January, for me is the bleakest month of the year, and somehow, I do not feel I am alone in my feelings of emptiness. The end of the holiday season, the start of New Year, funds are low, the weather is unpleasant and as I stare at my calendar I see that the next milestone on the horizon is alas, St. Valentine’s Day.

As I write this, sadly, I am lovelorn! When you are in a state of pining for a recent love, Valentine’s Day is a day to wish away. However, it might be a good time to take a look at LOVE.

What is a healthy love relationship? Real love has been described as a state of being. It is pure, it is simple, it emanates from within us, a place we cannot clearly define, though it feels like the heart is talking to every cell of our being.

It is your own inner creation going outward, sometimes we stop it, sometimes we share it. For some, it’s one of life’s peak experiences and for others, it’s one of life’s deepest troughs.

Though many will not openly admit it, most of us yearn for the fulfilment of a healthy relationship but often find ourselves instead being faced with the trials, confusion and conflict of an unhealthy one. We often find it difficult to leave because sometimes love can be compulsive, controlling and addictive.

Psychotherapist Brenda Schaeffer, author of ‘Is it Love or Is it Addiction?’ asks the pertinent question how can something as wonderful as love make you feel so bad? She explains in her book: ‘…the intensity of love addiction is often in direct proportion to the intensity of one’s sense of unmet needs during childhood. Intense love-addiction often accompanies low self-esteem. Such obsession presents us with a huge paradox, we fall into it as an attempt to gain control of our lives, and in so doing we actually grant control to forces outside ourselves.

‘This willingness to give control away springs from fear: fear of pain, fear of deprivation, fear of disappointing someone, fear of failures, fear of being alone…’ fear, fear and more fear– addiction’s best friend.

How many times have we nurtured a good friend, sister or brother through a broken romance, it can be so painful to watch as the individual struggles to cope with a broken heart and for that there is no cure other than time.

Despite everything, I am not giving up on love and on St Valentine’s Day 2008 the poem from Paulo Coelho in his book ‘Life, Selected Quotations’ was a gift in itself for me.

In this world there is always
one person waiting for another,
be it in the middle of the desert
or in the middle of a big city,
And when those two people pass each other
and their eyes meet
past and future lose all importance
and the only thing that exists
is that moment and incredible certainty
that everything under the sun was written by the same Hand,
the Hand that awakens Love,
and that makes a twin soul for everyone who works,
rests and seeks treasures under the sun,
Without this our human dreams,
would make no sense.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast!

Above: St Valentine and followers.