Learn how to do anything: How to Love

Love is expressed as an action and experienced as a feeling. Yet, love has an essence that resists defining in any single way — it encompasses compassion, determination, tolerance, endurance, support, faith, and much more. If you're in the dark about how to love, this article should give you some food for thought, and perhaps teach you a little bit about how to love yourself, love the world, and love other people just a little bit more.

Steps

Finding Romantic Love

Decide what you want from a loving relationship. What do you want out of a relationship, romantic or otherwise? What do you look for in a person that you love? What do you love in a person? While you don't want to narrow your focus too much, a properly-aligned list of priorities is helpful in knowing what to look for and how to find it.
- If it works for you, rather than making up a list of wants, make up a list of "deal-breakers." If you absolutely can't abide a drinker, a hyper-religious person, or a daredevil, put it on your deal breaker list and avoid getting tangled in their complicated web.
- Be judicious. If you’re putting a nice butt before a stable personality, you’re going to have a really tough time in relationships. Same goes for things like valuing friends who get you into the best clubs over friends who’ll hold your hair back while you puke. Put substance above superficials, every time.
- Real people don’t fit in boxes. Keep in mind qualities that you want a prospective lover to have, but don’t require someone to meet all of them and make sure you’ve got your priorities in order.^[1]

Have something to offer others. When you go to start a relationship, be it romantic or platonic, you’ll want to be sure that you bring something to that relationship. Having nothing to offer will give you and probably the other person the sense that you are a leech. Work on giving as much as you take, in all your relationships, and you’ll be set for success.
- A life partner or a lover can help you cope with the problems in your life and will work with you to solve them, but no one is going to make those problems just go away but you. You have to rescue yourself. Be your own knight-in-shining-armor. Expecting someone else to do that for you will only result in putting way too much pressure on them and disappointing yourself in the long run.^[2]
- If you're experimenting with online dating, or other digital forms of communication, you've got to put some work into it. Messaging a hottie with "Hey" isn't bringing anything to the table. Ask questions, put your dazzling sense of humor on display, be naturally curious. Be yourself.

Meet lots of people. Unlike in the serendipitous plots of most romantic comedies, we usually don't run into long-term lovers and friends by accident. With the noise and bustle of 21st century life, meeting people takes work. Treat every night out, or every new class, or every new encounter as a possibility and bring your A-game.
- Be friendly when you meet people, and try to see the best in them. Even if you're at a party you'd rather not be at, make a little goal that you'll make one new friend by the end of the night. Turn your dull party into a fresh opportunity.
- Make plans with people you're interested in. Rather than exchanging numbers and putting someone in your phone as "Red Shirt Blonde," try to make specific plans before the end of the night. Find common ground with someone and decide that you'll meet up for coffee, or an event sometime later in the week. Make it concrete, rather than vague.

Let yourself be vulnerable with others. Unfortunately, loving someone means that they can hurt you. This is normal and okay (and almost inevitable). But if you want to have real love, you need to allow yourself to open up with that person. Don’t keep secrets from them, don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t, but instead give them the opportunity to know the real you.
- Don't put on an act with people you're interested in, or with friends that you're building a relationship with. If you're pretending to be one way, it's not fair to the person who meets you halfway. Be yourself all the time, and you'll be confident that the people you meet are worthy of loving you, because it'll be the real you.

Give it time. Don’t force love and don’t try to speed it up. This will only create false feelings which drain you emotionally and leave you feeling empty and unsatisfied. You can’t rush love. But believe that it will come because it most certainly will. You just have to find the right person.

Making Relationships Last

Commit. If you're in love, prove it by putting effort into the relationship and working hard to make it work. Communicate openly with your partner about your goals for the relationship and where you see it going. If you're only interested in a short-term fling, be honest. If you've got an eye toward serious long-term love, be honest. There's nothing wrong with either kind of love, but you need to make sure that your partner is equally committed to the same version of love that you are.
- Commit to the person and to the relationship. It’s easy when two people have been together for awhile and you’ve become very trusting to just get very comfortable with each other. Maybe you don’t go out on dates anymore or maybe you don’t dress up nice for each other sometimes. But you should at least do these things occasionally, or eventually someone will feel like they’re no longer worth the effort.

Learn lessons and apply them to your relationships. Yes, bad things will happen in your relationships. You’ll say the wrong thing, or they’ll hurt your feelings. It happens. The important part, when anything goes wrong (even if it’s just problems in your life), is to learn your lessons and just keep moving forward. Try to make the most of any negative situation, turning it into something positive by gaining and growing from the experience. Honestly try to adopt your significant other's POV in any argument that gets fairly serious -- do try to be compassionate and understand where they're coming from.^[3]
- If you're in the wrong, apologize and own up to your mistake. Good relationships air out the grievances and clear the air. Bad relationships hide the negativity and let it fester into serious problems. If you're in love, talk about your problems.

Work constantly to make yourself and those you love better. A good, loving relationship is one where you constantly challenge each other to be better people. Help the other person to achieve their dreams and goals because you believe they deserve it. Improve yourself and work for your dreams so that you can be the person you feel they deserve. We should be better people because of the relationships that we have, and this is the way to do it.

Eliminate jealousy. This is one of the unhealthiest things to have in a relationship, as it can break down trust and respect, and create barriers. For some people, this can be the most challenging part of relationships. Jealousy is a tough thing to break, but you can do it. The most important thing to understand is that jealousy issues almost always come from within, from the jealous person’s own issues, so those need to be worked through first. This is a place where those communication skills come in handy.
- This is, of course, assuming one person in the relationship is running around blatantly cheating on the other. In which case, they don’t really love the person they’re hurting, now do they?

Try to see issues from all sides. We hate to be wrong. Everyone does. But the thing about everyone thinking they’re right is that someone HAS to be wrong. If we disagree on an issue, we’re bound to be wrong on at least part of the issue. You’ll have much stronger relationships if you learn to talk things out with the other person, see their point of view, and find somewhere in the middle where you can meet and agree. If you're having trouble agreeing on how you feel about something or someone, try to stick first with the facts -- some facts maybe have been omitted due to our preferences which really ought to be considered, in all fairness.

Be partners in life. The whole point of going through life with people you love is so that you can tackle life’s challenges together. Work together to find solutions, solve problems, and comfort each other when times get tough. We can’t solve everything on our own, we can’t know everything there is to know...but a whole bunch of people getting together out of love can solve just about any problem.

Avoiding Common Relationship Problems

Never, ever manipulate someone. Popular culture often tells us, subtly, that we should manipulate our significant other. You’ll find magazine upon magazine about how to get your girlfriend to do this or how to make your husband more that. But the thing is that expecting someone to change, and emotionally or mentally manipulating them into doing it, is one of the worst things you can do for your relationship. By manipulating them, you are creating distrust and resentment, a terrible thing to do to someone you love.

Don’t expect perfection. Don’t expect perfection in the person you love or in yourself. This sets incredibly unrealistic expectations. Neither of you will be able to live up to these standards and you both will end up hurt and disappointed. Even if you feel that you only expect perfection for yourself, this will give you the mindset that people can be perfect and you will subconsciously expect the same from the person you’re with.

Don’t bring outside problems into your relationships. Life gets stressful sometimes. We have problems and they make us upset, hurt, or angry. There are many, many people who take out these negative emotions on the people they love, often because they feel like they have no other outlet. But you should never do this. Find good ways to deal with your stress, like exercising or doing art. This will keep you from unreasonable outbursts directed at the person you love.

Don’t let things stagnate. Much like not putting in effort, you shouldn’t get to a point where your relationships are routine. Getting the same gift (or type of gift) for every holiday and birthday, going to the same place for dinners out, doing the same thing for your anniversary, etc. Your love deserves better and so do you! Keep things interesting by always trying new things and pursuing new experiences together.
- You can be wild and crazy and try things like rock climbing or you can be more subdued and try learning a new skill together, like playing the piano.

Focus on the important things. One major pitfall of relationships is that we tend to get super focused on little things that drive us crazy, rather than seeing the bigger picture, which is often wonderful. Keep your focus on the things that actually matter, and constantly analyze why those things matter to you. You’ll have a much happier relationship if you do.

Remember that everyone is equal. It is important to understand, for developing relationships, that no one is better than you and you are not better than anyone else. We are all equal, with equally worthwhile problems, ideas, and beliefs. If anyone ever tries to convince you differently, no matter where they pray and no matter how much you admire them, they aren’t worthy of your love.

Loving Your Friends and Family

Be a good friend. Whether you’re trying to create and grow love in a platonic or romantic relationship, you need to be a good friend to the person you love. Love is about more than kissing and hugging: it’s about being there when someone needs you and helping them unselfishly. Work to be as good a friend to them as you can be, and let them do the same.
- Work hard at your relationships. Show up for your friends. If your buddy's having an art opening, or playing a concert, buy a ticket and show up in the front row, even if you're not crazy about the music. Listen when your friend has a problem, and make yourself available emotionally.
- Try and learn to recognize when it's ok to be friends, and not possible to be more. Many people complain about being stuck in the "friend zone," which is really just a way of saying that you're attracted to someone who isn't attracted to you. Every healthy person needs a variety of healthy relationships, not all of them romantic. Embrace each interpersonal relationship for the unique brand of love it provides.

Respect everyone and earn the respect of others. Respect your friends, your family, and your lovers by validating their actual accomplishments, opinions and experiences. Try to understand them deeply, on a personal level. Ask them questions, have long discussions, and open your heart. Understand that the other person has their own wishes and desires, and rights to privacy and dignity. If you can’t allow this for another person, then you can’t love them.

Love people for who they are. Everyone is different. This doesn’t make anyone better or worse than anyone else. If you want to love someone, you need to take them for everything that they are, good and bad. Realize that none of those traits may be permanent and that if you want them to change, you have to help them want that change for themselves. Give them the tools they need to make the change. They aren’t yours to mold into your personal statue of perfection.

Find the true beauty in others. Maybe your girlfriend looks like Jennifer Lawrence, but this shouldn’t be the reason you want to be with her. She may be pretty now but she probably won’t be 50 years from now. You won’t be either. When you love someone, you need to find their inner beauty, the thing that makes them unique and wonderful to you. This will make your love and relationship stronger. Relying or basing your love on their great skin or gorgeous hair is probably just going to end in disappointment for everyone.

Focus on the positives and embrace the negatives. When you love someone, you should always keep focus on their positive traits. Find the things that you love about them and then give them the tools they need to amplify those traits. Focusing on nitpicky things you dislike about them will only make both of you unhappy in the end. You can learn from negativity -- sometime it's OK to "Just Say No" and not be willing to try too many risky activities, especially seemingly victimless crimes. Learn to laugh about negative things and accept things as they are, having the courage to adapt and grow yourself, Many people with disabilities, for example, do very well in life because they have an extra dollop of determination and sheer grit. They have faced extremely forbidding circumstances and learned to find a way to overcome them -- you can too.
- If they’re a good singer, for example, help them to record a song and get it out to people. If you love how tidy they are, try to help them out by taking some of the pressure off and let them know how much you appreciate it when they do clean.
- There are inevitably things that annoy or frustrate us about the people we have relationships with. You need to learn to love someone not despite these traits but, as much as possible, because of them. Try to loosen up and find the humor in the things they do. This will stress you out less and make your relationships much stronger and stable.

Communicate clearly and often. If you want real love to build and grow, you need to keep constant communication. This doesn’t just mean talking about the weather every day; you need to talk about real things that are affecting your lives and your actions. Most importantly, you need to talk about the problems you encounter with each other. Don’t just be the person starting the conversations and handing out criticism, though. You need to create an environment where the other person feels comfortable coming to you with their problems too.

Talk through your problems. You will inevitably encounter problems in your relationship. Maybe there was a breach of trust or someone was hurt by something that got said. Whatever the reason for the hurt feelings, whether intentional or not, you need to talk between the two of you and get everything sorted out. Come to understand each other and patch the holes in the relationship before they become too big.^[4]
- Make sure that everybody gets a turn to talk, don’t interrupt, and respect the other person. Just because their opinion is different doesn’t make it wrong.

Loving Yourself

Love yourself. Before loving anyone else, you have to love yourself. This will help you show that you can experience love, sending a message that you are secure, confident, and worth loving in return. Loving yourself will make you a better lover because you will not be hindered by self-doubt and crises of confidence.
- If you have problems loving yourself, then work hard to build yourself up. Work on your self confidence by accepting your past and moving forward. You may feel that things you did in the past will make you unlovable, or that you have too many problems to be lovable. Untrue. Accept the things that happened to you, forgive yourself, and move on.

Count your blessings. When things get tough, money runs out or someone loses a job, the way to get through these tough times is to focus on the things in your life that are good. Don’t worry about all the things you don’t have, because you will always not have a lot of things. That’s out of your control. But you can enjoy and find love in the things that you do have right now, while you have them. Appreciate this moment.

Be selfish sometimes. If you constantly give in your relationships and don’t focus on your own needs every now and again, you will find that you become burnt out. In order to make yourself a better lover, be selfish on occasion and make sure you’re getting what you need to be happy too.

Make your own happily ever after. Like the myth of the knight in shining armor, you also need to understand that there are no automatic happy endings. You may find blissful love, but you’ll always come up against challenges together, as you and your lives change. If you want to have your happy ending, you have to work to make it happy every day by supporting each other, working together, and doing the things in life that make you happy.

Turn off the rom-coms. Modern movies and romantic stories have us believing that we have to find it: The One. That somehow, despite the chaos of the universe, there is one person who completes us and is perfect for us. The truth of it? There is no "one." No one is perfect. In all relationships there will be sacrifice and annoyance and problems. So really, as long as you aren’t expecting anyone to be perfect, there are lots of The One’s out there for you!

Break out of pre-defined roles. Our culture does a pretty good job of convincing us that men and women have to act a certain way or do certain things in a relationship. However, this doesn’t really work out that way in practice. Some men are just naturally good housekeepers and some women are just naturally good at fixing things. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and those don’t conform to gender stereotypes. If you want to have healthy relationships, don’t feel constrained to those boxes: just do what you do best and work together to build a happy life!

Tips

Remember there is no failure in love, because once you show somebody that you love them, then you have already succeeded in love, even if they don't care.

It does not make you a bad person to desire someone else's love, even if they do not love you. However, to truly love someone, you must let them be free. It is selfish to blame them for your feelings.

There are many types of relationships that involve love, but love itself is a common thread to all those relationships. For example: a mother-son relationship is different from the relationship with a best friend, and both these relationships are different from a romantic relationship. But in each of these relationships, each person loves the other (wants the best for the other). Love is the base of the pyramid. On top of the base, we can add other items such as other common interests (in the case of friends) or sex (in the case of romantic relationships). Therefore, relationships can grow and evolve but the love itself is solid and constant. It does not change.

People become beautiful to you because you love them. In a society obsessed with appearance, it can often seem the other way around but the reality is that love makes a person beautiful and the imperfect perfect.

Warnings

Never seek to force love. You can try but you'll find fear, neediness and insecurity, not love. Love will come if you're willing to share love, to give of it freely and to expect nothing in return.

Loving isn't always easy.

The idea of romantic love is often fueled by fantasies and much of the romantic love shown in movies and romance novels is unrealistic and causes real mortals to feel inadequate. Be aware that creatively written or filmed romantic love is a thing of art in its own––mere mortals are recommended to see that romantic love has warts. The more expansively you view romantic love, the more accepting you are that romantic love isn't always ideal and the more certain you are about who you are and what matters to you in life, the more likely you'll be to find happiness in romance. Leave those rose colored glasses slightly lifted at all times!