It’s not unusual to come across short clips about love and relationships when scrolling through social media. There’s plenty of valuable advice out there, but only a few make you think and want to redefine your assumptions about love.

On two occasions this month, I gave space to two thoughts I heard:

1. Compatibility in a relationship isn’t what’s important. It’s your ability to love someone who’s different from you.
2. Love is not a feeling. Love is an intention, a choice, an action.

Compatibility or differences?

We’re usually wired to choose safety over risk, familiarity over mystery… but which one gives us a richer experience? Opens doors to new perspectives, possibilities and world views?

And it’s important to ask: am I courageous enough? Do I have it in me to hold enough space, without judgement? Do I feel safe enough in me not to hide or shutdown when something unfamiliar occurs?

To what extent do I accommodate unfamiliarity and where does it stop? Should I align it with values or common habits or schools of thought?

All these questions I ask to myself, for I’m no expert in relationships. The one thing I know is that expectations are a form of judgement.

Expecting to receive something from a partner or to be treated a certain way is a projection of what you deem to be “right”. It leaves no space for curiosity, openness or even magic!

There’s beauty in the unknown; in opening your heart to what’s completely unlike you (but respects your values). There’s so much growth if you’re confident enough that you’ll be able to handle everything with grace.

Compatibility breeds expectation, if you ask me.

Love is a verb, a choice

The story goes to say that one day a married man, years into his marriage, woke up, looked at his wife, and realised he feels nothing for her. The spark is gone, the fuzzy feelings, the warmth, the affinity… he couldn’t find any trace of them in his heart.

Nothing super unusual, right? But these were defining moments for him. As a man surrounded by a plethora of friends, many of them beautiful women, he needed to feel connected, needed to feel the solid roots that tie him to his wife.

Slowly drifting away was not a choice. He’s a man of his word; a man who can’t find it in himself to deny every moment he felt grateful to his wife for simply being there for him.

He made a choice right that moment, that he will create love. Whether by opening the wardrobe of memories he has with her, replaying them in his head, or by imagining a yet-to-occur memory and living its feelings now.

It took one moment of silence and imagination in his heart, one gesture he knows his wife would smile at, and there it was! Warmth swept his heart like a summer breeze from a back window he didn’t know was open.

Just like happiness, we can choose to feel love. We can choose to feel anything, really.

Imagine if we don’t wait to feel love, but feel it and watch? How many people will we be able to – choose – to love? Wouldn’t life be completely different?

❤️