At first glance, most people would probably think that this is an absurd question and would immediately want to answer that no, love is NOT a taboo. Before trying to sweep that question under the rug, however, they would question why I would EVER think that something as beautiful as love is a taboo.
As a matter of fact, they would wonder why I, of all people, being someone who loves talking about love would ask this question ESPECIALLY if there is the slightest possibility that love might be a taboo.
Wait a minute, they would say.
What are you talking about?
And why are you talking about love, anyway?
My answer? Because I believe that love has become a taboo in our society. It shouldn’t be a taboo, but it is.
Don’t Believe That We Treat Love Like a Taboo?
Then tell me:
- Why is it that news stations hardly ever talk about love?
- Why is it that many modern love songs, shows and movies are usually about everything except the purest form of love?
- Come on, you know what I mean. The “love” that we often get to experience via the media is often a “get laid quick” version of what some people think is love.
- And you know how much that kind of media messes people up.
- Why? Because simply put, it distorts the line between love that is “good enough” and love that is actually good.
- Why is love not the main topic in most people’s conversations, social media, life or to-do list?
- What are we running from?
- What are we scared of?
- Is love that bad?
The truth is, love is soooo good that it’s “bad.” This means that we can’t even handle love.
Our relationship with love is a prime example of how we do one thing and say another.
Simply put, we say that love matters to us and that it’s important, but we don’t want to be caught loving.
Love Is A Juggling Act, The Most Important One There Is, Actually
You know how people say that life feels like a juggling act?
Well, to some of you, love is like a ball made of porcelain, glass, crystal or whatever seems so precious to you that you don’t even want to juggle it. You prefer juggling many other things. As a matter of fact, you look for extra things to juggle just so you don’t have to juggle love. Or even touch love. Much less caress love.
As much as we say that we are pursuing happiness, one of the greatest discoveries that I’ve had is that the feeling that we’re most terrified of is joy.
Brenée Brown, a highly acclaimed researcher taught me this.
And I’m not a academic researcher, but it’s not hard for me to draw the conclusion that most of us, are as afraid, if not more afraid of love as we are afraid of joy. Think about it. What gives you the greatest joy? Who gives you the greatest joy?
In a nutshell, it’s:
- to love
- to be loved
- to experience things we love
- our loved ones — Do you notice the name, by the way? We don’t call these people the “joyous ones” or the “burdensome ones” (although they might be). We refer to them as recipients of our love… meaning, our “loved ones.”
And yet despite how much joy these people in our life naturally bring us, we so often deliberately opt to not juggle that ball of love because we are afraid that:
- it’ll break
- that we’ll literally drop the ball and
- that we’re not good enough to juggle the ball.
So we often don’t juggle. We tell ourselves that we are to make ourselves feel better, but we don’t juggle.
And I think that just so that we are not tempted to infuse our lives, our beings and the world with love, we treat love like a taboo.
But we’re doing ourselves and those around us suuuucccch a disservice.
Love shouldn’t be what we get to after everything on our to-do list is done. Our to-do list should be to focus on who to love and to serve the world using what we most love about ourselves.
Anything other than that is simply waisting our time.
Love isn’t a ball to juggle. It’s the most important juggling act you need to do.
And the only fear that you should have is that you don’t love everybody you were put on this earth to love in a way that it makes their life and yours worthwhile before it’s too late.
Symptoms In Our Language That Love Is A Taboo
The reason I wanted to explore this question is because, often in our society, love is avoided to the point that we can start to wonder if it’s a taboo or not… although as you can see, society at large avoids love as much as each of us avoids really diving deep into love.
So it’s interesting to explore why love continues to be a taboo…. and why it hasn’t died down with any generation.
We often hear phrases such as:
- Leave your emotions out of it.
- Don’t be a wimp.
- Think with your head, not with your heart. (Even though we associate the head with coldness– like cold temperature).
- Make a calculated decision. (What does that even mean??? Are we calculators or human BEINGS?)
- You shouldn’t wear your heart on your sleeve. (To which we should respond, “I wear my heart on my heart… and like it that way.” Besides, the heart’s location won’t make it feel more or less as long as it’s alive and pumping).
- And the famous one that sensitive people hear all the time and no many how many times they hear it, it doesn’t help is: Don’t be so sensitive.
And with phrases like these, we start to be conditioned and encouraged to keep our feelings ours, meaning private.
It’s unnatural.
But we do it.
We put on the armor.
And go into life.. guarded, protected… almost unsensitized.
And because circumstances, other people and sometimes even our own personality weaknesses take us down, we think…. “Hmm… maybe keeping my love to myself is not so unnatural after all.”
And the secrecy prevails.
The taboo is “justified.”
The Conditioning Starts Early
In school, falling in love with a classmate can be a reason for ridicule (possibly for years) if you make your feelings public, and especially if his/her friends find out about it.
You think: REALLY? Loving someone is something that I need to be made fun of for?
Nowadays, it seems that it’s more of a taboo to say “I love you,” than to say “I hate you.”
Sadly, if someone said that they hate you or gave you that vibe, you would do what you’re able to do so well and that is to “dust yourself off and move on.” You know the drill.
But if someone at work, from your past, whom you just met, whom you’ve had your eye on or from a common group of friends said “I love you,” you wouldn’t know what to do with this phrase.
You would freeeaaak out!
Haven’t you heard what you say to yourself or you would say to others (meaning those who would pinky-swear-and-hope-to-die that they wouldn’t ever say a word about this to any other single soul)?
You say, “Oh my gosh!!!! He/she used the “L-word.”
- You wouldn’t know what to “make of it.” (Do you need to make anything of it, by the way? Just thinking out loud).
- What’s okay to say?
- How should you react?
- What should you do with that information?
- Should you share that information? Oh gosh, no! No, no, no!
- And now what?
You would freak out some more.
You would replay the scene over and over in your head.
The Code of Love
Speaking of replaying your thoughts and internal/external dialogue.
I have three questions for you:
Really? They used the “L-word”? Do you notice how we can’t even say the word “love” as easily?
Love, as you can see, clearly is a taboo if we have to use code for it, we hardly talk about it and we fear doing it.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful to hear that someone genuinely loves you, but after hearing that, it really can get complicated. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we are great at complicating the matter even more.
It’s not that love is complicated, it’s that we are.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Ways In Which We Complicate Love
In romance,
- we do it so much it’s not even funny. Yeah, we do love our partner, but do we keep our love fresh? Do we leave the drama out of it? Do we show our partner in every way that we’ve dreamed of that we love them? Didn’t think so.
Within our own family,
- we’re usually there for one another how family is supposed to be, but if these family members were our friends, judging by the amount of love they consistently, with no prompting and no sense of obligation give us, would they be more like our best friends or more like our acquaintances?
- Of course, there are family members who congruently show that they adore you, but the main question is why do the people whom you know love you don’t actually show it? (Good luck on answering that one).
In the workplace,
- we have to walk the fine line of showing people our appreciation without going overboard.
In friendships,
- we often think of a million ways to show our caring without becoming too annoyingly sweet. Why? Because people don’t like to get all the love they can get, it seems. Even in friendships, there’s some sort of mistrust. It’s better to try to impress people who have no regard for you instead of focusing on the friends who’ve shown you throughout the years that they’re worth your time. You are even mistrustful yourself. You even question compliments. You think that your friends only say and do nice things because they’re friendly but not because you deserve it.
And we may have hit the nail on the head.
You Control The Taboo
How comfortable you are with talking about love, receiving love and actually loving others will dictate the quality of your love life and how fulfilled you are with it.
So you can continue to live in a guarded way to feel protected…. suspicious and undeserving of love.
Or you can reduce how much of a taboo love is for you and feel more fulfilled.
That’s something to analyze.
Don’t worry, if you’re thinking, “oh my gosh, this is tough and painful, and I don’t want to even make a choice right now” you’re not alone.
I often go back and forth between how much love to give myself. At times, I think it’s like walking on a tightrope. Too tense for my taste not because I want it to be tense but because I’ve noticed how most people have different love tolerances. They are a bit hesitant about openly embracing love… which means live it, share it, talk about it, and prefer it over any negativity, gossip or show… and most importantly, devote time to it.
The Blog’s Title Started It All
As a matter of fact, two questions “Is Love a Taboo?” and “Why Are We Treating Love Like It’s a Taboo?” were fundamental in the creation of this site.
That’s why having conversations about love so important to me.
I have a profound faith in humanity, in myself and in my loved ones and I know that no matter how much we make love a taboo knowingly or unknowingly, in reality, it’s not our nature.
How Do I Know This?
Now that were connected through the Internet, as one huge family, I can see that the videos or topic that go viral are those that have love at it’s core.
Why?
Because love, more than being a taboo, is fascinating. No amount of protecting our feelings and hiding our love will allow us to enjoy love or life at large more. Either we share love, or we lose it.
Love In The Open. With a Spiritual Naked Soul… Without Worrying If Nobody’s Watching Or If Everybody Is
We have to be open to “love in the open.” We have to risk our hearts, risk our joy, risk being seen because otherwise we will be living as the shadows of who we are. And our life will be darker and flatter than it needs to be.
Literally, it is best to love in a way that puts love on display for everybody to see what is truly meant to be positively showcased.
After all, love is hardly ever something to be ashamed of.
And if you do feel like you’re ashamed in some way, it usually means that you’re compromising on your values and are settling on participating in a love relationship that is “good enough” instead of good.
But if you know, deep in your gut that you are loving the right person, instead of focusing on how much you love and how you show them that you love them, you should simply LOVE.
At the end of the day, it’s not a matter of loving in a wrong way or in a right way, it’s a matter of loving them in a way that’s right for them… and make them truly feel loved.
In other words, it’s not you who ultimately decides the love that you should be giving… you’re simply a broadcasting station sending out the signal.
The most critical thing is that your loved ones receive the love in a way that is clear, is enjoyable, makes memories and makes their time on Earth worthwhile.
You’ll get a great feeling by how well they’re receiving your signal based on how happy they are when they’re around you.
- Do you uplift them?
- Do you suck the energy out of them?
- Or do you not even have the power to shift their energy?
When things are not a secret anymore and you know what to look for, love can improve. So can your life. And so can the world.
So let’s refuse for love to be a taboo.
Either we teach the children in our life to love or the world will teach them to fear, to doubt, to hate, to discriminate and to have no regard for others.
It’s Your Turn
- Do you agree that love is a taboo or do you have a different opinion?
- What examples do you see on our planet?
Please share in the comments below.
