I started this blog post with the firm believe that unconditional love is insidious and dangerous. I wanted to prove that if you unconditionally love it just provides the conditions for others to trample and hurt those of us that may unconditionally love. Full transparency, my heart is broken and trying to mend. As I was writing it felt raw but not real.
Love is Never the Problem
Then like a bolt of lightening I saw and could almost smell my own bullshit. Love was and is NEVER the problem. That needs to be repeated. LOVE was and is NEVER the problem. If love was not the problem, then what was the problem? Another lightening bolt, There was NO PROBLEM! “F” IT!!! I got my heart broken. That was a known risk. I was in the game. I put it out there. I paid the entrance fee to the game of love and life by willing to be vulnerable and allow myself to feel love but also to feel pain. Pain is a universal experience in life.
In the words of the great Urban Poet (rapper), Jadakis in song “Gov’t Cheese” on his latest album Ignatius released this year he said prophetic words. “One thing about pain, pain is universal. It don’t matter how much money you got. It don’t matter how bad your financial situation is. Pain is the one thing that everybody in the world can relate to. You can’t run from it, you can’t escape it. It is really a part of life.” Even though pain is universal there is hope. He acknowledges that pain can be a teacher based on the “decisions you make on how you deal with it will determine just how bad your next experience with pain will be”.
Countless of us are fake and tip toe around love and matters of the heart and intimacy out of fear of being real, being vulnerable. Fear is used as a safety mechanism to avoid getting hurt. Little do they know, like many things in life, if you want the full experience you have to be committed and fully immersed. You have be WILLING to give it if “100”. If you aren’t ready to put it all on the line then you just aren’t ready to be put in the game.
To experience love to its fullest you have to be willing to risk it ALL for love. You have to be willing to look like an ass for love. You have to be willing to scream and shout for love. If you think that is just cuddling, giggling and romance then I have some bad news for you. You graduated high school, I hope…. (If you haven’t stop having someone read this to you and go get your MF’in’ G.E.D.!) What I am aspiring for is Genuine LOVE, NOT puppy love. If you want something real and genuine, it requires you to be real and genuine.
It is about the “LIKES” on Facebook and the “Gram” but not about the “LOVE”.
The sad thing is that we live in a culture that doesn’t promote authenticity. It is about the “LIKES” on Facebook and the “Gram” but not about the “LOVE”. We are trained to put on the various faces to be accepted. One for work. One for home. One for our partners. One for friends. One for our children. It is exhausting. If we continue to do this we eventually get tired. We feel shallow, hollow and empty. The LIKES aren’t enough. The approval is not enough so we look in often times unhealthy directions like drugs, fame, work, alcohol, sex but end up in the same spot. Empty and alone.
Many of us have forgotten the light the that burns within. We are born innocent and pure and within each of us is the essence of love. Over time we get hurt by others and life. Often times our injuries are by others that also have wounds that covered their light. This is why the pain and destructive behavior is often intergenerational. These emotional injuries add layers and layers of scar tissue preventing us from showing our pure light and love to its fullness or with much consistency.
I am confident that LOVE is the energy source in all of us that makes life possible.
I am confident that LOVE is the energy source in all of us that makes life possible. The heart if allowed to remain open has an endless supply of love. There can only be artificial constraints on the capacity of a heart to love. We are all individual Stars with the ability to generate our own love and thus create an endless supply of fuel that makes life possible. A Star cannot be confined by Walls nor should it be. A heart should also not be confined by Walls. A Star is not preoccupied with its position in the heavens or is it concerned with who sees it’s light. It just blesses those who are fortunate to see their light and allows them voice their wishes.
The same applies with our love. We should not be concerned who sees our light and receives our love. How they receive that love is a reflection of them and not us. Our capacity to love is limitless. We put artificial constraints on the amount of love we give. Over time these constraints confine us and dulls our light. My new goal is not to live defensively. I would be doing a disservice if my mission was to help people not get hurt. It would be more constructive to remind ourselves that even if we get hurt that we are enough. Despite being hurt or experiencing pain, that pain is just a part of the game and doesn’t detract from our self-worth. If pain is the price of admission, the potential rewards are so worth it. If we are willing to be vulnerable and risking being seen, heard and loved and open to experiencing pain, deep love is possible.
I think a sizable percentage of relationships are entered into without clear understanding what they need out of a relationship.
My new goal is to keep my heart open. Only with an open heart can we experience life to it fullest. Despite the above “love fest” there are rules to this game of love. The great news is that we each individually get to set their own rules. Those rules of engagement are what I call my “Must Haves”. We need to establish our Must Haves to sustain a healthy relationship. For 24 years of my relationship I was not honest with myself on what my must haves were out of fear. Fear of losing the love of my life. Fear of abandonment and inadequacy. After being confronted with the reality of divorce, I figured that since the inevitable was coming, now is as good a time as any to figure that what I needed out of relationship. I felt that this would help me process what had gone so wrong in my current relationship and help me in any future relationships. First, no one can tell you what your must haves are and should be. They are your Must Haves. For me, my must haves included:
- Honesty
- Loyalty
- Adventurous spirit
- Optimistic attitude
- The ability to love me for me.
- Non smoker
- Not a hard core conservative
- Physically fit and attractive
- Kind
- Open with feelings
Tragically I do not think I was alone in not establishing my boundaries and Must Haves. I think a sizable percentage of relationships are entered into without clear understanding what they need out of a relationship. If we establish what we need in a relationship the next integral piece is to clearly communicate those expectations to our partners. For a variety of reasons we make excuses why we do not establish our MUST HAVES. These excuses are often feelings of inadequacy, low self esteem, low self worth and all too often we feel that our partners should be mind readers and “know” what I need if they “truly loved us”. Something that is the foundation of a healthy relationship MUST be communicated not only to ourselves but our partners on a regular basis and not left to mystical mind reading.
Must Haves are the mandatory minimum requirements for an loving, intimate relationship to work.
Must Haves are the mandatory minimum requirements for an loving, intimate relationship to work. If these must haves are missing in my relationships it will not be a healthy relationship that includes intimacy and a deep connection that I crave. I made excuses and exceptions for why these things were not being met but that my love would make up for these deficiencies. I was wrong. They were necessary for my relationship to work and I should have never compromised on these things, which I did time and time again.
The requirements are and should be different for different people but in a healthy relationship they oftentimes include conditions like respect, trust, honesty, and loyalty. If you are willing give your time, love and affection away without getting these in return then you are devaluing what you are giving away. If there is an imbalance in your relationship, or if the both of you are not unconditionally in love with each other (I don’t know if that is healthy or possible), or if you are not perfectly self aware individuals your partner will sense this and value you even less. As the saying goes if you aren’t wiling to stand for something you will fall for anything.
I fell in love, and I did hard. I told myself there was NOTHING that I wouldn’t do for her love and affection. I found myself on countless dark nights wondering how the hell did I get here. I was smart and relatively successful. Yes I may not have been the best looking guy but definitely not the worst looking guy with, I felt, a decent personality. How was it that I would routinely end up begging someone who time and time in again be asking to leave or show me her disloyalty with hurtful words and untrustworthy actions?
The answer was found in my subconscious programing, an internal script that had been embedded in me well before I met my her. This programming is responsible for how we view events, make choices, form relationships, end relationships, get triggered, raise kids, keep jobs, leave jobs, and on and on and on. My subconscious programming unfortunately was that I had a low personal self worth stemming from childhood wounds that I had not healed, let alone knew existed. I was substituting love and affection as a drug to heal the pain of these childhood wounds. Had I been a healthy self aware person, I would understand that my self worth is independent of others and that I did not need to seek a constant validation for others no matter who they were, from parents to, friends, employers or my spouse. I am now convinced that our mission in life is to just be our authentic selves. The goal of this blog is to aid myself and others to be the best version of ourselves and give Birth to the Beast within.