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