Valentine’s Day brings mixed emotions; I am happily married, do not ever want to get married, divorced and I have given up on true love. Perhaps you feel true love does not exist.

Podcast Host, Linda Beard, discusses in order to find true love you have to be it. Join in and hear discuss the key ingredients for true love. 

Copyright 2024 Linda Beard

Linda: Welcome, welcome. It's Linda Beard, your host of, uh, Bold Enough and the upcoming book Bold Enough. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for allowing me to come into your world. Another week. I am talking talking about Valentine's Day and what is true love and how to be true love. So it is really going to be, today, one of those emotional kind of chats, because Valentine's Day comes with a lot of mixed emotions. And as I scan social media, there's all kinds of perspectives out there on what love is and, uh, what you are looking for to find that true love. So I have seen comments that say, I don't want to be a girlfriend, I only want to be a wife. So dating is out for me. I've seen men that will have discussions and posts that will be centered around, well, if I'm going to date a woman and I do X, Y and Z, I expect this in return. I've heard and seen men on social media say, I'm looking for that traditional woman, not masculine. And females have said, I've had to take on the role of a woman and a man because I can't find a good man. Those are out there, individuals that are out there that are saying, it's not even worth it. It's not worth being in a romantic relationship because people aren't who you think they are. And the list goes on and on and on. So it really does break my heart to some degree, and mainly because as I think about everything that I have been through coming out of a 29 year marriage, that was a big devastating experience for me. And I think about, would I ever want to be in love again and to find true love? And the answer is yes. And I can answer that now because I was bold enough to heal from my past and to accept my wrongdoing in that relationship, as well as forgive myself and forgive the other person for their wrongdoings. But as I really now know what true love is, and I now understand that I have to be true love in order to find true love, I want to pass that along to you because we were made we were created to be loved and to be touched. So regardless of what your position is out there, and particularly if you're saying, I don't need a woman in my life, I don't need a man in my life, I don't need to be in a romantic relationship, I am satisfied just the way things are right now. Well, I would have to challenge you on that statement. If we were created to be loved and to be touched, then are you being honest with yourself that you don't need to be in a romantic relationship, that you don't need to be in a marriage? Are you being authentic to yourself? Ponder that for a moment, because are you stacking layers and layers and layers of hurt and pain on top of the real authentic need to be loved and to be touched. I had to go through a healing process. I had to experience and see what love truly is in order to be in the position today to say yes, I want to find that right person. I want to be loved, I want to be touched. As I ask different individuals what they think true love is. Sometimes it's lust versus love. How many of you have seen a good looking woman or a good looking man and you have said, wow, that person looks so good I can eat them. I want to be with that person. Well, that's not going to last very long. Lust is a fleeting moment. But if you want to find true love, then you have to be true love. So what is true love? I had to go back to what love is all about and how it was created. And the creator of love is God himself. So here is the definition of what love is and it's what we all have to practice to become. Because after all, love is an action word. It's an action word. So when someone says I love you, then you should be able to see the action that comes along with that statement. So love is kind. Love is kind. And uh, what does that mean when I say love is kind? It really involves acting an action for the good of others. So if you want to be in a relationship, a romantic relationship, and move that to a sustainable relationship such as marriage, you have to be kind. You have to think more of that person than yourself and be kind even when it doesn't benefit your agenda. Take that in for a moment. That's m kindness. Are you showing love with being kind? The next thing is that love is patient. What is patient? That means that you want to be able to give that other person space, understand them, not be quick to jump or to ignore what may be important to them. You may want to develop a relationship with someone, but you want to rush to it. Well, love is patient. Take your time. Take your time to get to know the individual, get to know their attributes. Because you want to be love. To find love, that other individual needs to be love so you can find it. So patience and your conversations. Wanting to seek to understand, not being hurried in a relationship is hugely important. When the rubber meets the road and you want to go left and that person wants to go right, patience. Patience. To be able to see each other's perspective is going to be hugely important and being able to come to some type of agreement. So be kind. Don't think of others. Think of others before yourself, even when it doesn't benefit you. And patience even requires waiting. Waiting the other thing about love is love is not arrogant. It's not puffed up. So do you think about yourself as being more highly valued over someone else? Are you arrogant that you brag about yourself over and over and over again as if there's no one else that can meet your standards or meet what you do or how you live? Love is not puffed up. It's not arrogant. In fact, love has a sense of humility that opens the door to embrace someone else without feeling that they're beneath you or above you. Love is not arrogant or boastful. I know. I've met individuals that they constantly talk about themselves. They're all of that in a bag of chips. That individual. If you are that individual, you have to take a step back because you're thinking more highly of yourself. And when you do that, the other person that you may enter in a relationship with may not meet your standard, but they may be the very right person for you. But you can't see it because self is in the way. Love is not rude. It's not disrespectful. So that's one thing that I have found in relationships, is that disrespect comes in a lot of forms. And so you have to be willing to express yourself when you feel that you bid disrespect, it disrespect can be ignoring the person you're in relationship with. It could be that you don't listen to what they're saying. You just say, uh, I don't have time for this. So think about your character today. Are you quick to be impatient? Are you kind? Are you boastful? Are you disrespectful? Love is also not envious. That means that you want to be open and embrace the other person's life, celebrations of their life, things that they have accomplished. It's not a competition when you're in a relationship. It's about partnering together and, uh, celebrating each other's successes. Love is not envious. I can personally say that when I was in, um, a long term marriage of 29 years, I felt like it was a competition. That's not love is where you celebrate each other. Are you willing to do that? Love is not self serving. Meaning that I want what I want and I'm going to get what I want. No, love is giving. It's a two way street. You're thinking about the other person and serving that other person. Love means that you can't OutServe one another. It means you just serve. Uh, it is self serving. That is not love. It is not selfserving. It is not selfish. It's giving. It's giving. And when I say giving, it doesn't mean that you're giving gifts, material things. It really means giving of your time. Be willing to understand and know what another individual likes are. I know for me, I am, ah, an individual that really appreciates when someone does things. For me, it could be as simple as my gas tank is on empty and someone says, well, let me go put gas in the car for you. Wow, that is giving up their time to serve me breakfast in bed. Someone making breakfast in bed for me is serving. There's all kinds of ways that we can serve based on getting to know someone in a relationship. But you have to be patient, you have to practice patience. So love is kind, love is patient, it's not self serving, it's not arrogant, it's not selfish. Jot those things down. Because in order to be true love and find true love, we all have to start practicing true love. So these are core biblical principles about love. Now, I know that we all want to create our own story about love, but the fact of it is we're not doing very good at it. Many people are hurt and broken. In fact, I think the statistics are, when I read those a couple of weeks ago, that 45% of individuals two and three years in and their marriages are divorcing. And the highest population of divorces are now also people over 50 years of age. So regardless of what reason that we got into a marriage, these are some core principles about what true love really is. To salvage that marriage, to be able to find true love, we have to begin to practice it. Because if we don't know what true love is, we don't participate in the core principles of true love, then how can we find it? So it's being bold enough once again to start a cultural change of how we look at love. Because we were created to be loved and to be touched. So love yourself first. Heal so that you can begin to practice being true love. So whatever relationship you're in, a relationship that is moving towards marriage, you're in a marriage or you desire to be in a relationship, it starts with you being true love, um, in order to find it. So that's why Valentine's message to you because it's no longer high school, it's no longer elementary. I kind of chat and laugh to myself even about the Valentine's Day cards that I would get in elementary school. Will you be my valentine? And someone would write in, I love you because of this and that. Well, we all have characteristics that people will love about us. But the foundational core of what love is, it's beyond now elementary school. It's beyond being that little girl, it's beyond being that little boy. To be true love, you have to be mature. You have to be willing to practice the core principles of what love is to be in a relationship. You're not the little girl any longer, you're the lady, you're the woman. No longer a little boy. It is a man that's mature enough to be able to be bold enough to say, I want to be true love, uh, to find true love so that I can be in that sustainable relationship. So there you have it. As you're entering into Valentine's Day, whatever you're doing, have this conversation about being true love. I'm excited. I'm excited because I am practicing being true love, and I want that reciprocated to me. I will not enter into another relationship and be unhappy. I want to experience true love, and it's there for me, and it's there for you. We just have to get on the right track of what love is. Get rid of all the noise out there, of what some women think and what some men think, because true love is not, when you enter a relationship for strictly the benefits of having sex or material things. It's much deeper than that. So don't fall in to this culture of love is not a good thing. It's meant to be a beautiful thing. Happy Valentine's Day. I'll see you again next week. And be bold enough to be true love.