226. Can real love include molding someone to fit our needs?
When you say you love someone in a romantic relationship what does that mean to you? Most of us can say we love someone when things are going our way. When we don’t like something about that person and we feel hurt, that “love” often turns to bitterness and anger, maybe even hate, at least in the moments when we’re feeling disappointed and hurt. That’s when the angry, cutting words blurt out. Divorce courts are filled with love turned sour. But was it really love in the first place?
The love that can turn sour so quickly can’t really be love, yet it’s the most common in relationships. It passes for love but it’s really a trade-off that looks like this: “I love you when you give me what I want and I’m angry at you when you don’t.” True love, however, isn’t an emotional connection based on want and need. How could it be true when it turns from affection to anger in an instant?
When we look we can see that true love must be unconditional because it leaves us in peace. It doesn’t need the partner to be or do anything so I can be happy. Trade-off love is always expecting the other person to make us feel good. That’s why we can be so instantly angry when we think they’ve made us feel bad.
Unconditional love accepts and allows everything, the way space allows everything that appears in it. True love could only be when we’re willing to let our partner be exactly who they are, just as we want to be. If I really love you do I want you to stop living life your way and come over to my side and do it my way? Can I really know how you should live your life?
We always suffer when we think someone should do life our way… and they don’t. And we suffer further as we try to manipulate them and put them under our control with our anger and threats. Wouldn’t it be easier and more loving to allow another person to be just as they are? Then we can either stay with them or move on and find someone we’re more suited to. Either way we can love them without judgment and in peace.
Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer
2 comments:
Wow, your blog really hits home!! Love is not just your romantic, feeling good in the moment, when everything is going well. Love is kind, patient, accepting, nonjudgemental and not wanting anything back. I have been "in love" several times and I have wanted love back so badly, that I have not seen the "forest for the trees". I also believe that my saying that I love you to the person that I was with, was true of how I was feeling. I don't believe that you only "love" when things are going perfect. Hurtful, angry remarks are not kind and loving, but does it also mean that gentle, patient, sweet times ARE the pure love in relationships. I have been quite angry with my children, for example, and never would I say that I didn't love them any less at those times.
This blog does make me stop and evaluate my life and thinking.
The writer above makes a good comment. We could be angry at children when they're endangering themselves. Or we could be angry at someone abusing a person, and those angers could be showing themselves as love.
Conversely, it's not unconditional love when seniors are angry at their adult children who don't visit as often as they'd like, for instance.
The key question is: Am I acting to get something back from this person? If so, it's manipulation, not love. Harsh words and overly kind actions can both be manipulative.
Yet kindness and care is a natural expression of love when it's not asking for anything in return. The recipient isn't expected to meet any conditions.
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