Love is a lot of things. Love is a verb. Love is in constant motion.
It is powerful, and it is empowering.
But, what about true love?
We’ve heard it said both ways, but what’s the difference? In essence, true love is the feeling that you completely and utterly love someone and everything about them. True love is as ambiguous and as unique as each person in the relationship.
There is no cookie-cutter recipe to true love. However, relationships are agreements of respect, honesty, trust, safety, security, and, yes, love. Nobody belongs to anybody, but we share a special connection and bond with our true love.
What Is the Meaning of True Love?
So, what does it mean to find “true love?” When you find true love, it is the most exciting and yet comforting moment. When you know you can ultimately be yourself, and someone genuinely loves you, it gives you the happiness you’ve never experienced previously. However, true love looks different on different people. But there are a few signs that help you know the difference.
True love is a unique and passionate bond that connects you as a couple that wants the best for the other person regardless of what that means for them. It is the foundation for a healthy, loving relationship. True love is authentic and genuine. It has significant meaning in your relationship because through flaws and all, you know the importance of true love and have finally found your best friend.
Does True Love Exist?
Now, you may be wondering. Okay, that sounds great but does true love actually exist?
Yes! It does exist. It looks different for everyone, and everyone finds their true love at different times in their life. Some find them early; others wait a lifetime. But it does exist!
It is even possible to have more than one true love in your lifetime. It is exciting and an intense feeling! It is intimate, deep, and passionate. But it goes beyond physical passion to the heart and mind.
What Is the Difference Between Love and True Love?
Okay, so now we've discussed the definition of true love. Now, let's talk about the difference between love and true love. When it comes to true love, you don’t have the pressure to perform or need approval.
You can be totally and completely yourself. All the little things that add up over time show unconditional love without the expectation of receiving something in return. It’s not about butterflies in your stomach but a constant feeling of calm, peace, and trust. It is not demanding or rude, or distrustful.
The 15 Ways of Maintaining True Love
Okay, so you’ve found your true love! What now? Remember, love is an action verb, so when you find your true love, you have to put in the work to maintain a healthy, loving relationship.
Keep reading for our 15 ways of maintaining true love!
1. You Are Affectionate
Demonstrating affection to our partner is a huge part of maintaining true love. Affection means many things in a relationship, including trust, love, safety, attraction, and expressing our feelings for each other. Maintaining an active effort of staying in touch with regular physical contact and affection helps show your true love to your partner.
Affection and physical touch can become routine in a relationship. Still, if you are both working to keep the spark alive and give and receive affection, then you are well on your way to maintaining a healthy, hopeful relationship where you are both indeed in love.
2. You Accept Each Other (Flaws and All!)
True love knows that no matter what is going on in your life or with your health, you can share and understand without a doubt that they will not think less of you or judge you for sharing your most inner thoughts.
They will always listen and hear you out regardless of the subject matter at hand. Maintaining your relationship with your true love is resting comfortably in the knowledge that your partner will love and accept the good and the bad!
They know who you are, and they don't want you to change. And the other way around. In a true love relationship, you fully accept the other person and don't want them to change. You love them! We constantly think of feeling safe in a physical or emotional sense. Still, another aspect of feeling safe in a relationship is knowing you are loved and secure in who you are as a person.
3. You Respect Each Other
Your true love partner is the love of your life, but they are also separate and unique human beings with their thoughts, ideas, goals, and dreams. When you get incredibly close with your true love partner, it can often be easy to forget this. We sometimes tend to treat our partners as extensions of us. And as that may be the case to some degree, they are still an autonomous individual and should be treated as such.
Respect comes in many forms, not just respecting physical boundaries, but when you are in a relationship with your true love, respect can show through everything you do for each other. Such as accepting your family and friends (and you accepting theirs!) and respecting their choices that you may disagree with, but still encouraging them. When you truly love someone, and they are healthy for you, respect is a natural occurrence that stems from genuinely wanting what is best for the other person over yourself.
4. You Keep Your Promises
Keeping promises doesn’t necessarily mean big promises. It can be simple everyday promises you may have mentioned to your true love.
However, keeping promises is the backbone of a healthy relationship. The very essence of maintaining your faithfulness and fulfilling the promises you’ve made to your true love is at the heart of any healthy relationship. If your partner is your best friend, you’d never want to hurt them anyway, so why break a promise?
5. Actions Speak Louder Than Words
It may seem cliché, but actions do speak louder than words! When you are with your true love, maintaining that special bond and romance you have between each other boils down to actions. Are they loving? Are they kind? Do they keep their promises? Have you kept your promises to them?
We’ve talked a lot about the other person in the relationship, but it takes both of you to maintain a genuine love relationship actively. Maintaining a relationship with your true love may seem like a lot of work, but when you find that one person that your souls connect with, it’ll all come together.
6. You Talk as “We” Instead of “I”
Although it is still vital that you remember you are two separate human beings with two distinct wants and needs when you are in a relationship with your true love, you need to remember whatever you do also affects the other person.
Consequently, you don’t belong to each other, but you should maintain a sense of togetherness out of respect for your partner. Meaning whatever comes your way, you are in it together. Whether it’s a medical diagnosis, an aging parent, or a business that didn’t succeed, it is “we” that is going through it together. You want your partner to know that you don’t have to do life alone.
7. You Are Fully Present
Everything under the sun is available now to distract us and hold our attention—especially our phones and other technology. However, an excellent way of knowing what true love is is to enjoy the company of your S.O. fully.
Paying attention to your S.O. could be looking into their eyes while out to dinner (instead of glancing at your phone) or listening to a story of their life at the end of a long day. Having a positive, healthy relationship is not effortless. Through large and small acts, it says that I am showing my love in action, including paying attention to you entirely.
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8. You Are Comfortable Being Completely Yourself
How refreshing it is to be your true self in front of your true love—your quirks, your morning breath, your attitude when you get hangry. And they can be themselves in front of you as well. You will love them (maybe even more) when you see their true self, that they don’t let anyone else see. Love is strange. We do strange things.
But it doesn’t matter to those who genuinely love us! So, when you start noticing you’ve let your guard down, and you let them hear you sing in the shower, it just means that true love is in the air. Maintaining that level of comfortableness in the presence of your S.O. is essential.
9. Honesty Is the Best Policy
Without honesty, you don’t have anything in a relationship. Telling the truth is one of the most basic ways to respect your partner. Unfortunately, there are so many opportunities to deceive our loved ones in our adult life.
However, resist the temptation even to tell white lies to your partners. First, the truth will eventually come out. Second, to maintain trust and vulnerability, you don’t want to let little lies start to creep in and then become more significant lies. You both deserve honesty and respect as the foundation of your love.
10. You Respect Each Other’s Boundaries
It will come naturally for you and your partner to respect each other's emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual boundaries in a genuinely loving relationship. You know you both want to feel loved and supported and safe, and the only way to do that is to respect the boundaries you’ve both established you are comfortable maintaining.
There won’t even be a question of you compromising your boundaries because in a loving relationship, you want the other person to know above all else they are safe and secure with you.
11. You Are Proactive in Maintaining Your True Love
You have control over your choices when it comes to relationships and friendships—romantic or not. When you find your true love, it is vital to be proactive in maintaining that true love. Unfortunately, so many things in our modern world are trying to distract us and keep us from our most important priorities, including our relationships with our S.O.
Consequently, being proactive in your true love relationship means you've chosen someone who loves, respects, and honors you. They are trustworthy, loyal, and open in your relationship. Your true love isn't going to break your trust or violate your personal or physical boundaries.
On the contrary, once you've determined you've found your true love, then you will do everything you can to hold onto them for life!
Meeting your true love may have just happened but maintaining your true love does not.
12. There Is a Constant Sense of Understanding Each Other's Point of View
It is easy to feel misunderstood in a loving, close relationship, just as easily as it is for others to misunderstand us. We are constantly in a hurry rushing from one thing to the next. Trying to keep up with our emails, our workout routine, and our relationship demands makes it easier to feel frustrated or impatient with our partners.
However, in having and maintaining a genuine love relationship, you tend to have a constant sense of the other person's perspective. Of course, we sometimes will still get frustrated or tired, but generally, we keep our partner's unique perspective in our mind.
The more we try to truly understand their point of view, the more our S.O. feels heard and understood. Therefore, constantly keeping our partner's point of view first and foremost in our minds is one of the cornerstones of a healthy, genuine love relationship.
13. You Give Priority to One Another
Giving priority to one another doesn’t mean sacrificing your personal happiness, time, or friendship. When you live life together, you keep the other person's safety, security, and satisfaction at the forefront of your decisions.
You’d never want to do something that would intentionally hurt their feelings or make them wonder if you love them. By making them a priority in your decisions, you say that you choose them every day, and you are showing it by your choices.
14. You Support Each Other Fully
If you are offered a fantastic job on the other side of the country (or even in another country!), you know your true love is going to support whatever decision you choose. There's never any fear of sharing your new plans, ideas, or job offers because you know they will hear you out and talk about the opportunity together.
This is especially true during trying times such as during quarantine when everything is different: your job, workspace, and inability to go where you want to go. These are all moments in your relationship that will test your love for each other, and you will indeed see how much you fully support each other.
Lovebox, the perfect gift
Looking for a thoughtful gift? The Lovebox is the perfect gift to send personnalized messages, photos and drawings to your partner, family members or friends. With the Lovebox, each message is a gift. This wonderful wooden box helps you to keep the spark alive in relationships.
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You can also schedule messages.
15. Communication Is Key
Not only is regular communication key, but so is regular healthy communication. When you’ve found your true love, it is like you’ve finally found the best friend you’ve always wanted in life. It just works.
You connect on a deeper, emotional level. You are genuinely friends and want to talk to them and hear what they have to say. True love is always healthy communication! There are never any games or deceit or blaming the other for something.
If you’re in a long-distance relationship, it's just as essential to maintain consistent healthy communication. Thanks to modern technology, we can communicate with our true love in an infinite number of ways!
We can text, FaceTime, snail mail, Skype, Zoom, or one of the most popular ways to instantly brighten your true love’s day no matter where they are in the world is with our Lovebox—the world’s first love note messenger.
You can send love notes, pictures, drawings, or stickers. The spinny heart on the side of the box spins until the recipient opens the message. Then they can send you a shower of hearts to let you know they got it! You can even pick your color spinny!
Summary
We now know that it is possible to find true love. True love is different from love because true love fully accepts each other just the way you are. The importance behind the meaning of true love is that it is an unbreakable bond that connects you with a deep passion and calmness.
But don’t forget love is a verb! So, you have to work to maintain it and to let it grow. With our best 15 tips for maintaining affection, you’ll have nothing to worry about when you find your true love!
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Sources:
What Does True Love Feel Like? 5 Signs Your Love Is The Real Deal | Elite Daily