Have you ever loved someone so much that you were determined to make the relationship work out, no matter what it took?

Have you ever been in a relationship where you thought everything in your life depended on it? 

Have you ever felt that you would die if someone wasn’t in your life (maybe not physically die but you just cannot imagine living your life without them)?

Be honest, we have all had that relationship in one way or another, the one that took so much time, energy, and effort and every bit of dedication and determination we had and yet, it ended, sometimes badly. And we remember it forever.

Do you still think about the one that did not work out, the big heartbreak, the one you could not help, change, or convince that you loved them?

I call this big heart relationships and we have all had a ‘big heart’ towards someone. 

Our big heart allows us to put endless effort into the relationship no matter what it costs us emotionally, mentally, physically, or spiritually.

Our big heart allows us to never give up even when we do not seem to be getting any rewards for our efforts. 

Our big heart allows us to be determined in how and who we love and we are 100% committed to showing our love and support to everyone we have a big heart for.

But our big heart hides our deepest darkest secrets about love and relationships:

• That we are not worthy of being loved
• That no one has or will ever love us
• That we will only be hurt by love
• That we must give love without getting love in return
• That we will one day realize our deepest fear that we really are unlovable, unloved, and not worthy of love.

Determined love compels us to love someone, to show them how much we love them so they will love us in return, no matter what they do to us or how they treat us. This includes family, children, and those closest to us. Do you have family members who do not ‘love, honor, and respect’ you, who really treat you badly, who are disrespectful, manipulative, toxic, dishonest, and abusive and you still give them your time and energy and you do your best to show them how much you love them? 

Determined love is connected to our Big Heart energy because it is the fear of being unloved and unlovable that makes us continue to seek love from those who have already shown that they do not love us, or who cannot or won’t love us in a way that meets our description of love. 

This is a key point here. We have our own definition of love, of what we believe is loving behavior, and that meets our criteria for feeling loved. Anyone who doesn’t meet these criteria is not a loving person, as far as our love definition is concerned. I call this your ‘love language, a term I coined in 2012 when I introduced my first ‘Raise Your Love Vibes’ program.

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Created, narrated, and produced by Jennifer Hoffman.

Artwork by Jennifer Hoffman.

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