Filling Your Love cup

Down deep in your heart, there’s a cup. Not of fine china, silver or gold. But a cup of feeling and emotion that when filled, makes life worth living.
The love cup is like an emotional barometer that can predicted behavior. When it’s full and overflowing, you become a loving person. It’s as if your life is so filled with love you can’t hold it all. You want to share those good feelings with others. But when your cup is drained, your world turns negative; criticism, sarcasm, guilt, and bitterness rush in to fill the void. You have nothing but bitter gall to share with others.
How do you filling your love cup? Here is an easy way: Just remember five characteristics: care, respect, acceptance, forgiveness, and trust.
CARE
Care is love an action; Attitude plus behavior. It’s reaching out to the helpless, the down and out; those who are in need, no matter how unattractive, sick, or obstinate. The person who gives care must make the helpless feel accepted and even desirable. If not, that person’s self worth is likely to suffer
There are three dimensions of care:
a. Time. Care takes time. Perhaps that is why so many people resent giving care to others. One the care is give; it often must be repeated again and again. You never quite finished.
b. Touch. Touch is important at every age. It symbolizes desirability. Keep “in touch”; it’s an important aspect of care
c. Thoughtfulness. Whereas concern for physical well being is taken for granted, concern for psychological well being must not be neglected.
Caring for the physical and emotional needs of others is a prime component of love; perhaps the most active, surely the most basic.
RESPECT
Respect implies consideration for the right of another to be unique; free to make age appropriate decision. Force and manipulation have no part in respectful relationship .Respect should not depend upon whether it is deserved. Respect after basic care sets the stage for a loving relationship.
ACCEPTENCE
Loving another person is a though job. Especially if he or she isn’t pretty, good, or clever. It’s hard, but important lesson to learn to accept a person who is different or whose personality clashes with yours. The temptation is try to remake that person before filling the love cup. Yet, acceptance- the unconditional love of others- is the basis for self. Acceptance is a powerful manipulative tool. Some people crave acceptance; they will do virtually anything for it, even accept physical pain and psychological abuse.
Many people live in relationship stepped with conditions, each using and manipulating the other to meet their own needs. Each marching to the others tunes - never fully free to be themselves. Each slaves to the acceptance they crave from other. Don’t misuse the power of acceptance. If you love unconditionally, your loved one can experience the freedom of being truly accepted and of being truly himself. He will never feel like a slave.
The need for acceptance is often so strong that it is difficult to be opened honest with your loved ones. What about your spotted past? Would they still love you? What about your doubts and dream? Would they laugh at you? For most of us Self disclosure is hardly worth the risk. It’s better to keep out sight out the darker part of our lives rather than the risk the rejection of a loved one. But we pay the price. We can never be fully ourselves. We can never feel truly comfortable. We can never feel accepted as long as we must hide part of ourselves. This leads further to isolation, conflict, and empty love cups.
FORGIVENESS
The essence of forgiveness is accepting that no one is faultless. We all make mistakes. Why should misjudgment, carelessness, or even spite disrupt a relationship and empty our love cups? They need not, if the person who errs is forgiven
There should never be a doubt whether or not to forgive someone who has wronged us. Forgiveness should not be conditional upon repentance. Complete forgiveness involves two people, the offender and the offended, but the process of forgiveness may start with either.
At all times forgiveness should be given freely, reconciliation sought, and the incident forgotten. But sometimes forgiveness is pretense. There is a lot of false forgiveness being practiced among us. False forgiveness is pretending you are forgiving when you are really not- it’s a way of sabotaging the process. Instead of filling a love cup, false forgiveness empties it.
There are five steps to complete forgiveness: recognizing the problem, accepting personal responsibility for your behavior, having a repentant and forgiving attitude, working toward reconciliation, and forgetting.
TRUST
Trust is an inherent part of a loving relationship. It sets the loved one free to be a person, to make decisions, accept consequences, and grow toward his personal potentials.
But trust has two dimensions, inextricably linked: trusting and being trustworthy. You can’t trust a person who isn’t trustworthy. Nor you can prove you are trustworthy unless someone takes the risk to trust you.

Love is easy to talk about, but difficult to practice. Love sustains your hope for something better. With love you can feel good about yourself. Without love there is no hope. Without love you will feel worthless
When you give your love, you give time and attention and filling another’s love cup as a goal worth striving for. When your love cup is filled, may your love overflow to touch those who live touch your own. By experiencing your love, may the unloved become loved and may the lovable be even more loving.

Taken from filling your love cup by Kay Kuzma