Let love be. Don’t give it a name. Ask yourself why do you love someone? Is it because of some of their qualities or is it because of a sense of kinship or intimacy? You can love someone for their qualities and not feel a sense of kinship. This type of love gives rise to competition and jealousy. Such is not the case when love arises out of kinship. If you love someone for their qualities, then, when the quality changes or you get used to the quality, love also changes. The relationship can either act as a strength or as a weakness depending on the mind. If the mind is strong then relationships can be a gift to us but if it is weak and not in control, then relationships can feel like bondage.
How would you like to see yourself? Happy and bubbling with enthusiasm or dull and difficult to please? Often you like to be pleased, appeased and cajoled. So you put up a tough, upset face and act difficult to please. If a person has to appease and please ten people all the time, it will be so tiring. People who keep a long face and expect others to cajole and appease them make others run away.
Lovers often do this. They expend a lot of energy in cajoling and this brings down the joy and celebration of the moment. It is okay for you to show your upset mood or tendency once in a while, but doing it over and over again is taxing for you and people you love.
Relationships develop naturally. If you try to build a relationship that is when you become a little artificial. Then your behaviour becomes artificial which is not natural. You like someone to be very honest, open, natural, unassuming with you. That is exactly what others also want from you. Don’t try hard to impress your boss, or impress your girl friend or boy friend. Then everything goes bad. Best is to be yourself, to be natural, to be forgiving and to be in the present moment. It makes a big difference. Be very subtle.
