Do you believe love is hurt? Here are 5 ways to love with less pain.

You believe love is hurt and think to yourself,

“It’s impossible to feel love without pain.”

You’re not alone in this belief.

As Fergie’s lyrics go, “Pain is love, and love is pain.”

We’re all familiar with the popular saying, “I love you so much it hurts.”

The Everly Brothers, Love Hurts, says

“Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough nor strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain
Love hurts”

So why do we associate love with hurt and pain?

Simple. Because, love can be painful.

We’ve had many real-life experiences that prove to us love hurts.

There are many ancient philosophers who make the case that love is inseparable from pain.

It’s likely you’ve heard of the Roman myth that love comes as a result of being hit by Cupid’s arrow.

Therefore, considering your painful experience with love and the ancient idea that pain is a precursor to love, the odds seem stacked against you.

Is it even possible to feel less pain and more love?

We think it is.

Here are 5 ways LoveLifeLinks.com believes you can feel more love and less pain:

1. Modify your expectations, so love hurts less

We’ve heard from those older and wiser, that our experience of love correlates with our expectations of love.

If we expect all roses and no thorns, every mishap of love will catch us painfully off guard.

Children of parents who are soulmates, often set their expectations of love unreasonably high. They want what their parents had.

Others who only observe dysfunctional love relationships growing up, close their hearts off to love or refuse to set expectations of love altogether.

But, whether setting impossible expectations or letting go of all expectations, neither extreme will protect your heart from pain.

However, it’s possible that modifying our expectations of love can give us a more balanced view of pain.

Most every couple who’s managed to stay in a long term relationship admits they’ve modified their expectations along the way. They’ve learned to de-emphasize their pain and accentuate their love by accepting that some things are simply not worth the pain of holding onto.

Does this mean we should accept a love that hurts us to the point of near death? No. And let’s face it, there is a version of love that can eat away at our soul no matter how we adjust our expectations.

But, in most cases, when love doesn’t turn out to be our ideal, we can modify our expectations with the aim of experiencing more love and less pain.

2. Love hurts, so redefine love

The second way to feel less pain and more love, is to reconsider your definition of love. Often times, we compare our love relationship to the public persona of other couples we know. Perhaps you’ve thought to yourself,

“Wow, they seem so in love and happy. I wonder why we can’t be more like them.”

True. Some couples are more compatible and experience fewer bumps in the road. But most of the time, what you see is not what you get when comparing yourself to others. Perhaps you and your spouse simply aren’t great actors on the stage of love. You’re no Romeo and Juliet. That doesn’t mean the love you share with your partner is inferior.

Yet you continue to feed your pain by habitually comparing yourselves to other couples.

What we forget is that each couple experiences love in a unique way.

This makes it imperative to define what love looks like to you as a couple.

Sit down together and talk to your spouse. Discuss how your envy of other real-life & celebrity couples adds to the hurt you feel in your relationship.

Don’t let others define love for you, else your pain will fester and love will hurt more.

3. Let go of love, when love hurts

You might be familiar with some version of the following quote,

First, much of the pain we feel is because we dread losing love. It’s hurtful to think that someone could leave us for another person. It’s even more painful to think of losing a loved one to death. Ironically, hyper-focusing on loss invites loss into our life.

The universe recognizes our inability to let go and seizes the opportunity to teach us that love exists absent of our ability to hold onto it. Love is an essence, not an arrangement.

Once you understand this, you’re willing to let go of the object of your affection and persist in love even at the doorstep of death.

You’ve finally embodied pain as an accent to love.

For the time being, you’ll enjoy love more, knowing that if you must–you’re ready to let love go.

4. So what? Love hurts, embrace the pain

The fourth way to feel more love and less pain is closely related to your willingness to let love go.

Letting go is a painful lesson to learn and the problem with pain, is that it signals to us we should retreat.

But, if we run away because we’re unwilling to risk the pain of love, we’ll never experience the depth of love.

Instead, we can minimize the pain of love by running toward love with eyes wide open. When we accept that love hurts we can embrace pain as the familiar companion of love.

You can finally sit with your pain peacefully and welcome the awareness that love was your introduction to meaningful pain.

5. Walk toward your fear of love

Up to now, we’ve discussed effective ways for those in relationships to deal with pain so they can feel more love.

However, in your case–you’ve run away from relationships your entire life.

You skydive, travel the world, ruthlessly climb the career ladder, and scale formidable mountains.

Yet, love is the adventure you fear most.

Never having faced the chasm of love, your loneliness causes great pain.

Remember, it’s not until you face your fear of love that you’ll discover love is worth the pain.

Take your first step.

You’ve climbed your mountain. Now it’s time to reach the pinnacle of love.

In conclusion, your mantra doesn’t have to be “love is hurt.” Yes, it’s true that love causes pain. But, it’s possible to experience less pain when it comes to love. As you’ve likely noticed, most of our tips deal with perspective. Even in love and war, perspective is a powerful agent of change.

LoveLifeLinks.com believes love always outweighs the pain.

Remember, you can feel love anywhere. Anytime. All the time.