What Does Love Really Mean? A Guide to Reframing the Concept Beyond Fairytales
Love usually is misunderstood. Framed by fairytale narratives and Hollywood glamorization, you might have grown up equating love with grand gestures, ideas of soulmates, and happily-ever-afters. In our non-Hollywood everyday lives, love is less about the fireworks and more about the quiet moments of connection, commitment, and care. As they say, ‘love is a verb’ let’s explore what that looks like.
The Perils of Summer Love: Love Bombing & Gaslighting
I’ve been thinking about what it means to listen. Listening is a form of active engagement which I think is different from hearing. Hearing is physiological. Hearing is a passive and automatic sensory process. If we have the privilege to hear, we don’t control it. Listening is an active and intentional process. It involves paying conscious attention to the sounds we hear, interpreting them, and understanding their meaning. Listening requires focus, cognitive engagement, and often emotional involvement. It's a deliberate action that goes beyond mere auditory perception to include processing and comprehension. We don’t have to have the physiological function to hear in order to listen.
Why is “Settling” Such a Charged Word?
“Settling” often comes with a negative connotation. When I googled it, one of the definitions I found was to “accept or agree to (something that one considers to be less than satisfactory)”. We assume that by settling, we’re taking a partner who’s “less than satisfactory”, but where does this notion come from in a romantic sense?