238. Most people love with strings attached, so is it love?

Most people don’t love you when they say they do. When you’re giving them what they want and agreeing with them they say, “I love you,” and they’re kind and warm. As soon as you don’t do or say what they want they get hurt or angry or jealous or sad. They’re not getting their way and they think that’s your fault. They’re unhappy with you, and their personality switches from kindness to coldness, from warm to icy. They berate you, withdraw, threaten, yell, sulk, blame, call you names, and find other ways to verbally or physically assault you, attempting to force you to be what they want.

People like that are confused. They think there’s a right and wrong way to be. When you don’t do it their way you’re doing it wrong. That’s why you’ll hear people say, “I would never do that,” or “I’d never say that,” referring to something you did or said. They’re implying, of course, that their way is right, yours is wrong, and you’d better change.

Would a yellow rose say to a red one, “You’re too flashy and garish; I’d never show up red!” Most people haven’t questioned their thoughts and seen that life shows up in all kinds of ways, expressed as all kinds of objects, including people who are different. That’s reality. That the way life is. Do you have a right to be the way you are? Does your date or partner have that same right? Sure.

You may be a guy who values monogamy and you learn your partner is having an affair. Should she stop? Only if she wants to. But you’re not her victim. If you ask, and she refuses to be monogamous, you know you weren’t supposed to have a monogamous relationship with her. You know because it’s not happening. Remember, reality always wins. You can wish her well, knowing she’s living her life the way that feels right to her, and also knowing your way is not her way and it feels natural for you to move on. That love is unconditional. It doesn’t demand that anything be different and you can both be at peace.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

229. A love like this lights up the whole sky

A friend of mine was asking what I meant when I said in my article #226 that most people in romantic relationships don’t love, they want something. She cited the example of her marriage of more than 30 years until her husband died and said it was a very loving marriage. Yet she and her husband had times of anger where they didn’t speak to each other for several days or longer, she said. “But just because of those times how could you say we didn’t have love?” she asked me.

My response was that any action we take in a relationship that’s designed to control the other person’s behavior isn’t love, its manipulation. We want our partner to change. In the case of anger we’re saying, “I’m going to make you hurt bad enough so you won’t do that again.” Whether our action is in the form of withdrawal or sharp words to punish, or being extra-nice, if our action aims at getting our partner to do what we want or stop doing what we don’t want, it’s not love. On the other hand, we’re happy to love when things are going our way.

We each know when our love isn’t pure or genuine – when we’re doing something we don’t really want to do so we can get something back. And our partner and the world knows it when we show our anger or disappointment when the reward we expected doesn’t come. Have you ever heard anyone say something like, “I went to the symphony with her but now she won’t even come to the races with me.”? Well, there you have it!

Hafiz, a great Persian spiritual poet of the 1300s wrote, “Even after all this time the sun does not say to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.”

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

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

205. What he described as care and concern she described as feeling stangled by love

Seeing danger signals in a dating relationship can prevent a great deal of suffering in the future. I’ve met a number of men and women who have been hurt when the man or woman of their dreams turned out to be someone different from the person they thought they knew. When they discussed what happened virtually all of them said there were warning signs they should have heeded but ignored because they didn’t want to see them.

A few months ago Annie, a woman I know, was telling me about a man she’d been seeing recently. “He’s a really nice man,” she said, “but I feel strangled by love.” She could have said, “strangled by false love,” and we’ll see why. This man was a widower in his 70s and had lived a life of achievement and success, well-educated and accomplished – a strong Christian. Yet Annie felt constant pressure from him. Not pressure for sex but pressure to let him take care of her and be the partner and protector in her life. He wanted her to carry pepper spray when she walked, for instance, and even gave her some and asked if she was using it. She didn’t feel a need for it but he wanted her to use it anyway.

One day she was telling him of a volunteer job she had that caused her to drive a long distance on the freeway. He tried to dissuade her from making that drive. He pointed to statistics describing how driving more miles on the freeway leads to more risk of being in an accident, and eventually said to her, “You know, you owe it to the people who love you not to take risks like that.”

She was dismayed and immediately knew didn’t feel good in her gut, she said. The problem with a statement like that is that while it doesn’t feel good it can sound so much like love that it’s sometimes hard to figure out what’s really going on. The statement can feel like love because it seems to say, “Oh, look how much he cares, he doesn’t want me to be hurt.” But since it didn’t feel good to Annie let’s look behind the words and see what’s really being said.

A little inquiry can bring some clarity. The statement this man made was: “You owe it to the people who love you not to take risks like that.” First, he clearly puts himself in the group of “people who love you” so we can narrow his statement down to, “You owe it to me….” Now we can see he’s not really taking care of Annie’s friends and relatives, whom he doesn’t even know, he’s taking care of himself. So let’s just be clear about that first.

Next, his statement is actually saying, “You owe it to me not to live the life you want, but to live the way I want because, after all, I love you and I know what’s best for you.” That may sound like a harsh assessment of his statement but we’re here to look at reality not to whitewash it. We also don’t need to judge him or think he’s wrong. In a confused view of life this is what love may appear to look like. But why, then, doesn’t it feel good to someone like Annie to hear this?

When you consider his statement more thoroughly is it love or is it control? He’s really saying, “It’s up to you to take care of my feelings and I worry (my feelings) when you drive long distances and risk being in an accident so please stop it (take care of me).” Control is always nothing more than that – someone trying to get us to live their way so they can be happy. This man’s statement to Annie is a huge, neon sign flashing: “Control! Control! Control!” If there’s control in this aspect of life isn’t it likely – about 100% likely – that this man will also try to control in other ways? If he wants Annie to take care of his feelings in this instance he’ll surely want to make her responsible for his feelings in other areas. (“It’s your job to visit my adult children with me,” for example.) All this is in the name of love, of course.

Love isn’t controlling. Love is about freedom and care without control. It doesn’t say, “My love demands that you take care of me.” No, love says, “Because I love you I want you to live your way and if I’m worried that’s my problem, not yours, and I’m the one who needs to take care of it.”

In any relationship, where one or both people are dependent and needy, there will be obvious signs of trouble if we just pay attention. How do you see these danger signals? It’s easy – your body will tell you. Our deeper wisdom knows when something doesn’t feel right, even if we can’t put our finger on it consciously at first. A little deep inquiry will always show us the light.

Then all we need to do is move away from that controlling behavior, without judgment or condemnation. You may even feel compassion but you don’t get unwittingly sucked in with behavior that wears the mask of love and concern but is really manipulation and control when you peer under the mask. If you don’t see control early it’s a guarantee that you’ll pay the price later in a relationship, when the clinging, needy behavior begins to feel like being “strangled by love” – false love masquerading as real.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer