Love is simple.

As soon as you want someone else to show up differently than they are, this isn’t love.

If you want anything other than for them to be sovereign, this isn’t love.

Love is that which enables choice.

Love supports the other person to choose what’s best for them.

It DOESN’T make the choice for them.

Love trusts that the other person has the capacity to handle reality.

The opposite of love is manipulation.

Manipulation is trying to make someone take an action that benefits you, while worsening them.

Manipulation stems from not being able to accept things(a romantic partner, business partner, friend, family dynamics) as they are.

To want things to be your way and not as they are.

To deteriorate the other’s capacity to make sense of and respond to a situation well.

The Reality

Love is infinitely difficult.

Oftentimes … to enable the choice of the other is to experience suffering.

If someone ends a relationship with you, to enable choice is to support that decision, not to want them to choose otherwise.

This is the hard reality of things.

So how do we begin to cultivate love?

We start with the cultivation of deep acceptance.

If someone doesn’t like us. That’s okay.

If someone likes us. That’s okay.

If someone once liked us and now doesn’t like us. That’s okay.

If I don’t like myself. That’s okay.

If I do like myself. That’s okay.

If I’m in the process of learning how to love myself. That’s okay.

If I have intense social anxiety. That’s okay.

Don’t you get it.

It’s all okay.

No matter how difficult the experience. It’s all okay.

No matter how deep the pain of loss.

No matter how intense the grieving.

It’s all okay.

There was never a moment where it wasn’t okay.

This is love.

At least how I see it.

The Newsletter is Love

This newsletter is my attempt to enable your choice.

To steward us all into greater self-awareness and capacity for making better choices in our lives.

I’m not perfect.

I fail at this aim more than I can count.

Each newsletter is my attempt to move in the right direction.

I hope it’s helpful.

But if it’s not helpful then that is fine too.

Love Ethan.

If you liked this newsletter you’ll like my new book The Depth Equation.