Love symbols serve us on many occasions, including Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, weddings, engagements and birthdays. They normally are visual aid that depict what is otherwise a non-visual emotion and portray feelings of love in a way that make it easier to communicate them to others.
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Love Symbols and their Association with Valentines Day

The day that is observed for the beautiful feelings and emotions associated with love is Valentines day. There are many symbols and signs that are associated with the myriad emotions that can be called love. Thus, these various valentine symbols have automatically come to be associated with Valentine’s day. Some of these are:-

Apple – Since time immemorial, this fruit has been linked to beauty, fertility and consequently with love. It has been widely talked about and mentioned in literature relative to love. Thus, it has found a place in our thoughts as a symbol of love and as a symbol of Valentines day too.

Cupid – This symbol has origins in the Greek mythology. Cupid is understood to be the son of Venus, the love goddess. It is believed that when someone gets hit by a Cupid’s arrow they fall in love with the person they have met right then. Cupid is also shown with a blindfold, which is a conveys the message of love being blind.

Heart and Arrow – Heart has been forever understood to be correlated with love. Phrases like ‘my heart beats for you’ and ‘you have broken my heart’ make it clear that a person in love ‘thinks’ from his heart. Also, the picture of a heart pierced with an arrow is another symbol of feelings that define love. It is consequently understood to be one of the symbols of valentines day.

Rose – Flowers are a representative of many emotions known to man. And, although there are many flowers that are exchanged between people who want to express their love for each other, Rose is the one most famously known as the symbol of love. The colors of Rose define the feelings that are to be conveyed. For example, Red Rose is for love, Pink for attraction and Yellow for friendship.

Love Birds and Doves – Birds like Love Birds and Doves are always found in pairs, that is a reason for their being considered symbols of love. In pairs, these birds represent lovers that are inseparable. In fact Love Birds find their mates in spring time, somewhere around Valentine’s day and leave their mates only when they die. Dove also symbolizes purity and innocence in love.

Chocolates – Chocolates are representative of love, romance and sensuousness. People in love gift each other chocolates and it is especially popular as a Valentines day gifts. Though chocolates need not be representative of romance only, but they definitely are a symbol of love in all its forms.

Love Knots – The love knot is made of two intertwining overhand knots, symbolising intertwined lovers. It is used in Valentine’s day gifts like chains and jewelry. Its beauty lies in its simplicity. Another form of love knots are Celtic love knots, which symbolise everlasting love as they have no beginning and no end.

X – This has long been identified as the symbol of a kiss and has been famously used to show affection for a loved one. People use this sign in love letters and cards to express their love and send across kisses without actually putting the feeling in words.

Laces and Ribbons – These have been used as a symbol of love, trust and confidence in your loved one. People have used laces and ribbons to remember their love who is physically away from them. These are also used as an accompaniment with Valentine day gifts.

In our society we have become obsessed with love. Our films, our books, our plays and our music are full of stories about love – the joy of finding it and the heartache of losing it. We treat it as a commodity, a transient emotion that comes and goes. We are deliriously happy when we find it but suffer terribly when we lose it again.

A vast majority of romantic relationships start well, with two people falling in love, but then something begins to go wrong. The feelings of love begin to fade and we start seeing our partner’s failings.

They begin to irritate us and act in ways that seem unloving. We then either move into compromise and settle for a relationship with less love and connection or we end the relationship and try to find someone better. Forming a successful romantic relationship is a real challenge, but it ends up this way because of a basic misunderstanding about love.

All our romantic problems stem from a destructive self-belief – that we are personally lacking in love. Deep down we feel empty and incomplete. It feels as if there is something missing in our lives. These feelings of scarcity then create a powerful need for love. That is why we go out into the world to find a romantic partner who will take away the emptiness and make us feel whole again.

Of course our search for somebody to love us is often successful and the sensations of falling in love convince us that our strategy was right. Unfortunately, the ease with which we fall in love can become the biggest trap we face in life, because it seems to confirm that love lies outside us.

The sad truth is that most of us fall in love for the wrong reason. We bring a partner into our lives to fulfill our need for love, and it is this outward focus that creates all our problems. It creates a dependence on our partners – we rely on their presence in our lives, to make us happy. This is a recipe for disaster, as I discovered when my marriage failed. When my wife suddenly left me, all my needs and insecurities were laid bare and it was not a pretty sight. How many of us fall in need rather than fall in love?

I am not saying needs are wrong – to be human is to have all sorts of needs, but the need for love is one of the most destructive. As long as we search outwards for love we will fail to see that we have it within. Our strong need for love usually comes from early experiences in our lives where we felt our needs were not met.

Not only do we resent the people who failed to give us what we wanted (normally or parents), we also feel guilt for having failed in the relationship that would have provided those needs. We get really guilty for having given up on our store of self-love and taken on the belief that we are lacking in love. At the spiritual level we feel guilty for having turned away from our divine essence – that of 100% love and connection.

The problem with being needy in a relationship is that it tries to take from our partner. It assumes that they have the thing we need to make us happy. They may feel scarcity themselves so having to continually meet our needs drives up the feeling that they are losing something. We might end up fighting for who is going to meet the needs of the other person – this is the power struggle stage of relationships.

When we feel our needs have not been met we might get angry, disappointed or moody as a way of punishing the other person. If this carries on we might be hit by depression because we just cannot get rid of the emptiness and deadness that we feel inside. Neediness eventually destroys a relationship or takes away all its joy.

So how do we remove the neediness from a relationship? Well the first thing to do is recognize the times when it is present in us and in our partner. Sometimes we may know we are being needy but at others we can be blind to it. If there is any bad feeling in a relationship, you can be sure that unmet needs are the cause. Try to identify what these needs are. What is not being met for you in the relationship – it will be exactly the same for your partner.

Here is the quick fix: Try to give the need that you feel is missing and it will be returned by your partner. Then start to understand your own needs in a situation. When was the first time in your life when they were not met? What was happening? Who was present?

Try to forgive the people involved and realize that you could have given that missing need if you had been more mature and experienced. Visualize the situation now and give the need to all the people present. Breathe love back into the situation. As you heal your need you will find that your self-esteem grows.

You can do this exercise for all your emotional needs. Typically they lie in layers in the mind so we have to repeat the process for all the layers. Soon you will become an expert at spotting needs and healing them. Every single human problem can be traced back to a feeling of unmet needs and at the deepest level it is a belief that there is a lack of love.

Emotional maturity and intelligence is really the ability to become aware of our needs and then not to play them out on the people around us. If we can’t do this our needs drive the things that we want away and paradoxically as we heal the needs within, the very things that we desire begin to appear in our lives!

Peter Granger is an acclaimed relationship counsellor and a Psychology of Vision Trainer (an organisation that specialises in helping people have happier and more fulfilled relationships. You can find lots more advice and tips about love, romance and relationships on www.iloveyouloveme.com