On Love

I used to think I'd never loved or been loved.  Now I see things differently.  I see that there is love and loving action.  For instance, there is no question.  I love my children, but I do not always take loving action.  Part of this is because I had not known what loving action was.  I'd simply behaved as was modeled for me in the home of my childhood.  However, as is typical in an alcoholic home, the behaviors I learned to associate with love were just the opposite and what I learned to associate with helping was actually harming.  No wonder I have been confused.

When my thinking began to untwist, my perception of love became more confused.  I could identify loving action, but as I reflected on the people in my life who had said that they had loved me, few loving actions were displayed by them or me.  I concluded that none of us had known love.

Today I see that both are true.  I see love as a paradox.  I can love someone and simultaneously act unloving towards them.  The unloving action stems from childhood learning, the behaviors modeled and the defense mechanisms I'd learned to employ for self-protection.  Perhaps the key to finding a satisfactory love relationship is in finding a partner with the insight to recognize and the humility to admit to their unloving actions when they arise, as they will.

Since coming to view love in this manner, I feel some relief - relief of sadness, relief from resentment and the removal of obstacles to accepting others, others I had hardened myself to.  I can trust that their love is or was true, even if our unloving actions made a close relationship untenable.  I can simultaneously love them and accept the depth or shallowness our unloving actions allow.  I have come to see the act of loving as the act of accepting another exactly as they are right now while maintaining the boundary appropriate for self-respect.