We each experience love uniquely, filtering it through our personal backgrounds, personalities and experiences. In this domain, don’t bother with generics.
One person feels loved when they are given a gift that perfectly fits an interest they have. For them, that’s love. Another feels deeply loved by a snuggly hug, another by being close but not touching. Another feels most loved by being listened to as they share the trivia of their day, another by being allowed to talk about ideas, another by having a purring cat sleep on their lap, another by being allowed to watch a local football game with friends, another by being encouraged to go to the beach and walk with girl friends.
Love is ideolectic, which means it is articulated in the language of the individual, not the group. It is found in nick names and private endearments and familial neologisms and goofy redefinitions. It resides in family jokes, favorite foods and funny family stories, a language invented by people with the same reality even if they don’t have the same last name.
When we cannot experience love, the dysfunctions behind our attachment disorders are often idiopathic, unknown or at least unrecognized by us. An angry father, a perpetually drunk mother, a childhood illness, a traumatic divorce, a disabling shyness — we may have some idea as to our love disability, but often we are not quite sure as to its precise etiology. We may brood, “Why can’t I seem to connect well with people, bond, enter into love the way I see that others do?” We often don’t know precisely why; perhaps we never will. Love’s dysfunctions are complex, but we do not have to understand them completely to love.
To whatever degree we can give or receive love, we should; it is a gift and a thrill. Love is the essence of mental health and the core of happiness. Love is so essential that it should be made the highest priority of life. We should go all out to love the people we live with idiosyncratically, in the ways in which they want and need to be loved. We should gently, kindly, patiently and continuously customize our love for our spouses and boyfriends and kids and best friends.
If we do everything else but don’t do love, we have done absolutely nothing. Love is first, best, highest and most supreme. Do not miss making this your primary mission in every second of every day for the rest of your life.
Let quirky, personalized, specialized, custom-fitted love rule.
Thrive! 
