“If you have love in your heart, it will guide you through your life. Love has its own wisdom. ~ Sadhguru
Love is something I have longed for most of my life. I dream that one day, someone will come into my life, preferably a man, who will love me and save me from the pain of emptiness and despair.
Even when I was single (and I was often single for long periods of time), I would fantasize about being in a perfect relationship with someone who would understand and accept me even in my worst moments. I want a partner and a best friend.
When Mr. Big didn’t come, I turned to my parents. I wanted a loving mom and dad—parents who could heal themselves and give me everything I was missing.
This led to a life of unmet expectations and a series of disappointments and borderline abusive and unhealthy relationships.
When I met another man it all came back to me and pushed me to my limits. This was one of those situations where I knew it wasn’t going to work out but kept going anyway. He eventually resumed his previous relationship and we remain friends. Or rather, I pretended to be friends, secretly hoping that one day everything would change and we would live happily ever after.
After a year and a half of intentionally staying in this dynamic, feeling exhausted and deeply depressed, our paths diverged and I began to heal myself. This time, it’s true.
I think a lot of us think love is beautiful. Although love is one of the most powerful emotions, it is also a painful emotion. When we care about someone and they are struggling or hurting themselves, we feel pain. When we lose someone we love, we feel pain. If you are willing to love, you are also willing to hurt.
But what if we are hurt because we don’t believe we are worthy of love? What if we view love from a limited perspective?
It’s been a few years since I committed to changing my relationship with myself. It scares me so much to see what my desperation to be loved has led me to do.
During this time, I went through different stages of growth while processing and examining every relationship I had, from my childhood to my marriage and divorce to my last romantic relationship encounter. Here are five lessons I’ve learned about love.
1. Love can only exist within the heart.
Not long ago, I watched a video of a yogi named Sadhguru.
In the film, he asks: “Where do you feel pain or joy, love or hate, anguish or ecstasy?”
The answer is: only internally.
Our emotions cannot be perceived or created outside of our inner experience.
Growing up, I believed I could only feel and receive love from external sources. It didn’t occur to me that I could awaken this feeling without an outside presence, as it is something I can only feel and create within myself.
This helped me realize that the love I was seeking was always with me and there had to be a way to get it.
I decided to focus on my thoughts and overall perception of myself while questioning every belief that told me I wasn’t worthy of love. I then dissect these beliefs while intentionally looking for evidence that they are untrue.
I focus on the enjoyable things and the people I love and admire. I can see that whenever I focus on the sweetness and kindness of my surroundings, my emotional state becomes pleasurable.
2. Love is always there.
Love is always available and you can feel it if you choose.
Since I know this is a bold statement, try this experiment.
Close your eyes and make yourself aware of the person you love deeply. Maybe it’s your child, puppy, or someone else. You get to see them doing something you absolutely love and cherish, or just think about their presence. Focus all your attention on this vision, immerse yourself completely in it, and hold it there for at least three to five minutes.
Then open your eyes and check in with how you feel. Do you feel that the sweetness of your relationship has increased?
All you do is close your eyes and use your imagination. I’m not suggesting that you go live alone on an abandoned island. But as you can see, love is within you and you can access it through simple exercises like this.
3. Love does not guarantee happiness.
At the beginning of my recovery, I had to face the question: “What do I expect from the love offered to me?”
I realized that I never entered any relationship with the thought of giving, but rather with the thought of taking. I didn’t say to myself, “Okay, I’m filled with kindness and joy and I want to share it with someone.”
Instead, I wanted to fill a need. Whether it was my relationship with my parents, or my relationships with the different men in my life, I was looking for something in return.
When it doesn’t come, my hungry soul throws a tantrum. Since I don’t have a healthy relationship with myself, I naturally attract relationships that reflect this.
Often, we enter relationships looking for something. Regardless of our intentions, we unconsciously want love to make us feel better and happier.
Initially, we may feel “it” as the dopamine from a new relationship floods our nervous system. But eventually, as the excitement of the new wears off, we return to the challenges of the past, the constant desire for more, ignoring the fact that it only exists within us all.
4. Self-love doesn’t always feel good at first.
When we say the word “love” it has a soft and pleasant meaning. So when we look at the fact that, say, setting boundaries is an act of self-love, it doesn’t sit well with our ideology because it causes discomfort.
This is hard for me to accept. I think loving yourself should always feel good. So when I do positive things for myself and feel afraid of rejection or worry that others won’t understand or accept me, this is something that the unhealed part of me struggles with and I feel uncomfortable and scared.
Ultimately, I learned that love goes deeper than immediate pleasure or comfort.
Sometimes self-love means setting boundaries, standing up for yourself, examining your toxic traits, speaking your truth, saying no, loving someone from a distance, or putting yourself first.
It’s respecting yourself enough to meet your own needs and well-being, even if it means other people are unhappy.
5. Loneliness results from disconnection.
When I got married, I felt lonely. Later I got divorced and the loneliness disappeared. Eventually, I fell into another relationship and felt lonely again. After the breakup, the loneliness disappeared again.
This dynamic makes me curious.
Often, when we are alone, we feel lonely. But I realized that loneliness does not lie in the presence of other people, but in our connection with ourselves.
Because I had been in an abusive and toxic environment, I knew I had betrayed myself. But because I ignored it and denied it, I automatically lost touch with who I was and my worth. This brings about a painful feeling of loneliness.
On the other hand, when I stand up for myself and leave situations that hurt me, my higher self understands that I am taking a healthy step and leads me back to myself. At this point, the loneliness begins to dissipate.
As of this writing, I choose to be single. For the first time, I felt that I was truly taking care of myself and respecting my own worth—something that was new to me all my life.
I see this as a time of deep recovery and healing while peeling back every layer of past limitations and trauma. Seeing that love is always available to all of us, I began to understand who I am, where I am, and that everything I do is enough.
—
Although approaching emotional pain will always be a challenge for me, I have come to realize that my pain was never meant to make me suffer. Instead, it showed me the love I could feel and taught me how to use it to heal myself.
About Sylvia Turonova
Silvia Turonova is a women’s mindset coach who guides women toward emotional healing while helping them live lives of wholeness, balance, and inner resilience. She enjoys writing and serving women through her blog. You can learn more about working with her and her one-on-one coaching intensive course COACH here , or get her free self-coaching worksheet here .
