Dating : Love and Evol: How to Tell the Difference

When love isn’t really love, it’s never a near miss.

tl;dr: Love doesn’t hurt.

When it hurts? It isn’t love (or wasn’t).

We call a lot of things love that aren’t.

Which gives love a bad rap.

It’s great to know the difference between love and not-love. Spare yourself and other people a lot of pain.

And maybe rescue the idea of love before you totally give up on it.

Try this on:

Love is an emotion that inspires action.

Specifically:

Love is an emotion of care, concern, compassion, kindness, and nurturing.

Love is the desire for someone’s good, and because it’s a sincere desire, it motivates action.

“Love” isn’t love just because someone says it is.

Because love is a sincere emotion of care, concern, compassion, kindness, and nurturing, love moves a person to action.

When action is missing, so is love. No smoke, no fire.

Love is the opposite of indifference.

Fish love being “love” for the sake of our own gratification.

Surely that’s obvious, that fish love isn’t love.

But the trouble starts when we want something very very badly, we long for it and yearn for it and feel like all our happiness depends on it, and we call that love.

It’s a common thing to do — acting like love is just an intense form of like or want.

And it’s the beginning of a road to a very dark place.

When someone says “I love you because …” — take a step back.

When you find yourself feeling, “I love them because …” — take a hard look at that.

“Because” = fish love.

Love is care, concern, compassion, kindness, and nurturing.

Love gives. It’s not some kind of reward for being given, or bait to get something back.

Love is the opposite of selfishness.

Care, concern, compassion, kindness, and nurturing of oneself aren’t selfish.

These false definitions of love (indifference, fish love) aren’t just 1% wrong and 99% still love.

They’re the opposite of love.

100% not love.

Hence the pain.

When we think fish love is love, we think love hurts.

When we think indifference is love, we think love hurts.

And nothing else is love.

This all seems very simple when you think about it. But there’s been a lot of not thinking about it going on, throughout human history.

Which is why:

Let’s place the blame for pain where it belongs — on not loving.

Then, we might begin to understand that love has never hurt us.

A note: Sometimes love, genuine love, brings up painful feelings. Those were already there, within. That pain came from before. Love sweeps it out. That’s what tears of joy are.

Another note: Often, people don’t want love. They want fish love. Try to give them real love — or take away the fish love — and they get very upset. You’re taking away their fish. They just want their fish. You hear “love hurts” a lot from people who really mean, “I don’t like not getting my fish love.”

SK Camille writes about life, love, healing, and her adventures in motorbiking, travel, and dance.