It starts in early childhood with Fairy Tales where the Prince and the Princess live happily ever-after. It continues in movies and books where "boy meets girl" "boy loses girl" "boy gets girl back" - the music swells and the happy couple ride off into the sunset.
Any time we set another human being up to be our Higher Power we are going to experience failure in whatever we are trying to accomplish. We will end up feeling victimized by the other person or by our self - and even when we feel victimized by the other person we blame ourselves for the choices we made. We are set up to fail to get our needs met in Romantic Relationships because of the belief system we were taught in childhood and the messages we got from our society growing up.
There is no goal to reach that will bring us to happily - ever after. We are not incomplete until we find our soul mate. We are not halves that cannot be whole without a relationship.
True love is not a painful obsession. It is not taking a hostage or being a hostage. It is not all-consuming, isolating, or constricting. Believing we can't be whole or happy without a relationship is unhealthy and leads us to accept deprivation and abuse, and to engage in manipulation, dishonesty, and power struggles. The type of love we learned about growing up is an addiction, a form of toxic love.
Here is a short list of characteristics of Love vs. Toxic Love
Love- development of self first priority.
Toxic Love- obsession with relationship
Love- room to grow, expand; desire for other to grow.
Toxic Love- Security, comfort in sameness; intensity of need seen as proof of love(may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness)
Love- separate interests; other friends; maintain other meaningful relationships.
Toxic Love- total involvement; limited social life; neglect old friends, interests.
Love- encouragement of each other's expanding; secure in own worth.
Toxic Love- preoccupation with other's behavior; fear of other changing.
Love- appropriate trust (i.e. trusting partner to behave accordingly)
Toxic Love- jealousy; possessiveness, fear of competition.
Love- compromise, negotiation or taking turns at leading. Problem solving together.
Toxic Love- power plays for control; blaming; passive or aggressive manipulation.
Love- embracing of each other's individuality.
Toxic Love- trying to change other to own image.
Love- relationship deals with all aspects of reality.
Toxic Love- relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant.
Love- self-care by both partner; emotional state not dependent on other's mood.
Toxic Love- expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other.
Love- loving detachment (healthy concern about partner, while letting go)
Toxic Love- fusion (being obsessed with each other's problems and feelings)
Love- sex is free choice growing out of caring and friendship.
Toxic Love- pressure around sex due to insecurity, fear and need for immediate gratification.
Love- ability to enjoy being alone.
Toxic Love- unable to endure separation; clinging
Love- cycle of comfort and contentment.
Toxic Love- cycle of pain and despair.
If you are anything like me, this was an eye opener. Let us keep in mind, there is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship - it is natural and healthy. Often times it is our expectations that set us up to be victims - causing us to abandon ourselves and our wants and needs.
Love doesn't mean always doing for other people.
It's normal for us to desire the love and acceptance of the important people in our lives. We might have begun doing favors for friends as a way of securing their affection. We didn't realize that we were establishing a habit that served no one. It taught us that we were loved only if we had done something for that love. And it enabled other people to shirk responsibilities that were clearly their own.
The program is teaching us about love. We are coming to believe that we are loved just as we are by our Higher Power. A "performance" is never necessary. We are learning that merely listening to others in need is a lovable act. Sharing with them our own experience, as others have done for us, is an act of love. We are seeing that assuming responsibility for all the details of our own lives is empowering us, and it is instilling self-love too.
In the past very little of what we thought was love was really love. And for years our lives stayed much the same. Now the changes are frequent and sometimes profound. We're discovering more happiness than we ever thought possible.
I will make sure I'm not trying to buy love today through my actions. I know now what real love is.
The above meditation comes from the book
A Life of My Own by Karen Casey copyright 1993
Helping: Doing something for someone that they are not capable of doing themselves.
Enabling: Doing for someone things that they could, and should be doing themselves.
Detaching: Granting less accessibility of your emotional state, long term, to the control or effects of another.
