Love is what we want
I wanted to post this after reading one of my DS friends wonderful story about Love.
Being in love is great! Loving others is great! But learing to love ourselves is even greater! Happy Valentine's Day early!
UNDERSTAND THAT IT’S LOVE THAT YOU WANT
I think that I want more money, or more sex, or more recognition, or better health, but it’s love I really want. I think that I will be right if I prove you wrong, but it’s love I really want. I think I’ll feel better if you are punished for your sin, but it’s love I really want. All I really want, my friend, is for you to love me. If I was sure of your love, the rest would be okay. Somehow, I would find a way to accept the rest and work with it. Those of us who have looked for perfection have had to learn the hard way that it just does not exist. Other people are not here to make us happy. They are here to help us learn. Beneath this dimly remembered goal there is the memory of a love that binds us all. We are here to love and to learn. We are not here to force learning or loving, but to let each lead naturally to the other. When one is present, the other is as well. So, life doesn’t always go my way. Sometimes I want you to please me and you are in my life to help me wake-up. You are here to help me learn to take responsibility. We do this dance where I keep trying to get you to give me what I want and you keep dancing away. I begin to think that you don’t love me. I begin to resent you. I feel angry because I think you intentionally refuse to meet my needs. But you are not here to meet my needs. You are here to show me my needs so I can learn to meet them myself. This is your purpose and when you fulfill it, you set us both free. You know, I think I want you to meet my needs, but that’s not really true. I want you to meet your needs. I want you to be happy. I just need to know that, if you move away from me, you are not rejecting me. I just need to know that you love me…When I know that, I won’t stand in your way. In fact, I’ll open the door and wish you well. I don’t want to be the person who keeps you against your will. And I don’t want to be kept against mine. I know that we are all free to choose. I just need to know that, whatever choice you make, you still love me. That is my child needs. And even though I keep getting older, that child does not go away. If anything, he/she just gets bigger and bolder in my heart. He learns to ask for what he needs. He is no longer ashamed to ask….He used to try to manipulate and control and badger to get his/her way. But that was because he wasn’t listened to. Now that he knows that I listen, he asks for very simple things.
In my pain, my confusion, my hurt, my sadness, I just need to know that I am loved. If I know I am loved, the pain begins to fade. The separation is gradually bridged. Something happens when I know that I am loved. But it can’t happen until I know that love is what I want and I have the courage to ask for it. My feelings are an inner communication to me that I am not feeling loving toward myself and others. I have over- or under- extended myself, allowed myself to be stepped on or stepped on someone else’s toes. I am not feeling loved. I am not feeling loving. That is what I must recognize. And then, when I recognize it, I must decide that love is what I want. I cannot continue on the journey of forgiveness unless right now I decide that love is what I want. Yes, it is ok to feel my pain, but feeling my pain is just telling me that love is what I want. Feeling separate, angry, guilty, envious, sad just tells me love is what I want.
The incredible thing is that when I do not justify or condemn my feelings they may lead me to an emptiness that can only be filled by love. And that love always begins in my own heart. Your love may join with it, but I cannot depend on your love. Love enters when I begin to love myself. And love enters when I begin to love you.
Being in love is great! Loving others is great! But learing to love ourselves is even greater! Happy Valentine's Day early!
UNDERSTAND THAT IT’S LOVE THAT YOU WANT
I think that I want more money, or more sex, or more recognition, or better health, but it’s love I really want. I think that I will be right if I prove you wrong, but it’s love I really want. I think I’ll feel better if you are punished for your sin, but it’s love I really want. All I really want, my friend, is for you to love me. If I was sure of your love, the rest would be okay. Somehow, I would find a way to accept the rest and work with it. Those of us who have looked for perfection have had to learn the hard way that it just does not exist. Other people are not here to make us happy. They are here to help us learn. Beneath this dimly remembered goal there is the memory of a love that binds us all. We are here to love and to learn. We are not here to force learning or loving, but to let each lead naturally to the other. When one is present, the other is as well. So, life doesn’t always go my way. Sometimes I want you to please me and you are in my life to help me wake-up. You are here to help me learn to take responsibility. We do this dance where I keep trying to get you to give me what I want and you keep dancing away. I begin to think that you don’t love me. I begin to resent you. I feel angry because I think you intentionally refuse to meet my needs. But you are not here to meet my needs. You are here to show me my needs so I can learn to meet them myself. This is your purpose and when you fulfill it, you set us both free. You know, I think I want you to meet my needs, but that’s not really true. I want you to meet your needs. I want you to be happy. I just need to know that, if you move away from me, you are not rejecting me. I just need to know that you love me…When I know that, I won’t stand in your way. In fact, I’ll open the door and wish you well. I don’t want to be the person who keeps you against your will. And I don’t want to be kept against mine. I know that we are all free to choose. I just need to know that, whatever choice you make, you still love me. That is my child needs. And even though I keep getting older, that child does not go away. If anything, he/she just gets bigger and bolder in my heart. He learns to ask for what he needs. He is no longer ashamed to ask….He used to try to manipulate and control and badger to get his/her way. But that was because he wasn’t listened to. Now that he knows that I listen, he asks for very simple things.
In my pain, my confusion, my hurt, my sadness, I just need to know that I am loved. If I know I am loved, the pain begins to fade. The separation is gradually bridged. Something happens when I know that I am loved. But it can’t happen until I know that love is what I want and I have the courage to ask for it. My feelings are an inner communication to me that I am not feeling loving toward myself and others. I have over- or under- extended myself, allowed myself to be stepped on or stepped on someone else’s toes. I am not feeling loved. I am not feeling loving. That is what I must recognize. And then, when I recognize it, I must decide that love is what I want. I cannot continue on the journey of forgiveness unless right now I decide that love is what I want. Yes, it is ok to feel my pain, but feeling my pain is just telling me that love is what I want. Feeling separate, angry, guilty, envious, sad just tells me love is what I want.
The incredible thing is that when I do not justify or condemn my feelings they may lead me to an emptiness that can only be filled by love. And that love always begins in my own heart. Your love may join with it, but I cannot depend on your love. Love enters when I begin to love myself. And love enters when I begin to love you.
Replies
Some powerful and moving thoughts in this. Thank you xxx
Hi Vicki,
This is a beautiful journal. It is very touching to me.
Hugs,
Shar
Very nice. I my opinion, though, it is a projection when you want to be loved by others. What we really want is to love ourselves. Demanding or expecting it from others FIRST, interferes with our learning to love who we are as we are. I am told It is difficult to know how to love others if you do not have the ability to love yourself yet. I was once told that you cannot give something you do not already have. Teaching others how to love themselves as they are, requires the ability to know how to love yourself first as you are. Teach what you know how to do, and let the other person learn at their own pace.
Dependency (and co-dependency) is waiting for others to love you in order to give you the permission you need to love yourself in spite of your opinion about your \"perceived flaws\", or \"reasons-for-not-being-lovable\", that we learned or were conditioned to learn according to our perceptions of how our parents rewarded us with love and approval for who THEY wanted us to be so they could approve of themselves. Pretty tricky, yes?
As for the previous post, that was great too. I think the concept of the Ego is the same, or at least similar, to the \"roommate\" I keep talking about. They sound the same.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge, not to practice implementing it, boldly and with Faith.
Big Hugszzz,
Rich
Correction; that should be \"noW\" not \"noT\". (I should learn to proof-read what I wrote, not what I meant to write.)
;-P
I knew what you meant...and yes, the love has too begin with self-love!
Nice to have you back! :-)
I do agree that the journey to finding love in your life starts with yourself.
I believe that without any nurturance and love by my mother, I am not able to love myself fully because I have not been shown how.
People then tell me that I MUST love myself first, before I can love another. But no one seems to consider that I haven\'t been taught. I haven\'t even been taught that I am lovable. I have only been taught that I was resented and in the way.
I then tried for affection by seeking approval elsewhere. But it was always needy and desperate. So that was not love either.
I\'ve been in 2 relationships and I was not loved there. Which only validated my point: I am not lovable.
I have been told that I am loving and giving. And perhaps that is the only way I can learn what love is. By demonstrating that maternal feeling outward.
But then I\'m told that This is Not Real. Because I\'m externalizing it, rather than internalizing it.
So, I will go back to my original belief: that without the loving nurturance of a mother, I\'m not capable of loving myself. Because I do not know how.
http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/24/the-measure-of-a-mothers-love-how-early-deprivation-derails-child-development/
\"[Nobel-prize-winning economist James Heckman] This study, he says, shows that early life conditions critically affect adult health. Maternal attachment plays a fundamental role in shaping who we are; remove it and the harm is great.
I think of the story of the little girl whose mother kisses her goodbye and waves as the bus pulls away. When the girl comes back home, her mother is there, waving and the little girl runs & leaps into her arms.
True story, told by the bus driver at my CoDA meeting. We were all in tears. Because that little girl KNOWS what love is. She doesn\'t have to beg for it, steal for it, bargain for it. She doesn\'t have to seek it; it\'s just there. Implicit and understood. She won\'t grow up needy or depressed or screwed up with identity crises, because she will firmly be assured that she knows who she is, as she was loved. That love is her foundation. It\'s so fundamental. She can then freely love.
I\'m 45. And have no foundation. My body aches from not being held. And my arms just don\'t do it. It\'s like trying to give oneself a foot rub. A very different experience when someone else does it. But trying to do it myself? My foot cramps up and my hands get knotted, my shoulders hunch and ache.
But I\'m told that to nurture others, I have to know how to nurture myself first? When I was not nurtured in my childhood? When my base is fractured & shattered?
No matter how it\'s sliced, it\'s just not the same as that little girl who gets a full set of hugs and kisses every day, running off the bus...
((Hugs))
Hi Amelah: Your story is my story also. Never any kind of nurturing whatsoever; no hugs, no kisses, no support, etc. I can remember my first beating at 5yrs. old for telling my sister what she got for Xmas. Held down, sat on and beat across the face till I was black and blue. Then told to get up and get ready for Sunday School (Mom was a teacher). She had to put make-up on my face and I was NOT to mention it to anyone. There are many more worse stories.
I understand how loving ourselves is not the same..as I have said many of times, I would love, love, love to have a Mom with skin on. For me, I have experienced major healing and am learning to love, support and nurture myself. It all started when I wanted to hurt my daughter when she was three. No, it is probably not the same, yet is is the only solution for me if I want to experience any kind of love here and now. I have been married twice and lived with a guy three years; I was unable to love them and let them in. My heart was closed. I had no idea how to open it. The pain inside me was unbearable. I couldn\'t give and recieve love as I had no idea how to even begin.
All I know is for me, I feel to my knees thirty-two yrs. ago and surrendered to whatever this thing is we call God. I have cried, I have denied, I have hurt so bad I wanted to kill myself, I have surrendered over and over and over, I have hated this thing we call God, I have hated me, I have hated people, I have hated my own insecurities and jealousy\'s (sp) I have blamed, I have felt totally useless and worthless! BUT....much of that has healed for me. There are still twinges of it every now and then and I still fill the sting of that lost childhood; but I have found there were some good things in my childood also. Learning to appreciate nature (my Dad was a hunter and a fisherman), learning how to stretch a dollar, having a good work ethic, being responsible and accountable, helping others, getting to experience the joy of playing, etc.
I don\'t know/understand why these things happen to us Amelah...but I do know they CAN BE OVERCOME. When I work with people, one of the things I ask them is \"Are you willing to be healed?\" For me, I was in sooooooo much pain and misery, that it was take my life or have the courage and strength to get better. How that was going to happen, I had no idea. But it has and I am very grateful....Do you want to be healed Amelah?
I can feel your need to be loved deeply and I understand that. I understand that little girl wanting hugs and kissed when she get off the bus. We\'ll never experience that. But healing for me has created an opening of my heart. That is not hugs and kisses, but it is a joy that I never knew before. Here if I can ever help you in any way.
Hugszzzz, Vicki
thanks for sharing your experience, strength & hope. it\'s not a matter of if I want to be healed; I don\'t believe that I am salvageable. How old am I? how many years of therapy have I gone to, looking for answers, for healing? even the therapists gave up on me as I continue to miss the mark again & again. so, my hope got squashed along the way.
Do you know, even the career counselor I saw, told me that I\'ve got it together, while I held a resume that was in pieces? so I give up. I try and try and try -- and it\'s like trying to massage my own foot. It\'s just not working.
people keep telling me that to love others, I must love myself first. I\'m expected to just do it? It sort of like trying to teach me to be resilient, when I am not. I believe that goes back to fundamentals, too.
I get so tired of trying to do for me what my mother could not do for me. Story of my life. And it\'s not working.
I eat something tasty and I put on weight. How is that loving?
I eat something healthy and it tastes like deprivation.
And I\'m told to change my perspective and think it tastes good. Even after all this time, my breakfast is still bland. But I\'ve gotten used to the blandness. I tell myself it\'s loving.
But I see others, laughing, enjoying their pancakes and eggs and bacon. I call that living life. I see others, enjoying their smokes, while I did this thing to \"love\" myself by quitting -- but instead I just feel deprived all over again.
Forgive my confusion.
((Hugs))