When You Love Them More

Don't bother policing every sentence that comes out of your mouth. It's the energy underneath that really matters. 

The sentence and the results that follow are tendrils of influence growing from the energy. 

You can say the same thing multiple times with different intentions and get multiple outcomes. 

Consider this impossible task of quantifying love.

I wrote to you about it yesterday. 

Yesterday I was focused on being loved less. This is a passive construction. It implies something is happening to me and I am helpless under it. Victimy and powerless. 

Today I'm contemplating loving more. 

That's almost the same concept. 

But totally different. 

I love my kids a lot more than they do me. 

This feels great to believe. It supports a fantastic parent-spawn relationship. 

Why doesn't it bother me that my kids love me less? 

Partly it's because that's the way it usually is between kids and parents.

They pop out helpless and covered in goo.

Entirely dependent. Dependency isn't love. 

Though caring for and being cared for surely engenders love and connection. 

I started entirely in love with them. Helped by science with all of the built in instincts of protection and chemical reactions to seeing their sweet little faces. 

It's more than that though.

I think about it like "I love them the most."

I do. I love them so much. I take great pleasure in our unrequited love.

Sometimes they give me a particular look that is a combination of annoyance and softening and appreciation. The heavens ring and my entire soul flashes.

But I don't need this from them to sustain our relationship dynamic.

We go weeks and months sometimes without that sweetness between us. 

The way I think about it has a different focus. 

With my partner or anyone else where I can feel insecure and not loved enough, I'm focusing on the "less than" part. 

Thinking he loves me less than I love him. 

With my kids I think "I love them the most." 

The emphasis is on the most loving. Not the least loving. 

It doesn’t really matter if what you tell yourself is true or possible.

Most of what you tell yourself is subjective and unprovable. 

Might as well choose a narrative that feels good.