How many books have been published on how to play the relationship game?  Books with strategies for finding the man of your midlife dreams.  Books with all the do’s and don’t tactics of carrying out your strategy.  Books by so-called experts in the game of love.  Starts sounding more like a high-stakes football game than connecting with another human being.

Our WomenBloom member, Jan Lundy, an author, presenter, and spiritual mentor, distills love to its essence in this thoughtful essay.  It’s a great reminder of the fundamental need all of us share.

As a kid, I loved playing games. Whether it was a lively game of monopoly on the back porch of my childhood home, or running through a field with fellow campers playing Capture the Flag, games were always my forté. Playing games in relationships, however, was not. It seemed to me an outlandish thing not to be “real” with people—to manipulate them, or to hide behind a protective facade. And it’s never felt to me like relationships should have rules like board games. Relationships should be spontaneous, forthright, and emanate from the heart, not from a rulebook written by so-called relationship experts.

After all, relationships are based on love and when has love ever followed the rules! Love is free flowing, freedom loving, unable to be contained. I am sure that each one of us has experienced just how elusive love can be. When we desired it most, love flitted away like a leaf dancing down the sidewalk. When we struggled with making love “work,” it squirmed out of our grasp and resented our loyal efforts. When we searched for love, it couldn’t be found.

It seems to me that if we are destined to be in loving relationships, we must let freedom ring. What does that mean? It means true love doesn’t confine or demand. It means that it blossoms like a hot house flower in an environment that is warm, nourishing, and unrestrictive. True love is also open and honest. If true love plays by any rules at all, I imagine it would be these:

Keep Your Heart Open

Because each one of has had a broken heart (or two or three!), we automatically carry within us a protective mechanism not to be hurt again. In the game of safeguarding ourselves from further hurt, we may put up some pretty big walls. We don’t allow people to get too close, or to see the real person behind any masks we might wear. In the hope of mending our broken heart, we may actually sew the seams together a bit too tightly. Actually, it is a loosely mended heart that allows new love to flow in and to flow out. It is important to keep ourselves open to love, despite any fear of rejection or loss that might come up for us.

Be the Truth of Who You Are

Love doesn’t last when we are phony bolognas. True love thrives instead in the warm soil of truth and acceptance. When we present a persona of ourselves not as we truly are (but as we think someone might like us to be), it doesn’t take long before the game is over. The truth emerges that we have a bit of a temper, or that we don’t like boats as he does, or any number of things that we might hide from someone who we hope will love us. True love thrives only when we are able to come to the banquet of life as we really are. Our fear, in the early stages of intimate relationship, is that we won’t be accepted at face value—a real person with warts and moles, weird idiosyncrasies and bad habits. Our fear is that we won’t be loved for ourselves.

True love can be ours only when we present ourselves to others with truth and honesty. We need to remember that everyone has warts and moles, weird idiosyncrasies and bad habits. We wouldn’t be human if we weren’t! The idea is to rise above the personality (I like to call it our “ego self”) and seek out the spirit—the essence—of each person. In turn, let us present our truest self—our essence—to them, so that they can connect with ours.

I remember the first time I really presented myself in this way to someone. I was 46-years-old. (I guess it took me a while to learn this lesson.) All my insecurities went wild! My ego self was working overtime, chattering away at me that I was not good enough to be with this person. I was sure I wouldn’t make the grade! What a great relief to feel his relief, too, when we realized that we could be real with one another. We talked about our failed relationships and what we wanted in a new one. Today, I am proud to say that this openhearted man is my husband. Our relationship from the outset has been based upon honesty and truth—the truth of who we are. There was no phony bologna and, in that, the feast of our marriage has been a delightful repast.

Be Love

The final ingredient for love to rise up and flourish is not to wait to receive love, but to give it. When we can demonstrate unconditional love to someone, everything changes. However, many of us, due to our insecurities or our failed relationships, hold back. We play the game of wait and see. When we’ve received what we think we should get, we allow our love gates to open. I would challenge you to do it differently and be the one to give first. Offer yourself willingly, openheartedly, and observe what happens. Don’t think of what you might or might not get in return. Just give.

By being love to another, we demonstrate our openheartedness, our willingness to love someone as they are; we show them that we are able to love generously, unconditionally. When that happens, others can do the same.

In the end, when all is said and done, and we reflect back upon the presence of love in our life, we’ll realize love was not a game to be played after all, but a great gift to be given and received—wholeheartedly.

Janice Lynne Lundy is an author, presenter, and Interfaith Spiritual Director. With her husband, Brad Lundy, she co-authored Perfect Love: How to Find Yours and Make It Last Forever. In October 2008, her newest book was released by Sorin Books:Your Truest Self: Embracing the Woman You Are Meant to Be. Learn more about Jan on her websites, www.awakenedliving.com; www.awakeisgood.blogspot.com. 

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