Affection makes us feel all kinds of wonderful inside, but affection is never about more than our own good feeling. What you have is two or more people in a relationship, be it just a friendship or a full-on marriage, who are never doing more than taking what makes each of them feel good. People pulling on each other have nothing to give each other except more pulling and inevitably get pulled completely apart.

Affection is not love. It’s lust. It’s the selfish desire to fulfill what you want and the delusion that having what you want will make you happy. Affection only cares about others insofar as others make you feel good. Affection will only do for others as much as it needs to to maintain the good feeling you want.

Love is an entirely different, opposite thing. The key component of love is that it gives you no satisfaction unless you are giving your satisfaction to someone else. Where affection is rooted in self-importance, love is rooted in self-sacrifice.

Love sees to it that others feel wonderful. Love cares about others feeling good. Love gives the other something out of within yourself and provides something back to you. Love isn’t pulled out, it is poured in. People pouring into one another draw closer and closer together until each one has poured themselves so fully into the other that they are literally one person.

You don’t find love. You don’t go looking for someone to pour the love you long for into you. You give love, and you give it greatly, and you give it often – you pour yourself out into others. When you do, you will see that others will pour love into you and you will draw closer. You will have true friends then and even someone who will walk alongside you through life, with each of you pouring love into one another.

You will also have those who are only seeking affection. These will feel the love you pour out and will do nothing more than draw on it for their own good feeling. Be wise and evaluate each relation you enter, and look clearly to see if someone isn’t just letting you pour into them without really pouring back into you. Keep pouring your love on them, but know that they can’t give you anything back, at least not right now. Don’t cast them aside, but don’t let yourself be drawn into them completely either. Remember that you are a light and that you must shine as far and as brightly as possible. Someone who is only interested in affection will take the light of your love and cover it in themselves and it will be lost to the world and the world you have will be lost to you.

We all want to feel special, appreciated, cared about, like we matter. We all want others to come into our lives, to fill our world, to share our experiences, and to provide us comfort. We all fear the still quietness of an empty house, a life of pathways walked alone, or the thought of being forgotten when our spirits finally break free from this mound of flesh and bones. The feeling of not having love in our lives is enough to cause literal physical pain, and we can be driven to take any stupid thing that we can have an affection for. But, those things are just like pornography. They are things that look like love but that have no feeling for us, that satisfy our need to feel something but that pour nothing of themselves into us.

Love is given first. Love is given always. There are people in your life who need your love and people who have love for you that you’ve only given your needy affection to. Love them. Smile. Say Hello. Ask a simple question, really listen to their answer, and you will see a million more ways to love them. Love them without wanting to be loved in return. Love them for no other reason than to love them. Love them and there will be love for you.