What is love? How do you define it? For many, when they say they want love in their life, what they mean is they want romantic love.

With Valentine’s Day approaching, you may be someone who dreads the holiday because you aren’t married or don’t have a significant other romantic partner in your life. Every time you go into the grocery store the first thing you see is the floral section, with all the Valentine arrangements, balloons flying with declarations of love, cute stuffed animals, and heart-shaped EVERYTHING.

Perhaps you have recently had a relationship breakup or are single and wishing for marriage, and you are sad that you don’t have love in your life exactly the way you want it. But there are so many other kinds of love.

Family, friends, pets, volunteerism, and God’s unconditional love for you are some of the other ways love can be present in your life. If you are someone whose Love Language is physical touch, somehow the hugs you get from friends, your grandkids, etc., don’t quite cut it for you when you long for a deeper physical connection with someone.

But the first person you need to love is yourself. You may never get that romantic love you seek but love yourself enough not to place your own worth based on how another person feels about you.

Even romantic love isn’t sustainable 24/7 for a person’s whole lifetime except in rare cases. But the craving for it sometimes leads people to quickly seek to get into another relationship too quickly after a breakup because they want to feel that euphoric “in love” feeling all the time. I’m not here to break your heart-shaped Valentine balloon, but realize the unique, incredible person God made you to be and celebrate YOU!

I read a book years ago called, Love Is A Choice, and when I saw the title I thought, “That’s ridiculous! You can’t choose with whom you fall in love – it’s something MAGICAL that happens!” But when I got more into the book I understood what they meant. Even if you’re in the most amazing relationship or marriage, the day will come when there is dissent or disagreement. You may not like the other person very much in those moments, but you can CHOOSE to love them. That’s right. Let LOVE be a verb, rather than a noun. SHOW love to that person by your actions. Words of Affirmation are wonderful, but our actions usually speak louder than our words.

There was also a movie out in 2003 called “Under The Tuscan Sun” with Diane Lane. It’s about a woman whose marriage falls apart, so she takes a vacation to Tuscany and ends up buying a fixer-upper villa and moves there. It’s a project that’s an uphill climb, and throughout her new life and the restoration of the villa, she keeps hoping and working to have romantic love in her life again. What she learns is that love comes in many forms and in circumstances that may look different than what she envisioned, but that love is still attainable if she can only recognize it.

So, back to the other means of having love in our lives if we’re without a partner.

There is FAMILY LOVE. The love you have for children, grandchildren, and for the wise elders who went before us and who may no longer be here with us physically but whose love remains in our hearts.

There are friends with whom we share our deepest longings and secret thoughts without fear of rejection or judgment. People with whom we can laugh, cry, have fun times, good food, and with whom we can share travels and conversation.

Those of you with pets consider them members of your family. Pets quickly integrate themselves into a household and evoke loving feelings. Particularly dogs. Dogs are always happy to see you, run to you and wag their tails when you come home or enter a room. Their love is unconditional. You can do no wrong. If only we could transfer that trait to our spouses! (I’m not married, so no getting in trouble for that statement!) I personally like horses and had an unforgettable connection to one during my stay at a ranch a few years ago, but – too big to have in the house!

Volunteering and giving of yourself to others in need, whether it be someone we know or packing meals for a third-world country, we are showing our love by our ACTIONS.

You may even feel joy from intangible things like traveling, cooking and tasting favorite foods, or enjoying nature.

Then there is God’s love. I am a person of faith, and if you are not, you may be tempted to skip this section. But the Bible tells me in Psalms 139:13-14 that God “knit me together in my mother’s womb” and that I am “fearfully and wonderfully made.” That tells me that God knows all about us even before we are born. The way the systems of the body work together is done by Intelligent Design. And for those of you who believe, we know the great sacrifice God made in order to have a relationship with all of us. THAT is unconditional love. If we don’t have that, there always seems to be a hole in our hearts that we end up trying to fill with something else – drinking, drugs, sex, work, material things. But those things will never measure up.

This Valentine’s Day, and every other day that follows, appreciate yourself for the wonderfully-made person you are. And if you don’t have anyone with whom to celebrate, buy yourself some chocolate-covered strawberries, buy your own balloons, light some candles, and soak in a nice tub with some soothing music. You deserve it.

NOTE: Speaking of music, if you go to the Music page on my blog site, you’ll find a list of songs for romance that I created a while back. There are MANY songs about love, but love and romance are different, and this list caters to the latter. I’m sure you have favorites of your own that can be added to the list. Enjoy!