Based on my understanding of our need to be loved and the barriers to being loved (as discussed in "I Never Knew I Had A Choice" by Marianne & Gerald Corey), the world that we live in tenaciously challenges the idea of love and the purpose behind forming true loving relationships. This idea is fueled relentlessly by a vast number of myths and misconceptions regarding whether it is truly worthwhile to risk loving. After all, to risk love is to also risk rejection. Our perceptions of what love should look and feel like stem from a wide variety of influential factors. These may include values or traditions shared by members of a single household or members of an entire ethnic group. Influences may also come in the form of religious morale or disguised in misguided advice from our peers. In the most simplified sense, however, influence appears to be generally dependent on what an individual derives from their personal experiences.
Combined with our experiences, we have the unceasing desire of the mass media to commercialize and construct the social standards of what love ought to be and how it ought to be illustrated. Luckily for us, being born in a technological savvy era, we’re fortunate enough to have tools and resources that afford us the opportunities to be both consumers and producers. However, are we really capitalizing on the ability to create a shift in rigid thinking? That is, have we become advanced and diverse enough to acknowledge that we consciously make decisions to perpetuate these inflexible ideals? We have undoubtedly become producers, producing and using our own content, but, sadly, we have become producers with the same underlying motives. That is, we propagate our own tightly held opinions.
In this article I would like to address two major myths that I feel detour persons from the idea of forming lasting relationships.
I agree with the Coreys that love is not exclusive, our desire to be loved and our ability to love is in abundance. However, I do believe that the exclusiveness of love is dependent upon the individual's personal views on both how and in what context love should be distributed between a lover and their loved ones. With the ever-changing dynamic of relationships there’s no way, I believe, that our love is meant to be exclusively for our one best friend, brother, uncle, or single parent. It’s not uncommon for a sister or a friend to feel triumphed by a loved one taking on a new relationship. I’ll be one of the first to admit this flaw about myself. I have and, probably to a minimal extent, will always be just a little bit territorial in my relationships. Another example of this way of thinking can be demonstrated in parent-child relationships. In divided households, we may often hear a child hold one parent in high regard while dismissing the efforts of the other. This is a common mistake that I feel that we all make at some point in the realm of love. We have this innate tendency to compare the love languages that are spoken by our loved ones, either amongst one another or we compare these illustrious displays of affection to persons who aren’t aware of the multitude of ways to communicate or demonstrate their own love back to us. Our love languages are the things that we do to transfer the meaning of love and appreciation to other people. Just because a person appears to practice service before self doesn't always guarantee that their service to us isn’t self-serving. The reality is that sometimes people actually need to do things for other people to validate themselves. This is not to vilify claims that love is self-less, however, it is an attempt to challenge a false dichotomy in which people perceive love as being either or. There are alternatives, my friends! As I like to say, longevity doesn't mean loyalty! In the same token, however, I would also like to make clear that even when relationships don’t work out, a person’s love and sincerity should not to be discredited by failing circumstances.
Additionally, the idea that we must always be willing to extenuate ourselves and repeatedly sacrifice our own moral values, happiness, or resources to accommodate the lifestyle of a loved one leads to yet another myth.
Despite common belief, love is not always selfless. While I am aware that this statement goes against everything that we have been taught to believe, it certainly holds truth. What do we do when we find our personal growth or sanity being threatened by the ones who we love the most? Many people often feel that to withhold from extending time, energy, or resources implies possessing a socially undesirable trait: selfishness. In actuality, however, the art of personal resource extension is truly a balancing act for more reasons than one.
The primary reason is selfish givers. I had no idea what a selfish giver even was until I came across one in real life. If you’re trying to identify a selfish giver in your life, a harmless example might just be one of your parents. These are the people who find it absolutely necessary to exhaust their resources for their loved ones. Selfish givers are persons with a high need to nurture and care for others with very little tolerance for accepting reciprocity.
Inadvertently, this creates a power imbalance and results in one member of a relationship feeling guilty for not having a chance to reciprocate, as discussed by the authors. It is easy to adopt the mentality of sacrificial love from our parents. After all, we are born into it and most of us receive this kind of love throughout most of our life. Ideally, we would all want someone to experience this love in it truest form, but the notion that we must abandon ourselves for the benefit of our neighbor or our loved ones is totally false. When we toss around the idea of unconditional love in allusion to God’s love for mankind and how our parents love us, we chose to ignore two harsh realities. The first is that both forms of love are conditioned to some degree. We would be naïve to think that any entity, flesh or spirit, would not grow weary of our escapades and thus a wee bit resentful. If it weren’t true, then there would be no fear of an unforeseeable judgment day. The second reality is that, despite our efforts to generate this ideal love in our everyday lives and relationships, this kind of love is not easily replicated. That’s OK. I feel that it’s OK and rather healthy to put limits on how far we are willing to stretch with loved ones. Placing limitations doesn’t mean that you cannot wholeheartedly accept them as they are, it simply means that you are willing to admit that you can only accept them as you are. In the grand scheme this may spare both parties a lot of emotional turmoil. I personally believe that the bond shared between a creator and his creation--which can also allude to a mother-child relationship--is far beyond our understanding of the love that we demonstrate in everyday life. The purpose of that love is to perpetuate the cycle of life. It kind of says, “I love you more than anything so that you understand why it’s important to love someone beyond yourself.” That kind of love is generally not meant to be reciprocated because it cannot be reciprocated. It can be mimicked, but not replicated.
The realization that our thinking is strongly influenced by commercialized standards of what a fully functioning loving relationship ought to be is the first step towards forward thinking in a new direction. The two misconceptions that I briefly discussed are merely touching the tip of the iceberg. If we’re willing to accept that we have been systematically trained to think in a certain way, then we should be willing to bet that, along with active participation, the effects are reversible. Instead of allowing subliminal messages that creep in through mass media to dictate our relationship ideals, we ought to spend more time creating realistic ideals that both lovers and loved ones can ascribe to.
