What does love mean as a core value?
Love as a core value means caring deeply for the people in your life, showing it openly and often, and letting them care for you in return.
You measure a life largely by the depth of care in it. You want to love people well and be loved in return, and you notice when either is missing. It shows up with partners, children, parents and friends, but also in the way you speak about your team or a place you belong to. When you look back on a year, what you remember first is who you were close to, not what you achieved.
What does love look like in practice?
- You say “I love you”, or your own version of it, often enough that nobody has to guess.
- You notice what someone needs and give it before they ask, whether that’s a lift, a meal or an hour of your time.
- You let people care for you too, and accept help without keeping score.
- You look for repair quickly after an argument with someone you love.
- You judge a good week partly by whether you spent real time with the people who matter.
When is love overplayed?
Love can tip into losing yourself. You bend around other people’s needs until your own disappear, stay in a relationship that has stopped working, or feel any distance as rejection. Sometimes love quietly becomes a way of seeking reassurance. It can also make you avoid honest feedback in case it hurts. Healthy love includes you as well as them, and has room for boundaries and disagreement. It can help to ask yourself, once a week, what you need from the people you love, and then say it out loud.
Often confused with
Love vs Intimacy
Intimacy is being deeply known by someone. Love is deep care, which you can feel for people who don’t know you well, like a newborn or a friend’s child.
Love vs Relationships
Relationships is about investing effort in your connections. Love is the feeling and care behind them, and it runs deep in only some of them.
Love vs Compassion
Compassion is care in response to suffering, often towards strangers. Love is warmer and more personal, and it doesn’t need anything to be wrong.
Questions to sit with
- Who do you love who might not know it as clearly as you’d like?
- Where do you find it harder to receive love than to give it?
- What would change if you treated yourself with the same patience you give the people you love?
More values in Love
Deep feeling and close relationships.
About the author
Matt Rutherford is a Career and Leadership Coach. The Values Finder is the same exercise he uses with his coaching clients. He also writes Stuff that MattRs, a weekly newsletter with practical ideas to help you think clearer and work better.
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