convinced that people sometimes will also use “love” this way for people. A guy says to a girl, “I love you,” but his real meaning may be “I really like how you look” or “I like your personality a lot.” Perhaps, in those cases it would be more honest to just say it that way, rather than “I love you.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It may be important for us to make a clear distinction in our minds between “like” and “love.” If a person has features or characteristics that appeal to us, we can say, “I like you.” If that appeal is strong, then maybe we’d say, “I really like you” or “I like you a lot.” But when we step into the realm of love, let’s mean something higher than liking a lot. When we say, “I love you,” let’s mean that “I like you a lot,” but beyond that, “I am willing to sacrifice something of mine (time, energy, etc.) in order to provide things for you that are valuable.” I think another part of love that is real human love should be loyalty. Despite challenges and difficulties, we should still be loyal to someone we say we love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to love in marriage, there is also a sexual element. Within many cultures and religions, marriage is the boundary for sexual relations. Though some people speak as if love and sex are the same thing, they are definitely not. The moral place for sex is within a loving marriage. Human love is light and does not require sex to exist. But sex without love is some shade of darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would say that love should be a part of most any human relationship, whether it’s a marriage, a parent-child relationship, a friendship, teachers with students, and even business relationships between people. Of course, each of these would be at different levels or degrees of love, which would suggest different levels of “like” and different levels of sacrificing for the other person. Obviously, in family relationships, there should be some love. But even in a business relationship, there should be some level of acceptance of the other person and there is usually a contractual expectation to do something for the benefit of the other, which each person should be willing to do for the other. Without this minimal level of “love” in a business relationship; cheating, fraud, scams, and taking advantage are likely outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To go a little further, I believe a full description of real human love would include all of the following: being willing to help with needs, looking for and appreciating the good in the other person, forgiving hurts, self-restraint to avoid hurting the other person, willingly providing good things (tangible and\/or intangible) for the other person, honesty (not deceiving), and so on. Doing these things will bring light into the relationship and into the lives of each person involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to suggest taking some time to evaluate your relationships. Does this kind of real love exist in the relationship? Does each person contribute something to the relationship that benefits the other people involved? What can you do to improve anything that needs to be improved?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let’s make sure the light of love is in our relationships!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Do the people who are close in your life know how much you love them? Do you tell them you love them? If you do, is that really enough? We can say words all day, but if our actions don’t speak love, is our love significant? Is it even real? When we speak of someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,29,31,33,38,40,65,96,115,117,139,148,163,176,201],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-relationshiips","tag-acceptance","tag-business-relationship","tag-care","tag-caring","tag-child","tag-children","tag-family","tag-husband","tag-like","tag-love","tag-people","tag-relationship","tag-sacrifice","tag-spouse","tag-wife"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}