Lookin for Love in all the Wrong Places
Do you ever ask yourself the question, “When I say I love you what do I mean?”
I am framing this more in the context of romantic love, though it can pertain to our children as well. We have been spun so many stories, so many lies about romance and what it means to love another person. The indoctrination begins when we are very young. The story books and movies created for children have the majority based on a heteronormative “love” where the prince comes in to save the helpless princess and they look into one another’s eyes and live happily ever after. One of the stories that lodged deeply into my psyche was that of unrequited love. For so many years of my life I believed that the most romantic and powerful love was one where two people meet and have grand finale fireworks in their short time together. Then, for one reason or another, they are not “allowed” to be together. They live the rest of their days out remembering their time together and one another as their one true love. Their hearts are left pining for each other only to never reunite again. Pretty depressing huh?!
What are the stories you have told yourself about love?
What false expectations have you been putting upon yourself and others about how to be in relationship based on your stories of how you think love “should” be?
What are some of the lies you can dismantle right now so you can move forward loving from a place that is more true to yourself?
Often times, what we call love is really our inner child seeing in another something we yearn for in ourselves. We are attracted to what we feel disconnected from in ourselves. It is because of this that relationships are excellent opportunities for self-growth and transformation. The thing is calling it what it is rather than fabricating some fairytale story around your relationship to make it fit a societal expectation of love. Though this may feel like an accomplishment, a box checked off, it is nothing more than falsehood that puts immense pressure on the relationship.
When we are honest with ourselves about why we are attracted to another, we can see that we are often coming from a need to control or possess them for self-validation. We are looking outside of ourselves to find our self-worth. Being in relationship in this way will present incredible opportunities to grow and gain more self-awareness, however it isn’t going to give you the self-worth you are yearning for.
I am not advocating to stop being in relationships, but I am saying to consistently check yourself. Be courageous and ask yourself why you think or feel a certain way. Know that everything is a reflection. It is ultimately about you and never about the other person.
When we remain in our story constructs of what we are told a relationship is supposed to be, what love is supposed to be, we miss out. Imposing expectations on another blocks you from experiencing the fullness of who they are. We are unconsciously conforming all of the time to meet the unspoken (and spoken) expectations others have of us. Take beauty as an example, do you think you are ever 100% free from being effected by the societal norms of what is considered beautiful. Do you think that this does not have a profound impact on how you perceive yourself? Because of this, we struggle with accepting the beauty that each and every one of us naturally is. We are all magnificent creations of God, not one of us more or less grand than the other, yet we are under the spell of what is considered beautiful, ugly, acceptable, horrendous. It is really messed up when you think about it. And where is this dictate coming from?!
Our perception of love is as heavily distorted as our perception of beauty. We as individuals are the only ones that can change this. And it has to start with loving yourself first. We can only love as big as we love ourselves.
Recently, I have become aware of the next layers of how fear of rejection has impacted my choices in relationships. I had some pretty big rejection trauma as a young girl, both within my family constellation and in my peer group. I am seeing more clearly than ever that many of my past choices around love have been either to control the other, so that I couldn’t be rejected again, or to “have” the other as a way to use them to help me feel whole. Both of these scenarios had disastrous results. When I was controlling, I was narrowing the capacity of love I was able to give and receive. When I was possessing, I was devastated when the relationship ended and felt the deep pain of rejection all over again times 100.
It is only in recent years that I have become acutely aware of the lies I have believed and told myself about love. I have let go of, sometimes reluctantly, the incredibly romantic notions I attached to for so long, in search of something that I know can only reside within me. I have committed to this journey with myself first, tenderly, compassionately loving all of me, beginning with when I emerged from the womb. It is an arduous process monitoring the voice within that is also a rejector so that my tenderest parts can receive the love and acceptance they so long for. And it is a rapid pathway towards integration of trauma and opening to the possibility of experiencing a transcendental love. This is a kind of love where both parties orient from the inside out not the outside in. Who knows if it fully exists in the human form, but I do know that shedding the stories we tell ourselves to let live what actually is real is liberating for both individuals in a relationship. At least from this perspective we get to share with one another all of who we truly are.
Dare to Desire!
Kristen