Healthy relationships don’t generally come naturally. They take work. Hard work. And conscious thought before, during and after interactions.

The more trust that is built, the more of one’s inner dimensions can be exposed and shared. And in doing so, the more vulnerable that person becomes. Yet love requires that risk. The greater the risk the greater the potential. And if love is what one wins, then it is more than worth it.

In a certain sense one could say that the world was created for love. The world was created for us to learn to love ourselves and to learn to love another. One allusion to this is that the very last letter in the Torah is a Lamed and the first is a Beit which spell the word lev meaning “heart.” The heart, the symbol for love, is at the beginning and end of everything. It is the be all and end all.

It is therefore imperative that we learn from all times and situations how to love. How to have healthier and happier relationships. It is during the Hebrew month of Adar that we celebrate the holiday of Purim. The word ‘Adar’ shares the same root as the word ‘adir’ meaning ‘strength.’ It take strength to love properly, to love fully. It requires being able to be dedicated to another.

Every 19 year cycle in the Jewish calendar, 7 of those years we have what is called a “pregnant year”  in which there are two months of Adar. While pregnancy, in the physical sense, is ideally an outcome of love, it also represents love itself. It is the concept of recognizing that we do not only live for ourselves but that all we do affects another and that we are capable of keeping the focus in our lives on more than just ourselves. Just as the womb is center in the body, so too is sharing one’s center required in a relationship. Pregnancy is the ability to put another at your center.

During the month/s of Adar we are taught that we must increase in our joy. During a pregnant year, two months provide us with sixty full days of unadulterated joy. Sixty is a powerful number. In the laws of kosher food, there is the concept that anything is nullified when it is 1/60th of the total. Practically this means that while meat and milk cannot be cooked together, if a drop of milk unintentionally falls into a pot of chicken soup, as long as there is sixty times more soup than milk, than the milk is considered nullified. In such a case, the soup is still kosher.

So too, relationships are never perfect. But they can be perfect for us. And we feel that way when we learn to nullify the aspects we do not love by what we do. When we see a person in totality, all of his or her attributes and all that person does for us, then we should be able to use that to outweigh and overcome what annoys us. Maybe you were late to the party because it took her too long to get ready. Maybe he forgot to take out the trash even though you left it by the door. Yet if we love the other, we should be able to find sixty times more good to nullify what we are not crazy about. If we don’t see our relationship in such a way, then that should push us to increase the positive until we do. And more often then not, the good is already there, it just needs to be cultivated and revealed.

So how do we know when it is true love? How can we determine if we are letting ourselves fall for the right person?

That is where we can glean lessons from the heroine of the Purim story which takes place during Adar. During our month of joy we recount how we came very close to being destroyed and we celebrate our miraculous redemption from near annihilation.

At the crux of this story is Esther, whose name means “hidden.” On the surface this reflects how she had to hide her true identity as a Jew so that she would be able to survive in the palace of the king. But there is more. She very consciously chooses to hide not only who she is but how she thinks feels until she is convinced it is the safe an proper time to reveal what is in her mind, heart and soul.

Esther is well aware that the secret to her success is in her timing. And because of that she is incredibly careful to never lose track of when it is and what must be done. The commentaries explain that even though she hid that she was a Jew she was able to observe all of the laws of Shabbat for she made sure each day she had different women working for her so that the ones present on Friday evening and Saturday would not suspect that her behavior was unusual. That was all they knew so that was what they expected from her on those days.

Being able to know what to do and when is essential. When we rush in a relationship we risk scaring the other away. So too, when it is time to make a commitment and to move forward and one is not willing to take that step, that too can ruin everything.

Her acute awareness of time shows that she never allows her emotion to dictate her decisions. She makes decisions that are rational, that are based in her intelligence and that resonate with her heart, but she does not act out of pure feelings. This is perhaps the greatest test in any relationship. When the heart is engaged it is so easy to “fall” and yet when the emotions rule over the intellect it becomes impossible to make decisions that are sound. Scientists have proven that the same areas of the brain are affected by drugs as by one who is in love. It is a time of intense feeling, even joy, but true joy is a love that is everlasting, not one that is a temporary high that can come crashing down when reality hits.

Esther teaches us not only to ensure our minds rule over our hearts when building a relationship of love, but that we also recognize that sometimes not expressing everything allows us to reveal our inner truth. While that might seem contradictory, saying or showing too much actually blinds our ability to focus on what is most important and central.

Esther’s name means ‘hidden’ from the term ‘hester’ and yet through her process of concealment the end result is a complete revelation of the situation. She is so attune and aware of what others can handle that she realizes the truth, if said straight out, will not be believed. Therefore she must consciously hide the truth, temporarily, until others are ready and willing to see for themselves what she could have easily told them a while earlier. Once again this alludes to the importance in having proper timing as saying either the right thing at the wrong time or too much when one is not ready results in the opposite of true communication which is to bring two people closer and that much more aware and in tune with one another.

Every part of the celebration of Purim teaches us how to love more fully and be more present. We have four Purim commandments: 1. to give gifts to the poor, 2. to give packages of ready-to-eat food to our friends, 3. to eat a festive meal, 4. to hear the Megillah twice.

Being able to recognize what one needs and to be empathetic to a person less fortunate than ourselves is essential in a healthy relationship. We are all poor in different ways and in need of someone to help fulfill and provide for what we lack. Learning how to give to others and to receive when given to is fundamental to love. This is why one of the subroots of the word love, ‘ahavah’ is ‘hav’ meaning ‘to give.’

Along with giving we provide ready-to-eat food to our friends. While this also seems to represent the process of giving, more importantly it is the ability to distinguish between the one who is poor and in need of money and the one who is not in need of a gift to survive but rather a gift to represent gratitude, respect and acknowledge the importance of that person in our lives.

The idea of the meal is the concept of being able to internalize and integrate joy (when we eat we break down and digest the food, which in this case is representative of what sustains us).

And finally, we must hear the Megillah. If we miss even a word it does not count for the obligation to hear it read. If we want to connect with another, we must learn to listen. To truly hear. And not just what we want to hear, not just part of the conversation, but every single word and in the order it is being presented. Active listening is a challenge. Yet when we allow ourselves to receive what the other is trying to provide us with those words, we then can begin to understand the other on a much deeper level. And the Megillah is named after Esther. For Megilat Esther represents ‘megaleh ha’hester’ to reveal what is concealed.

So to recap, if you want a healthy relationship, make sure you have the following: strength, joy, patience, timing, the ability to give, distinguish needs and receive and ultimately through proper concealment ultimately reveal the deepest dimensions of our minds, hearts and souls to the other.

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