What does love mean to you? If you said it’s a feeling, relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author Jillian Turecki wants to challenge that.
In a recent Instagram video, she revealed how thinking that love is 'just a feeling' could be impacting your relationships, and stopping you from showing up to do the hard work that a relationship needs to evolve and last.
“You can’t make a relationship work with someone who thinks love is just a feeling and not actually a choice, an action, a practice," Jillian explains.
"Because the people who think that love is just a feeling, are the ones where, the moment there’s any friction, any tension, any argument, they think something’s immediately wrong with the connection,” she explained.
Because the truth, Jillian says, is love doesn’t always feel like we’re taught to believe it does. Sometimes it’s hard and difficult, and doesn’t feel an awful lot like 'love'.
"So, for someone who thinks of it as just a feeling, when tough times pop up, they start to doubt you. They start to doubt the relationship. Then they start to pull away or they start to sabotage," she added.
Jillian went on to say: “I think we’ve all been under the spell of the conditioning that says that love should always feel like rainbows and this intense feeling, which is really lust. But here’s the truth. In a long-term relationship, you have to choose to show up.”
Whether it’s by looking for ways to revive romance in a relationship or trying out some unforgettable date ideas, Jillian says that by realising you must work on love and not simply “feel it,” especially when “you're not in the mood” or don’t “feel madly in love in that moment,” then your relationship will improve massively.
“You have to decide to have hard conversations, not because you want to have the hard conversation, but because you know that avoiding it is not good for the relationship. You have to choose to be loving when you may not feel madly in love in that moment.”
The insight is something that Jillian’s fans connected with immediately, with one writing in her comments section on Instagram: “Yea! Absolutely! Love isn’t a feeling – it’s a decision. It’s showing up when you’re tired, when the excitement fades, when everything inside screams ‘give up.’”
Another said, “Yes! Small deliberate acts.” While a third simply commented, “Truth upon truth upon truth.”
