Love Is Something That You Do, Not Something That You Feel

When love is a verb that youโ€™re living, it becomes your entire state of being.

Feeling (noun): an emotional state or reaction. A feeling may be a noun, but love done right is a verb.

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What is love? Being in love is holding hands and hugging hard. Itโ€™s fighting over stupid things, saying things you donโ€™t mean and then apologizing. Itโ€™s drinking too much and lying down on the damp ground, shoulders touching, stars dancing dizzily above you.

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Itโ€™s saying โ€œI love youโ€ for the first time, the words bursting out of you in a single breath, inhaling their โ€œI love you, tooโ€ in return. Itโ€™s spending Christmas with his family and Thanksgiving with hers, even if neither one of you is really comfortable doing that yet.

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Love is learning the art of truly listening and avoiding the temptation of simply waiting for your turn to talk. Itโ€™s making space for somebody to be their best selves. Itโ€™s leaving the last slice of pizza and the last piece of cake.

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Itโ€™s attempting to make his momโ€™s chicken noodle soup instead of warming up a can of Campbellโ€™s in the microwave. Itโ€™s baking her a lopsided birthday cake with drippy frosting instead of buying one at the grocery store.

Love is holding her in her sleep, even though youโ€™re burning up because her body retains heat like a moving furnace. Itโ€™s eating really weird food when sheโ€™s on a diet and not making any faces until she turns her back.

Itโ€™s pretending that you donโ€™t mind kissing him when he straight up tastes like a garlic clove. Itโ€™s remembering that forgiveness is a daily practice and grace a lifelong work in progress. Itโ€™s infrequently ordering flowers, but frequently giving back rubs and foot massages.

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Love is moonlit walks on the beach but itโ€™s also long walking down even longer hospital corridors, each step lonelier than the last. Itโ€™s shaving her head when she canโ€™t bear to see all that hair on her pillows, in her brush, collected in the shower drain. Itโ€™s forgetting how to be squeamish around blood, learning how to change IV lines, and developing a second sense about when to pass the puke bucket.

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Itโ€™s reassuring him itโ€™s OK to move on, to meet somebody new, because if he mopes around for too long once youโ€™re gone youโ€™ll give him a ghostly kick in the ass. Itโ€™s finding memories in the way her pillowcase smells when you press your face into it.

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Love is saying a hundred hellos and a thousand goodbyes. Itโ€™s an exercise in self-restraint and self-respect. Itโ€™s breaking down boundaries in the best possible ways but never abandoning the posts you have stationed along the tender lines of your heart.

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Itโ€™s always having a plan but never living by your expectations. Itโ€™s opening up your chest and letting another person climb inside, and trusting them to be a good tenant.

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What is love? Well, love is never just a noun, just a feeling. Itโ€™s always shifting, changing, morphing, moving. Itโ€™s a painting with endless brushstrokes, a pottery wheel that never stops spinning. The truest love packs as much action as a superhero movie into one minute of bodies melting into each other like warm butter.

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This is what we should be searching for, why we shouldnโ€™t settle, why itโ€™s worth every second you ache for a soulmate before you find one. When love is a verb that youโ€™re living, it becomes your entire state of being.


Written byย Cassie Fox

Originally appeared on Yourtango.com

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Love Is Something That You Do, Not Something That You Feel

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