We’re not taught to love, we’re mostly taught to get our needs met
We are not taught to love. We are mostly taught to control, manipulate, coerce people into falling in line with what we want. We are taught to look for "what can you do for me" - which is not wrong or bad. It just becomes lopsided and unhealthy when it's not balanced with "what can I do for you".
If we look to nature we see there's a give and take in every dynamic. Nothing happens in isolation, nothing happens solely for the benefit of any one thing. Each organism simultaneously does what's best for itself, while contributing to the whole.
It's clear that we've deviated significantly from the natural order of things. We've become arrogant enough to think that we know best. We fix issues and create more problems. Instead of pausing, taking a step back to reevaluate...we just keep going. We build upon shakey foundations and wonder why everything is crumbling.
Over the past decade I’ve taken a break from humans for the most part (Y’all can be draining 😅). I did this to observe myself on a deeper level and those around me. In this time I’ve learned more about myself than I ever have previously...and the more I’ve learned about myself, the more I understand those around me.
The glaring fact that we have not been taught to love is evident. How I define love is wanting the best for you, while simultaneously wanting the best for me. I don’t think being a martyr or at the other extreme being purely self-serving is love.
In my post about boundaries (facebook) I touched on how north America’s obsession with independence is an incomplete paradigm. Wanting to be independent is a good thing, it’s just not the highest form of relating. The point of achieving independence is to eventually be able to practice Interdependence.
And that is what healthy relationships require. Independent people, who come together and chose to be Interdependent. This is in any relational dynamic.
Instead, for the most part, we seem look to codependency dynamics as a healthy way of relating. Codependency is a healthy way of relating - when you’re an infant. It’s a necessary phase. Before our nervous system develops and is able to regulate itself we must look to others (parents/adults) to help us regulate it. If we’re fortunate enough to be surrounded by adults who are able to self-regulate we learn to do so too. If not we get stuck in this phase much longer than is healthy.
This is why there are so many chronological adults, who are still in adolescent phase of development in certain areas of our lives. Myself included. The fact of the matter is, a lot of childhood trauma can block healthy development. We get stuck in certain phases longer than we have to. This can have a negative impact on our relationships, until we do something about it.
I’m a strong believer in healthy independence, and solitude. I personally need a lot of alone time, away from humans. I went through an intense hermit phase for the past few years. It was necessary. I needed to isolate to heal. But healing in solitude will always be incomplete. Healing requires relation - to other humans. We need other humans to trigger us, show us where we’re still tender, show us where we’re closed off, show us our blind spots. Basically we need other humans to show us how we are getting in our own way. Even the most self aware person has blind spots. The most triggering of all relationships tend to be the romantic ones, then parent-child. These two will bring up shit you’d love to keep in the dark corners of your mind under a pile of unhealthy coping strategies…lol…at least I do.
The thing is, we weren’t taught how to love because the cultural narrative around romantic love has become so convoluted. It’s become disney-fied. We equate the hormonal rush that presents itself in the beginning phases as love. That’s a necessary part - but that’s only a PART of it. We also place a lot of weight on our partners. Weight that was originally carried by the village. We have such high expectations for one person (if you believe in monogamy). And our expectations are all about how they can make us happy, or how they can fill a void or what they can do for us. When it isn’t balanced with “what can I do for you?” it’s selfish and destructive.
The fact of the matter is we’re wired for connection. Connection requires vulnerability. Connection requires us to take the other’s need on as our own. This is not in a codependency - more "your happiness is just as important to me as mine is". Our need for connection goes beyond the romantic realm. The only way we can truly fill that void that exists in us, is to learn to connect with one another on a deep level. For that, we need to have a healthy paradigm that defines love in terms of healthy reciprocal connections.
