We are usually born into a family that loves us. We are held, fed, watched attentively, and cared for in every way as babies and children. We cannot refuse love. We don’t have the control over our bodies to do so.
As we age and turn into tweens and teenagers, this shifts. We can refuse love just the same as allow it. We begin to accept love from the “wrong” people sometimes hurting us, maybe for the first time.
As adults, we’ve all been burned at least once. We put up our barriers and boundaries, build the castle walls and keep safe inside them. It’s all we can do, right?
How do we continue to open ourselves up to the healing power of love-the love of friends and family as well as the love of a partner?
I don’t have the answer to this question but I’m working on it.
At this moment in time, I am being asked to rethink the concept of being “helped”. I am being asked to allow people into my life to be of assistance at the same time as trying not to allow myself to be filled with fear that this “help” has strings attached, or expectations awaiting around the corner.
What am I missing by NOT allowing them to help? Is it truly a risk to allow people in or is it a misperception shaped by my past?
I was in a marriage for 27 years to a man who refused to help…or at least refused in a way that was not tainted by abuse. Help never came easily. It came after I “nagged and nagged him”, he said. But I hated reminding him of what needed to be done. Mind you, I never, ever asked for flippant things. These were things that we needed…like the washing machine, or cleaning out the plumbing in the bathroom tub.
I didn’t ask for remodeling of my house, nor for paint jobs, nor cleaning help. I asked for only essentials. And whatever help I got…I paid for, in emotional abuse.
To receive help is thus, a challenge. What do I “owe” you for helping me? How do I accept fully knowing you aren’t getting anything out of this. You are getting no money, no sex, no “like” help, nothing reciprocal that I can think of. I am the only one benefitting here, that I can see.
What am I missing? Why do you offer?
Yes, we are friends. We have a connection that you would perhaps like to see go somewhere, someday. But it might not…and likely won’t. We are friends and we love spending time together. You give me hugs, a beer, tea…whatever the moment calls for. I give you so little back.
Perhaps I do not see things correctly. Perhaps my gift in return is nothing tangible. I know I have helped people in the past that I have simply had great hope for; graduates from high school, college, people that I knew would appreciate it and would do good with it.
I’ve given time and energy to so many people I could never count them. I’ve given my heart to many as well…many of whom have honored and loved me back. These were not men who I was sleeping with, however. These were friends and family.
So, why do we refuse to accept love? Love comes in all forms. But it seems that love is risky business. We cannot know others’ intentions, try as we might, as honed in as our intuition is.
I have a working hypothesis that our intuition is quite ruined by the time we are in middle school. All of the people who we should be able to trust have either broken our trust inadvertently or outright abused us by then. Trusting people just became confusing and difficult.
Do we seek a companion to love us that feels like that? I think we do. I ended up with a man who confused the hell out of me. My intuition had nothing to work with by the time I met him. All of the people who I had been taught to trust had breached that trust at some point, even my grandfather, who gave my ex the “entrance exam”. He didn’t even catch it. And my grandfather was a freaking angel.
We are worthy of being loved. Some of us are worthy of being loved…over there, where we are safely out of range. But we are still worthy of love. Those of us who haven’t truly harmed others are worthy of love up close. We have all hurt people, but harm is different.
That harm gets in the way of being loved. It makes us gun-shy. It tells us that people all have evil intentions and that we will never find anyone like us…anyone who will be kind with our hearts and not have expectations that are not welcome.
Being loved is so way much harder than loving. Loving others can be a one-way action. It is safe because we are the givers. We can put up the parameters in a way that keeps us safe. In being loved, we cannot do that. We either accept or we don’t. And we gain something beautiful or we lose out…again.
I think about how to teach my daughters what true and honest love looks like as they navigate their late teenage years. They have seen abuse by my significant others, confused with the perfect words, gifts, and deeds. They have seen too much.
But, they have been given something more. They have also seen the deep love of friends and we have named it. We have talked about how my best friends love them so much-how when they see them at work or at a performance, how they adore them. My friends love my children and see them because they loved me first.
Because of that, my children have a leg up. They will see the sincere love of friends and recognize it as they get older.
I hope they find the companionship they want, when they want it. I hope they don’t have to live with the confusion that has riddled my adult life.
I hope that their ideological background hasn’t taught them that love is conditional and that it can and should hurt at times. I do not want this for them. Love it not that.
Their accepting of love now, as teenagers, from safe sources, might just give them what they need going forward. It might help them expect the right things from every kind of relationship they find themselves in, be it friends, co-workers, or lovers.
Maybe practicing this when they are young will make all the difference in the end. I’ll be praying all along the way.
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This post was previously published on A Parent Is Born.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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