Love is Life
Love Is Life: Many Forms of Love Beyond Valentine’s Day
As Valentine’s Day approaches, love is everywhere—store windows filled with red hearts, social feeds celebrating romance, and a quiet, often unspoken pressure to feel something specific. Happiness. Gratitude. Desire. Connection.
Yet for many, Valentine’s Day can stir something far more complex.
This blog has been inspired by a Czech artist “Krasna pani” who pays tribute to feminine wisdom, cycles, and the quiet power of being human, this reflection invites us to expand the meaning of love beyond romance—and into life itself.
Because love is not just something we fall into. Love is something we practice, we live, we experience.
Love as Presence, Not Performance
In Gestalt therapy, love begins with presence—the capacity to be fully here with ourselves and with another. For high-achieving individuals, this can be surprisingly difficult. Productivity, leadership, responsibility, and decision-making often come at the cost of emotional attunement.
Love is not another task to optimize.
It is not a KPI.
It is not something to perform well.
Love is what happens when we allow ourselves to slow down enough to notice.
Notice our breath.
Notice our longing.
Notice the ways we disconnect from ourselves in order to succeed.
Sometimes love is also what we may be subconsciously missing and looking for in others
Attention
Kindness
Gratitude
Many of my clients discover that the absence of love in their relationships mirrors an absence of self-connection. Valentine’s Day simply shines a brighter light on what has already been present.
The Many Forms of Love We Rarely Celebrate
Romantic love receives the spotlight—but it is only one expression of a much larger field.
Self-love
Not the curated, Instagram version, but the grounded ability to stay with yourself during discomfort, failure, or uncertainty.
Relational love
The love that asks for honesty, boundaries, repair, and emotional risk—especially in long-term partnerships.
Creative love
The devotion you bring to your work, your vision, your purpose. Entrepreneurs often pour love into creation while quietly starving their inner world.
Compassionate love
The capacity to hold grief, disappointment, and change without turning against yourself or others.
Love is cyclical. It evolves. It matures. It sheds old skins. And at times, it asks us to grieve what love used to look like so we can meet what it is becoming.
How some famous philosophers view and understand love
Some famous philosophers defined the love as journey of the soul towards truth and beauty (Platon, Symposium).
Aristoteles understands love where people support one another and aim for the best for the other. Love is for him the part of the honourable and fulfilling life.
St. Augustine understands love as a relationship and dedication to God and community. In accordance with his understanding the love should be unconditional and should lead to soul’s fulfillment.
Arthur Shopenhauer was looking at love with pessimism. He claimed that love is directed by the will of life and serves primarily to reproduction of life rather happiness of an individual.
Jean Paul Santre put an emphasis on freedom and responsibility. In love he saw an effort to over come own feeling of loneliness but same time he warned from manipulation and tendency to own the other.
When Love Feels Hard, Distant, or Confusing
Many professionals arrive in therapy saying:
“I don’t know how we became so disconnected.”
“I’m successful, but I feel emotionally numb.”
“I love my partner, but something feels missing.”
“I want closeness, but I don’t know how to let my guard down.”
These are not failures of love. They are invitations to deepen it.
Why is it sometimes too difficult to say I LOVE YOU.
To say I love you may not be always easy. Sometimes it is difficult to find the right words to the richness and complexity of our feelings. Maybe we are scared to admit that it is something BIG or important for us. The relationships are very fragile, especially at the beginning where fear may stop us from trusting, fear from being rejected or fear of being left alone just do not allow us to express our feelings. To open your heart to love means to risk that you may be disappointed or heartbroken. But when we open our heart to the others, we are vulnerable, and it is important to share how you feel about the other one.
Through individual therapy, we explore how your patterns of attachment, self-protection, and ambition shape your relationships.
Through couples therapy, we slow conversations down, shift from blame to awareness, and rebuild emotional contact—often where it was lost long ago.
Through hypnotherapy, we gently access the subconscious beliefs that shape how safe, lovable, or open you allow yourself to be.
Love as a Conscious Choice
Love is not sustained by grand gestures once a year.
It is sustained by micro-moments of honesty, curiosity, and presence.
This Valentine’s Day, instead of asking:
“Am I loved enough?”
You might ask:
“How do I relate—to myself, to my partner, to my life?”
And if the answer feels unclear, therapy can be a powerful place to begin that exploration.
An Invitation
At The Present Therapy, we work with professionals, leaders, and entrepreneurs who want more than surface-level change. Our work is relational, depth-oriented, and grounded in real life.
If this reflection resonates, I invite you to book a consultation:
Individual Therapy – to reconnect with yourself and your emotional world
Couples Therapy – to restore intimacy, communication, and trust
Hypnotherapy – to shift deep-seated patterns and emotional blocks
Love is not a destination.
Love is a living process.
And you do not have to navigate it alone.
Book your confidential consultation today at
👉 thepresenttherapy.com
Become You. Be You.
