5 Misconceptions About Love. Irina Mlodik

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

To love is to sacrifice. Traditionally, it seems that the fact that you can donate yourself or something of value is proof of love.

By sacrificing ourselves for the sake of a loved one (partner or child), we actually:

1. We show him our own "worthlessness", teach him not to value our interests, feelings, needs;

2. We demand or expect the same sacrifice on his part in the near future;

3. Instead of negotiating and respecting each other's requests, we learn to suffer, perceiving life and our relationships as suffering (which should someday end, and preferably faster, or for which it should someday be rewarded);

4. We console our own pride by rising in our suffering and the ability to be deprived. Especially if there is nothing more to be proud of, then we will want to use this particular way of getting rid of our own insecurity;

5. We naively think that our partner or child will be grateful to us for this, although if the sacrifice is made regularly, then instead of gratitude he will be guilty and angry, since it is hard to be obliged, the child will return all this to you in his adolescence, the man - much earlier;

6. We forget to admit that it is beneficial for us, that we are pursuing some of our own benefits, giving up for the sake of another from what may be difficult for us (go back to work, get a divorce, start something again, regain lost value).

Love is not love if it requires sacrifice. Sacrifice is the destruction of the important, the other, or part of the other. Love, on the other hand, multiplies, permits, expands. This is a union, a discovery. If you want to sacrifice or you are required to sacrifice, then perhaps love has not yet come, and you still need to learn from it.

To love is always together

Many people think that if we break up, or just want to at least sometimes spend time apart, then this means that we love less. So jealous husbands drag their wives with them everywhere, wives are forced to share their husbands' activities that are completely uninteresting to them, and mothers feel colossal guilt, with relief giving their grandmother a child for a couple of hours.

Only nursing babies need the constant, as close as possible presence of the mother, older children (from about two years old) and men are quite capable of coping with the temporary absence of a beloved object.

Of course, compatibility and closeness for loving people is very important, but it can and, probably, should be interspersed with separation and relatively calmly tolerated loneliness, which will be filled with some deeds and activities.

"Always together" is wanted by those who:

1. Remains in adolescent romantic illusions about their own scale - about their ability to replace the whole world with another (so mothers do not even let go of their children, wives of husbands, not realizing that by keeping them close to them, they create a stuffy environment, deprived of opportunities for development);

2. Does not really trust each other and the world (in particular, grandmothers, nannies who will somehow “not” raise your child, if this is a man, then, of course, he will do the wrong thing or with the wrong ones, and also, of course, needs your control and supervision);

3. Wants to create a very closed system (family or couple), because he is not very ready to communicate with the outside, large world;

4. Does not believe that he is able to survive separation, believe in a new meeting, not confident in himself and his friend, not at all confident in himself;

5. Who has experienced the traumatic experience of leaving, someone's sudden departure, not mourned loss, not lived grief, unexplained rejection; (to avoid this, explain to your loved ones and children where you go and when you will return, as well as why you reject them and whether your rejection is permanent).

It is necessary to part for the possibility of meeting, the absence of parting deprives the ability of seeing the other to others, so we stop noticing how our children grow and change, and we cannot nourish ourselves in another environment and give this opportunity to another in order to enrich our togetherness.

To love is to understand without words

At first, words seem superfluous, when our baby is very small, we want to speak only with interjections “cute, cute”, because words are not needed when we are merged, when we are one more whole, we have no opportunity to differ.

The newborn has no words, and only by the peculiarities of his crying we have to guess what he wants. But when children grow up, we already want them to speak, because we will begin to suspect deviations in speech development, if they still do not speak. And we also begin to expect words from our loved ones. It is not for nothing that they are sometimes ready every day to shake out the sacramental “do you love me?” From him.

When and who wants to understand without words:

1. When we do not want to admit differences. Because we want to continue to be one and continue this magic - to guess, to have flair, because this will mean: "we are so similar", "we were made for each other." Differences frighten us, because they portend the possibility of mutual misunderstanding. And misunderstanding is so terrible for those who do not know how to clarify. Difference is the risk of losing a relationship, and when we are merged and we do not notice the difference, it seems so safe and glorious;

2. When we don’t bother to understand what exactly is happening to us, what we want, what we feel, what we need, wait or are concerned about the manifestation of "dumb" care, and from it we suffer when our mother puts us on a plate superfluous and tasteless, but you can't refuse - you will be offended; when guilty children: “don't you see how tired I am?”; when we expect from our beloved the words: “how beautiful you are today” and do not wait, and it is just as clear why to say …

3. When we do not know how to communicate, talk about what is important, about what happens to us, when we do not know how to ask, or say “no” to another. So in order not to contact and not “strain” the other with a request or refusal, it is better for us to deprive the other and ourselves of the right to speak, to endow him and ourselves with the obligation to understand without words;

4. When we are waiting for exclusivity, that the other will be connected only to us, and the whole world will wait. When we say to him: “There should be nothing important in your life except me. Only me! " And only your confirmed ability to understand me without words will prove over and over again: "I am valuable to you, and there is nothing more valuable than me."

But is this really about love, when the other is as super-important as not noticed? Our words and questions speak of our respect, imply that the other may have different feelings, opinions, sensations, states, interests and needs. Our ability to say, ask, refuse, let know is our respect for the other. A sign that we are ready to bother ourselves for the sake of respect for the "otherness" of another.

To love means forever and ever

When love comes, we want to hold on to it, grab it, keep it for ourselves, make it sound on that high note on which it appeared. On the other hand, we want our love to grow and develop: from meetings, to dating, from dating to living together, then to a wedding … When children are born, we also want to delay this moment of pleasure from their affection, smallness, touching. But at the same time, we want them to grow up … learn to roll over, sit, crawl, walk, talk …

Unsuccessfully and inconsolably, those who:

1. Thinks that loving a baby and a teenager is one and the same … They will treat him at forty even as if he were still four. They want to keep that age, it is easier for them not to notice the growth of their own children, so as not to face the fact that every day they live takes away from them the opportunity to enjoy his childhood, and that it inevitably ends, no matter how we try to keep it;

2. Those who do not know how to live and accept losses, because love is to let it go a little every day, it is to experience the loss of the fact that you will no longer be the mother of this particular infant, and then this “preschool child”, and this schoolboy, and so - loss after loss …

3. Those who do not know how to withstand the unpredictability of life, its uncertainty, accept the transformations, changes that occur almost every day in our relationship with the one you love;

4. Those who do not believe that the new will be interesting, good, unknown, and that in these changed relationships there will be a place for something that simply could not have been before, until this old ended;

5. Those who are simply forbidden or find it difficult to feel: sadness when something leaves, and rejoice at what is being born.

To love is to let go, believing that wherever this other goes, he can return, he knows that here he is loved, remembered and awaited.

Love is the risk of appreciating what you invariably lose. It is a joy that he, another, somewhere else is as good as here, next to you. And the belief that he gets next to you something irreplaceable, irreplaceable and unique simply because you are you.

Love is the need to deal with the threat that there is always something more to tear you apart, but that is not a reason to lock another up in prison to deal with your anxiety.

To love is to love only you, you alone

Oneness is what we expect from love. Only she, it seems to us, will prove. Will prove something important, what we will then convincingly call "love." We will expect this from a man, and declare everything else a betrayal. As if it is possible for everyone to love one person in a lifetime. And only if this happens, then as if the evidence is obtained. Does it exist in nature - uniqueness? After all, children are deprived of it with the birth of brothers or sisters. And, of course, this is a loss for them. It is not easy for them to cope with the fact that love will now, as it seems to them, “share”.

Those who:

1. Used to compare. The comparison convinces us that they love for something, and that something else may have more. Those who do not believe in their uniqueness do not believe in someone's ability to love just for what he is. (Parents, in my opinion, do not love their children equally, they love them uniquely, and men do not love their women - past or present more or less, they either love them or not);

2. Who believes in the existence of justice, and does not believe in subjectivity. Of course, we all want to believe in agreements and marriage vows. But only the inanimate can remain unchanged and be correct, ideal, correspond to someone's ideas, agreements and stamps in the passport, and all living things change, transform, and the direction of these changes cannot be predicted.

3. Who chooses to live in denial: "other women or men on the planet simply do not exist, neither in the past, nor in the present." The other must also close his eyes. And also they would like to close their eyes to the fact that our children will also have other beloved ones - husbands, wives, children …. and we will have to lose the oneness of their love too.

4. Whoever thinks has the right to claim that the heart of a loved one will be occupied only by you, who confuses love and occupation.

To love is to trust another, leaving him with the right to love you the way he can, the way he can. It is to respect his desire to place in his heart and love everything that is dear to him, and to feel full, multifaceted, alive from this.