Love Offered - No Attachments
A few days ago, I was told that I offer too much love; that the way I give love suggests I want more than someone extends to me. I’ve thought about that, about how my tenderness might be read as a request I haven’t spoken. How taking an interest, being affectionate, or making someone feel cared for can become evidence that I must be asking for something more. I know what moves me to love. I know the difference between wanting to hold someone close and trying to hold them to a promise. I offer what I know how to give.
I offer peace. The energy of love. I offer that love in abundance because I don’t believe people receive enough of it. We learn to get through a day without being touched, to carry something heavy without mentioning it, to say we’re fine because explaining feels harder than being alone with it. Then someone comes along with warmth, and we find ourselves wondering what it will cost.
I understand that many people have called certain things love that came with a debt attached. Affection has been used to persuade; generosity remembered aloud when it was time to collect. Some of us have learned to examine kindness before allowing ourselves to enjoy it. Still, I want there to be room for a love we can receive without bracing for the terms.
If I ask about your day, I want to hear about your day. If I tell you something I admire about you, I want you to know it has been seen. When I make room for you beside me, there is pleasure for me in your presence. I’m enjoying what we’re sharing. The tenderness is real in that moment; it doesn’t need a future promise to make it sincere. I can want your company without asking you to rearrange your life. I can be moved by you, affectionate toward you, glad for the time we have, and mean exactly what I’ve said. There is an intimacy in allowing a moment to be full without insisting it become something else. I wish we trusted that more.
Love with no expectation is difficult to understand when we’ve become accustomed to keeping an account. We look at who called first, who gave more, and who might be getting attached. Somewhere in all that measuring, a person can be standing right in front of us, offering something beautiful, while we’re busy deciding what their generosity must mean. For me, it means that I have love to give. It means I want you to feel some ease when you’re with me. To speak and know I’m listening. To hear an honest answer when you ask for my thoughts, given with enough care that even a difficult truth leaves you whole and intact. I want to laugh with you, reach for your hand when I feel moved to, say the loving thing while there is still time for you to hear it.
These are things I value. They’re part of how I move through the world, how I make a life feel like somewhere a heart can live. My spirituality lives there, too. In what I do with the tenderness God has kept alive in me. I’ve prayed for comfort and felt it through someone’s patience. I’ve needed reassurance and found it in a voice that softened when it heard mine. Those experiences have made me mindful of what I can offer another person. Sometimes I have the words. Sometimes I have the time to listen until they find their own. I don’t want to withhold that simply because the world has made sincerity difficult to trust.
I know my offering still has to leave room for the person receiving it. I can listen when someone tells me what feels comfortable. I can respect the space they need. Love has enough tenderness to hear a boundary without treating it as an injury. I need to be heard as well.
My affection shouldn’t have to carry intentions someone else has assigned to it. Ask me what I mean. Believe me when I answer. Give me the grace of knowing my own heart, and don’t force me to change or make me feel guilty because you don’t understand the full complexities of a love that is me. Loving with no expectation doesn’t erase my desire to be loved. I want tenderness in my life. I enjoy being considered, cherished, and reached for. I can acknowledge that desire without turning every act of care into a bargain. What I give freely belongs to the moment in which I give it. It isn’t a deposit on someone’s devotion.
Perhaps my love feels abundant because it is. I’ve lived enough to know how deeply a little care can reach, and how long its absence can stay with someone. When affection rises in me, I want to be able to express it with honesty and discernment, without apologizing for its warmth.
I love because I believe that I am love. I recognize myself in the giving of that love, in the peace I bring, the truth I speak, the joy I take in seeing someone feel cherished. It is one of the ways my spirit becomes visible.
So when I offer you love, receive what I’m actually giving. Let it be warm. Let it be sincere. Let it be love and belong to this moment without making it answer for a future we haven’t been promised.
You are being loved because, in this moment, loving you is what comes naturally to me…that is the offering.
Rosalind Jackson aka Roz
A fierce mother of five, loving grandmother of 15, Rosalind is full of an overprotective, all-inclusive love for those who belong to her. She loves fiercely, completely, and believes in giving one hundred percent of herself.
A lover of words, random facts, researching, and the Bible – Roz writes her thoughts, dreams, and inspirations to share with her closest friends.
A firm believer of love, life, laughter, and loyalty, seeking any opportunity to take a quick road trip or a mini-vacation.
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