The Experience of Love: 3 Ingredients You Need to Know
No, they are not passion, excitement, sexiness, fun or joy
As a psychotherapist, as a father, and as a husband, love is far from being just passion, excitement, sexiness, fun and joy, and more being a continuous stream of emotions, learnings, and experiences. Let me share with you—as I have shared with my patients—three very uncommon ingredients love needs.
What does love need?
Once I saw a mother telling her five-year-old ‘I love you’. And as a previously trained routine, the child answered ‘I love you too’. What does a five-year-old know about love?, I thought.
But years passed, and now my three-year-old daughter tells me without previous training ‘I love you so much’ and she hugs me. And I can feel it. She is honest. She is not repeating a TV gesture or imitating another kid. And I’m very skeptical to get fast and easy conclusions.
Besides the fact that her declaration makes me cry of happiness, I wonder how a child can intuitively understand love.
In the other extreme, there is my teenage daughter and the way she is trying to understand what love is. The love for her friends and the love between couples.
