Love Knows When to Say “No More of This”
Love is the basic intangible need which characterizes our shared humanity. Once our requirements for sustenance and survival are met, we all turn towards the ideas of loving and being loved. To take seriously the primacy within which our need for love exists is to realize how easily we can stay inside of problematic situations for the wrong reasons. We may choose to stay in a particular relationship out of a profound need for love without a full appreciation of the ways in which that love can become something hurtful, damaging and ultimately disastrous for everyone involved.
Some people will go their entire lives without experiencing the moment of truth when they realize that what they have called love is, in fact, what has hurt them the most. Perhaps this realization comes only after an intense personal crisis, when we are forced to see clearly how our own needs have gone unmet, and why what we have called love is nothing like what real love should be. Many times a realization that what we call love is not love comes when our most basic of human needs goes unsatisfied. For too many people, destructive relationships with family, spouses and friends are allowed to continue because we can not envision a reality without them. From this perspective, if they do not love us, who will? And if our relationship with them cannot be salvaged, then what hope exists for any relationship with anyone else? If the people who are supposed to love us do not know how to, what can we reasonably expect from those who are under no such obligation? What happens when we finally come to terms with the realization that we are profoundly better off without their attempts to belittle us, misconstrue their illegitimate needs as our legitimate ones, or blame us for problems that are of their own unique making? As sad and difficult as these realizations may make us, they hold within them the key of freedom from what we misunderstood as love, and open the door towards a beautiful appreciation of what real love is. Delicately nestled within this realization is not just the opportunity to be loved in a healthy way, but to open yourself up to love others in ways so much more intimate and profound than how you previously loved. To ever experience this moment - this true epiphany, it is necessary that you reach the point where you can say firmly to yourself without anger in your heart, that you are finally ready to say “no more of this.”
Destructive relationships are characterized by three stages: the first is a tension-building stage when we experience sporadic fits of anger that stop short of being completely uncontrolled – the tremors before the quake if you will. The second stage is the culmination of the long term tension that has built up, with an explosion characterized by the individual pathologies at work both in the person and in their relationship with you. The third and final stage is when the person who has erupted realizes they need to make amends; unfortunately this many times occurs only because the person is afraid of losing you, and not as a result of a deeper change in behaviors based on a realization that they have no right to treat another person as they did you. For many people, this cycle will carry through their entire life with someone whom they have many good and wonderful reasons to love, but whose behavior is unacceptable and destructive to them both. People caught in this cycle struggle to appreciate that the evidence of love is not to stick with the person, but to force upon the other person a choice between the necessary changes that will allow them to be healthy both as an individual and as a partner in their relationship or the choice of life without them. Many times the cycle will continue unabated with no such realization because each person brought into the relationship similar needs, problems and consequently, views of what love means within the context of relationship. For many people caught in such a position both individual’s pathologies prevent them from the type of self-appraisal necessary to see themselves, the other person, and their relationship in such a light.
Ideas about love vary widely, but no healthy view of love incorporates the idea that love endlessly accommodates hurtful behavior with no expectation of change. To afford love this latitude would be to lose all ability to distinguish between acts that are hatefully wrong and those that are internally acts of love, but externally manifested as acts of hate and loathing. Love, as defined by most religions and many enlightened philosophies, is selfless and sacrificing. It is this realization that seems, at face-value, to contest the idea that love may require us to remove ourselves from a destructive relationship. If love is self-sacrificing and selfless, then what better way to love another person than to stay in a relationship with someone we are committed to regardless of their destructive tendencies? This is where an important distinction must be made, or else the idea of love loses all meaning: immature love struggles to discriminate between the act of being committed to a person and the act of leaving a relationship with the hopes that your decision will force upon the other person those changes necessary for their well being. Mature love, on the other hand, recognizes that no one is properly served when bad behavior goes unaddressed and that if it does for too long, it may be necessary to move on.
It is the question of how mature love should manifest itself within an unhealthy relationship that plagues many people who have come to grips with the nature of a relationship that needs “fixing.” Rightfully seen, love may require you to say “no more of this” and move on. This is a depressing realization, and is certainly a decision whose import is not to be trivialized. To get to this point, it is necessary to believe that no healthy middle ground can be established between you and the other individual. Repeated behavior coupled with multiple confrontations over destructive behavior that leads to no real change is a very strong signal that it is time to pay more attention to what you need in life than what the other person does. This is a sad moment in your life, and should not be marked by anger at the other person. The power of grace is its ability to appreciate that even the most destructive and hateful of people are so because of their own struggles and, in many cases, difficulties they were dealt as children. But, even the most accommodating forms of graciousness can not and should not overlook your own legitimate needs. Self-sacrifice can too many times be a beard for someone with their own struggle over self-loathing, and it is this very reason that allows too many destructive relationships to continue unchecked.
Coming to the point where you realize that you must say “no more of this” is an honorable decision. It is a regrettable decision, but we can regret the consequences of a situation not of our making, but a necessary ending that is of our choosing. In many ways it is the foundational moment of adulthood when we acknowledge our willingness to take responsibility for our lives outside of the destructive influences that formed us. It is not the same as being angry or bitter, but it will be misunderstood by the people still trapped inside the old paradigms as both. More importantly, it does not mean you do not love those still stuck in their old way of life, or that you in any way wish the worst for them. You may sincerely wish for them every hope, luck, dream and love you once shared together. But of all the things you wish for, having said “no more of this”, what you may hope for is change – the type of change that would allow you once again to share in those aspirations that previously bound you together. This is love, for them and for you.
previous post: Top 10 Books of 2005
next post: December 2005 Bookshelf
One Response to “Love Knows When to Say “No More of This””
Leave a Reply
About MysteriousFaith
“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
Themes
Now Reading
Search
Favorites
Personal Writing
Theology
Categories
Meta Data
January 2nd, 2006 at 10:06 am
Love must be a continually evolving entity that adapts and honors those that are involved. We have all experience relationships where love is very one sided or singly dictated in a rigid, selfish and unchanging fashion. It was well written.