It’s like this; it’s another day of the year and you celebrate it whatever way you want, or not. End of story.

So let’s talk about the underlying symbol of it, love, romance, togetherness – these are intimate, private energies that flow between partners.

They cannot be measured, stored up for later or gifted in a box.

The love between you both, starts in some ways in the love you have for yourself. And no that isn’t all cliché and yuk, there is a lot in that.

To nurture the relationship between you and your partner, or your own relationship with yourself, or any relationship you have for that matter, all starts from the same couple of things;

•Truth

•Kindness

•Unconditional love

(Yes, there are many more attributes, characteristics and qualities we can talk about, however, I feel these pretty much wrap up the essence of it.)

If you don’t have truth, kindness and unconditional love, I believe all the other factors, have only a limited worth.

Let’s explore them a little… (they are actually very interlinked).

Before we do however, remember, although it may be difficult to hear at first;

• It is not our responsibility how someone else reacts to our response, our actions or otherwise.

• It is not our responsibility to stop them concluding what they will about your actions.

• It is not our responsibility to carry others endlessly and protect them- in fact, we are not in a position to really know what someone needs to experience, in any given moment or time.

So…

Truth is all about being who you really are. It’s about expressing yourself in your value systems despite what the world might have you believe or what is popular. It includes expression in your clothes, your choice of work, activities in free time, etc. It includes being truthful with yourself and your challenges. It includes expressing your needs even if you may hurt someone in the process – when done with kindness, this is ok to do if it’s being honest, (see note above). It includes upholding your values in the face of opposing values from those you love or other challenges.

Kindness is all about being kind in every act you do and word you speak, even down to your thoughts. Very much interlinked with love, if you act from a place of love and kindness, then you are being true.

Kindness may sometimes be disguised as not helping, having boundaries or not being available – as we are kind to ourselves, or for example recognising that doing too much for another is in fact debilitating for them.

So kindness is not all about giving. It is also about holding back, receiving and taking the more difficult choice on the day.

Unconditional love is mostly associated with the great love we have for those few close relationships; however, I feel it can go beyond that.

This may be easier to explain if we look at the opposite of unconditional love; our partner or friend does something we do not like so we punish them by giving them the silent treatment, not answering their call, or not saying yes to their next request for help or whatever. We are putting conditions on them; I will show you love as long as you are like ‘x’ or ‘y’, but not ‘a’ or ‘b’.

Unconditional love would be accepting that what happened was not necessarily about you or against you, rather it was serving their need at that time, full stop. It would not go down memory lane and recall all the other times similar things happened or take out other comparisons.

If we let go that others are out to get us, and accept that everyone is simply doing their best, with the skills they have, to negotiate their lives and challenges within, then we would have unconditional love as we are not placing conditions on their behaviour towards us.

So where do your roses fit in now?

Time to reflect…

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!