Cultivating Love Like Growing Flowers

No matter who tries to tell you different, love at first sight is a myth. Love is not something that just happens, and building relationships that last a lifetime takes work. They don’t just spring into being, but they do grow like flowers if you give them what they need.

Just as love lies in everyone’s heart, every seed contains the flower it may become when given the right conditions. For a flower, those conditions include water, oxygen, sunlight and nutrients. Give a seed the right proportion of sunlight and dark, the right amount of water and a nutrient-rich growing medium and you’ll be rewarded with a strong, healthy plant that flowers and sets more seed. A plant can grow without the optimal mix of those conditions, but a lack of any one of them will result in a stunted plant, or one that is all stem and no leaves or one that wilts without ever flowering.

Love is no different. It requires specific conditions to blossom and set seed. Those conditions include trust, faith, honesty and respect. If you don’t provide each of those conditions for your relationship, you’ll still have a relationship and you may have something resembling love. But just like a plant deprived of sunlight or water will grow stunted and crooked, so a relationship without faith and respect and trust will never fulfill its potential.

Of the four qualities that help nurture love, the most important is respect. Love cannot exist without respect. It’s a prerequisite. Relationships without respect are unhealthy and harmful to the persons involved in them. When you respect another, you listen to them and consider their needs and desires and work to earn their respect. All of those things are vital to growing health relationships.

Many people exist under the misconception that respect is something that must be earned. In fact, respect is something that should be given freely. Unless you are open to respect, you’ll be shutting out any possibility of allowing love to grow to its fullest potential. If you only respect those who have earned your respect, you could be closing out many possibilities for loving others.

Like love, trust, honesty and faith also depend upon respect to grow strong and health. These four pillars of love lean upon each other and together, they create an arbor on which love can climb and grow and flower.

If you want love to flower in your life, if you want to build relationships that last for a lifetime, practice respect. Learn to respect everyone around you for the simple fact that they are, like you, a person.

Four Requirements for True Love

If you want to grow a plant, you know that it has certain requirements – air, earth, water and sunlight. Growing true love is no different. Just as plants require those four elements to grow strong and healthy, so love has its own four requirements for healthy growth. Each of the four elements of love relies upon the others, and when all four are present, they combine to create a strong framework upon which love can flourish and flower for a lifetime.

The four requirements for true love are respect, trust, honesty and faith. Learning to recognize them will help you nourish and enrich your relationships, but sometimes it’s easier to recognize when they are lacking than it is to see their presence. These signs can help you recognize relationships that are true, loving partnerships.

You Can Express Your Opinion without Fear.

In a loving relationship, you can speak the truth without fearing that it will anger your partner or cause him to abandon you. You know that your partner will listen to you with respect and respond to you with honesty. If you fear being ridiculed or belittled by your partner, something is lacking in your relationship. It may be a failure of trust on your part or respect on the part of your partner.

You Can Confide Your Deepest Thoughts to Your Partner.

A loving relationship is built on intimacy, and intimacy relies on being able to communicate with each other honestly. That means you must both feel safe to express your thoughts to each other. You can trust that your partner will keep your confidence and not share what you tell her with others in a way that hurts you. You know in your heart that she will not laugh at you or betray your trust.

You Share Common Goals and Beliefs.

Shared faith is a vital part of a loving and evolving relationship. You put your faith in each other and in the commitment you make to each other. You believe in the same principles and work together toward a common goal, and you believe that together, you are strong enough to reach the goals you set.

Love may spring up on its own, but only when its seeds fall on fertile ground. If you want to find true love, you must cultivate the conditions under which it can flourish. When you strive to be honest and open with others and to be respectful of everyone in your life, you are cultivating the garden in which love can grow.