Have you ever wondered why the people we love the most are the ones we hurt the most or the ones who hurt us the most?
I have thought on these lines so often. I am amazed when people say love hurts, love is poison or whatever they display on walls and vehicles.
The simple and more practical answer to that question would be they are the ones around us most of the time. The constant physical presence or virtual closeness could one reason behind the friction and hurt. When you love someone so much you tend to seek their company more often letting friction have its way.
Friction is fine as long there is a good understanding between the two. I have a friend who is constantly bickering with her spouse, but at the end of the day they kiss and make up because their love is pretty strong.
Another reason could be that since we love the other person so much, we become oversensitive and our emotions get a rude shock when their words or deeds do not align with our expectations.
With our emotional investment being high we get deflated as soon as anything sharp or prickly touches us. Our expectations are high when we love someone so much and so are the hurts when their words or actions fall below the level of expectations.
Have you seen people who have been severely hurt? They tend to draw back into their shells so much to avoid being hurt again. Their fear of hurt reaches abnormal levels that they tend to avoid any kind of interaction with others. That is an extreme reaction that some people show when they are hurt emotionally.
We hurt those we love when we test boundaries and try to blend in together. Often the other person resents when their boundaries are disturbed. However, the boundaries lines in relationships never remain strong.
We could also be projecting our emotions from a past relationship into the current one. Let me explain this clearly. I found a new friend quite recently who was in many ways like another friend I had from the past and missed so much. The closer I got to this new person I tended to unconsciously bring in the same feelings I had in my other relationship, this just didn't work well at all. The truth is each relationship is different and unique in its own way. Trying to make one relationship seem like the other is futile, irrespective of how beautiful the previous relationship was. The sooner we recognize this the better.
The personal space between two individuals is a mystical boundary that exists and still doesn't. Being able to gauge this and adapt to it is one constant struggle for most people. This is an area where hurts and misunderstandings could surface.
These are some of the ways in which we could hurt those we love. Being in a relationship is like a tight rope walk. This almost always seems difficult, almost impossible to the outsider, but for the one who does it day in and day out it is just another day's walk.
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond