THE RIGHT NOT TO LOVE

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I once told my nieces that I can love them only 15 minutes a day, because there are a lot of them, but I have little love for children, and I save it. Then I was about 14, and I remember how after that they all came and asked if it was possible to spend their 15 minutes of love.

The adults thought that it was my teenage crisis in me that was talking and that it would pass. My sister somehow tried to reason with me and convince me to love her daughter all day, and not 15 minutes, but I did not agree, because I could not. Well, I could not love someone all 24 hours, love when it pisses me off and annoys me, when I feel cramped. And I can't even now.

Then I did not know that I was defending the most important right for me, the right not to love.

We live in a society obsessed with love, we are told that love is the most important thing, you need to love your parents, you need to love your children, you also need to love your homeland, you need to love a good guy, if you don’t love, then something is wrong with you.

And even in psychology, acceptance is associated with love, which simply takes away the right not to love. But acceptance is not love, acceptance is about something else. And the right not to love is just about acceptance, about choice.

The meaning of psychology is not to tell you how to live correctly, but to give you the opportunity to feel your life as you only feel it and to allow yourself to live as you live without looking back

The right to dislike is about choice.

When we have learned to define our feelings, to identify our needs, then we need to learn how to choose how to show these feelings, how to satisfy our needs. And for this we need to see all the diversity of the environment, the world and choose what suits us, and not choose what does not suit us.

Each of our choices, each of our YES to something or someone, it is also NO for something or someone

The right to dislike is the right to reject those who even chose us. We have the right not to choose those who like us, who show interest and attention. And at the same time do not feel guilty for the fact that we are bad, and do not expect punishment for such unreasonable behavior.

I know a lot about this wine, it is painfully familiar to me. At 17, when I chose the guy I liked, not the one they thought was right for me. At 20, when I left the guy, because I decided to choose myself. The guilt was so all-consuming that I decided to give up intimacy, and for 5 years I was in a variety of pseudo-relationships, these are those that create the appearance, but in fact you are even more isolated, more alone. This is the familiar feeling of the bottom, when you slowly drown, when you do not understand what you are doing here, what kind of person is next to you. You don’t like him, you know that, but you are still with him and you do everything to make him leave, because you cannot make a choice yourself. And instead of the honest “I don’t love you, let's stop it all”, for some reason you say that it’s “you don’t love me”. And this is basically true, but the point is the choice, the fact that then I could not afford not to love. Because you can't not love, this is bad, this is a feeling of guilt that will eat slowly, and I will not stand it anymore.

When there is no right not to love, there is a fear of love.

Because it seems that love should be forever, at 20 it seems so exactly, and if not forever, then why at all. And literature, films, mass media “seem” to support and nurture it. And coping with the pain when they do not love me, it was always easier for me, it freed me from guilt. But not to love is bad. And this is bad, it will not cope with it. I couldn't myself.

I remember when I went to a psychotherapist, at the first meeting I began by saying that I did not love my parents. I sobbed so hard as I said it, drunkenly just, I don't know how she heard me at all. But then I realized how it is when you are accepted, when you are allowed not to love, when you are freed from guilt, when you understand that everything is all right with you.

The right to dislike gives confidence that we have the right to choose and not to choose

That it's okay, just like it's okay that not everyone will choose us.

If you know that you have the right not to love, you learn that others also have the same right. And then the fear of rejection is not so terrible, because this is normal, this is life.

You see, everyone has the right not to love, what one does not want to love, or to love as much as possible. Because personally, I do not understand how you can love something or someone constantly

I have a friend, and we are close, and once in a conversation she told me that she loved me, but you know how we say this to each other. But she made the amendment that she loves me right now, right at this moment. And this does not mean that he will love me tomorrow. And this was the most honest and detailed confession that I was given. Because that's how it is.

When I say that I love, I will introduce this very moment, right now, at this moment my feelings can be described with this word, at another moment it may not be, there will be something else, but not this. For me, love is a feeling, when there are so many emotions that it is impossible to differentiate them, it is a lump in which there is tenderness, joy and delight and a lot of everything else. And I treat love like any other feeling, like inhalation and exhalation, it came and went, instead of it other emotions and feelings come and this is normal.

My love is not eternal, not forever, but only now, and at another moment, I have the right not to love. But this does not mean to leave or break off the relationship, no

I just have the right to experience all the feelings in a relationship. And I will say moreover, the more feelings I experience, the more intimacy appears, because there is freedom.

The right not to love gives us freedom. The right to not love gives us the opportunity to love. Gives you a choice. Therefore, it is important to defend this right not to love.

Psychologist, Miroslava Miroshnik, miroslavamiroshnik.com