Love stories

“We have something to tell you”.

Me and my wife emma are sitting together with my parents in their garden. The sun is shining and we are about to tell them that we live in an open relationship. As we are sharing it I’m realizing how obvious it is for me and always have been. I can be attracted to, and love, several people, at the same time. 
A shift came when I stopped seeing it as a problem and I started sharing it with others. As soon as I did I realized that I’m not alone. I found others who also believed that trust can be built in relationships in spite of (or maybe even because of) our genuine humanness to also like other people.
My journey towards freeing my own love from fear has been a journey through honesty landing in trust. It also happened that freeing my own love and supporting others on their journey turned out to be the best teacher I ever had. A mirror constantly asking questions facilitating my evolution.
It is through support and supporting others I have experienced love. And to live a life true to my heart I need support, I need mirrors, I need family. I dream of living with family one day. With brothers and sisters, family of choice. When who is sexually or romantically involved with whom is secondary. When love beyond all that, is primary.

with love♡
– nils

It became completely silent in the kitchen.
I had told my boyfriend at the time about my attraction to another guy. Seconds later, both of us quickly moved on to something else. Another topic, something else to do. And we never spoke of it again.
I didn’t really know how to relate to what I was feeling and I surely didn’t know how to speak about it. To not share what was alive in me with the person that I spent most of my time with didn’t feel like an option. The picture of me and him standing in the kitchen is engraved in my mind. I cannot remember the words, just a feeling of abruptness and confusion.
17 years later, I access my thoughts, feelings and longings in a way that’s wider, deeper and more in line with my essence. The topic of multiple love and attractions came back to me later in life with my husband nils. We tried to move slowly and carefully but it felt fast and brutal at times.
In the roller-coaster of curiosity, fear, eagerness, pain, empowerment, joy, I got a sense that I’m arm wrestling with something bigger than myself.
One year after nils and I went on our first date with other people, the wrestling was over. I spent some months in Tamera, a peace research center in Portugal, and it became clear to me:

“There can’t be peace on Earth as long as there’s war in love.”

This sentence created new space within myself. My journey in love became less challenging when I realised that it’s bigger than me. It’s our journey.

with love♡
– emma

To write a short story about the way I think of love, life and relationships came as a great challenge. Anyone who knows me would probably giggle a little bit at me trying to keep something I’m passionate about short. 
But here goes. I have been lucky enough to meet, and have relations with several humans who have had beautiful, and sometimes painful impacts on my life. Many times the relationships had me fleeing before they had a chance to settle or trying again when letting go would be a more caring choice. But the different types of relationships I have had invited me to question, not always as a pleasant process as you might imagine, my ideas regarding love, relationships, and freedom.
But maybe most of all, myself.
Why am I afraid? How do I want to live love? What is love to me?

I don’t have any answers. More like subtle clues leading me forward. But maybe it’s not so much about finding the answers. Maybe it’s more about observing the questions that arise.
So today I ask myself, Do I ever want love to make someone have to be anything lesser than what they truly are? To make them conform in the premisses of my expressions of fear. And is love really love without the curiosity to fully explore and accept myself and others?

I’m looking forward to sharing the journey of partnership(s) when the time comes. To find expressions of love that suit us, that never hinders but allows intimacy in our growth and freedom in our individuality.
I look forward to keep growing into love. Facing my many fears and opening up.
And my wish at this moment is that love, regardless of person(s), always is an invitation and safe space to fully exist as I am, as you are, at this exact moment. That with love and curiosity I can grow and expand beyond those first layers, and maybe there, I can find the courage to be.
Just be. As we are, together.

with love♡
– cecilia

I have idealized romantic love a lot through my journey so far.
I used to push myself to accomplish the image of what love was supposed to be, specially to make another one happy and by that satisfying my own self image of a “good” lover. Then I transferred my initial love for this person into a love for the “beautiful” relationship. This led into a pattern of disconnection with my being as a whole and hence not being able to fully see the other one, which caused emotional distancing and pain.
By moving further into a more integrated sense of self and opening my heart progressively while ceasing to act out of fear and the need of control, I started deconstructing that old idealization of what love was supposed to look like. 
I realized I could genuinely feel love for another person while not necessarily projecting myself in the future with them or not feeling like forming a family with them. By discerning what was the experience of relating from what composes the mental structures of co-creating a relationship I even could see that there wasn’t a thing such as loving one person more than another one. 
I’m allowing myself to live and connect to others through empathetic honesty and an open heart while being responsible for all my recently afflorished sensitivities and vulnerability that come with it. I’m cherishing its complex beauty and I’m experiencing the joy of being in -the frequency of- love and honouring it with gratitude.

with love♡
– juan andrés

I see a woman, (read countless women throughout the years) whom I’ve never met before, her very being makes me smile and bubble, heart beats a little faster. Oh but wait… I’m in a relationship, I’m not allowed these emotions. I didn’t share this with her because I felt it was not an ok feeling to have, I kept it to myself. 
I’ve lived many of my adult years like this. Some years ago my partner asked me if I wanted to open our relationship up to meet others, it had been on my mind for some time, so I agreed. We grew in this, and our communication also became more open. I felt more free and allowed to be who I am. Today I feel it’s right to live in an open relationship, that might change at some point in my life, I am not invested in that identity.. But openness in communication is something I will cherish and nurture throughout my life, even though it’s not always easy.

She told me she loved me, I got scared and didn’t tell her back. After a while I realised that saying this meant, to me, we are in a serious relationship, we are going to move in together, and all these other musts and ideas.
This held me back from daring to love her, understanding this, I felt that I loved her.
I told her I loved her.

with love♡
– andreas

I am not so sure that I know anything about love.
Does that count as inspiring?
Maybe don’t put me on the website.
It’s the only thing I can say now: I don’t know. I have gone through several formulations of thinking I know. A long stretch of pure conditioning, believing that there is someone else to complete me, exclusively, easefully. It naturally dropped away – not a fun process, but I would say, almost an inevitable part of growing up in the 21^st century. Then came a cycle of still believing in that Story of Two, but seeing it as hard work, like a job, a responsibility. It sucked all the fun out and was still more focused on the idea(l) than the actual process of relating.
When I met my most recent partner, the focus shifted from idea(l) to the process of relating. Once I developed feelings for someone else, I knew the joy of being more open while in a relationship. When my partner told me that he would like me to see this other person because he wanted me to be happy, I remember having the curious feeling of never having been so loved in my life. A new cycle of certainty began – certainty that open relating was the way forward, that freedom equals love.
Then my partner left me for someone else – the relationship was not strong enough to deal with different people flowing in and out. It didn’t damage my essential belief in open relating, but it threw me back to a new place of not-knowing. I have no sense of identity invested anymore in how one ‘should’ do love – what is left are some outlines of ideas and hopes that can change any moment. It’s enjoyable, in its own way.
Perhaps one certainty has come to replace it, one that I cherish: the idea that all my relating depends on the level of intimacy I have with myself. If there are parts of me that I am not willing to put under the spotlight, that scare me, that I am hiding away from myself and others, then my connections to others will inevitably live on that surface.
I think next time, I’d like to dive a bit deeper.
Let’s see what comes.

with love♡
– henrike

In the first version of my text I caught myself writing a lot of spiritual fluff, trying to sound wise or clever.
So I hope this second attempt is more honest: 
When I was very young my perception of Love mainly consisted of the over-romanticized picture of falling in Love. So I fell in love many times to experience that exciting feeling.

When I was a little older I started to appreciate the more subtle frequency of a committed long-term relationship. Less erratic and exciting but personally way more rewarding. However, at different times tension would rise within me and consequently between us. Slowly, over time, my mind would build a personal catalogue of reasons why my partner was hindering my personal full development and expression of all my possibilities. These tensions could have been avoided with the proper communication but at that time I didn’t have the necessary awareness or tools. 

It was only after I found Yoga and later NVC (Non violent Communication) that I was able to relax such tension. I discovered the liberating value of complete honesty when it comes to Love and relationships. Both with myself and my partner. When I met my wife we spent three months in India in almost complete seclusion and got to know each other in total honesty from day one. We created personal rituals and took a lot of time expressing everything that went on within ourselves. We now have a son and the foundation in honesty, which we laid in the beginning, helps us through the often taxing times with a baby. 

I personally never had the desire for an open relationship. For me that would mean investing a lot of energy  which I rather spend on something else. But I can completely understand the desire of others to apply such a concept. I feel like as long there is honesty there don’t have to be fixed definitions of Love and relationships.

with love♡
– danny