Love is not a feeling. It's a practice.

Valentine's Day was Thursday. My daughter, at twelve, is entering the age where Valentine's Day is beginning to have new meanings — where the heart-shaped cards of primary school are giving way to something more complicated and interesting. She received something. She hasn't told me what. I haven't asked. We have reached an equilibrium that I find both right and slightly poignant.

I want to write about love today not as a feeling but as a practice, because I think the way we talk about love — as something you have or don't have, something that arrives or leaves, something felt rather than done — produces a model that is less useful for children than the alternative.

The useful model is this: love is not primarily a state. It is a set of actions, performed repeatedly, over time. You do not love someone and then the love exists as a possession. You love someone by the things you do in the direction of their flourishing — by showing up, by paying attention, by saying the true thing when it would be easier to say the comfortable thing, by staying present when leaving would be easier.

This is a learnable set of skills. It is, in fact, the same set of skills that underlies good friendship, good parenting, and good citizenship. The capacity for sustained attention toward another person's wellbeing, repeated over time, regardless of mood.

The capacity for sustained attention toward another person's wellbeing, repeated over time, regardless of mood — that is love. It is also citizenship.

The capacity for sustained attention toward another person's wellbeing, repeated over time, regardless of mood — that is love. It is also citizenship.

That is love. It is also citizenship.

What I have tried to teach my children about love is not the feeling — the feeling is its own teacher — but the practice. The things that constitute love when the feeling is present, and the things that maintain connection when the feeling is temporarily absent.

Attachment research — the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, and the many developmental psychologists who built on their foundations — shows consistently that what children need from their caregivers is not the presence of warm feelings at all times, which is not achievable, but the reliability of return. The parent who gets angry and then repairs. The parent who is distracted and then returns. The parent whose love is demonstrated not by permanent perfect presence but by the pattern: you matter, I notice, I come back.

This is a practice, not a state. And it is the practice that children learn from, not the feeling.

My daughter, at twelve, is beginning to form her own models of how love works, partly from what she observes in our family, partly from what she reads and watches, partly from her own emerging experience of connection and the particular complications of early adolescence. The model she builds now will inform the relationships she has at twenty-two and forty-two. It is worth being intentional about what I am demonstrating to her.

Valentine's Day is a good prompt for this. Not for the cards and the chocolates and the heart-shaped things — for the question of what love actually is, and whether the way we practice it in this family is the way we want to practice it.

I think it is. I also know there are things I want to do better. That is also love: the intention to improve the practice.

I know there are things I want to do better. That is also love: the intention to improve the practice. It is not a feeling. It is a decision, renewed daily.

I know there are things I want to do better. That is also love: the intention to improve the practice. It is not a feeling. It is a decision, renewed daily.

It is not a feeling. It is a decision, renewed daily.

How does your family currently practice love — not feel it, practice it? What are the specific, repeating actions that constitute the love in your household?

And: what does your child currently understand about the difference between love as a feeling and love as something you do?

What are you demonstrating to them about love this week, by the specific things you do and don't do?

This week: one specific action in the direction of each person you love. Not a feeling — an action. Something that says: I was paying attention to what you need, and I did something about it. This is the practice. It doesn't need to be Valentine's Day to count.

She still hasn't told me what happened on Thursday. I still haven't asked. She made me a card — not a heart-shaped one, something more complicated and personal. She left it on my desk. I found it. I didn't say anything. We have been communicating this way my whole life, through left objects and found objects. It is a practice. I think it is a love one.

Names of people and brands in these editions are changed. Whoever was there and reads this knows what we are talking about.