I said something last time about no one being able to do anything to hurt me that I “simply did not allow”. In retrospect, I am a bit uncomfortable with the word “allow”. It’s a loaded word. How is it possible, in a relationship between equals, for one to allow or not allow another to behave in any particular way?
Relationships take work, we all know that. You’re willingness to hang in there and negotiate through some difficult conflicts is a huge key to lasting and loving relationships, romantic or otherwise. But what I didn’t really understand for a long time is that so much about a healthy dating relationship has to do with your willingness to walk away. Your willingess to simply not accept less than what will make you happy. And your willingness to lovingly and respectfully let someone else be who they are, choose their own path, even if that path takes them away from you.
I was not willing to walk away. For some reason, walking away never felt like an option I could live with. So then every negotiation was a fight, where I had to “stand up for myself”, and not “allow” them to hurt me. I had to convince my partners to make me happy, because walking away was not seen as an alternative. Sometimes the problem was that I should have walked away and didn’t. But sometimes the relationship itself may have been more successful had I not actually walked away, but simply been willing to.
How would our relationship conflicts be handled differently if we were open to the possibility of letting the relationship go? If we are able to recognize that if someone is, with full awareness, choosing not to make us happy, we should trust what they are telling us about themselves? That we should respect, even if we can’t understand, their reasons behind their choices? And that we could either negotiate towards mutual happiness, or accept that we can’t and move on? How might my partners’ feelings towards me have been different without the relentless disrespect of my need to convince, to change their minds? For in a relationship between EQUALS, there is no “allow”.
January 31, 2008 at 4:52 pm |
I once read that no one else can ever really make us happy, and that a healthy and mature relationship is more of a sharing of your own inner happiness and love with another as an expression from within… an expression of who we are. In contrast, I myself and many others I know have been in relationships that were conditional and possessive… yes, these relationships included expression of love, but if that love was not returned in kind or as expected, then the expression of love could lead to being hurt.
A key aspect of the first perspective on relationships mentioned above, is that it is focused on self-love. We are domesticated by our society to not love ourselves… there are messages abound that we are not good enough and we need to be this or do that or buy this and have that to be worthy of love. With many families, the child’s survival (more specifically, access to love from their parents) is mitigated by their ability to please their parents; to be a good boy/girl. So, in a lot of ways, we are programmed out of self-love, and into thinking we need to search for love in someone else. We give them responsibility for our love. We want them to make us happy. This is what I think it means to “allow.” We also might even do all we can to please the other person, because we know that will make them more likely to love us back. We fear not being loved.
What if we lived for our own happiness? That question itself evokes within me messages sounding something like, “That would be selfish; selfishness is bad, selfish people are wrong, selfish people are undeserving of love.” But, I have a different perspective on self-love. It is not selfish, in fact, it is a virtue. I have heard people say that our ability to love others can only be equal to, but no more than our ability to love ourselves.
Applied specifically to a relationship: if a partner is upset and says or does something hurtful to us… when we are filled with self-love and not depending on our partner as a source of love, but truly fulfilled in sharing love with that other person… then perhaps our perspective will be one of compassion, or one of understanding, or perhaps we can simply know that it has nothing to do with us and not take it personally. Perhaps we can be completely honest about what’s really going on. Perhaps in the face of the disharmony or projected anger, we will still be able to express ourselves out of self-love. Perhaps our partner needs time to just work something out, or perhaps we can talk about what’s really going on. If relationships are entered into with this understanding, perhaps the whole dynamic would be different.
I have read that when we look to others for our own happiness, we give our power away to them. It is relieving to have also read that we can give that power back to ourselves
January 31, 2008 at 11:47 pm |
These are all really good points, David, thank you so much, once again, for adding your voice.
I do want to make a couple of distinctions here, because I think we are in agreement, but may be talking about slightly different things. First off all, there is a difference between looking to your relationship to be the source of all happiness for you, and simply wanting to be happy WITHIN the relationship. Secondly, and quite related to that, there is a difference between Unconditional and Romantic Love. Successful Romantic Love does depend on a foundation of Unconditional Love, and that is, I think, something we are both talking about. That combination of respect and compassion that is essential to any successful human interaction. However, the aspect of Romantic Love is not, nor should it be, unconditional. There are conditions under which you are “in love” with someone, and conditions under which you may lose that love. And there are conditions under which it might be considered healthier to lose that love than to hold on to it. And our ability to nuture Romantic Love in large part DOES have to do with our ability to equally consider our partner’s happiness with our own. I want to make this the subject for another blog entry, so I’m going to leave it there for a moment. Let’s talk more about this a little down the line.
February 2, 2008 at 10:03 am |
really nice one and keep it up!
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