Who makes up your circle?

While lying in bed last night trying my best to get my mind to stop it's treacherous roller coaster ride, I couldn't help but reflect on several recent situations I have encountered over the past couple of months with different people. I have analyzed a few awkward moments with people, and the common denominator with them all seems to be me offering a positive spin on the situation or comment being thrown at me. I have learned, these comments and discussions are being thrown at me with the expectation that I will think the same way as them and join in on the judgmental world of negativity. Problem is, my mind has a way of thinking 'benefit of the doubt', so my first instinct is not going to be to think about the situation the same way.

I was in a discussion about some Facebook picture drama added with an assumed negative meaning behind it. When I offered my positive view as a way to ease this person's mind about it negatively effecting them, I was flipped off. Yes, I got the finger.

I was in a discussion about a particular person's relationship status. After listening, I saw another side of the situation and tried sharing my positive light on it. This quickly resulted in offensive comments about the way I saw the situation; simply because I didn't join in on talking ill about it.

I posted a general Facebook status about how I was 'praying for a close friend and their current life situation', and I was asked by that friend if the post was pertaining to them - thinking maybe they would be grateful like 100% of all humans beings are when others pray for them. When my answer was 'maybe', I was asked to delete it...two weeks later, still no word from her. Apparently her situation isn't as bad as it's being portrayed to be by the multiple phone calls and all the support I've had to dish out over the YEARS. Just an FYI: If you're praying for me, keep on keeping on. I don't have to display my drama to appreciate prayer any day.

My attempt at keeping this post short-ish has already failed. But I assure you, I have 3 more scenarios that also result in someone becoming distant or getting pissed off due to me not taking interest in the negative spin with their particular dramatic fiasco. It is apparent that everyone on this planet at some point in the their life will need to seek attention in some way. Some do it through made-up drama, some make situations up out of thin air, and some literally find negativity in everything. Like in a perfect double rainbow WITH a pot of gold actually sitting at the end. PSA: I strive to not be one of those people, and I don't want to be included in the discussion if my views and take on the situation aren't welcomed. Newsflash - People can have discussions and have different views. That's how different views on the same situation are seen and brought to light.

So, I will close with this: We cannot continue to throw around comments and meme posts about how we strive to be better than we were yesterday and how we need to be a positive venue for others if we don't put in the effort to make it happen within ourselves. If the {constant} work I am doing with myself, my life, my thoughts and my reactions causes your dramatic and negative mindset to suddenly come to a screeching halt (aside from your childish behavior of getting butt-hurt), then my work is definitely paying off.

And because I'm human & the devil knows I'm trying hard, there will come a day when he will win and cause me to slip up, have a moment and find negativity where it just doesn't belong. But when that day comes, I hope I have friends like myself who will return the favor and offer peace and simplicity to my mind by offering up their POSITIVE two cents in an effort to straighten me up. I'm not a friend who requires much; actually, I require nothing at all. But as much as I do and give to others, If you can't give back in that simple way, then you don't need my friendship. Better yet - I don't need your type of friendship holding me back from being my best self.

To The One Who Stopped Appreciating The Girl He Loved

You thought that being perplexed was an excuse to stop appreciating her. You let your past, your pride, your demons, your selfishness and the fact that you are weak and scared be a validation for why you treated her the way you did. And you lost her, the one girl you needed to appreciate.

You didn't give her all of you and all of your love while making her think you were taking her on some crazy love adventure. You didn't hold her hand tight and teach her something new. You may have kissed her face a million times, or took her somewhere she’s always wanted to go, or even danced with her cheek to cheek and spoiled her with 'things' to make her feel special, but the most important thing was kept from her; your love and appreciation.

Believe it or not, this was the girl who changed your life. She was the one who was desperately trying to make you a better man. This was the girl who loved all of your wrongness, all those parts of you that hurt her the most, the parts that you hate about yourself. The girl who wiped your tears when you spoke about your dad and what he must have been like, the one who kissed your rough edges, who loved all of your roughness despite how ugly you treated her. Those parts of yourself that you only showed to her, even though they hurt her to the core, she adored them anyway. Her love for you somehow warmed your imperfections without you even realizing it, and you won't admit it, but it changed you somehow for the better.

This was the girl you needed to appreciate, because you know in your heart you will never give all of you like that to anyone else, and you know that no other girl will love you and your imperfections any better that she did. No one will put forth that much effort for such little gain.

Extraordinary love is rare. It means something. You needed to fight for it, to be a better man for her in order to have made an effort. You think choice means something. You think easiness is good. You think the more chances she gave you, the better you were. But trust me when I say, she is in your heart no matter how mad you portray yourself to be. Your roots have entwined together. You know that no matter what, she still looks at you as if you are magic, and you don't even notice a glimpse of it. All the while, in the back of your mind, deep down in your subconscious, you think there’s something better - but it’s all just an illusion that your ego is showing you.

You don't realize it, but dating her was not the end of your liberty, it was the beginning of it.

This love was extraordinary. You want calm seas and smooth sailing, but the girl you fell for is opinionated and smart who doesn’t always agree with you. She is difficult, she requires effort; it was a challenge, it was work, but know this - the easy girl will never satisfy you. She may be sweet and kind, but her uninspiring ways will eventually leave you empty inside. She will always leave you wanting more, never fulfilling your needs.

She argued with you because she cared. She craved so much more from you in order to grow with you - she had opinions and big dreams for your future as well as her own. She never let you get away with slacking on your talents and potential, and you think she was coming down hard on you for it. No matter how much she loved you, you never realized that eventually she would leave because you stop appreciating her.

Because she knows what you have, and she will never put up with not getting everything she deserves.

Whatever you did, you let her get away. It may have been difficult at times - she may have drove you crazy, she frustrated the hell out of you. But she never left you uninspired or unsatisfied. And she always allowed you back in when she shouldn't have.

You thought that no matter what you did, she would always be there because she loves you. That she would always take you back. But remember that you fell for the girl who isn't easy: as in, she won't just 'go with the flow' all of the time. She knows her worth. She knows the seriousness of what y'all had. She is the girl who will not settle for someone who doesn't put her first.

You didn't even know it, but you had a love that built, that made your soul alive, that made you a better man. You let this love get discarded for the next boring interest or side-chick. You lost this love because of your pride, your fears, your ego, your past and your selfish ways. Someone will value how special she is - someone will put in the effort that you didn't in order to be with her, and she will feel whole because of the appreciation she deserves.

Wake up and realize, she was worth appreciating. Because you didn't, you are the one who will suffer the most. You don't see it now, but you will soon enough.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love,

and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

1 John 4:16

Why She Stays - Understanding the Weak

"He won't lay a finger on you,

He won't wreck your pretty face.

But he'll tell you that you're worthless

Just to put you in your place."

Little Big Town, Evangeline

I came across this read, tweaked it a bit, and couldn't help understanding myself more. What more I had to be thankful for that lies ahead in my future. And the things I need to be looking forward to rather than the very things that have broke me down over the past several months.


They say you can't truly understand something until it happens to you. And they are absolutely right.

When I was young, I remember hearing a story from a friend about a woman and a man who started fighting in the car in front of my friend. the woman ran from the car and the man followed, brutally beating her and a passerby who tried to help, in front of dozens of people staring in shock. Certainly after that she would leave him, wouldn’t she?

Only a few months later, we spotted the same woman, with the same man - in line together at a local restaurant. I asked myself for years following why in the world she would stay. She was an idiot. She knew better. It was an obvious choice. He had done it once, and he would do it again. She was an idiot.

Now I understand.

Alcohol is an ingredient many people add to many of their scheduled plans. Bon fires, live music, riding back roads, etc. But the plans that are actually planned, hardly ever go 'as planned' when you have alcohol involved. Accidental or not - drunk or not - remember or not...abuse is abuse. A hit is a hit. A punch is a punch. And a shove is a shove. Every single time.

So let's just say he really is sorry after this incident, and months go by and he actually doesn't do it again. People like that have to have an out for their anger, whether it is physical or verbal. Brace yourselves - it will come in other forms if he isn't being physical anymore. These other forms are known as emotional abuse and verbal abuse, and they hit just as hard as a physical punch or shove ever could.

“You’re a bitch”.

“You’re a whore”.

“I don't care".

"F*** you".
"Go hit a wall or something".

"Go cry about it some more".

These incidences escalated to the point where one night I sat sobbing on my patio. I felt worthless. My life at that given moment was meaningless. I had no one. I couldn't tell anyone, the judging alone would send me over the edge. My one close friend who knew about all the incidences assured me that I was too good and loyal to put up with being treated like that, and that I should leave; that I had no reason to stay. So why didn’t I leave?

With every low there is a high. With every fight, there is a morning full of regretful apologies, tears and promises of it never happening again. And for a while, everything is back to being perfect. Until it happens again...

And again, and again, and again.

It is at the very moment it's over for good; you have mustered up the courage to walk away. You will find yourself alone. You will then find that what you've put up with for far too long has beaten you down to the point you thought you would never end up. It's as if we become brainwashed, broken to the point where we actually believe things are our fault and that we actually deserved the abuse in some sick way. Somehow we start to believe that if we change, that if we could only be better for him, it would stop. But it never does.

I truly believe everything happens for a reason. This experience has opened my eyes to millions of women in this world who endure and accept physical and emotional abuse day after day after day. So often society judges these women so harshly when they choose to stay, but not everyone understands why. Until a woman completely realizes what she is experiencing in her relationship is wrong and is in no way, shape, or form true love, she will certainly stay. And you cannot judge her for that.

You may not know why she stays, but I do.

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way,
showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel,
since they are heirs with you of the grace of life,
so that your prayers may not be hindered.
1 Peter 3:7

Men, women aren't as complicated as you think -

I read an article recently that focused on relationships and the what to do's and the what not to do's; and if you know anything about me, I'm literally obsessed with the ins and out of all aspects dealing with relationship anything. I'm not sure if it's the endless amount of things that make up a good one or if it's the drive to understand why there are so many bad ones. I'm not sure, but what I am sure of (from experience) are the very things that will kill a relationship in a second.


I can only imagine the stressors of a man. We women expect our men to be sensitive, caring and in tune with our feelings. But at the same time, we still expect them to be strong protectors and able to fix anything that breaks. But what we don't understand, is that men can't be too sensitive or they begin to feel as though they are not being good enough protectors. On the other hand, they can't be too protective, or they begin feeling like they aren't being sensitive enough.


Although it may sound like I'm defending a man, I think it is very important for them to assume responsibility of being open minded in order to always balance between being caring and being strong. There is such a fine line, that most men can't determine the 'time' or 'place' for being either one or the other. Which brings me to a few things men do that ultimately hurt and most of the time, kill their relationship.


Being 'HARD' does not define your manhood
Ever since you were a kid, boys were taught to, "Man up," and, "Don't cry," just to accept the fact that bad things just happen in life. While this is good advice sometimes, your partner also needs you to be an optimist. Your relationship will need to rally from all kinds of challenges, failures, hurt feelings and health problems. Your partner doesn't need someone to tell her to stop crying, she needs a shoulder to cry on.


Put forth a little effort, and back up how you say you feel.
Physical affection is more than just sex. It includes giving her hugs before you leave for work, holding her hand in the aisle at the grocery store and pulling her close to you when you're watching a movie on the couch together. If you're withholding these things from her, you're withholding physical affection that women thrive on. The affection you try to show inside the bedroom will never make up for the physical affection you show her outside the bedroom.


Drop the ego and get on her level.
Studies show, that when a man is not willing to share power with his partner, there is an 81% chance that the relationship will self-destruct. While hoarding power may have got you ahead in your job or career, this strategy will sure backfire in your relationship, because your partner will end up feeling like her opinions aren’t valuable and that she doesn’t matter to you. To help save your relationship, develop a more accepting attitude toward compromise. Practice by giving in on issues you don’t feel extremely invested in.


We listen to you and act interested, try to do the same for us.
Story, after story, after story....the fishing trip gone bad, the weird guy from work, your family, your mother, the other weird guy from work, work, your hard day at work, your meeting at work, your jerk of a boss...We not only listen when you rant, we actually engage. Even if it does not relate one bit to our current day or situation; it is our job to make you feel like you are heard. We are your soundboard; we are who you bounce your negatives and positives off of, and you look to us for the sympathy or reassurance you need in all circumstances. So why not reciprocate that to us? Why not be that person when we need it? We don't expect you to actually 'care' about the stressors of our day, but if you aren't wanting us to seek out what we need elsewhere, then you also need to be engaged when we need you.


Prove to her with your actions why you ultimately chose her.
Of the hundreds of girls you have known and the dozens you have dated, your partner is the one you have picked to spend the rest of your life with. She needs to know that you still pick her - every day. Every time you check your phone when you're out together or every time you come home late from work without calling you're sending her a message that she's not important to you. Consequently, she wonders if you still care about her as much as when you first got married. Your work is important, but don't forget what you're working for. Remember that there's nothing on your phone that's more important than what's going on right around you.


Define your love for her every chance you get - after all, you're the one probably benefitting the most from it in the end.
Your partner needs to know she is loved and that you are grateful for her. You think you're showing love by going to work every day and bringing home a paycheck, so most of the time you don't do much more than that (except maybe on Valentine's Day). But, she needs more than that to see your love; she needs you to show her that you're doing it all for her. So take a little extra time and do something special. Send her a couple texts during the day or bring her home some flowers from the grocery store. You might be surprised at the reaction you get.


For God's sake, say you're sorry when you're at fault.
Nine times out of ten, a man is not owned by his faults unless his partner brings it to his attention. And it is a commonly known fact that when she outs him, most men will run through every excuse in the book to cover up the smallest thing before he feels like he should apologize - even when he is in the wrong and she can prove it! Guys, if you're the man you proclaim to be, then admit when you're wrong. You don't know it, but women (or at least myself) find ultimate attraction in a vulnerable man. When a man can put his ego aside and own up to something he did or didn't do, that is a major turn on. It's even sexier when you're willing to talk about it in efforts to save our negative feelings about it. Bottom line - a man who takes care of his woman emotionally, is definitely a man worth catering to.

Simply Because I love to Blog About Relationships

This is a repost from an article I came across this past weekend. It gives a lot of insight to the main problem areas in relationships today. Or, its simply another view on things...

Communication - it gets blamed for everything. For generations, in survey after survey, couples have rated communication as the number one problem in relationships and marriage...it's not.

Relationship communication is getting a bad rap. It's like the kid who fights back on the playground. The playground supervisors hear a commotion and turn their heads just in time to see his retaliation. He didn't create the problem; he was reacting to the problem. But he's the one who gets caught, so he's sent off to the principal's office.

In relationship communication, everyone gangs up on him, when the truth is, on the playground of relationships, he's just reacting to one of the other troublemakers who started the fight:

1. We date and marry people because we like who they are.

People change. Plan on it. Don't be with someone because of who they are, or who you want them to become. Be with them because of who they are determined to become. And then spend a lifetime joining them in their becoming, as they join you in yours.

2. Relationships and marriage do not take away our loneliness.

To be alive is to be lonely. It's the human condition. Relationships and marriages don't change the human condition. It can't make us completely unlonely. And when it doesn't, we blame our partner for doing something wrong, or we go searching for companionship elsewhere. Relationships and marriage are intended for 2 humans to share the experience of loneliness and, in the sharing, create moments in which the loneliness dissipates. For a little while.

3. Shame baggage. Yes, we all carry it.

We spend most of our adolescence and early adulthood trying to pretend our shame doesn't exist so, when the person we love triggers it in us, we blame them for creating it. And then we demand they fix it. But the truth is, they didn't create it, and they can't fix it. Sometimes the best relationship therapy is individual therapy, in which we work to heal our own shame. So we can stop transferring it to the ones we love.

4. Ego wins.

We've all got one. We came by it honestly. Probably sometime around the fourth grade when kids started to be jerks to us. Maybe earlier if our family members were jerks first. The ego was a good thing. It kept us safe from the emotional slings and arrows. But now that we are grown, the ego is the very wall that separates us. It's time for it to come down. By practicing openness instead of defensiveness, forgiveness instead of vengeance, apology instead of blame, vulnerability instead of strength and grace instead of power.

5. Life is messy and relationships are life.

So relationships are messy, too. But when things stop working perfectly, we start blaming our partner for the snags. We add unnecessary mess to the already inescapable mess of life and love. We must stop pointing fingers and start intertwining them. And then we can we walk into, and through, the mess of life together. Blameless and shameless.

6. Empathy is hard.

By its very nature, empathy cannot happen simultaneously between two people. One partner must always go first, and there's no guarantee of reciprocation. It takes risk. It's a sacrifice. So most of us wait for our partner to go first. A lifelong empathy of standoff. And when one partner actually does take the empathy plunge, it's almost always a belly flop. The truth is, the people we love are fallible human beings and they will never be the perfect mirror we desire. Can we love them anyway, by taking the empathy plunge ourselves?

7. The hidden power struggle.

Most conflict in relationships is at least in part a negotiation around the level of interconnectedness between lovers. Men usually want less. Women usually want more. Sometimes, those roles are reversed. Regardless, when you read between the lines of most fights, this is the question you find: Who gets to decided how much distance we keep between us? If we don't ask that question explicitly, we'll fight about it implicitly. Forever.

8. We don't know how to maintain interest in one thing or one person anymore.

We live in a world pulling our attention in a million different directions. The practice of meditation--attending to one thing and then returning our attention to it when we become distracted, over and over and over again--is an essential art. When we are constantly encouraged to attend to the shiny surface of things and to move on when we get a little bored, making our life a meditation upon the person we love is a revolutionary act. And it is absolutely essential if any relationship or marriage is to survive and thrive.

People can be taught to communicate in just an hour. It's not complicated. But dealing with the troublemakers who started the fight? Well, that takes an entire lifetime. And yet, it's a lifetime that forms us into people who are becoming ever more loving versions of ourselves, who can bear the weight of loneliness, who have released the weight of shame, who have traded in walls for bridges, who have embraced the mess of being alive, who risk empathy and forgive disappointments, who love everyone with equal fervor, who give and take and compromise, and who have dedicated themselves to a lifetime of presence and awareness and attentiveness.

And that is a lifetime worth fighting for.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching.  Hebrews 10:24-25

--Kelly M. Flanagan

Social Stamina and Building your Character

I cannot get over the fact that some people think it's good to always have a negative attitude the second something doesn't go how they expect. What happened to 'you don't know the whole story' or 'wait until you know the reason why'. People tend to think they are superior to everyone else and that the world revolves solely around them. It's absolutely astonishing. You text someone, they don't immediately text you back. So you get pissy and starting throwing digs and daggers to that person thinking they are being facetious - Newsflash; maybe that person hasn't had a chance to text you back. Maybe that person's phone is froze up and they had to restart it, and you just went on the attack. Before you even gave a rational thought as to why this person hasn't text you back when you expected, you started building negative character.

Someone comes to you with an issue. Be it, their feelings are hurt because of something you said or did or maybe just how a situation was handled on your end. (FYI - anytime a person comes to you to address this sort of matter, it's because they care enough to resolve it so that they don't feel this way again.) Instead of being an upstanding adult and actually resolving the issue that is being brought up, you immediately make it about you and turn it around to justify why you made that person feel the way they do. You throw negative digs, you say hurtful things, and why - to punish them for trying to make the situation better? That's impressive... Again - there you are building negative character. Many people will spin off the initial issue brought up, and they will bring up another issue that is directed to that person. This is what I call, 'tit for tat'. Irrelevant topics that are brought up to take the heat off someone quick. This is pointless and just builds more hurt against the two of you. How about resolve their issue and maybe bring your issue up on your own. You don't have to be prompted by someone else's issue to bring yours up to have something to throw in their face - do it on your own. Now next time, that person isn't even going to come to you to try to fix an issue, and you are going to act as if you don't understand why. These things happen a number of times, and people tend to give up.

How you perceive someone's feelings, emotions and ideas says everything about you and your character. You build the image people see when they look at you, and when you build negative character, your image then becomes a negative one. Maturity is also radiated by your actions and reactions to other people. It is displayed by acting in such a manner as 'handling up on business', not one-upping them with the blame game. It doesn't take long for someone looking for rationalism in a situation to turn and walk away from the person who can't keep their inner child contained at appropriate and important times.

And no - this is not just another one of Casey's "ridiculous standards"; this is real life. People can say all day long that they don't care what other people think. But in my opinion, you should definitely care what other people think. Other people have a bigger pull on your life than you will ever realize; both physically and emotionally. Plus, people tend to be attracted to level-headed people who have the ability to uphold and conduct mature conversations with efforts to strive for positive results. No one likes to deal with irrational people who act as cocked guns waiting to fire at any second for any reason.

It's not that hard to co-exist. If everyone would live by the golden rule and not get offended when it's acted upon, then no one would have a problem with anyone - ever.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Luke 6:31

Accommodating for Life Factors Without Changing Who You Are

We hear it time and time again; "Don't ever change for anyone." Or, "Don't expect anyone to change for you." This is true to an extent, depending on how you define this word we call change.

We all define ourselves as certain types of people with certain types of quirks; this is what I do on the weekends, this is what I like to do in the Summer, this is how I am when hunting season is here, this is how I eat my so-in-so, this is how I am with my girl friends, this is how I am with the guys, that's just how I talk...I believe that when someone feels the need to change for someone or when we feel the need to change them, we confuse 'change' with 'accommodate'.

I am personally at fault for this. I've lived it and have also seen it with my own eyes, as should you. You're around a person and their family, and they are one way. You are around them with their friends, and they are another. We all have a natural sense to adapt to our surroundings, thus setting this same expectation of adaptation with others. Though, some only adapt when they want to and not for every occasion.

Majority of the time, you begin dating someone because of how they are with you. You fall for them because of the way they make you feel when you're together. Yeah, he/she has some things about them that you don't necessarily like or agree with, but you go along with it in hopes that they will remain the way they are with you, then someday grow out of this 'other' person they portray to be around others. This person adapts to his/her surroundings and accommodates for their settings. How do you know which personality or 'way' this person really is? How do you know that the person they are with you, is their true person? We tend to believe that this person is who they truly are based on how they are with us, forgetting or not seeing who they really truly are as a person.

Altering some not-so-good points of yourself around certain people is not considered changing yourself. And seeing it as a 'change' is simply you being stubborn in not wanting to try and do something a little different to accommodate for someone else's feelings or standards. We live in a day and age where we don't want to change anything or work toward doing things different at all. Whether it's the time of day we eat, words we say out of habit or how we react to things simply because our way of doing these things are from constant habit over time.

"If it has worked up until this point, why would I put forth effort into slightly conforming my ways for someone else?"

(Uhh, probably because you supposedly love this person? Maybe?)

This seems to be our mentality, and we don't even want to talk about or consider meshing our lives with someone else's because we may have to alter some things on our end.

Are people not one way single, and another way when they're dating someone (or should be)? Well that's a form of accommodating for your current relationship status situation. Or you could call that 'change'. People will admit all day long that relationships take work, sacrifice and more effort than one can even imagine. And saying it comes easy, but when it comes down to actually doing it, everyone backs up or stalls and screams 'you're trying to change me'. It's an aggravating tick with me - it always has been. There are no 2 people the same, obviously. And like I stated before, meshing 2 different lives and co-existing with the many differences is a major task. But I personally believe that if you aren't being asked to transform yourself from Christian to Atheism, change your sex or identity, or alter yourself in any way that deflects from your core values, then change and accommodation is a must for both parties. I mean, lets get real here - you can't act single when you're in a relationship. You cannot do things that a single person does when you're in a relationship. And if you do, you are wasting each other's time and showing the most disrespect for your partner.  

But I guess here is where people feel as though their toes are being stepped on. "Don't come walking into my life trying to change who I am." Ok, again - unless you are asked to change the listed points in the previous paragraph, no one is expecting you to 'change' yourself.

It's rare that both parties are fully aware of the give on both sides. Everyone sees strictly what they are expected to do; how they are expected to be; what they are expected to do differently; what they need to change. (Newsflash - you're in a relationship, so it's not all about you. Sorry, not sorry.) But they rarely see what the other person has changed/accommodated for already without even being asked to do so.

Again, it's a give and take. But realizing all the factors is what's going to keep it together and solid. Without realization of the situation at whole, you're both doomed.

Strictly my opinion, but I will say it for the 4,769,243rd time:

Love is not angry.

Love is not one-sided.

Love is not about retaliation.

Love is not disrespectful.

Love is not shameful.

Love is not selfish

Love is not all about you.
Love is not jealousy, or tendencies of.

Love is not unreciprocated expectations.

Love is not meant to be a score-card.

Love is not temporary.

Love is not hurtful.
It is not about you,
And it is not about me;
Love is about 'us'.

 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7