If I love you in a way you don’t receive as love, does it mean I don’t love you?
This is a question I asked multiple times today. Relationships are typically defined by two or more consenting parties. I love you, and you love me; that makes us lovers. I am your friend, and you are my friend; that makes us friends.
But I can love you without you loving me back. I can think of you as a friend when you don’t consider me your friend. In that way, relationships don’t really depend on other people and it just depends on your perspective of the other person.
Now, going back to our original question. I love you, and I express it to you. So from your perspective, you’re expecting love from me. But I happen to express my love in a way that you don’t receive as love.
For example, I’m a very kinesthetic lover; I love touch. But growing up my dad wasn’t really a kinesthetic lover and he would always push me aside when I clung on to him (to his defense, I did become quite a chunky kid pretty fast). My wife is similar, she thinks I’m too heavy for her and she doesn’t like sweating because of my body temperature.
So I do love you from my end, but you can’t receive it as love. This may be a preferential thing, or it can be a stronger karmic experience. For example you may have been betrayed by someone who did a lot of sweet talking to you. After that experience you’re likely to be extra wary of people who are sweet talkers, even if they come with genuinely good intentions.
I love you, but I love you in my way. You think I love you, but you never see me express love because you don’t receive my love as love. In this case is it fair for you to say that I don’t love you? Because I never express your love in a way that you can receive?
I am a person with person-like qualities, and imperfection is one of them. I will at times be unable to love you in the way you want because of my obsessions and insistences on how I think I should love you. But the more tragic part is, I may actually lack the ability and the capacity to love you in the way you want.
For example, suppose you’re a person who wants to receive handcrafted tokens of love and I don’t have hands. Suppose you’re a person who wants a steady, consistent expression of love and I am neurodiverse in a way that I cannot do anything with consistency.
In this case, do I love you or do I not love you?
I may never be able to love you in the way you want, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. We forget this simple fact in the most critical way when we hate our loved ones, and today specifically I want to talk about parents.
When you have a rough childhood and have a rocky relationship with parents, the wound tends to settle deep inside of your heart. The belief of “even my parents, whose job it is to love me, don’t love me” extends to “if my parents don’t love me, how will anyone else love me? I am inherently un-lovable”.
I’ve seen people try lots of different methodologies around healing this wound. Yes, you can reframe it. Yes, you can go into your unconscious and re-experience key moments. Yes, you can get medication for managing symptoms of CPTSD. But none of them resolve the core issue of my parents don’t love me.
All of the above cases, it’s easy to see the interaction between two people and the emotions they have for each other if we’re observing them as the third person. But when it comes to you, your life, and your experiences, it’s so difficult to accept this fundamental fact: YOUR PARENTS LOVE YOU.
The great tragedy is that because of their human imperfections they cannot love you in the way you want to receive. This is not personal, this isn’t because they hate you; can YOU always love others in the way they want to receive love instead of loving others in the way you want?
Love is a strong emotion but often times it ends up being weaker than the primal need for self-preservation. This is not evidence that they don’t love you. This is evidence that they are human with human minds.
Your parents love you, but they never learned how to manage their own emotions without outbursts. Your parents love you, but they never learned any other way of discipline but physical punishment. Your parents love you, but they never learned any other way of parenting outside of the experience of them being parented. Had they known, had they learned, had they been aware that it wasn’t the only way to love you… They would have chosen otherwise.
When we realize that they tried their very best and fell short as human beings, they stop being our abusers and enemies. They turn into small children of their own, not knowing how to navigate life with all the suffering they have over their shoulders. They become children who are deserving of your love.
As an adult, re-parenting yourself is one thing. Forgetting the grudges and loving your parents is one thing. But the best thing you can do (and the hardest thing) you can do for yourself and your parents when it comes to parent-child relationships is, being the parent that your parents wish they had.
You will see the inner children inside of your old parents for the first time and you will see how lovable they are at their core as human beings. And when you see that inside of your parents, you will see how lovable you are as an offspring of such lovely people.
This re-learning of the very first relationship you learn may be the most challenging thing to do in your life. But sometimes the medicine that helps the most is the most bitter. It is like childbirth, the tremendous amount of pain and literal threat of death; it is worth it to see the child out in the world, as you came out.
Billy Seol
July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com
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