Love II

So here's where it gets personal... We all love and want to be loved on our terms... My love language is Quality Time with Words of Affirmation close behind... So it would make sense then that ignoring me is the worst possible thing you can do. It cuts me like nothing else. Knowing that, I have to be careful to control my natural instinct to withdraw my time, words and attention from the people I feel ignored (unloved) by. The last couple of weeks I've been really challenged by that, and I think I've learned a lot, as well as made a few mistakes, but hey, I'm still learning about this love thing..

When our love, and the way we express it, is rebuffed, how do we react? It's easy to act up, act out, clam up, lash out, or even sell out and put out in an effort to get what we want. What happens when we get hurt, when someone breaks our heart or frustrates us and causes us pain? Do we cut the person out of our life and decide to hate them forever? One of my friends told me that when you get tired of being sick and tired... That we need to perhaps focus on the reasons why it didn't work out, why they are not right for us. So what then, should we write out a list of everything bad about the other person, everything we didn't like about them and stick it on our mirror to be read everyday until we "get over" them? Do we make ourselves hate them in an effort to stop loving them? I don't want to do that...

If that's the case and that's the way we handle feeling unloved, then maybe we didn't really love the other person to begin with... Maybe we just selfishly used them to make ourselves feel good, and when they no longer did, we disposed of the relationship because it was now causing us more pain than pleasure. It's a "normal" response, right? I mean no wonder so many relationships now never reach the altar and even when they do, half of them end in divorce. It's the "I'll love you while you make me feel loved" type of deal now, which has replaced the "For better or worse, till death do us part".

Love is a catalyst for love... Love responds to love... When someone frustrates us, it's natural to want to change them to suit ourselves, but that seldom, if ever, works... Loving them first however, continuing to love them and showing them love in their love language (not yours) even when at first they don't respond, is demonstrating real love. If they let you, that is... But that's a whole different blog...