[From My Love Book] 7 Rigid Love Rules To Live And LOVE By

by Sejal Parikh · November 18, 2015

Here’s the funny thing about rules: you don’t learn anything by following them but you don’t wish upon an ‘accident’ to teach you the rules you must have driven by!

I learnt this rule about rules a little late in life. Or to be more specific, after a few ‘accidents’ cracked me right open and my soft gooey insides spilled out. No, no- am talking of heartbreaks- and the countless invaluable things they left me with, even as I struggled with the pain.

But because I loved without any rules, I learnt about seven that you just cannot NOT love by (I don’t want you to break your heart, it hurts):

1. Love is worth working for

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Every relationship in our life presents us with an opportunity to grow- to learn something of consequence about ourselves and love. If it doesn’t work out, it teaches us what went wrong and why. If it does work out (in spite of the odds), it teaches us why it was worth striving for and all the reasons it prevailed. Either way, showing up every single day, every single moment for every single bit of your relationship is worth your while- coz you aren’t attached to the destination it is headed for- but all the experience the journey gives you!

2. Love is, indeed, a give and take equation

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Very often in our relationships, we find ourselves aching for more from our partners. I know I did. But the bitter truth we refuse to confront about this sad piece of reality is that we are often subject to the consequences of our own doing. In ‘standing up for ourselves and demanding better,’ we forget our part in giving the same. If we are a tad bit more accepting and accommodating of what is going wrong, our partner shall reciprocate. But if you dwell on what isn’t right, your partner would do the same- and you would be caught in a vicious cycle of ‘reacting’ to each other without any room for ‘acting out’ on what really warranted change in the first place.

3. A focus on ‘me’ in ‘we’ seals the you&me forever

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Life has a way of getting to the best of us and sometimes, all one can do is control one’s own responses to a situation. The only part of your relationship you can control is you. By altering your own responses to an otherwise averse situation and weaving in gratitude and forgiveness in the tough times, you can strengthen the bond you have built together.

4. Love means sharing our complete selves

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There’s a reason you don’t keep feelings under lock and key. If there are parts of you that incite feelings of guilt and shame within you and you decide to keep them from your partner, remember that these dark shadows will keep banging on the door until you let them out- their interruptions, in turn, harming your relationship by affecting your reactions toward your partner. One needs to pour all their darkness into the sunny clime of one’s relationship- thereby purging it of any fear that shall strike if the relationship itself were to tread precariously dangerous dark alleys.

5. There is no place for fear, guilt and shame in love

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You can bear testimony to this one. Has anything you have ever done out of fear, guilt or shame borne good results? Thought so.

6. Acceptance is the key to true happiness in love

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In complaining about the ways some things or someone isn’t measuring upto your expectations, you are aggravating things further and hurting your partner deeply. It is in the darkest times that you wish for light the most and it is in these times that showering truckloads of love, acceptance and approval to things and your partner (just the way they are) shall allow you to roll with the punches. Coz there is truth in ‘this too shall pass.’

7. There’s no such thing as perfect love