The Love Matrix
By Kim Barta, MA
You are a symphony of love. An amazing amalgamation of music and instruments, all working together to transmit love and vitality magically—through the air— to and between those receiving your love song. The first step in this magical journey, is to learn what it means to actually receive love. We love to feel loved. It simultaneously softens us, excites us, relaxes us and vitalizes us.
But sometimes, we don’t receive the love that is given to us. We are like the child’s toys where you put the square block in the square hole and the round block in the round hole and the star-shaped block in the star-shaped hole. At times we only experience the love in one shape. At times this is simply because we don’t realize there are other metaphorical shapes of love. That is what this article is about—all the shapes of love and how you can recognize them when they come to you. At times, we can get a little snobby about what form of love we are willing to accept. “What is this round shaped love? I do not accept round shaped love, I only accept star-shaped love”. This silliness we find ourselves participating in, can leave us devoid of love. Both of these styles, “not recognizing the love”, as well as being picky about “how the love should be shaped”, can leave us feeling deficient of love even in a sea of abundance.
If we want to hear the full symphony of love, we need to open ourselves up fully to all the ways the song of love enters us. Think of a time in your life where you loved someone so dearly, and no matter what you did they did not feel or receive your love. How did that make you feel? That is what we make others feel, when we cannot recognize their love or when we get so picky about its form we do not accept it.
People talk about identifying their love language, as if that is the only language of love they can understand. Well, perhaps it is time to be multilingual with our love, and I can guarantee you there are a lot more than five languages of love.
Below I will show you sixteen love styles—sixteen ways you can sing your love song, receive the love song of others, and feel the abundance of love all around you. Our job is not to run around frantically trying to get that one form of love we hope to receive, but rather our job, as conductors of the love song, is to learn all the styles of singing love. If we feel love is in short supply, it is simply because we have not yet learned how to see it in all its forms and let it in. Once you do, you will discover that love is all around you, at every moment, and it will never be in short supply ever again…