What it means to me
Love: true appreciation and enjoyment of another person. That’s what I came up with, and it’s changed a number of my relationships over the last few years.

I used to think of love as purely my commitment to another person. Saying “I love you” was saying “I’m committed to you,” but I realized that love and commitment are two different things. They can certainly go hand in hand, but they don’t have to.

Get real
How many of us have pretended to love someone? We’ve done it either because we felt we should love them, we were obligated to love them, or we wanted to get something out of them. How about the family members we continue to spend time with in order to keep the peace, or the friend of yours who “just needs a friend,” or that date you went on just because the guy or girl was nice? We have all been committed to being giving to someone in our lives who we don’t really care for. However, none of these relationships are founded on respect and genuine excitement for the person.

Then there are the people we LOVE. I mean, REALLY LOVE. They walk into the room, our eyes light up, and a smile sweeps across our faces. We can’t wait to see them, to share our stories and lives with them, and we listen with excitement as they share theirs. They are the people we can spend hours upon hours with laughing, talking, crying, and most importantly, just being ourselves.

Raise your hand if you know what I mean!

Now, when you put love and commitment together, you can get something even more amazing. You are able to build on a relationship and keep it going past anger, sadness, difficult times, and dry spells.