In 1967 John Lennon wrote the song "Everything We Need is Love." Again, he admitted that he had maltreated his wife, abandoned one of his children, he was hacking his Jewish gay manager with homophobic and anti-Semitic insults, and once a day he was lying in front of a crowd of people with absolutely naked cameras.
Thirty-five years later, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails wrote the song "Love Is Not Enough." Reznor, despite his popularity with his shocking performances on the stage and grotesque alarming clips, managed to heal himself of drug addiction and alcohol dependence, married a woman, two children were born, and then canceled the studio and concert activity stay at home and become a good husband and father.
One of these men has a pure and realistic understanding of love. The other - no. One of them idealizes love, seeing the solution of all the problems. The other - no. One of them was probably a messy narcissus. The second - it was not.
Three bitter truths about love
In our culture, many are idealizing love. We see in it a lofty panacea for all life problems. Our films and books represent it as the ultimate goal in life, the final solution to all our pains and struggles. And because we are idealizing love, we overestimate it. As a result, we have to pay for our relationship.
When we believe that "everything we need is love," like Lennon, we tend to ignore fundamental values: respect, humility, and commitment to the people we care about. After all, if love solves everything, why do we have to deal with other things - with complicated things?
But if, as Reznor, we believe that "love is not enough," we understand that a strong relationship requires something more than pure emotions or strong passions. We understand that there are things more important in our lives and in our relationships than just being in love. And the success of our relationship depends on deeper and more important values.
The problem with the idealization in love is that we are creating unrealistic expectations about what is actually love and what it can do for us. These unrealistic expectations then sabotage those same relationships we hold above all. Let me give you an example:
1. Love does not always mean compatibility.
Just the fact that you fell in love with someone does not mean that he is the good partner for you in the long run. Love is an emotional process, compatibility - a logical process. And they do not necessarily pass through each other.
You may fall in love with a person who does not behave well with you, makes you feel bad and think of yourself that you are worse than you, do not respect you as much as you respect him or his life is so unsettled that it can fall down and your life.
You may fall in love with someone whose ambitions and goals in life are others that contradict yours or someone whose philosophical beliefs or views are in conflict with your sense of reality. You may fall in love with someone who sucks out of your life and happiness. This is paradoxical, but it is a fact.
When I think about all these catastrophic relationships that people tell me in the letters I get, most of them have been in such a situation because of emotions. They have felt that famous "spark" and have lost their minds.
What if he is an alcoholic, an obsessive Christian, and she's a drug addict, bisexual, or who knows what else they are? Anyway, it seems to you that this is something most normal and right.
And when she was throwing him in dishes after half a year, and he prayed to Jesus twelve times a day for her salvation, they were surprised to ask, "Why is nothing wrong?" In fact, everything has not gone as it should before it starts.
When you meet and look for a partner, you should be guided not only by your heart but also by your mind. Yes, you want to find someone who will make your heart excited, everything in you to tremble and sing.
But you also need to judge the person and how they relate to people, what are their ambitions and views. Because if you fall in love with a person who does not suit you ... it is, as a cartoon character from the South Park series once said, bad times will happen to you.
2. Love does not solve problems in relationships.
With my first girlfriend, we were crazy in love with one another. However, we lived in different cities, we had no money to see each other, our families were hateful, and we were experiencing idle dramas and quarrels every week.
And every time we were fighting, the next day we were reconciling and reminding us that we loved foolishly and that no trifling matter, because we love it so much and we will surely find a way to solve everything, we only have to wait a bit, look around and everything will be fine.
Our love made us feel that we could overcome everything, although it was absolutely nothing to change. As you can see, no problem has been solved. The quarrels were repeated. Arguments became more and acuter. The impossibility of even being seen hanging around our neck like a millstone.
We were absorbed by ourselves so much that we could not even communicate normally. We hung on the phone for hours and practically nothing wisely said. Now, looking back, I understand that there was no hope for us. Still, it continued for three miserable years!
After all, love overcomes everything, does not it?
It is no strange that our relationship was blazing and crashing like a flamboyant Hindenburg airship. The split was terrible. And from these relationships, I took a great lesson: though love makes you feel better about your life problems, it does not solve any of them.
Emotions can be intoxicating, every conquered height may look more and more impressive, but until solid stable soil appears under your feet, the tidal wave of emotions will eventually sweep away everything.
3. It's not always worth sacrificing yourself for love.
One of the important features of love for someone is your ability to think about this person, for his needs more than for yourself. But the question they ask very rarely is, "What do I sacrifice for the other and do you think that?"
In love relationships, it is normal for both to sacrifice their desires, their needs, and their time for the other. I would say that this is an adequate and healthy behavior and that is what makes relations really important.
But when it comes to sacrificing self-esteem, self-dignity, physical state, ambitions, and goals in life, just to be with someone, love becomes problematic.
Love relationships should be complementary to our individual identity rather than harm, ruin, or replace it.
If we find ourselves in a situation where we have allowed and suffer disrespectful or abusive behavior, this, in essence, means that we allow our love to swallow us and bring us to zero. If we are not careful, we will only leave the shell of the man we have ever been.
Test through friendship
One of the relationship advice sounds like, "You and your partner must be best friends."
Most people only accept this advice on the positive side: "I have to spend time on my partner as I do for my best friend," "I have to talk to my partner openly, as I say to my best friend", "I have to have fun with my partner just as I am having fun with my best friend."
It is worthwhile, however, to look at the situation in a negative angle: "Would you allow your best friend to behave as negatively as your mate is behaving?" The unbelievable fact is that when we ask this question, even in most cases of unhealthy or dependent relationships, the answer is "no".
I knew a woman who had just married. She foolishly loved her husband. And she did not notice the fact that her husband was out of work all year round, showed no interest in preparing for the wedding, and often dropped her to surf with friends, and her family and friends were not very sensitive about their intentions his.
Nonetheless, she married him. But when the emotional peak of the wedding passed, reality remained. One year after the marriage, he was still not working, hesitating between two jobs, doing nothing at home while she was working, angry if she did not prepare a dinner, and every time she was discontented, he called her " gloss "and" brazen ". And yes, as before, she left her alone to travel with her friends for surfing.
And she fell into this situation because she ignored the three bitter truths of love described above. She idealized love. Despite all the signals he gave when they met, she believed love was a guarantee of compatibility. And she was not.
When her family and her friends shared their worries about the wedding, she believed that love would solve all the problems. But that did not happen. And now, when all her frenzy was crowded, she turned to her friends for advice what to do next, what else to give her, how to fix things.
And the truth is, he could not.
Why in our romantic relationship do we tolerate a behavior that we would never allow our friends for anything in the world? Imagine that your best friend has moved to live with you, he is hanging over and throwing the house, refuses to look for a job, does not pay rent, requires you to prepare his dinner and he is angry, he makes you when you are you complain. Such friendship will end faster than Paris Hilton's acting career.
Another situation. A man's girl was so jealous that she wanted to be given the passwords from all of her accounts and insisted on accompanying him in all his missions so that other women would not be tempted. His life was practically under 24-hour surveillance, 7 days a week.
And of this, he obviously suffered his self-esteem. She did not trust him to do anything anyway. His own value collapsed to zero. He himself has ceased to believe that he can do something on his own.
And as if he stayed with her! Why? Because he loved!
Remember the following: The only way to get full enjoyment of love - is to find something more important in your life than love.
You can love many different people throughout your life. You can love ones that are good for you and ones that are bad for you. You may find yourself engaged in simple love relationships or in complicated relationships. You can love when you are young and when you are old.
Love is not unique. Love is not uncommon. Love is not a deficient commodity. Unlike your self-esteem. From your sense of self-dignity. From your ability to trust. You may find yourself in love several times in your life, but if you lose self-esteem, your sense of self-dignity, or the ability to trust and trust people if you lose your confidence, it will be very difficult to get them back.
Love - it's a great experience. This is one of the most impressive experiences and experiences that life can offer us. And this is something that everybody should strive for - to experience it and to enjoy it.
But as with any life experience, it can be healthy and unhealthy. Like any other experience, it should not be decisive for you, your identity and your purpose in life. We can not afford to destroy us. We can not sacrifice to him our personality and self-esteem. Because at the moment we do that, we lose both love and ourselves. Because in life you need more than love.
Love is magnificent. Love is wonderful. Love is needed. But love is not enough.
Author: Mark Manson, writer, entrepreneur, and blogger
Much love - Krisii
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