How to find abundance in love

Love is not a transaction. It is not a zero sum game. Love is. I can choose love, immeasurable and free, or I can count favors and tokens given and received and call that love while I am completely missing the air full of love all around me, there to walk into and to have completely free if only I raise my eyes from my abacus. My experience of the discovery of love was simply the realization that I could choose to live in the light of love and it wouldn't make much difference if I was giving it or getting it. What mattered was choosing love. So I try to stand there, love the people I let into my life, enjoy the loving of them and their love of me as well as their love of others. I try to love the world, the life and the incredible beauty and power in it. I want to be adding more love to the stream of life; this is the way I try to live. Individuals come and go and sometimes return; there is romantic love for a time and it is wonderful; there are infants and children for a time and they are wonderful but the permanence, the fullness of love is something I choose to live out in my life. It is all around me whether I have a partner or not, a parent or not, a child or not. This works for me and has ever since I discovered it. It makes it possible for me to be free of the crippling need for other people's approval and reassurance in order to function. This makes all the difference to my happiness.

Alright, here's how I go about it: First I needed to learn that I could give and receive pleasant feelings and actions expecting nothing in return (for me it was a social anxiety thing). I'm nice to everyone I meet. I smile at them and I really mean it. Sometimes this is hard but I do it anyway. I open the door for them or ask if I can help them carry something that's heavy or pick up a thing they dropped. Want to just do a nice thing for someone, say goodbye/you're welcome and never see them again. Be prepared for these moments. They will make your day, and you'll hopefully realize that just as you enjoy being nice to people and helping them with no expectations, that other people feel the same way. Kind of a "brotherhood of man" thing. This helped me in so many ways that I can't really detail it. I'd just start with this.

When I'm really deep into a "I will never be good enough and everyone hates me" anxiety attack I have found that no amount of validation from external sources of love ever really helps. Nor does working on self love, I find, because that tends to waver when I'm in the midst of an attack. What DOES work consistently for me is to seek out things that I love about my life that are permanent (or at least feel that way). In my case, this means walking around parts of my city that are beautiful, going camping in the redwoods (my most favorite environment ever), getting up at dawn to watch the sun rise, smelling the air after rain...you see the pattern. There's something about the feeling of connectedness and joy nature gives me that makes me feel OK with being alone, even being unloved. Of course, I am NOT alone or unloved, not in the least, but feeling like I will be OK even if I were makes that fear so so much easier to bear. So, when you are freaking out about losing someone's love, focus on things and experiences YOU love that you'll have no matter what. Anything to make the prospect of being alone something that isn't so frightening and depressing.

The best way to increase love in your life is to love others. Yes you might get hurt, but that is small potatoes compared to what you get back. It might be helpful to find some small community to work in, a church, community garden, book club whatever. Really show up for those people. Call them on their birthday, invite them over for dinner. Maybe start with a small, low stakes, safe group.

How do you let other people's love into your heart without being afraid of what you will do to get it or that it will go away? These are two different questions. The answer to "What you will do to get it?" is "show up." Other than making yourself available for romantic love, brushing your teeth and looking presentable, I can't imagine what else one would do; it's not a reward, for good behaviour or for anything else. How you get over being afraid that it will go away is accepting that it always does. You will go through many relationships that are happy and filled with love until they are not and end; and if you're very lucky, you'll find one where it doesn't end until one of you dies, at which point that too goes away. The trick is to enjoy the ride every time.

The place to start perceiving love outside yourself in the world is to start inside - by loving yourself. Once you are sure that you love yourself, not blindly but with empathy and compassion for yourself as a human being, then your next hurdle is loving others. Don't limit yourself to just a few - as shothotbot suggests, develop connections and treat those you meet with compassion and love for them as other human beings. Having trouble with the first bit? I think at some point most of us have. First, recognize you're flawed, and try to consciously treat yourself with love even if (when) you screw up. Forgive yourself. Take care of yourself, just as you would someone else you love who needs care. Also, it will sound simplistic, but repeating a simple phrase to yourself - something as simple as "I love myself. I'm good enough." can help you get through the rough parts.

When we are children we NEED love. We need attention and security and to know there are responsive people who know how to navigate the world and who are acting in response to meeting our needs on a physical and emotional level. Recognize the fear of the love disappearing is about a very real state in which a human can find themselves in a state of desperate need and alone and that no one will care or do anything about it. To heal these feelings in myself, I practice doing everything I can to make sure that our society is prepared to meet the needs of people who are collapsing under needs they can not meet themselves. If you work to create a world where SHOULD you collapse, and SHOULD the shit hit the fan and everyone disappear and you have an injury or illness that leaves you unable to work-- you could trust this is a world that would respond to those needs and help you. Knowing you value and are doing what you can to make that possible--- and sharing time with others who have this same value, helps you to feel more secure that when you meet individuals who love you in the moment it's really not as important whether THEIR specific love comes or goes because you are part of a society that would carry you in an emergency. If underneath you know "but what if I collapsed under unbearable need, all these people would disappear!" then it never feels like the love is TRULY reliable. And that's the reality, individuals, even well intentioned, can not necessarily meet really big needs in others when everything is collapsing. Wanting stability, that kind of stability where if ANYTHING should happen someone would be there and do everything to make it better--- I think this is a valid human need that most people recieve varying amounts of (however universally imperfect) from their families. If as a society we assume many people are not getting these needs met in their families and make it a priority to be there for people (in ways that are well researched and informed and safe for everyone involved), we can change how many live with this feeling of instability. Also working to understand what sort of biological, societal, economic, emotional, and disability oriented issues lead to the instability you faced as a child, and working to change how we outreach and support families in states of crisis can help you feel more secure that this is in fact a world that cares, and that wants to make reliability and stable support available for all people. Those are just things that work for me and there are lot's of great ideas in this thread.

There are no guarantees that the love of others is here to stay. All you can do is love with all of your heart, receive love the best you can, keep working on allowing others into your life, trusting as much as possible, and let the chips fall where they may.

Exactly as shothotbot says, you have to give love to get love. In that vein, I really love this comment by jimmyjimjim, http://ask.metafilter.com/108524/Heal-Thyself#1563307 It's about feeling love in the aftermath of a break-up, but I think it's also generally applicable.