Love, What is it?

Many people come to me to talk. They use me as a sounding board. I am a very good listener and try to help if I can. A friend came to me the other day and cried because she is in love with someone who she thought was in love with her, but he is not. This is a relationship they have been in for over a year now. To see her so distraught broke my heart. It hurts deeply. I know, I have been there. This got me to thinking. So I ask myself what do I say to her? Why can't the love be returned? Why isn't it?

A person I respect and admire deeply introduced me to HubPages and I am so grateful. I have written much about my feelings here and I appreciate the chance to vent and work through those feelings. But this subject it very close to my heart and very difficult to work through. Many have said ' it is better to love than to never have loved at all.' I agree with that to some degree, but in all sincereity, having been in such relationships, I find that difficult to live up to.

I had a Birthday the other day and I know I am closer to fewer years left than I have lived. In those years I have loved and given of my heart only to have it stepped on. It hurts so bad, I cannot begin to tell you. I watch movies and see these fairytale endings and it makes me cry. I think those are just pipe dreams, yet in the same thought process I want that for myself. But then I have a few women friends who are in their 80's and 90's that have only had one husband all their life that treated them like gold. Men loving their wives as though they were born to do just that. As much as I have loved I have never received that in return. I have been married twice and have given my all only to have it thrown in my face 'maybe you love to much'. How can anyone say that? That is a cop out to me. I have heard those words and have had my heart crushed. I thought that when you love someone and are in a relationship, you both give your all, you work at it together, you work toward a deeper, meaningful relationship. How can you do that without love? A man I know with a wonderful heart, said, I thought I was doing the right thing telling my wife how pretty she was, helping her around the house, letting her go and do things, then he said, but I was wrong. She hurt him badly. I told him, you are not wrong, you did as it should be. She is the one that did wrong, took advantage of your love, could not, or did not want to accept, the love you had to offer. Oh, how hard that is to understand when you love with your whole heart and you are committed, thinking all along that they love you back. Then you get all that goodness and love that you have put out there, thrown back in your face. That is so hard for the heart to deal with. It leaves you reeling.

Is it possible to love to much? I don't think so, I think that the significant other just really is not committed or doesn't want to do the work, or maybe thinks I have him/her now and I am content where I am. I cannot deal with that. I gave my all and I wanted the same in return. But you get involved in the relationship and sometimes when you have given your all, you find out it was all in vain and the whole world falls out from beneath you. God how that wrenches your heart.

I closed my heart for almost 10 years and would not let anyone in, except my kids and grandkids and friends. Even then I was hurt. My youngest son once said to me 'maybe you love me to much'. Wow! Coming from my own child, it makes me wonder, how do you not love with your whole heart when you love someone? I don't know how to do that. If I did that I would be like all the others that spoke those words. It makes me hurt for those who have been treated this way. But what do you do? You can't make someone love you. Do you love guarded? That's no way to love. I have never been able to express how deeply I love. It makes some uncomfortable. I don't understand that. Uncomfortable because you are loved? I just don't get it. Is it me? Is my heart to open? Am I to honest? Am I missing something? Am I just naive? There just doesn't seem to be an answer. I love with a trusting heart, believing that I will be loved, you'd think I would have learned by now after the heartache I have been through. Yet I am willing to put my heart back out there again.

I had a conversation the other day with my oldest son and his wife. They have been together 14 years. They love each other so much, they express their inner most feelings to each other. They are so good together. I told them hang on to that, always work through any difficulties together. Talk to each other. You have what I have never had and it is so worth holding onto and working for. It's rare in my eyes. Yet I know my son has my heart. Loving deeply, trusting his wife with his heart and she trusting her heart with him.

The only thing that keeps me open to love is that I know that I have so much to offer. I have a heart full of love and it is a good heart. People I know tell me you are so loving, you are the best person that I know, you have so much love to offer, you are so giving. I tell them please don't say that, that is how God made me and I don't get credit for that. This is just the way I am. It has been ingrained in me, etched in my heart. I have seen women treat their men like total crap, yet their men love them so much. They would do anything for them, give them anything they want. I think, 'is this how I have to be to be loved?' I am not a bitch and I cannot be a bitch to get what I want, it is not in me. I will live alone for the rest of my life before I will change the way I love. My love is real and true. I treat people they way I want to be treated, bottom line. I refuse to change the way I love, the way my heart is. I prefer to say it is their loss, they don't know what they have missed loving me. No, it is not my ego talking, I am no different than the next person. I deserve no more, no less. What I am saying is my heart is sincere and has so much love to offer to someone who accepts me for me and willing to open their heart to my love. To trust me with their heart. How wonderful that would be. I would go to the ends of the earth for someone like that. I want to share a life with someone who really knows me and knows my heart, someone I can talk to about anything. Someone as sincere as I am and willing to share their heart and love.

So, what is love? To me to love is to receive a glimpse of Heaven. It is something that God has put in each of us to share. The more we share , the more our hearts open. Yes, many of us get that stepped on by people who have not taken the time to know their own hearts. Should we love? Yes. It is the only way that we grow what God has placed in each of us. Does it hurt? You're damn right it does, sometimes piercing our hearts to the very core, so deeply we say never again. But time heals all wounds and we come back around again. All I can tell my friend is love with your whole heart and be sincere. Eventually you will find the right heart to love. And if you don't find that heart you know that you at least tried and gave it your all. I hope, if you are as I am, one day that you will recieve back one hundred fold the love you have poured out to the many hearts in your life.

And to those of you who are the ones that have stepped on those hearts, or would not accept someones love, I say to you, you may have missed your chance at knowing the true esscence of what loving is really all about. You have overlooked a special time in your life. A time when you could have known the true meaning of being loved. You may have missed out on some of the sweetest love you will have ever known. I can only hope that you walked away from that relationship and learned, at least, to open your heart a little more in the next. If that is so than the love that was once yours, has taught your heart something.

Be blessed. Love and be loved.