Real love is not romance, it’s service – A Shutterstock Licensed Image

We can explore the fantasy definitions of love, including Eros, Storge, Philia, Ludus, Pragma, Philautia, and Agape. We can enjoy Robert Sternberg’s 3-component theories of love. Or we get into the down-n-dirty reality of love — the stink of it all. Yeah, let’s do that.

Real-world love is complicated, messy, and it doesn’t often come with instructions. While love can be delicious, nurturing, and near-perfect, it tends to be mysterious and elusive. Love is a tough concept to grasp and even more challenging to attract.

While there have been many brilliant people who have outlined profound concepts on love and relating, here’s my take on The eight Real-World Types of Love:

1. Ego Love

Ego Love relationships are born from what other people provide and represent. It’s a self-centered style of love that is most often based on need-fulfillment. When Ego Lovers appear to be full of light and goodness, it’s often because their life requirements are being simultaneously met. If the slightest thing goes wrong or if an ego is pinched, the relationship can collapse in a heartbeat.

When two people are relating from this position, it’s all based on expectations. This is not necessarily bad, but it can be wrought with issues.

2. Romantic Love

Romantic love is another form of Ego Love, but with a twist. As the 2nd lowest form of love, Romantic Love is chock full of fantasies and projections, and it’s often infused with the drippings of mutual objectification.

Romantic love is the gooey, yummy, fake love that makes our toes tingle. It’s love based on how others inspire you to feel. As you feel bliss, you assume that you love the other person. The sad truth is that, when experiencing these types of relationships, you’re projecting your lack of something, not your love of the other person.

What makes this type of love so addictive, sad, and ridiculous, and yet delicious, is that the mutual fantasies and objectifications often occur at the same time. This is when people usually have babies, planned or otherwise, make long-term commitments, and start families.

In about 25% of these marriages, couples eventually stumble into higher and more service-based love relationships. The other 75% live with a numb sadness, in complete denial, or they get divorced.

3. Self Love

While Self Love, one of the types of love, might be elusive for some of us, it’s a vital step in our evolution. We must learn to love ourselves. If we can learn to love ourselves (garbage and all), we will undoubtedly stand a better chance at loving others.

4. Servitude Love

While on the surface, Servitude Love appears to be pathetic and potentially dangerous, being in servitude to another human being can provoke extreme leaps in personal growth. It might also placate or heal someone on the verge of a breakdown.

For example, a husband might be in servitude to an angry, self-centered wife, with whom he shares several children. Over time, with his dedication, his servitude can turn into a Contractual, more resilient, or deeper love. Similarly, if a woman has become a slave-like housewife to an absentee husband, she might eventually embrace the depth of her loneliness, give birth to the full breadth of her power, and break free.

Sometimes our most destructive relationships force us to self-actualize. Without them, we may have never reached the top of the mountain. This is why, no matter what you’ve experienced, you’re not a victim. You’re an experiencer. That’s all.

5. Contractual Love

When we know and love ourselves, we are better equipped to fulfill our agreements. When we understand our limitations and issues, we are more successful in meaningfully participating in mutual relationships.

Contractual Love requires clear objectives and agreements, whereby both parties have evaluated their positions in the relationship, and considered every aspect of the other person’s position. In doing so, both participants can make clear and clean commitments in the form of contracts. Within the confines of the agreement, both parties feel safe, and they begin to develop a mature and durable bond. Because it’s based in clarity, these bonds stand a good chance of evolving into higher forms of love.

While this Contractual Love might feel a bit antiseptic, it’s often the most successful form of love. Why? Because both parties put deep thought into the concept of their relationship, and they considered every aspect of the other person’s agenda. They may also have extinguished their selfishness, expectations, fantasies, and projections.

When we thoughtfully and consciously evaluate and improve ourselves, can stand a better chance at building the types of foundations that can carry us through the realities of life.

6. Light & Friendly Love

Light & Friendly Love produces beautiful relationships that feel like gentle breezes, flowing in and out without tension or restriction. We might have sweet hopes and simple desires with these lovers, but few demands. In our relaxed and loving states, both participants blossom, and all is well.

As these relationships unfold, we feel gratitude upon every experience, and at every juncture. It would be rare for this type of relationship to produce any measurable levels of anger or disappointment. Mostly, this love reminds us that human beings are beautiful creatures with exponential potential in all directions

7. Interdependent Love

Interdependent Love is when two or more people enjoy supporting and loving each other. While giving and receiving, they tend to refrain from adding unnecessary requirements to the relationship. Participants in Interdependent Love might have bad days, but they would never require the other person to solve their problems. In fact, Interdependent Lovers would also never blame others for their challenges or emotions. They might even work on specific, personal challenges without ever telling their primary partner.

While codependence has been given a bad rap, it’s an important step toward interdependence. Without experiencing codependence, we could not know its opposite, and we might never understand our shortcomings. When we enjoy giving and receiving within an Interdependent Love, we tend to feel validated by it. In a way, this is also codependent.

Interdependent Love takes responsibility for intentions, actions, and outcomes, without playing the victim. An Interdependent Love is where you stand strong, I stand strong, and there is a bridge between us. If one of us falters, our bridge sustains us.

Interdependent Love relationships are often elegant ecosystems, as each participant takes responsibility for every aspect of their participation, while also consistently creating value for others.

8. Human Service Love

When we realize that we are each one with all of creation, and one with every Universe and realm, it becomes first nature to seek ways to serve others. Upon the recognition and empathic embodiment of other people’s pain, we merge with them. Doing so, we feel what they feel and endeavor to gently lead them to lighter and lovelier states of being.

While Human Service Love is the ultimate way to serve humanity, it’s a tall order. If you struggle with loving yourself or releasing your ego, you might refrain from loving and giving in this way for some time. If you have not learned to love yourself and give without ego, your intentions to lovingly serve others might sour, which could result in doing more harm than good.

To start your exploration of Human Service Love, take baby steps. Make a note of how your ego reacts to each gift you give to the world. As you learn and grow, make adjustments, then explore some more.

On The Road To Love

Within each of these types of love, there are nuances, subcategories, parallels, and offshoots. You know yourself best. Be gentle with your heart. Set boundaries that protect, nurture and honor you. And find loving ways to relax your ego into the nothingness from which it came.

Empaths often require better self-care and self-protection. A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

An Empath is a highly sensitive person, often referred to as HSP, but the HSP label is not entirely correct. HSPs are sensitive to light, sound, experiences, and emotions, while Empaths will embody the emotions, experiences, and relational energy of others. This means that Empaths not only feel what you are feeling, but often have intel on how you can untangle your mess and improve your life. When Empaths heal themselves and get beyond their egos, they can become emotional superheroes.​

Many Empaths must learn how to set clear boundaries with family members and friends. They have to adopt practices, habits, and rituals that help them clear the emotional debris they often collect through everyday experiences. Empaths are big-hearted, intuitive sponges. It’s not complicated; if you feel it, they feel it.​

Because Empaths tend to live with one foot other realms, they sometimes find it difficult living in the real world. To be grounded and happy, Empaths often need:

• Time to consider, embrace and integrate personal and work relationships
• Healthy food and helpful supplements
• Meditation and prayer
• Leisure activities that don’t involve crowds. For example, most Empaths might avoid shopping at Walmart and wild parties on the 4th of July.

Empaths need space and solitude to allow for careful introspection. Empaths also need to regularly express their emotions, which is most often, sadness. If you’re an Empath, you might be shy, spiritually inclined, a lover of solitude, and clairvoyant. You might also love to write, paint, sculpt or dance more than most artists. The fiercest Empaths will cut a relationship cord in the blink of an eye.​

If you’re like me, you might be so sensitive and attuned to other people’s emotions and lives, you sometimes experience temporary, physical manifestations of other people’s pain and trauma. This, too, shall pass.

When you finally come to terms with being an Empath, life tends to invite some dramatic, yet overall positive changes. You begin to set better boundaries. You learn what is right for you and what is hurtful. You learn what types of people diminish your quality of life, and you learn how to maneuver through society without losing hope.​

Empaths hoping to become spiritual warriors can process the emotions and experiences of everybody around them at such a rate, they can burn through lifetimes of karma in one thrust of emotional expression.

To help me in this process emotions, I watch movies that center around love, complex and deep relationships, and oppression. Because an Empath will naturally embody the feelings of the main characters in movies, I’ll cry from beginning to end. As strange as that might sound, doing so, I shed lots of emotional and psychological debris, and up-level my vibration and awareness. In every instance, crying produces indescribable feelings of freedom.

How to Protect Yourself

​If you’re an Empath, you most likely have one or two unique gifts. You can use them to serve yourself and those you love, or you can share your gifts with the world. Whether you’re a full-time psychic or healer, or you just want to keep yourself whole and happy, here are a few tips that might help you:

• Seek ways to nurture your heart every day.
• Keep things simple in relationships, work, and life in general.
• Eat less meat, and only if it’s organic.
• Eat only pasture-raised, non-GMO, happy eggs.
• Eat lots of organic, non-GMO vegetables.
• Eat spoonfuls of pure sunlight powder like Spirulina, Chlorella, Barley grass, Wheatgrass, and Moringa
• Be decisive so that you have flow in your life.
• Let go of the people and things that consistently burn you or trip you up.
• Be less impulsive so that you can better serve and heal yourself. If you’re not whole, it’s difficult to help others do the same.
• Don’t let solitude swallow you whole. Step into the light, often!
• Don’t allow another person’s momentum or conviction sway you from your truth and peacefulness.
• When in the throes of conflict, don’t allow yourself to be manipulated or coerced into becoming someone you are not.
• If you’ve absorbed another person’s energy, dance around the room and try to release it through prayerful movement.
• Don’t take on too many projects, tasks, or relationships at once. If you have too many pockets of energy swirling around you, you might become confused.
• Learn to continually love yourself, even amid the worst mistakes and challenges. When you fall short of this, always try to nudge yourself back to self-love.
• To become resilient, turn to nature, meditation, prayer, and rituals.
• Stay away from people who tell you that you’re too sensitive. They will never fully understand you, and they might fail you at vital junctures in your life.
• Be a little less generous, especially when you know your energy is depleted.
• Seek love and adventures with people who honor your role as an Empath.
• Set firm boundaries with the people who believe that Empaths and other sensitives are weak.
• Confide in at least one loving, caring person every day.
• Dig a little deeper into your faith by seeking the most love-based and light-filled aspects within your religion and spiritual practices.
• Watch movies that make you feel love and provoke your tears.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for affection when you need it.
• Spend lots of time in the water. Whether it’s hot baths, cold showers, lakes, streams or oceans, Empaths tend to revitalize around water.
• See your heart as a beautiful, fragile, and powerful light-being. Love and protect your heart, and seek to express the feelings that live there.

Remember that you are a bundle of electricity, a complex vibration, a spark born from the eternal consciousness’s love of life. Even amid the worst circumstances, be open to the possibilities, embody hope, and seek light and love. These things are your birthright.​

The world needs healthy, positive Empaths. If you’re so inclined, you can make a living as an intuitive reader, healer, or psychic. With more healers and Empaths serving creation, our planet stands the best chance of infusing itself with light and love.

I love being an Intuitive-Empath and serving others. Over time, I learned to exit stifling situations and protect myself. I also learned to stop apologizing for my gifts. Now, I can wholeheartedly be myself without judgment. I hope you can, too.

In all things, dig deeply to find your clarity, express your emotions, and honor what you know to be true. Being an Empath is a wonderful thing.

Empaths can be warriors – if they choose. A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

As an open-hearted and whimsical little boy, I wish this question had dawned on me sooner, “What is an Empath?” Given all the experiences that sensitive children tend to endure, I wish someone had taught me about my nature during childhood, instead of plopping it into my lap when I was a meandering adult. My boyhood battles were hard fought and rarely won. The lessons throughout the years seemed to point to one thing: I had no idea I was an Empath.

Are You An Empath?

I remember the day someone asked me that question. I was 30 years old, sitting on a beach in California, holding a friend’s hand. I felt so badly for her broken heart that I cried with her. When she asked me that very potent question, my tears turned inward, where I immediately found a beautiful and profound clarity. At that moment, I knew I was an Empath. I was free.

In the years to come, I could not only feel the feelings of others; I could see the possible trajectories in their lives. On several occasions, I took on my client’s physical attributes, including the temporary appearance of track marks on my arms when doing a session for a former heroin addict.

Yes, being an Empath can be intense.

Check out Paul’s EMPATH OATH.

What Is A True Empath?

Over the years, I’ve seen the definition of Empath morph. It used to refer to being able to imagine feeling what other people are feeling. It grew from there to reference people who are deeply and actively compassionate, and in the face of danger or drama, can readily extend warmth and kindness to those in need.

As factions of society became more conscious, the definition of an Empath narrowed and crystalized. It’s clear now. An Empath is someone uniquely open and highly sensitive, to the point of being able to embody and process the emotions that someone else is experiencing. It turns out that Empathy is the older, wiser brother to compassion.

Not only do Empaths grow and heal by processing the emotions of other people, but they can also learn to be inspiring advisors and powerful healers. They can build schools of thought and heal nations. Nelson Mandela was an Empath.

What Does It Mean To Be An Empath?

If you can feel, from head to toe, what others are feeling when they are having a tough day, you might be an Empath. If you feel overwhelmed and personally afflicted when someone else is hurt or broken, there’s a good chance you’re an Empath.

It all starts with a traumatic event for another person and the immediate feeling of being completely overwhelmed, yet unable to describe it. Somehow your voice is shackled, and your energy is restricted. You don’t feel depleted, but you feel limited, maybe oppressed. As your mind fails to land on a clear thought, deep in your heart, you realize something’s wrong. But, what is it?

At first, you try meditation, exercise, therapy, dance, essential oils, crystals, herbs, jogging, sex, tantra, mountaineering and adventure travel, plus every other modality that might help you shed inhibition or come back to life. While some of these things help you find yourself again some of the time, most of them don’t work most of the time. Empaths tend to spend 50-70% of their lives somewhat emotionally restricted, confused, or depressed.

While most now agree that an Empath is a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) who feels and absorbs what other people are feeling, there are different degrees of Empathic abilities.

Some Empaths can feel what an object is carrying, and possibly the energy of the person who once held it. The most intensely intuitive Empaths not only feel emotions and energy from most of the people in a room, but they also feel the residual energy and can intuit the personal circumstances surrounding the people who recently inhabited that room. Some Empaths are downright spooky. I’m one of those Empaths, and I love it.

Types Of Empaths

As you can tell, there are varying levels of Empaths. Some can carry collected energy their entire lives, without ever being able to relinquish it. The reason that an Empath might be stuck in this way is that they never learned how to set boundaries, release collected energies, and reinvigorate themselves. This points to one painful fact: most Empaths have no idea how to care for themselves.

An Empath doesn’t have to be a professional clairvoyant, intuitive reader, or life coach. Some Empaths are artists, politicians, or teachers. You can even find Empaths in the military.

We tend to be bright, compassionate, and proactive, although there is also a slight tendency to over-dramatize emotional situations and events. Empaths are not perfect; we’re just open-hearted and absorbent.

Empath Traits

You might be an Emotional, Medical, Intellectual, or Spiritual Empath. Regardless, the traits of an Empath can vary. Here is a list of potential characteristics, according to the newly emerging category of Empath psychology:

• Often considered a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
• Materially, energetically and spiritually generous
• Absorbent to the point of having to shed the emotions collected from others
• Highly intuitive, telepathic or clairvoyant
• Sleep is filled with potent dreams that are easily remembered and interpreted
• Appear to be slightly sad or depressed, more than most
• Come off as mystical or spiritual
• Tend to be shy, introverted or avoidant of conversation
• Able to heal others of physical, intellectual and emotional challenges
• Easily manipulated or coerced
• Easily overwhelmed
• Can quickly become the dumpster for every else’s negativity
• Energy can be rapidly drained
• Equally helpful to friends and strangers
• Often feel better in solitude
• Feel as though they can deeply and genuinely relate with trees, plants, and animals as if they are kin to human beings
• Able to pick up the disease and physical symptoms of the sick
• Able to quickly parse the emotions and thoughts of others
• Attractive to narcissists and energy vampires
• Attuned to the moment someone is lies
• Tend to give far more than is required or necessary
• Tend to have a tipping point where the individual cuts cords with others
• Might temporarily hate themselves, and as a result, get stuck for a while
• Might be seen as a doormat or sucker
• Sensitive to smells, sounds, and tastes to the point of being immobilized
• Feel full of love and light when they are surrounded by nature
• Feel replenished during thunderstorms and snowstorms
• Shocked by event crowds, cocktail parties, and busy department stores
• Loves to write, paint, sculpt, color, dance or play music

Empath And Narcissist Romances

If you’re an Empath, you’ve probably spent some time in a relationship with an extremely needy person or a narcissist. The Empath-narcissist pairing is alluring because the Empath is always absorbing something palpable from the emotion-addicted narcissist. With their hearts full of light and love, this can be exciting or energizing for an Empath.

With each projection that extends from the vampire-like partner, the Empath will find ways to reflect healthier versions of the projection, with the hope he or she might save the narcissist from yet one more drastic rise or fall.

It’s the Empaths throughout the world that tend to act as the psychic receptacles of emotional and dramatic events. Yes, Empaths can save the universe.

Are Empaths Real?

Once in a while, I bump into people who reject the notion that Empaths are different from others. They say things like, “You’re too sensitive” or “Why do you choose to feel that way.” As an Empath, you eventually learn to tolerate these statements, without reacting to them. I will often respond, “If I wasn’t feeling things so deeply, I might never have seen your immense value.” Or “If I wasn’t truly Empathic, how could I have seen that subtle event that broke your heart and told you what it felt like.”

It’s an honor to be an Empath, yet it takes time to learn how to maneuver through all the emotional and energetic fascia throughout the environments and relationships that we encounter.

Famous Empaths

There are millions of Empaths around the world. If you’re on the Meyers-Briggs scale as an INFP or INFJ, you might be one, too.

Here is a list of a few of the more popular Empaths throughout history. There are many more.

• Mahatma Gandhi
• Hilary Swank
• Edgar Cayce
• Amma, The Hugging Saint
• Thich Nhat Hahn, The Buddhist Teacher
• Princess Diana
• Elton John
• Merlin, the Magician
• Jimmy Carter
• Nelson Mandela
• Jesus
• Jane Goodall

Look around at your family and friends. Chances are that 10% of them are empathic in some way. Be gentle with these folks and nurture these relationships. At some point in the future, you might need a deeply loving friend to come to your rescue.

Check out Paul’s EMPATH OATH.