What "Pure Love" Really Means
“He cries in the corner where nobody sees. He's the kid with the story no one would believe. He prays every night Dear God, won't you please. Could you send someone here who will love me? Who will love me for me? Not for what I have done or what I will become. Who will love me for me? 'Cause nobody has shown me what love What love really means” – JJ Heller, “What Love Really Means”
We all think we know what love really means. We all think we know what love looks like; and what if feels like to love another. We’ve all experienced some kind of love, or something resembling love in our lives but not all of what we have experienced is, in fact, love. And yet, we talk about love as though, because we have a heart, we have love. As if, being in a relationship with another; whether that is a family relationship, friendship, or an intimate relationship, allows us to see what love is. As if, feeling strongly for someone, wanting someone and making a life with someone, is enough to call love. But is it? Or are we calling it that because we don’t fully understand what real love looks or feels like? Because we don’t know pure love.
I’ve been searching for the answers to the ever-allusive question of what love truly is my whole life. When I was young, I was “the kid with the story no one would believe”. Who screamed, prayed and cried to be given someone, would, “love me, for me”. To be shown, “what love really means”. I was the kid who was abused and neglected at home. I was the kid with the dirty house, used clothing and who went to school with no lunch. I was bullied at school, and hid on the playground, from the girls who bullied me, or the boys that the girls sicked on me. To fight me because they didn’t understand what was going on with me; or they didn’t understand poverty and abuse or what it meant to not feel safe at home. What it felt like to not be loved. No one taught me how to love, or what it meant to be loved. They taught me the polar opposite; what love was not. Instead of learning to love and be loved, as a child; as a child should learn at that early age, I learned to fight; to fight others, and to fight for my life. They also taught me to search; for truth, and love.
My entire life, beginning as it did, became a search for love. Of looking for pure love but always finding and settling for something broken or twisted, but somewhat resembling love. It became an exercise in clinging onto whatever I could find that was similar enough to love to make me feel at least, “wanted”. I jumped from experience to experience, taking what I could from each, wishing it was more meaningful; purer. The only pure love I ever felt up until recently, was for my children. For the family, that I created; to love me and to teach me to love, purely. Everyone else in my life, up until then, and many afterward, as well, I cared for but didn’t love. I cared for some very deeply but didn’t love them. Not purely and rightly.
We can care for others but that doesn’t always mean we love them. We can have compassion for others but that doesn’t always mean we love them. We can serve others but that doesn’t always mean that we serve from a place of love. If we are prideful or boastful about serving others, if we ask for something in return for caring for others, or if we put conditions on our love for others; it is not love. Not pure love. That is not what love is. It is what love is not. I know this, because despite that it took me as long as it has to realize what love is, I’ve always known what love was not.
Love is not; a jealous spouse, or partner who demeans you or hurts you because of their pride or need for control. Love is not a friend who only calls on you when they need you, but isn’t there in your time of need. Love is not, helping others so that you can put it on your resume; instead of serving others with and through love. Love is not a partner who abandons you in a time of difficulty, or when you get sick. It is not having a partner who keeps you sick, so they can maintain control. Love doesn’t control. It doesn’t ask you to change for it, or make you feel unworthy of it. Love doesn’t criticize you, ostracize you, isolate you or harm you. It doesn’t try to possess you or keep you to itself. Love does not need to apologize for hurting you by buying you flowers afterward. Love doesn’t push you down, or kick you when you’re down. It doesn’t abuse you, betray you, or leave you in your time of need. It does not want to change others to fit its needs or desires, as it has a purity that can love others in their place, and as they are without needing something from them, or needing something in return. Love doesn’t try to possess another, or become jealous of others who also love them. Love won’t try to gain something from others, as it is not selfish and self-serving. It is not competitive, easily angered or envious, either.
It took me years of failed relationships, losing friends and family members, divorce and other losses to realize that all of these things that I experienced; all of the things that were not love, had taught me what love wasn’t but not what it was. So, like that child who screamed, cried and prayed for someone to love me, for me, I searched for answers to what real, true, unconditional and pure love was; what it looked like and what it felt like.
This is what I learned;
Love is unconditional, unbiased and unfailing. Love accepts you for you; as you are and loves you, for you. Love supports you and helps you up when you fall. Love; pure love, is not boastful or prideful. It is kind and compassionate and unconditional. It honors others, allows others to be themselves and loves them for exactly who and what they are. Love writes the hurtful things that happens to it in the sand, and the beautiful things that it experiences, in marble. It always trusts and protects those it has in its fold. Love always perseveres through hardship and pain, and can handle anything that is thrown at it; because love is pure, faithful and hopeful. Love; real love, is pure, Godly, unending, unfailing and true.