Qualities and behaviours of love

“If you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To know the pain of too much tenderness. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.” Khalil Gibran

“You will know that you are living a good life if you love another correctly.”

At Rahma, we use the image of a garden for love.

Working on love is like nurturing a garden. You need research, constant attention, and to enjoy the process.

This article will go through some behaviours of love. However, the expression of love is unique to each individual person and so you should focus on what works for you and your loved ones.

The behaviours of pure love can be summarised in four categories:

1. Seeing: seeing another person’s magic and divinity with wonder and awe. Seeing them completely, unconditionally and without expectations
2. Acceptance and admiration: completely accept thebeloved person for who they are; support their journey to become who they want to be; see their amazing potential with positivity and admiration; be their biggest “cheerleader” and biggest advocate
3. Active: love is always an active, dynamic process that requires internal work including self-love, opening our own hearts, being vulnerable and healing our own trauma
4. Personalised: the expression of love is best when it is personalised to each person; we should focus energy and attention on expressing love in a way that suits each of our loved ones

1: Seeing

Seeing another and allowing ourselves to be seen

Love involves vulnerability and openness. We need to allow ourselves to be fully seen, even the parts we are ashamed of in ourselves. We also need to fully see another person. For our children, we must slow down to see them for who they truly are: personality, interests and their full selves.

Allowing ourselves to be fully “seen” and honoured requires courage. Many of us want to hide the parts that have been shamed before, such as never achieving our father’s dream of becoming a doctor, or that we really want to be the centre of attention or that we are ashamed of how shy we are. Allowing ourselves to be loved can be as hard as feeling ashamed. Opening ourselves to love, even from our children, can be as hard as your manager at work shouting at you in front of the whole team for making a mistake. We may open ourselves to love and get hurt by people who do not yet know how to love safely. These people may shame parts of us e.g. “I can’t believe you want to be the centre of attention. Are you a child? Grow up!”

However, we will not truly feel love if we do not open ourselves up to risk.

Love should be unconditional

Once we get the privilege of seeing the whole person, we then have the honour of loving all of them.

All humans are imperfect. We should see the whole of our loved one and love them with all their glorious strengths, mistakes and flaws. We should support them when they’re at their highest success and when they learn and grow. We should love them as they are now without expectations of outcomes or return.

Please read our article on unconditional love for further information.

Awe, wonder and positive regard

It is a divine gift to be allowed to see a whole person and connect with them.

Rumi’s poetry talks about the awe and magic of that connection, which is the purpose of life! “This sacred blessing, this divine love … they are the chosen ones … once they were particles of light, now they are the radiant sun.” Existing is painful, but love makes that pain worthwhile.

We should never lose sight of how special it is to be allowed to connect with the piece of “God” within another person or with their “Soul” and to be allowed to be part of their life journey. We should see their potential, their uniqueness, their divinity and support them to become their full self. 

In the chaos of life, we can lose sight of the fact that love is what gives life meaning and purpose. We should always prioritise our emotional, mental and physical energy for love and connection.

2: Acceptance with admiration

We should accept our loved ones for who they are completely. We should not ask them to change themselves or their goals in life to suit us.

Further to acceptance, we should admire them and be their biggest supporters and cheerleaders in their mission to be their full, authentic selves.

Research demonstrates that people in secure loving relationships are more likely to succeed because they are more confident taking risks, exploring and trying new things. This is true for adults and children.

3: Active Process that requires work

Love is a process that requires research, understanding and attention

Like gardening, love requires care forever. The process of caring for the garden will fill our hearts with joy and give us health and purpose.

Love is not only an emotion that we can declare – it’s a dynamic, active process that’s built on consistent behaviours like trust, respect, kindness, gentleness, safety and connection.

Our whole society has not prioritised love until this generation. Most of this generation will have to do the work in our lifetimes to learn what love is and how to express it. This work will give the best gift to ourselves and to the next generation: a gift that will make their lives full of wonder, self-worth and connection. We need to allocate time to love, read books, assess our progress, attend seminars and seek professional help.

The above is especially true for men. Many men come from generations of fathers who have never been allowed to feel love. It will require significant research and work to break those cycles.

Safety and respect

We cannot open ourselves to love if we do not feel safe. This applies to relationships with both adults and children.

We need psychological, physical and emotional safety. Your children should never fear that you will hit them, scream at them, disrespect them, swear at them, or try to control their lives.

We must respect our children’s minds, emotions, bodies, opinions and when they say “no”. We should support our children to be able to critically think, know their values and make their own decisions.

Our self love sets the limit for how much we can love others

Believing that we deserve love and loving ourselves is critical. We can only love others if we love ourselves. Our relationship with ourselves sets the ceiling for how much love we can offer. This should form part of the active work required to foster meaningful, loving relationships.

Please read our article on parental trauma for more about this topic.

4: Personalisation

Attunement – “Mawadda”

Attunement informs all the behaviours of love.

Attunement is a key concept for both our relationships with adults we love and our children. As we make time and emotional space to see another person, we will also see what they respond to, what they like, and will be able to modify our behaviour to suit them. In Arabic, the word “mawadda” captures this beautifully – mawadda means loving in a way such that the recipient feels loved. It means modifying your communication and behaviour in a way that suits the recipient to feel loved, important and the centre of your attention.

Love is like caring for a garden full of diverse plants. You need to study each plant and know what it needs to thrive. That might be more sun exposure, or more shade, or more water, or a particular type of plant-food. One of your children may love constant physical contact (hugs, holding hands, kisses, sleeping side-by-side) and another child may respond more to quality time spent together, such as talking as you walk to school or talking as you do weeding in the garden. Attunement is a key, beautiful skill that individualises your behaviour to each relationship in your life.

Listed below are some behaviours of love that you can use in your relationships if they resonate with you and those you love.

1. Learning our loved one’s language of love: Quality time, Acts of service, Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation or Gifts
2. Connection: physical and emotional connection. When you are spending time together, ensuring that you are not distracted by work or stressed about other activities
3. Consistency: returning their bids for connection at least 80% of the time – when they reach out to you, noticing and returning that gesture
4. Open expression of love – making it normal in your household to shout “I love you!” or “Wow! You’re amazing!”
5. Eye contact
6. Prioritise them above others and above work
7. Make it normal in your home to cry or be vulnerable on hard days
8. Reliability: being reliable when we commit to something or when we are needed
9. Hugs and physical contact
10. And so much more!

We can learn Pure Love from children

The best way to learn love is to observe our children.

We can see pure love from our children every day.  children express unconditional love towards us every day. We can learn from the authentic, special love they consistently radiate.

Reflect on how your child loves you no matter how much you weigh, what colour your hair is or how much you spent on their birthday gift. They love us because we are theirs and will always be. That’s it.