By Salome Akpan

It’s not just enough to love someone, people, or something. It is very easy to show love to people and make them feel welcome and good, it is easy to be there for someone no matter the circumstances and situations, the big question is, how to sustain love?

Love does not discriminate by age, religion, tribe, or class, love accepts all, and it can turn anyone into a sweet, beautiful, and kind person. Sustaining love involves repeated choices, duties, obligations, and commitment. Sustaining love will make you go extra mild in a good way just to be sure that one or more people are okay. Sustaining love is hard. But truth be told, it’s also possible and can be very much easy to keep.

How to Sustain Love

There are so many ways to sustain love, not just romantic love, but love that is extended to people within and around you.

In the hopes of coming to a more collective understanding of how to sustain love, I’ve listed some of the necessary things that sustain love.

ACCEPTION OF FLAWS

You have to come to the realization and to the fact that people have two wolves of the heart, one is of love, and the other is of hatred. And each of the wolves signifies that everyone has a weak point and flaw and that not one man is hundred percent perfect. Yet, we keep working and aiming toward perfection. Accepting people’s flaws and imperfections is not about beating ourselves down and stressing ourselves for others, It’s about acknowledging human fragility and trying to see the good in a person beyond their flaws. We are human beings, and we are never going to be the same, but being kind enough to accept each other’s flaws is something that can never stop us from sustaining the love we have for others.

HEALTHY/GOOD COMMUNICATION

Healthy communication strengthens bonds, grows affection, and sustains love for a very long time. Communication plays a vital role in sustaining love, it creates an avenue for you to communicate your mind, feelings, and perceptions and also gives room for others to tell you if what you’re thinking will be a good or bad one. Communication does not only mean you text all the time, especially when the person is not in the same environment as you. You can communicate through calling and face timing. Text can create so much room for misunderstanding, and unnecessary conflicts especially if the person does not get to hear your tone or see your facial expression, it’s advisable you make use of calling or facetiming to communicate clearly.

STAY COMMITTED

The key to sustaining love, especially in a relationship is to stay committed. A lot of people have experienced failed relationships because they lack the spirit of commitment to sustain the love and keep the relationship going. Being there for your partner is what a real relationship needs. When you neglect putting your effort into what you love and things you admire, you will do nothing rather than lose it to someone who knows how to handle the thing with care. If you put in that extra effort for someone that can reciprocate it, love can be the greatest feeling one can ever feel and yearn for.

Also read: Having Difficulty With What to Wear to a Dinner Date? Here is a Guide

LIVE IN AGREEMENT

There is no way you can sustain love when all you do is disagree on everything. Yes, it’s true that disagreement will come in so the best decision can be taken. But, have you ever wondered what will happen if there is always a disagreement without arriving at a conclusion? If it’s a business partner, you will be seen as one who is not fit for the role or job, and who won’t be able to work well even when the preferable option is presented before you. And if it happens to be a relationship, you’ll be seen as someone who can’t raise a good family because some disagreement always leads to confusion. Love could describe a plethora of different types of love, but the most important aspect of love is being in agreement.

Whether you both talk through every hour of your waking day, or whether you agree that you’re both busy and you’ll just talk on the phone at the end of every day, as long as you both are in agreement, that is what’s important and enough to sustain the love.

BE SECURED

How do you intend to secure other people when you are not secure? You don’t need to be insecure about yourself or even your posture or body, if you are insecure about yourself, people will definitely be insecure about you too because you created room for them.

Sustaining love for people is the most beautiful and secure feeling which extends to having a great companion, best friend, lover, partner, hype man, hype woman, cheerleader, advisor, and sincere buddy through every avenue in the journey of life.

GIVE WHOLEHEARTEDLY: You can not claim to love someone when you are stingy with the little you have. This doesn’t require you to give all that you have to someone, giving is love and sharing is equally love that makes people remember you for a long time. A little gift can leave footprints in people’s life. You cannot be a stingy person and then want to sustain love, it doesn’t work that way.

If you are always at the receiving end, learn and cultivate the habit of giving, don’t always wait to be getting things from people, also give people gifts and build great relationships.

Share your feelings and emotions too, you are not a robot to be hiding your feelings. Opening up and sharing your feelings and life with others constitutes one of the ways to sustain love. But, it must be mutual. If a particular area is lacking on either side of the relationship, it makes it unideal and not worth sustaining.”

SUSTAINING LOVE REQUIRES RESPECT

Respect people’s decisions, and respect their beliefs, culture, and tradition. Respect people’s perspectives of life, emotions, and feelings. There’s always room for a cruise, but an unhealthy cruise usually results in problems and bitterness. It’s great if you catch a cruise with someone, and it’s better if you know the boundary so you don’t overstep or overdo it. A love that is worth sustaining is always built on respect for one another. Each person understands the commitment they are making to the other person and the respect they accord each other. No matter how close you are to a person and how well you know someone, learn not to cross boundaries and learn how to relate with respect.

For some people, love can be used to describe almost anything. I love this burger, this meat pie is delicious, and I love it. For couples in long-term relationships, love means loyalty, respect, forgiveness, and commitment. But for college students, it might be their love for a subject, a teacher that teaches them well, or even the school they’re attending.

I don’t need to know where you fall on the lines, whether your love life is blissful or chaotic, it’s clear that everyone has an opinion on love and what it means in the everyday world. But truth be told, you must choose to see the good in others rather than focusing on things that bother you. Instead of ghosting people and making bad comments about their weaknesses, focus on ways in which they shine and their areas of greatness and make a list of their strengths.

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