The Amazing Way Mortality Transforms Your Love Life
Love more deeply, with freedom, presence, and awe.
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I’ve been contemplating the fact that love deepens when we remember it will not last forever.
When I fully realise this, I stop waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect version of myself, the perfect future where everything finally feels sorted.
And love… breathes again.
This isn’t only about romantic partnership. It’s about how you connect with another person and with yourself.
Awe Is Where Love Lives
There’s something subtle that comes back when you remember nothing is guaranteed.
Awe.
Awe is what fills your chest when you realise that out of billions of years of cosmic chaos and creation, somehow you are here. And somehow the person in front of you is here too.
Every ancestor survived long enough to pass life forward and somehow it ended up here, in this room, with this cup of coffee, this familiar face.
When love is met from that place, it changes texture.
You start seeing your partner with fresh eyes. Not as someone to fix. Not as a problem to solve. But as a miracle of existence and consciousness.
The ordinary starts to glow again. Morning coffee. Shared silence. Even disagreements soften faster. Even goodbyes carry gratitude.
I see this happening in my own relationship. Not perfectly. Not all the time. But enough to notice.
As my wife and I practise meeting life with mortality awareness, we listen more carefully and we repair quicker. Love feels less like something to manage and more like something to receive.
I am including A Mortality Practice for Deeper Love to the bottom of this newsletter. It exists as part of the growing exercise library available to paying subscribers in Tools.
When Fear Enters Love
Fear rarely announces itself loudly. It slips in as worry. Worry about money. About time. About being enough… about anything.
One of my favourite authors, Cormac McCarthy once wrote, “A worried man cannot love.” I often thought of those words during a long period of my life when I was constantly worried about one thing or another, and I could feel my ability to love was massively diminished.
That is because worry pulls us out of the present moment. And presence is the oxygen of intimacy.
You can sit beside someone you care deeply about and still be elsewhere. Replaying old conversations. Fretting over imagined futures. Rehearsing loss before it arrives.
Love doesn’t live there. It lives here. Now.
The Ancient Roots Beneath Modern Love
Most of us are not afraid of love itself. We’re afraid of what love might cost.
Grief, after all, is the loss of something we love.
Fear of rejection. Abandonment. Fear of failure. Fear of public speaking or intimacy. At the root of all these modern fears lies the grandmother fear… of Death.
Our nervous systems were shaped for survival, not expansion. Rejection once meant exile. Exile meant death. Scarcity meant not surviving the winter.
We no longer live in caves, fighting off sabre-toothed tigers, but our brains are still wired with the same ancient survival instincts, which have not been updated to fit our modern lives. So we cling. We protect. We hoard.
How Mortality Changes Everything
When we avoid thinking about death (which our culture in the West encourages), we hold love tightly. We need it to keep us safe.
When we face mortality, something shifts.
Psychological research shows that gentle, and intentional, reflection on mortality increases gratitude, compassion, and forgiveness. Not panic. Not despair. But depth.
This is why Buddhist monks meditate on their own death each morning. Not to become grim, but to step into each day in full gratitude for being alive.
When love is known to be fleeting, we stop taking it for granted. We say the words sooner. We forgive faster. We stop postponing tenderness.
And if you’re not currently in a relationship, this awareness doesn’t exclude you. It prepares you.
Mortality awareness sharpens discernment. It dissolves performative connection. It draws you toward relationships that can meet you where you are, not where fear wants you to be.
Love begins with how honestly you meet life.
I learned this the hard way. Years ago, panic attacks brought me to my knees during a crisis at work. It felt like a small death. Everything I thought defined me, fell away.
That unexpected unraveling led me here. Into this work. Into deeper alignment. Into relationships that feel more real. Including a deepening of the one I was already in. Read more in My Story.
An Invitation
Before you scroll on, pause for ten seconds. Look at the nearest person to you. Or if you’re alone, bring someone to mind. And remind yourself:
This person is not guaranteed. Notice what changes.
Often it’s subtle. A warmth in the chest. A loosening of whatever you were holding too tightly.
That’s the power of mortality doing its work. That’s love waking up. For when we stop demanding forever, we finally experience now. And now is where love thrives.
Live happy,
Hoppy
Tools & Updates
The Ultimate Meditation: A guided practice designed to help you slow down, reflect on mortality, and reconnect with a life of no regrets. Many people tell me it helps them discover greater calm, gratitude, and clarity.
Tools: For guided exercises to help you live these ideas day to day.
Go deeper: The Incredible Way Mortality Awakens Happiness / My Story / The Problem Hiding in Plain Sight
Full website with all content: Here
What people are saying about DTLWP: “John exactly this! In the moment when I ask ‘what is happening NOW’, fear falls apart. Only the present moment remains, in which usually nothing bad is happening.” (Sophie)
See below for A Mortality Practice for Deeper Love: to soften fear, release the urge to control love, and return to presence by remembering that connection is precious because it is not guaranteed.
