It was Valentine’s Day yesterday. In the eyes of the world, it may be considered that I have had the worst day of my life.
I had a disagreement with my partner which lasted for six hours. We did not just ignore each other but rather, we continuously communicated throughout these six hours almost non-stop, except for a brief period where we bought food, cooked and ate dinner at almost midnight!
Everything was so imperfect and completely in contrast to the picture-perfect images that were bombarding us all around on this day of love. We did not give each other gifts, we did not have a special dinner; there was no sweet photo of us together. We were in disagreement but the truth was, I have never felt a love so true.
Why would I say that?
In our commitment to get to the heart of the matter of this argument we dealt with many different topics, such as the consciousness relating to genders, money, doubt, insecurity, judgement, imposition, brotherhood etc., to get to the core issues of responsibility, attachment and need. That the truth is, we know the both of us are more than how we have chosen to live. So we got to feel what that was like. In the process, we received all of our honesty from feeling genuine frustration and stress, insecurity and reactions. In effect, we blatantly received all of our patterns and their consequences and during this, I felt a point of clarity of choice.
At that point, I also felt the deep touch of my partner who bared his vulnerability and threw away his protection to tell me how he was feeling. We received no niceness and gave none: we received no ‘holding back’ and gave none. It was the deepest vulnerability we have ever offered to each other.
Throughout most of our night, I observed myself. My movements also testified that no matter what, through thick and thin, I will always be by our side. Whenever I felt like protecting myself and wanting to cross my legs, I opened them again. I made sure I felt warm. I did not shout but my tone and manner was firm. I looked my partner in the eye. I sat beside him. We went to buy food together and ate our light dinner together. And I observed my partner’s movements changing from frustration to patience. We came to a mutual understanding of not needing the other to change, but everything had already changed.
We did not have any sweet words or gestures. We went to bed separately, but the fullness and equality I felt within myself gave me the deepest sleep. When my partner and I woke up in the morning, we naturally cuddled together, now ever more in understanding and love for each other.
Our imperfections lived have knocked down the ideals of what love should look like, how love should be expressed for a man and woman, exposing the judgements we have between genders. As a woman, knowing how as a culture/gender we hold back our power and the truth of who we are. I take the responsibility to be seen by my partner, all the parts of me that I felt uncomfortable in showing, the qualities that I do not know how to handle or may feel embarrassed about because it would mean greater responsibility.
Qualities like being naturally in authority and expressive, having the ability to feel deeply and the ease in communicating these feelings, but always being faced with the resistance that, to be accepted, these are ‘no go’ zones. And what I felt was a man who has never wanted anything less from me. I have never felt equality like this before as a woman by not hiding myself.
Today as a man and a woman, we are re-building our foundations of how love is felt within our bodies. That before we open our mouths to express love, this love is first lived and felt within us.
Published with permission from my partner.
By Adele Leung, Hong Kong
Further Reading:
No Passport required: making Relationships about Love
What is true love?
Unconditional Love
593 Comments
When another opens up and shares their vulnerability with us we are offered the opportunity of going deeper in love with both them and ourselves.
Before we can say I love you we really need to know what love is, unfortuantly world wide there are many of us who think we know what love is yet fail to understand it is already in us.
Vulnerability is such beautiful thing, seriously more people are going to be genuine and care for you when you are able to open up and show them that vulnerable side.
How can we express love if we have not felt and experienced it within ourselves first, so we express from a known, ‘That before we open our mouths to express love, this love is first lived and felt within us.’
Being honest and sharing how we feel is far greater than any niceness or protecting ourselves against another we claim to ‘love’.
And here it is coming around again. We accept the tokenism of love when the truth of love is within us all, waiting to be connected to.
As Valentines day comes around again, I have been pondering on how all relationships can be deeply loving (obviously only physical with one partner) and how they all reflect so much for us to learn.
Adele, the livingness of your expression and the depth of your lived love is flowing from your blog off the page and into life itself. Thank you for sharing…..I thank you with my all.
When we let love be the foundation of our relationship with ourselves we are totally open to letting love be in our relationship with others… this magnificence first and then all the imperfections we have as humans.
The most powerful way of living is to simply reflect the love we are and then in this transparency we can feel how our relationships can expand or evolve and this is not just for couples. for everyone we meet we have a relationship with..
Adele, what you are sharing in this article is gold. For us to be open and honest and raw with each other feels like a true way to be in relationship. Being nice and polite and not speaking up through fear of not wanting to rock the boat can cause tension bitterness and resentment in relationships.
Absolutely, Rebecca, and what the world really needs right now is true relationships – open, honest, raw, imperfections and all, and with love as their foundation.
These images of what we think life and Love should be keep us trapped in stagnant arrangements and shut down to true change and hence vitality. So much better to let life be without judgement.
Love is being honest with each other at all times regardless of the day.
This is what is needed with a relationship, a commitment to get to the bottom of things and not to just let things go unresolved – it can only serve to make a relationship stronger.
As soon as we have an expectation for another to change in a good way or not so good then we no longer have a relationship and could it be that anything less than Love, True Love is a judgement disguise as an expectation?
Then could it also be true that we are addicted to wanting others to change and will even pay others to twist their arm?
Its amazing the clarity we can get when we are prepared to be deeply honest. Then what comes after that is felt and there is space for change if we so choose it.
The more authentic we are with each other the more opportunity there is for a deepening in our relationships. So drop the game playing and all that niceness!
“Today as a man and a woman, we are re-building our foundations of how love is felt within our bodies. That before we open our mouths to express love, this love is first lived and felt within us” – yes, the foundational quality we set for ourselves we set for another to expand that quality even deeper.
This breaks the norm – it makes love about a true reflection and pulling each other up rather than using a day to be nice to each other. Where is the purpose in this?
With love as the foundation, we realise that pulling each other up is one of the greatest ways to support one another – no critique just inspiration to live our full potential.
Always with love as our foundation, pulling one another up, feels so gorgeous.
Being true, truthful and honest is to be loving, even when at times it is difficult to express and/or hear.
When we look at it from an observant point of view: we have a body filled with love or a body empty of that love. How can we express love towards another when our own body is empty of it?
This shows us that walking around empty is never truly expanding our love. We need to build a connection to ourselves that strengthens us in our understanding of what love is and to start living from there. That is whats building a body of love is !
A body of emptiness needs. Many bodies of emptiness make neediness and needing each other love. But that is a great illusion and falsity. Love is complete and full, there is no one ounce of need in it.
“Our imperfections lived have knocked down the ideals of what love should look like, how love should be expressed for a man and woman, exposing the judgements we have between genders.” So beautifully expressed Adele. Love has no perfection, but only the true expression of who we are in whatever shape or form that may take.
“In our commitment to get to the heart of the matter of this argument we dealt with many different topics, such as the consciousness relating to genders, money, doubt, insecurity, judgement, imposition, brotherhood etc., to get to the core issues of responsibility, attachment and need” – Adele what a relationship you enjoy with your partner and so too what love to be discussing these things/hindrances that deeply hamper a truer love from being.
The beauty of any relationship reflects a deeper potential and possibility we can go with ourselves and each other.
So well expressed, Adele, for if there is not expansion and evolution there is instead stagnation and that is not love. True love is self-perpetuating and thereby forever deepening and growing.
“Today as a man and a woman, we are re-building our foundations of how love is felt within our bodies. That before we open our mouths to express love, this love is first lived and felt within us.” When we know love from our bodies and not our mind we are then able to express what is true, rather than what I know I can do is to measure what the other person wants to hear to avoid confrontation. To be able to live this is very powerful and changes the whole way we view relationships.
The body our true market of truth. If we want to know love, feel and express from the body.
Love can only be lived before it is spoken.
I have come to know that often in what seems like deeply uncomfortable crises is seed of a beautiful step in evolution. Your story shows the same red line Adele. Loved it.
Every re-correction shows us the detour from Truth we have lived in the past, the discomfort is our own choice to leave ourselves, but this process (evolution) cannot be stopped and the surrender to each committing moment is because we naturally always move back towards Truth.
I love this for it reminds us that there is no perfection and to strive for it means we are missing out on all those growing and evolving moments that can deepen our love for ourselves and each other.
I love that evolution is a process, imagine how unnatural it would feel if it’s linear and non spherical…impossible.
We are bombarded by pictures about love, romance and relationships and these are exactly what will make us unhappy. If we strive for the perfect picture we will be easily disappointed but if we are free from the picture we are free to experience what is truly in front of us, and this might be actually so much more then a picture could ever capture.
Thank you, Elaine. Every reminder to dispense with perfection is gold. Being free of perfectionism opens us up to learning so much.
“We received no niceness and gave none” – that feels challenging as niceness can creep in to ‘keep the peace’ but it also feels very refreshing.
Peace is only ever temporary, it feels much more settling to the body to deal with whatever’s needed from the core.
“before we open our mouths to express love, this love is first lived and felt within us.” Love does start with our own loving choices – lived first and then as an expression in our relationships.
We may not even need to open our mouths then, or more accurately, our words only come as a confirmation of how we have consistently moved.
Thankyou Adele. Allowing yourselves to show your vulnerablity to each other, and to let that unfold between you without any expectations or emotional attachments but instead to let each other just be in their own connection and then eventually return to a deepr understanding of each other is truly inspiring, and so not how disagreements usually unfold.
There is no other way but the way to love deeper, it might not happen immediately but the movement is inevitable.
It is very common to come up against challenging moments in a relationship but it is how we handle them and communicate with each other is key. We are either building a more loving foundation or we can add to the complication and destruction. What you’ve shared Adele is an example of how we can work through a challenging moment together and evolve.
These moments are so precious always reminding us that there is more to unravel, let go, clear patterns of and more love to deepen into. No pictures of perfection but feeling each movement is key to keep appreciating. There is no investment and therefore no struggle either.
It’s interesting to consider how normal we have allowed love and misery to be, they co-exist together, strange bedfellows you may say, yet we have placed then in the same bed that we lie within. The truth of love has nothing to do with Valentines day, which is simply a day to make card sellers happy. That love lives within us all equally is without comparison a divine fact. That we can access that at the drop of a hat is also a divine fact. That love lives in our body’s and our body’s can be divine bodies of love is also a fact and our choice.
My body squirms when I hear an often saying that if it is love then it should hurt. That is just a confirmation that we are so far from the truth of what love really is in our body. We have lost this connection but never is it too late to re-connect to it.
In our letting go of pictures, ideals and beliefs of what love is or ‘should‘ be or look like we then are open to exploring how we can deepen our relationship with the true love we are in essence with our commitment to being honest about what is not love and our willingness to let go of that which is not in honor of the love we all are.
Letting go of love pictures show me love is truly everywhere around, the expression of it may not be what I expect, but my heart that is open can pick up on all these expressions and appreciate them.
This blog describes the greatest gifts and presents you can ever give another on Valentine’s day. As in reading it I could tangibly feel the love that was at play, the love that is so pure that it will bring all that is not love to the surface, to look air, deal with and discard it so it will never enter into your relationship anytime thereafter.
You reflect the Love we can be Adele, in every daily conversations of true expression to each other, no matter whatever the day is.
When things are hard or ‘go badly’ it isn’t the sign that we are no good as we so often think but that we are about to learn something great – and are given the inspiration to make the required change.
Yes Joseph so true – love is always pulling us up to be more. And the more we say ‘yes’ the more there is for us to explore. This I find totally inspiring.
Beautiful and this is what treu love is about, evolving and expanding and so a true relationship will be about this. In this understanding bumps on the road are not a problem but an opportunity and can be approached as such.
So true Joseph and it is awesome to appreciate the learning we receive when we are open to them no matter what we are presented with.
Thank you for this deeply touching piece of writing. You have sketched a day of love, of truth and vulnerability. I especially adore this sentence, “… mutual understanding of not needing the other to change, but everything had already changed”. There is true alchemy in this expression and it is very inspiring.
Hear, hear Gabriele, very well said. This is a beautiful example of how love is about expansion and allowing each other space to grow in our own time.
This rawness and vulnerability in expression is now deeply appreciated too Gabriele, and this appreciation has made it clearer for me to see what is Truth too.
“Today as a man and a woman, we are re-building our foundations of how love is felt within our bodies. That before we open our mouths to express love, this love is first lived and felt within us.” The love and responsibility of this is beautiful to feel and very inspiring allowing ourselves the honesty to be who we are .
Thank goodness for movement in life! Not everyone would want to hear or speak it, but our movements say it all.
Sometimes love is a firm pull up, it is telling someone that their behaviour is not the amazing person we know them to be, it is asking someone to be more. Love does not leave us to be less
Oh yes! Ultimately this is a pull up of both/all sides if we all say yes. It is always loving to express if anyone is lagging behind, whether they react or respond.
If we keep that as its core, at our heart and its foundation knowing that love lets us be less when we don’t look at something that is not “nice” fight it when it is in fact the love we so desperately crave.
I love what you’ve shared here Adele, as you both chose to go to the discomfort and not settle for the comfortable arrangement. Most of us don’t like to feel the discomfort and find ways to mask over what we feel needing our relationships to be on a comfortable footing in order to feel secure and safe.
We all want security that’s true. But true security comes from dealing with our hurts, step by step…rather than covering up what we don’t want to face and pretend everything is perfect. That is just so uncomfortable to feel.
Adele a great way to look at what true Security is all about. Something that is based on our connection to our soul and relationship with ourselves in full.
You broach a very important point – the willingness to feel the discomfort and tension rather than pretending that everything is okay. The latter sweeps everything under the carpet and the former leads to openness, vulnerability, understanding, acceptance and more love.
And this comfortable way is actually our normal. It is the comfort we at time seek that make our lives so miserable.
We are addicted to our comforts after life times of having a Love-less relationship instead of looking at the discomforts of life and embracing them as our greatest teacher.