Love Day – Let’s Reconnect

It’s Valentine’s Day so the Queen of love could not resist reaching out to share my thoughts on ‘LOVE’. I cannot hide it, I live and breathe love, a hopeless romantic, I have a strong desire for more love in the world. I dream of a day where we are all filled with love but what does this mean to me? What do I want for you?

When I think of love I think of the emotions and behaviours it brings. If I was to describe love I think affection, attachment, tenderness, devotion, liking, caring, compassion, connection – emotions we can hold for a partner, child, ourselves, friends, family and let’s not forget our fur babies. 

When we think about ‘adult love’, we add arousal, desire, passion, intimacy. We start to appreciate that love has much depth, many layers, takes on many forms including friendship, infatuation, passionate love, compassionate love and unrequited love. When love is positive, we are healthier! Love helps to lower stress levels, lowers our risk of depression, it truly reduces our risk of having a heart attack, it makes us feel good but love is complex, to love, to practice love, to be love involves risk and vulnerability. 

The one constant I see in the therapy room is we feel unloved when we lose connection. Let me explain………………

I am going to take the phrase ‘Self Love’, for many self-love feels uncomfortable so the phrase commonly gets interchanged with ‘Self Care’. I often consider selfcare as the daily activities we should be doing at a bare minimum but often do not hold ourselves with enough positive regard or we are so busy fulfilling others needs we forget our own or simply we are exhausted with life we do not hold selfcare as important. It is not uncommon to literally have to rebuild someone back, one day at a time we implement self-care activities. I am mindful of saying show yourself more love, the old cliché you must love yourself before others love you, what if you, they, I are missing community love. We were never meant to go through so much alone. Somewhere or somehow as a society we stopped showing ourselves and each other it's ok to be vulnerable, we need connection, a sense of belonging, we are not meant to be perfect, we are human, we experience all emotion, we are human. 

When we put this theory into our romantic relationships, we can appreciate how practicing love can be difficult. We expect each other at the exact moment in time to practice love; this means be vulnerable, to forgive, to listen, to share things, show affection, care, act with kindness, this is hard when you have many painful experiences, fears, anxieties, are unsure how the other person truly feels and thinks, especially if they do not know themselves. 

We spend much of our time reacting to stimuli which evokes emotion we fight to control, we forget to sit with it, feel it, understand it and go deeper. There is the need to connect with who you really are, connect with each other, let yourself just be, be together and if you find talking too overwhelming, I invite you to sit and eye gaze for 3-5 minutes, give it a go. 

Why gazing into someone’s eyes may matter

On a psychological level, prolonged eye contact can benefit your social relationships, it helps you recognise emotions, eyes are the window to the soul. Eye gazing also creates an opportunity for emotional connection and increases intimacy, trust and facilitates emotional bonding, it may also nurture a deeper connection.

How to try eye gazing

1.   Sit or lie in a comfortable position and face your partner. You can hold hands or touch each other if you like.

2.   Set a timer for your desired amount of time, I recommend 3-5 minutes but 30-60 seconds maybe where you start. Look into your partner’s eyes.

3.   Breathe deeply and allow yourself to blink. Keep your gaze soft and try not to look away.

4.   Break your gaze when the timer goes off.

The goal of this exercise is to connect your energies without speaking. My love tip, reconnect! With yourself, with others.