Lessons from last month

Should love have limits?

I think a lot about love.

It is something I grew up thinking about often.

Love between family. Love between friends. Love between lovers.

I often asked myself, “what does it take to love someone well?”

I don’t think I knew the answer myself until very recently.

I grew up surrounded by a huge family. I saw love in all its facets. I saw the harsh realities of it, I saw how it could destroy someone beyond repair, I saw the way it could be twisted and used for power… but I also saw how it could save someone from the depths of hell. I saw the good. I saw it often enough to know, that when done right, it is worth all the troubles. It is worth counting on. It is worth devoting our lives to.

I think I saw one thing very often in my example of relationships, from my parents and close family, and one thing that was missing in its entirety. I saw self-sacrifice too often, and I saw no example of boundaries. Love never had any limits. It was meant to be given no matter what. Perhaps it wasn’t even love anymore, at times it was just a fire that was burning out, quickly — but still, people were desperately fanning it. Trying to keep it alive. There was a lot of forgiveness, but more than that, there was a lot of overlooking. Bad behavior was not confronted, needs were never addressed. Nobody acknowledged that that fire had burnt so much around it.

Maybe there was no forgiveness. There was just built-up resentment. It piled up at times, but everything was done to cover it up so that it never reared its ugly head. You know when your room gets dirty? And instead of cleaning it up, you just throw everything in your closet? That’s what my examples of love were like.

I learned very quickly that the appearance of perfection did not actually mean perfection. People will do anything to hide their skeletons. They will pretend, they will put on facades, they will tolerate and settle.

I made a promise to myself very early on that I would never tolerate and settle when it came to love.

To love well and be loved well

So, what does it take to love someone well? Or rather, what does it take to love well and be loved well?

I’m realizing that it takes a deep knowing of ourselves. Of our desires. Of our wants, needs, expectations, values, truths and probably more.

When I was younger, I didn’t know that in order to build a successful relationship, you actually have to address what you believe in — with yourself and with another person. I thought relationships were just about liking someone enough to want to spend the rest of your life with them. And that is certainly part of it. But I think a larger part of it is setting limits.

In order to love well, we need to define our limits. We even need to define our future. What kind of a life are we building, and what kind of a person can help us build that life? I don’t think this question is asked very often when we are in search for love. We also need to define what we will never tolerate. Define our expectations. Say them out loud. If you don’t know what you’re willing to tolerate, if you don’t have expectations for yourself, you will very quickly find yourself in places where you will tolerate abuse and wonder what got you there in the first place.

Loving someone well also requires having principles — and discussing those principles. Honesty, loyalty, respect. If you do not have a strong foundation in your relationships built on shared principles, you are just as good as lost.

To love well and be loved well we must actually stand up for ourselves. Often.

You see loving other people begins with loving ourselves. It seems like a cliche. But how can you expect yourself to teach another person how to love you well when you don’t even believe you’re worthy of being loved well?

Our own measure of our worthiness, our values, our vision, our desires, our need — they set the standard for the love we are willing to accept.

Ultimately, I realized, cultivating good relationships has more to do with us than it will ever have anything to do with another person. Our view of who we are sets the standards for who we allow into our life. The spotlight should always fall back on ourselves. We can’t blame other people for what we allow.

We accept the love we think we deserve.

I never understood what this meant. I always thought it was just some saying from a teenage angst movie. But it holds a large amount of truth to it. When we don’t believe we are worthy of good, whole love, when we have no understanding of what love means to us — we will accept things that might even ruin us. Every single time.