Tag Archives: Jerry Jud

There are a million love songs. From Donna Summers I Feel Love to The Lion King’s Can you Feel the Love Tonight, they all remind us that when love is present, it is palpable. So I’m willing to agree that love is a feeling. The problem is love felt, but not expressed, is not enough. I wrote on Week One that we need to figure out how we want to be loved. If your partner loves you madly, but treats you badly, is that really love? This is where the fourth Principle of Loving comes in: Love is Good Will in Action. If you want to love someone more, do nice things for them, keeping in mind what they would like to receive from you.  If you want some one to love you more, allow them to do nice things for you.

A little counter intuitive, no? We think that the more we do for another, the more they will love us.  In reality, the kindest thing you can do for another is let them know how they can please you, and then be pleased by their good will in action. Jerry Jud talks about another facet of good will in action, which is that, to truly love, we have to come to grips with the fact that we are all good, and bad, dark and light.  He said, “I have to own my own darkness in order to live with your darkness.  But I also have to own my own light in order to live with your brilliant light.. . . If you are going to love somebody, you have to love the whole thing.”**

Victor Baranco said it another way, “Love is the willingness to see yourself through all of another person's viewpoints.”  And here’s the love myth.  That someone out there is the perfect person for us, in every way. Their bumps will fit our grooves, and we will live happily, lovingly ever after. We believe that true love sees us as we wish to see ourselves. Anyone who’s been in a relationship knows this isn’t true.  Our “soul mates” stick their thumbs in every sore spot we have. We are attracted to the people who have the things we lack, and then resent them for it. They mirror back  our shadows, and also call us to live into our highest selves.This can be very uncomfortable!

The next time you find yourself not liking someone very much, you can re-connect to your love for them by remembering that love is good will in action. More on what that might look like when we get the skills of loving.

What are your thoughts? Do these principles inform your relationships?
Next time: The last principle, Love is a response to need.

To read the prior posts, click below
Week One | Week Two | Week Three

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I started this series to get people thinking about how much more love would be available if we practiced some simple principles and skills of loving. If you missed that post, you can read it here. Today’s myth? That Love is expensive.  We believe it's something we earn.  We have the idea that we must be good to be  loveable. Often, we shy away from love, because the price tag looks too high.  We have the idea that romantic love will require sacrifices of who we really are. And often it does. Who hasn’t kept themselves small, or kept their mouth shut, in order not to rock the boat? Who hasn’t withheld love when a lover, friend or child has failed to make the grade?

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It is our most pervasive myth. Love is something you fall into. You are going along your daily life and BOOM, there she was just a walking down the street! I saw him standing there, and I knew. Cue the soundtrack! We have come to believe in chemistry, and kismet, and that we fall in love, like it was a camouflaged hole that we stumbled upon. The problem with this theory is that we also fall out of love. And then there is all the disappointment, and fingerpointing, and ultimately, we amputate that person from our lives, because the love wasn’t perfect.

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