WorldWideWe

The truth is, we outgrow those who don’t know how to love us.

No one wants to be lonely; even those who feel fairly comfortable being alone desire companionship. I do. It’s been something on my mind since I ended my two-year sabbatical two months ago.

But am I ready to fall in love again? That’s an entirely different question this time around.

If you had asked me this question two years ago, I would have answered with a resounding and confident "yes!" Back then, I almost got married to someone I was dating. But three days before our supposed wedding day bliss, I apologized and told him I couldn't.

...not that I fell out of love. But I realized that love alone would not suffice.

Being in love does not equate to being loving. Saoirse Ronan poignantly depicts this in one of my favorite scenes in Greta Gerwig’s version of Little Women.

The capacity to love someone well is both a privilege and a responsibility. And while we all want to be loved, we aren’t all equipped to know how to love well.

The truth is that people will always, at the very least, willingly accept the kind of love they aren’t even prepared to reciprocate.

Jo March : Perhaps… perhaps I was too quick in turning him down. Laurie.

Marmee March : Do you love him?

Jo March : If he asked me again, I think I would say yes. Do you think he’ll ask me again?

Marmee March : But do you love him?

Jo March : I care more to be loved. I want to be loved.

Marmee March : That is not the same as loving.

Why does this matter? It matters because everyone desires to be loved, but not everyone is capable of loving, let alone loving someone in a way that’s healthy and good for them.

And while love is the most primal desire we all have, we’re not all taught how to properly do it.

That’s why most relationships fail. This is why love feels scary.

We don’t fear love. We fear people are incapable of loving us.

Truthfully, though, have you ever stopped to also ask yourself if you have also learned how to love yourself well?

I know it’s such a cliche. Cliches, on the other hand, exist because they contain some form of stereotypical truth.

When was the last time you have learned to love yourself unconditionally?

I did not know how to do that two years ago. Two years post-sabbatical, I am still learning how to do that.

If I had pushed through with that marriage two years ago, I most likely would have ended up divorced. I could have been married to a person who still didn’t know how to love me well.

After all, how can you teach someone how to love you well if you don’t even know how to grant that to yourself first?

This is the loophole. We are drawn to people who mirror our dysfunction and deficiencies. If we’re not careful, we might come from a place of lack instead of healing. Equally yoked relationships require two healthy, capable, self-aware adults who consent and commit to choosing the same person to evolve with.

This is why relationships require commitment.

Marriage is the ultimate social declaration of this, as well as a covenant you enter with God if you are spiritual. You don’t just get married out of love. That is not the correct way to look at it; rather, it is a very simplistic and fairytale-minded way of perceiving things.

Without the core building blocks of respect, trust, accountability, friendship, a whole lot of forgiving, and forgiveness — love alone won’t make it.

It’s like eating icing on a cake that tastes sour and stale. You would not want that flavor for a wedding cake, right? So, why marry a person who can only give you the icing when they can’t bake you the cake yet?

Similarly, have you cultivated those baking skills too?

Great relationships require partnerships, and even the greatest person on the planet can only do so much more without an equally capable partner or team.

Perhaps this is why the lucky ones who say they have found “the one” declare how lucky they are to marry their best friend.

Finally, love isn’t always just romantic.

Learning how to love isn’t something we can only learn within the confines of a relationship. It’s a skill we ought to develop early, even at a young age.

While it is supposedly the norm, the truth is that most of us did not grow up in healthy homes that modeled healthy love and relationships for us. Ergo, we grew up thinking chaos, pain, unreliability, and a lack of safety in relationships were fairly tolerable. ‘

It might seem like a misnomer that we’re all wired to want good, but not all of us know what’s good for us.

We accept the love we think we deserve.

If you grow up in broken or dysfunctional homes, "good" can become subjective. It might be hard to understand the difference between what is healthy and what is good, and your tolerance to pain and dysfunction might somewhat go awry.

Still, even if you did not really go through a turbulent upbringing, I say it is most likely you still went through the highs and lows of life and loving yourself.

Being self-aware does not come naturally to all of us. Age does not guarantee wisdom either.

Self-work is an ongoing process. Self-compassion does not come easily, either. Much like how we hoped to find a romantic partner, a parent, a friend, and a community that would love us wholeheartedly, we must have this kind of relationship with ourselves too.

Unconditional love is a lifelong skill to practice.

When life does not go as planned, when dreams don’t materialize, when self-realization does not come to fruition, or when we feel stuck in a rut — it’s hard to love ourselves. But it is especially in those moments of burning and breaking that we need to love each other more.

How are we to offer the same kind of love to someone else when we can’t even keep ourselves warm with our own embers?

Self-love is the foundation of every kind of love we ought to give and take in this world. Hopefully, you love God too.

God is a designer.

God is your maker.

It would be difficult to determine your own make and model if you did not know who designed it.

I hope you fall in love with God too. I hope you learn to love yourself the way God sees you.

P.S. To Chris, Alex, and Paul — thank you for showing me the different shades of love and the skills of loving I have yet to learn. (11/30/22)