Anybody who knows me knows that I love to love people. I love making people happy, I love showing people kindness, I love caring for people. I love to love. But I am not saying I love being in love with people. Which, don’t get me wrong, being in love in an amazing thing. I’m talking about a different type of love. See, love has many meanings: You can love (the verb or action) and you can be in love (the feeling). In this case, when I say love, I mean the verb, not the feeling. I am not sitting here saying "there is no such thing as being in love" because if you know me, you know that most certainly isn't my case. But the joy I find from showing others love is what made being in love so impactful on me. Those of us who love to love are a special breed. Our desire to show others love and to love them is such a powerful thing. In some cases, we desire to show others love so deeply that we can lose our own needs and wants. Although it is so wonderful and amazing to love hard and to love in many ways unconditionally, there can be a few what some people would call drawbacks. But there are so many upsides to loving to love. Regardless of if you are the person like me who loves to love, you date someone who loves to love, or you’ve never really met anyone like this, this article may help you understand us a little better. Here are nine things to learn about people who love to love.

1. We do not have to be romantically interested in you to want to show you love.

Personally, I try to find ways to show people love every day. Not just people I am romantically interested in, but the random lady at the grocery store or the waitress serving me lunch, even my good friends and family. Those of us who love to love understand that it is the little things that make the biggest differences, such as flashing a kind smile, holding the door for people, or saying have a good day to somebody. We find happiness in making other people’s day a little brighter.

2. We always go out of our way to make our friends happy.

Think about this: If those of us who love to love enjoy showing kindness to random strangers, how do you think we feel about our friends? Your friends see sides of you that nobody else does. They are there for you at your lowest and highest points. They accept you for who you are, and love you back. Every friend group has the “lovey dovey” friend. My friend group has many of those lovey dovey people. We care about other in a deep and powerful way. We care about each other's well-being, happiness, and feelings. Doing things to brighten each other's day is easy because we know what our friends' favorite things are and what makes them feel better.

3. We always look for the best in people.

Those of us who love to love tend to think people always have good intentions and that everyone is sincere and kind. Most of the time, we only look at the positives of a person and not the negatives. We look on the bright side, you might say. We believe everyone is capable of doing good and doing the right thing. We often get our hopes up by having confidence and faith in others. We think everyone is capable of being their very best, which leads us to have high expectations of people. This can often lead to us being let down and not really understanding the reason behind it.

4.We forgive…even when most people wouldn’t.

This is kind of a hard one. Forgiveness is a complicated and difficult thing. Yes, everyone deserves forgiveness. This is what the Bible teaches us. But in reality, most of the time people do not feel the desire to forgive or have the strength to. Those of us who love to love seem to forgive others easier than most. I think the reasoning behind this goes back to the fact that we always look for the best in people. Even when someone does us wrong, disappoints us or upsets us, eventually, we most likely forgive them. We give far too many chances because we believe the next time will be different, that person is going to change. Most of the time, they don’t, but we forgive them again anyway. Does that make us weak or mean we let people walk all over us? I guess that's your opinion.

5. We love to make people laugh.

Showing people a good time brings us lots of joy. We will go out of our way to make people laugh. We enjoy being social and goofing around. We crack ourselves up most of the time, even when our intentions are to make others laugh. I think this goes back to the fact that we enjoy making people happy. Happiness is associated with smiles and laughter.

6. We are usually very affectionate, aka “touchy feely."

Again, this does not always mean romantically affectionate. This just means affectionate in general. Physical touch is a way we can show our love. We are usually huggers, snugglers and we jump all over people. Nobody is a stranger to us because everyone we meet gets a hug. Every time we leave, we have to hug everybody in the room. It's the closeness to others that we crave, the physical action of a showing of love.

7. When we are in a relationship, we give it our all.

We are not going to settle for a mediocre relationship. Our ability to love hard affects the relationship in every way. We find so much joy in making our significant other happy. We go out of our way to do the little things that our partner likes, such as grabbing their favorite candy from the store or rubbing their back after a long day. We do not give up on our significant other—this goes back to the fact we look for the best in people. Even when we fight and argue with our partner, we will try to remember the positives and not focus on the negatives. We will put forth the effort to compromise and to make things work. We are very affectionate and usually love holding hands, hugging and kissing constantly. We sometimes love too hard, which is why when relationships do not work out, it affects us differently.

8. Sometimes we love people “too much."

We sometimes can love someone too much. Now, what you consider too much is a personal thing. In my opinion, we can love someone too much to the point where our exceptions of them become unrealistic. We think so highly of them that they feel they can’t live up to it. We also can be very critical of them in the way we want them to be their very best. What we think their best is and what they think their best is can sometimes be two different things. Sometimes we get to the point where we crave to show people love constantly, and as unfortunate as it is, people don’t always want to be shown love. It is possible for things to be too good, for you to love too much?

9. We want to be shown love too.

This is what is hard about dating someone who loves to love. We also love to be shown love. Remember the saying, "treat others the way you want to be treated"? Well, this is usually the case in this scenario. We want to be shown the love we show others because we want to feel important and cared about. We want to feel like we mean enough to somebody that they show us love and affection. A problem that often arises is that people who love to love sometimes feel not good enough when others do not show them the same type of love. We often are disappointed when people do not treat us like we treat them. It often hits us hard and can be a struggle many of us who love to love deal with.

Everyone knows somebody who loves to love or is that somebody. Loving others is important and can change people’s lives. Loving hard and unconditionally and unbiasedly is a powerful thing. If you aren’t the type of person who loves to love, I hope you make more of an effort to try. Try to make someone’s day, try to pay attention to the little things in your relationships, try to show others love on the daily. Loving to love is a gift many people possess naturally, but it is not impossible to learn. Being someone who loves to love may have its so-called drawbacks, but it also has so many upsides. You have the power to change the world, one act of love at a time.