The problem isn’t that he loves you less, it’s that you expect him to love you the same way you love him.

When we talk about romantic love, we always focus on the part of the equation that we think will make us the happiest: how to get someone to love us.

Seriously, that’s 99.9% of dating advice. But if you do research on how our minds work, you’ll know that a major contributor to our happiness – and what we should focus on – is how we love.

Think of the famous – and flawed – dating advice: “Never treat someone who treats you as an option as a priority”.

Here we highlight the other’s behaviors – “Does he/she love me enough?”, “Is our affection reciprocal?”

We measure their actions and what we think are their motivations. We turn people we would otherwise be willing to love into monsters because we don’t get enough. We put all our eggs in a basket over which we have no control.

The fact is, it’s very difficult to tell if someone loves you as much as you do, even if they love you. People show and receive love in different ways, and despite all our technological advances, we are often very bad at communication when it comes to matters of the heart.

Feeling completely loved by someone is like landing on the moon. You have to learn to walk first.

Focusing on one of the hardest parts of relationships – having someone love us as much and in the way we want to be loved – will ensure that we are never happy in love.

The secret to love is to love

There is no obstacle to having more love in your life. You can start right now. loving.

It’s not a gimmick and it’s not bullshit, spend more time loving and you’ll feel happier with the quality in your love life. Forgive more. Show your love by listening to and understanding your partner. Make all love easier for yourself by not demanding that he/she love you back. Just let your heart do what it does and try to get your ego out of the way as much as possible.

You don’t have to depend on someone else, luck, weather, or romantic moments to have a happy love life. All you have to do is be willing to love.

SEE ALSO: WHAT IS THE REAL PURPOSE OF A RELATIONSHIP?

The need to solve the problem is the biggest problem

The problem with this strategy is that it reveals an unpleasant truth: we care about “making our partner love us” far more than we care about becoming people who can love better.

We put up with so much unnecessary happiness because we want to solve something that is not a problem: people love each other to varying degrees.

No one is a bad person because they love someone less than that person loves them. Some people are busier, some people place more value on money or endeavors that are not romantic love, some people carry too much baggage to be vulnerable enough to love deeply in their current state. There are circumstances beyond our control, always, but we can be satisfied with the abundance we can give when we really try.

SEE ALSO: THE 3 KEYS TO BECOMING AN IRRESISTIBLE PERSON

The problem is that instead of being fixated on this abundance, we become obsessed with scarcity. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

“We often feel like a pot without a lid. We believe that our lid is somewhere in the world and that if we look hard enough we will find the right lid to cover our pot. The feeling of emptiness is always there within us. When we gaze at the other person, we sometimes think we see what we feel we lack.

We think we need someone to support us, take refuge and lessen our suffering. We want to be the object of the other person’s attention and contemplation.

We want someone to look at us and embrace our feeling of emptiness and suffering with their mindfulness energy. We soon became addicted to this kind of energy; we think that without this attention, we cannot live. It helps us feel less empty and helps us forget the blockage of internal suffering.

When we ourselves can’t generate the energy to take care of ourselves, we think we need someone else’s energy. We focus on need and lack rather than generating the energy of mindfulness, concentration and discernment that can heal our suffering and help the other person as well.”

When we have nothing to lose, we stop being afraid of losing

Imagine what your love life would be like if you weren’t afraid of losing. How much freer would you be to be yourself, to pursue your goals – how much more powerful would you feel to give love without fear of the possibility of not getting it back? Don’t we always understand that life is more fully lived in gratitude than in worry?

There is no concern about our ability to give love. This is something we control. This is something we can do.

SEE ALSO: THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN A RELATIONSHIP (FOCUS ON THIS, FIND A PARTNER WHO HAS IT AND THE REST WILL FIX ITSELF

As Dennis Lehane wrote:

“The person you love is rarely worthy of the size of your love. Because no one is worthy of it and maybe no one is worthy of that burden either. You will be disappointed. You will be disappointed and you will have your trust broken and you will have many successful days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But you roll up your sleeves and move on – in everything – because that’s what matters.”

There is a story about children who survived the holocaust but were unable to sleep peacefully until they were given sleeping loaves. Only when they were sure of the promise that they could eat the next day could they sleep. Give yourself a piece of bread to hold: focus on what you control, what makes you feel good.

Saying “I love you” is easy

Who is happier? The person who is chained to a status or the person who is free from circumstances, who is free to do what is good for himself.

If you’re worried about whether you’re lovable, handsome, smart, or good enough – will you look to other people to say “yes” to you to fill your void? You are kind because you love. You’re beautiful, smart, or enough because of what you do. You will never be these things simply because someone tells you that you are.

Saying “I love you” is easy. Loving someone is easy. Expectations are complicated.

SEE ALSO: THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE

Reciprocity is often the enemy of happiness

I learned that reciprocity can be the enemy of happiness. When you give something, especially love, it must be because of the joy that comes from giving. If you’re giving in hopes of making a transaction because you want to keep score and get back everything you’ve been giving, I’m sorry to say you’ll never be happy. Since you haven’t found love, you’ve found someone who accepts the same form of payment as you do to distribute your affection.

It is supposed to feel empowered to demand reciprocity, but instead it feels hollow. What if, instead of needing, I was so committed that I could give as much love whenever and wherever I wanted and never worry about what was coming back to me?

What’s wrong with loving someone more than that person loves you? What if you have a high love capacity and you’re on the far end of the spectrum? Is it worth being upset all your life? Is it worth sacrificing your gift because it’s not given to everyone equally? Is it more important to find peace and say “I’m glad that one of my best qualities is my ability to love” and move on?

The simple fact is that love and relationships are not equally important to everyone and we are entitled to have whatever values ​​we choose as long as we are forthcoming about them in a relationship.

When you really love someone, your love doesn’t come with hooks. You don’t like someone to get something from that person, including a share of how much they love you.