How To Manufacture Love

When we talk about emotions, we often talk about feeling happy, sad, angry, or anxious. There are a wide range of emotional layers that easily come to mind, but love is so often left off in its own category. The word love seems to carry a bit more weight. Up on its pedestal, it is often more challenging to talk about. Especially for men.

It’s either downplayed and stripped of its edge. Or it’s framed as something with such power that the mere mention of it could transform the entire make up of a situation. Do you say you love them or is it far too soon to feel that emotion?

So, what is love? Have you ever been in love? If you have, than you understand how love brings a new pressure to a relationship or experience. It feels like a universe. It’s powerful force is not just like any other emotion. In fact, the other emotions seem to orbit love like planets. Happiness, jealousy, grief, loneliness, anxiety, and every other emotions we feel are all circulating this larger force. As the emotion of love’s power grows stronger, the surrounding emotions are pulled with that force. The happy things felt with more ecstasy and the painful moments felt with more weight and uncertainty. It feels like love is in control. The centre of the universe. If love falls, everything falls.

Is love this greater emotion? Does it truly hold so much power over our other emotions?

What if love, real love, had little control over our other emotions? What if love is much more practical than that? What if you can manufacture love, regardless of your other emotions? What if it’s not so scary?

Love is a practice.

The first love of my life taught me this: Martial arts.

You don’t build strength on the days you feel motivated. You build it by showing up when you’re tired, frustrated, distracted, or doubting yourself. You build it through repetition and patience. Through learning how to stay present when every other emotion is telling you to quit.

Love works in much the same way.

Love is demanding. It asks for you to be resilient. The ability to stay present when things get uncomfortable. Love demands discipline. A willingness to continue showing up, even when (and especially when) you are sad or angry. Love asks for compassion. It requires understanding, awareness, and acceptance even through emotions like jealousy and disappointment. It requires the capacity to hold your ground without hardening your heart.

My martial arts instructor was always on my case about how tense I was. I wanted so badly to succeed that I was constantly tensing and trying too hard. Because of this, I struggled to flow, lost speed and timing, and would gas myself out. My reckless desire held me back because I wasn’t taking the time to nurture myself into understanding and learning the fundamentals first.

I believe the same is true in love.

Love requires our patience. The discipline to slow down instead of react. To listen first rather than jumping into defense. To take that deep breath before you strike back. In martial arts, I had to learn that my mistakes aren’t failures; they are information. You get hit, you learn. You fall, you adjust. Bow and reset.

To truly experience love, you require that same humility. Acknowledging when you’re wrong or when something doesn't work without developing an enemy in feeling what that comes with. Taking responsibility without collapsing into shame or blame.

When I first began instructing classes myself, I thought if I demanded the respect of my students, I would receive it. I was wrong. Respect isn’t about dominance. It’s about awareness. Knowing the weight of your actions. Understanding that how you show up impacts the people around you. What I began to understand was that the way I said something held weight. My words had an impact that lasted in people. I began to earn respect when I started to listen and respond to what I was hearing and observing from the students in my class rather than being the leading force.

Love carries that same responsibility.

In today’s world, one of the hardest lessons to learn is that love isn’t about control. You can’t force connection. The words you speak are meaningful to the people who are listening to them and their words will carry weight for you as well. Understanding isn’t a God given talent. Relationships are not about winning or losing. It all takes effort. It takes practice and that takes determination. Not the loud kind, the quiet kind. It’s the kind of effort when you’re training and no one is watching because it just matters.

Love is a very powerful emotion, there is no doubt. But love is not in control of you or your actions. Love is the product of effort. The effort you put into those around you will bring the emotion to life. The effort you pour into yourself will bring the emotion to life.

The emotion of love asks you to know yourself. To regulate yourself. To take ownership for your reactions instead of outsourcing them to the people closest to you or blaming them on past circumstances.

That’s discipline. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be willing to practice.

To show up again. To learn from the past.

That’s how you manufacture love.

Written by: Kyle Craik