Darren and I met over 35 years ago. 

We dated each other in three different decades. 

And last month we celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary.  

To say we have had an unconventional love story is an understatement.  But, as I often tell people, it’s a pretty great story. 

In coaching about life, I end up coaching a lot about love….  A LOT.  People in love, people trying to stay in love, people definitely wanting out of love, people trying to find love, people swearing off love, etc.  You get the picture. 

I can say that over the last 40 years, I personally have been in almost every phase I just mentioned at least once!

One thing I didn’t know back then that I definitely do know now is that love is a choice.  

Yes, our hormones can lead the way and sometimes drive the ship in the beginning stages of a relationship, but if we have to rely on hormones to feel love, we are relying on something largely out of our control.

Hope Gillette says it this way: “Lasting love can’t rely on hormones to carry it forward. This means your actions — or lack thereof — directly contribute to the strength of love in a relationship.”

There are components of love that require you to act. 

There are acts of compassion, appreciation, and reliability you must continue to build. 

There are building blocks of positive experience, close proximity, and growing familiarity to deposit into your relationship bank.

Components, actions, building block experiences that make it easier to choose love.

It serves to reason, then, that there are things we do that go against the tenets of love. Things that may damage our relationships and make it harder for us to continue to choose love.

“These love-damaging actions and attitudes may include things that challenge attraction, deep connection, trust, or respect,” Ms. Gillette says.

Here are 10 signs that you are not choosing love for your partner (or your family or your friends or maybe even yourself!)

I’ve adapted them for our purposes.

Ready?

1. Ignoring or dismissing values, wants, and concerns
2. Not communicating well or at all 
3. Emotionally leaving them out to dry
4. Taking them for granted
5. Being critical and judgmental
6. Keeping secrets
7. Revealing things they have confided to only you
8. Pushing them to change the way they are to please your preferences
9. Belittling them in private or in front of others
10. No longer demonstrating affection to them – physical or otherwise

If you are wanting to choose love it might be necessary to get back to the components, actions and building block experiences that make it easier for you to do so. 

Start with the simple stuff: 

• compassion (It must be hard to be him sometimes.),  
• gratitude (“Thank you for turning on the dishwasher last night!”), 
• reliability (I’ll be home before 8:30 and I’m excited to hang out with you!”), and 
• appreciation (“I really appreciate the way you handled that situation.  It reminded me of why you’re so good at problem solving.”) 

You can build on your relationship deposits from there.

This also works with building love for yourself!  

Same principle:

• compassion (It totally makes sense that I’m struggling right now.),  
• gratitude (I’m grateful to myself for doing that really hard thing. I see how hard it is.), 
• reliability (I know I can do what I said I was going to do), and 
• appreciation (I really appreciate the way I showed up in that situation. I can tell I’m getting so much better at it.) 

I can’t wait to hear about how you’re actively choosing love.  And if you need more ideas, I’d be happy to help!

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