Pictured: When it Comes to Love Ability, Fable is a Master Instructor.
In my last post, I shared the story of my relationship with my dad – a journey of understanding love beyond our carefully constructed expectations. Today I want to dive deeper into a concept called “Love Ability” – the profound art of loving others exactly as they are.
Remember how I mentioned my lifelong project of proving my own lovability? It was an exhausting dance of performance, of constantly trying to be “good enough.” Nice enough. Smart enough. Successful enough. Perfect enough. As if love were some kind of transaction – a delicate equation where I could input the right combination of traits and guarantee affection in return.
But love is not something to be earned; it’s something to be given. As bell hooks wrote, “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb.” Our ability to practice the verb-version of love is our Love Ability.
Love Ability is about shifting from a place of desperate validation to a space of unconditional acceptance. It’s about recognizing that our worth isn’t determined by our achievements, our appearance, or how well we meet others’ expectations. Our Love Ability is our capacity to love – truly, deeply, without condition.
Humans evolved to seek love, to crave love and belonging from others – it’s foundational to our sense of safety and therefore we constantly scan for it, hustle for it, and attune to any threat against it. But love is also something we can cultivate, internally. It turns out, giving love brings so much more peace and equanimity to us, because it’s an inside job. We’re not dependent on anyone else for it, so it can’t be doled out, withheld, or taken away.
This isn’t easy work, but default mode isn’t any easier. Our brains are hardwired to seek approval, to assess, to judge. We’re constantly creating manuals: mental checklists of how people should be, how relationships should look, especially in our closest relationships. This is why I can often show up with calm and empathy when talking to someone else’s child about their feelings, but when my own children come to me with their problems, something I very much want them to do — I regularly shut the conversation down with too much fixing, too much advice, and, if I’m honest – way too much judgment.
Family gatherings at this time of year are so often satirized in jokes and memes, because they are fraught for all of us. The holidays contain so many triggers about how things “should” be. We arrive carrying our favorite side dish along with our personal narratives and expectations. Our brains love to categorize, to label things as “bad” or “good,” “should” or “shouldn’t,” and to analyze our place in the hierarchy. When we’re seeking love and feeling judgment, a dinner with loved ones becomes an exhausting chess game. What’s the palace intrigue? Who’s in favor and who’s out? Who is the most loved sibling? We learned about love as young children, and many of us learned a construct of love as a zero-sum, finite matter, to be competed for and measured.
One of the most powerful acts of self-care is to think intentionally, ahead of time, about the boundaries and mindset we need for any situation. In preparation for a holiday gathering: ask yourself some caring, supportive questions. That person whose behavior is so triggering to you: What is it you need from them, and can you give this to yourself, ahead of time? In doing so, you take back your power. Your feelings no longer hinge on their behavior.
Love Ability asks us to do something radical: to love without an agenda. To love without trying to change, fix, or improve. To love the entire messy, beautiful complexity of another human being. If we can inhabit a space of love, even when others don’t conform to our prescribed scripts — then we can just connect and enjoy other’s company in the moment available to us.
This doesn’t mean accepting harmful behavior or eliminating boundaries. Love Ability isn’t about martyrdom. It’s about seeing the humanity in others, even – especially – when it’s difficult. It’s about understanding that everyone is fighting their own internal battles, carrying their own wounds, living within their own limited understanding of the world.
This may sound lofty and noble, but it isn’t even about altruism. It’s about emotional maturity and empowerment. When we can cultivate the emotions we want to feel, with intention, we’re in charge of the weather in our inner world. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather feel love than judgment. Judging others always leads me back to one place: judging myself. The more you practice Love Ability it for others, the more you begin to extend that same grace to yourself. Those impossible standards start to soften. That inner critic begins to quiet.
My dad’s terminal diagnosis brought this into sharp focus for me. When time became finite, suddenly all the old arguments, the disappointments, the unmet expectations – they all seemed so insignificant. What remained was pure love.
“Just one more song,” he would say, listening to his beloved Sinatra tunes. And isn’t that true for all of us? We have just one more song – this moment, right now – to choose love.
So I invite you to practice Love Ability. Drop the manual of how others should be. Listen more. Judge less. See the tender humanity in those around you. And most importantly, see the tender humanity in yourself.
Our time is finite. The songs are playing. Are you listening?
