Confusingly, we talk about love as one thing,
instead of realizing 2 very different meanings contained in this one word.
“To be loved” and “to love”
We can only establish a successful relationship when we are ready to do the second
and we are aware of our unnatural, immature fixation on the first.
At the beginning of life we learn only what it is to be loved.
This is wrongly becoming the rule.
For the child the perception is as if the parent is always available:
to calm down, to guide, to domesticate, to feed, to cleanse and to remain almost always cordial.
Parents do not reveal how often teeth, swollen tears,
and were too tired to take off their clothes after a day of childcare.
The relationship is almost always entirely non-reciprocal,
the parent loves but does not expect the gesture to be returned in any meaningful way:
the parent is not upset when the child does not notice his new hairstyle
when he questions the important appointment, or when he proposes to go upstairs.
The parent and the child can love each other, but they are at the two different ends of an axis without the child’s awareness of it.
That is why in adulthood, when we first say “I long for love”
What we most often want to say is that we expect to be loved, as ever by the parent.
We want in adulthood to recreate the sensation from childhood to be led and ankles.
In a mystical part of our mind, we imagine someone who will understand our needs, bring what we want,
will be extremely patient and sympathetic to us, will act unselfishly, and will do everything right.
This, of course, is devastating. In order for a relationship to work,
we must resolutely step out of the child’s position and enter the parent’s.
We must become a person who can sometimes
submit your own desires to the needs of the other.
To be adults in love, we need to learn, perhaps, for the first time in our lives,
to do something really exceptional – at least for some time to put someone else ahead of us.
It is actually a true, mature love – a surprise to all.
instead of realizing 2 very different meanings contained in this one word.
“To be loved” and “to love”
We can only establish a successful relationship when we are ready to do the second
and we are aware of our unnatural, immature fixation on the first.
At the beginning of life we learn only what it is to be loved.
This is wrongly becoming the rule.
For the child the perception is as if the parent is always available:
to calm down, to guide, to domesticate, to feed, to cleanse and to remain almost always cordial.
Parents do not reveal how often teeth, swollen tears,
and were too tired to take off their clothes after a day of childcare.
The relationship is almost always entirely non-reciprocal,
the parent loves but does not expect the gesture to be returned in any meaningful way:
the parent is not upset when the child does not notice his new hairstyle
when he questions the important appointment, or when he proposes to go upstairs.
The parent and the child can love each other, but they are at the two different ends of an axis without the child’s awareness of it.
That is why in adulthood, when we first say “I long for love”
What we most often want to say is that we expect to be loved, as ever by the parent.
We want in adulthood to recreate the sensation from childhood to be led and ankles.
In a mystical part of our mind, we imagine someone who will understand our needs, bring what we want,
will be extremely patient and sympathetic to us, will act unselfishly, and will do everything right.
This, of course, is devastating. In order for a relationship to work,
we must resolutely step out of the child’s position and enter the parent’s.
We must become a person who can sometimes
submit your own desires to the needs of the other.
To be adults in love, we need to learn, perhaps, for the first time in our lives,
to do something really exceptional – at least for some time to put someone else ahead of us.
It is actually a true, mature love – a surprise to all.
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