An Intentional Practice to Prioritize Your Lover
How Can I Show You Love Today?
Assumption #1 — words are abstract.
Assumption #2 — this is why you give someone a gift for their birthday.
Because you can say, “Happy Birthday” and that is a good sentiment, but we usually take it a step further. You send a card or you make something or take time to call them or celebrate them.
Gifts are the manifestation of the abstract.
It is how we tangibly show what we are trying to say.
Case in point — the ever abstract phrase, “I love you.”
Important to say, but easily left ambiguous or unrooted.
If a ten year old boy can say it to a cute girl he just met or you can look at a piece of pie and use the same sentiment in expressing that you really love pie then the words, “I love you,” may be vainly left empty as an easy, over-used sentiment that isn’t rooted in anything real.
You can lay in bed with someone and say the words, and that can certainly be meaningful, but if it isn’t rooted in anything, it can also be a shallow disguise for a lack of having anything more than an abstract thought.
Because love is a gift.
Which means it needs to be manifested.
An author named Gary Chapman popularized this with the concept of “Love Languages”.
Different personalities feel and experience love in different ways — affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch are all examples of how different people will feel loved. Essentially, people sense love differently that need partnered with the use of the words that, in turn, make the abstract tangible.
Essentially, in order for the abstract statement to be made real, the sentiment, “I love you,” needs manifested the same way you manifest “Happy Birthday” via an act or gift.
So if you love someone, here is a practice to help manifest that love.
Everyday, simply ask, “How can I show this person love today?”
It seems obvious, but it is not the novelty of this idea that makes it powerful…it is the intentionality of claiming this question consistently over time that brings forth its value.
In my experience, asking this question leads to three benefits:
1 — Intentionality
Your love, overtime, can become as assumed as the ring on your finger. Eventually, you don’t even think of it because it is so common to your touch. Very easily, you can continue to say the words while not having them rooted in a real act or experience.
Intentionality, then, consistently forces you to pair your sentiment with its manifestation in action that we might otherwise neglect.
Asking this question prioritizes your intentionality — it becomes the lens through which you organize your time & energy.
We don’t drift towards love…it only is constant when we are intentional. Every single day.
2 — Contextuality
The second benefit of this intentional act is that it forces you to take that abstract statement and manifest it tangibly in a way that is customized to your lover.
By making this an intentional practice, you first ensure that your words are rooted in something beyond the words, but you also have the even more beneficial dynamic of rooting your words in your lover’s context.
It not only gives space for you to act on your feeling & commitment, but to do so in a way that meets the needs of the other. If you tangibly ask this to the other person or simply empathize with the specific context of this person, it empowers your lover to have their needs expressed in a way that directly applies to them.
It would be easy to show your love in the way that you prefer and, while this will still be beneficial, the more your gift is adapted to the specific personality, history, and needs of the other person, the more meaningful it will be.
By asking how the love needs manifested to this specific person, you are contextualizing your gift to the other person’s identity.
3 — Priority
Third, this practice combats a central human tendency to function at the expense of those who we feel connected to. We tend to care for others as a way to gain connection and neglect care for those we are already connected to. We will leave our family to go help a neighbor in need because it will gain relational points with those people and we assume our family will forgive us for sacrificing their needs or prioritizing others at their expense.
We treat strangers and outsiders with more forbearance than our closest allies.
Our closest, most intimate relationships then needs to be prioritized as the most important.
While we seemingly have a natural propensity to start with outsiders and give any reserves to our partners, children, or most connected relationships, the opposite is actually more powerful. By starting with your closest relationship and making it the priority that you invest the most in, the manifestation of that love will radiate. Caring for others will be like shrapnel from a deeply intimate love with those who should be the priority.
Intentionally and contextually asking this question forces those relationships we might assume to become the priority throughout each day.
Who is someone that you love?
Continue to say, “I love you,” but take on the practice of asking how you can show that love to them every single day.
I’m working on discovering how to “Become More Human”
If you’re interested, I’d be happy to share what I’m finding to help craft how you live, too. You can find more here:
