Capacity and Reciprocity

I speak on love...a LOT, but that's because no matter how much I try...I end up breaking love down to someone. Am I God? NO! No way...but, I have always been in awe of what love can do. I am a sucker for love stories, whether they're between couples or families...or friends. I love how miracles are born through love and people's determination to fight for it.

Today, I was talking to a friend of mine. She's newly broken-hearted. She spent almost a year with someone, whom seemingly didn't grasp the intensity of her love. She gave up a lot for him...probably more than any person should do for another. In typical fashion, whenever a person gives up too much of themselves during a relationship, it's extremely difficult to get that back when they're gone. I believe in compromise, consideration, adaption, even...but never total sacrifice. I've learned that the very hard way.

She wants to understand why he did and said what he did. She wonders if he ever loved her and if she was doomed to live a life of loneliness. It's the questions we all ask. When a relationship ends...we think the love has, too. We question what it is we did, where we made the mistakes, and how do we get it back if possible. We blame ourselves for letting love in and curse it to a banishment of never again. Yet, in our hearts...its not the love we try to banish. It's the pain. My friend wondered why she didn't hurt this deeply when she and her husband separated. I told her, simply...you didn't love him as deeply as you did this man here.

She wondered why it is that people get what they need from her and leave. How unfair it is to always be the one giving and nurturing and coddling. To be other's inspiration and to never feel like someone cares about her enough to inspire her as well. I told her, that I preferred to have someone take what they want and leave...rather than stay and milk me over and over again. The kind that feel entitled for you to give them you with no reciprocity. I know I've said it before...I've had to have written a similar blog, but I'll say it again.

Unconditional love. Not everyone is capable of coming CLOSE to this kind of love, but to make it more possible for you, I'll define it simply. Loving without condition or expectation. Knowing that you loved because YOU were capable (even if they weren't). I still do believe that people love to their capacity. The one I love may never give me back what I give...and that's ok. Someone WILL love me, because I am open to love as it comes. Looking for it in a certain package, wrapped how you want to receive it...is an automatic letdown. You will NOT get it as you give it from who it is you give it to. Sometimes, we're in people's lives to affect them and move on. To learn something and move on. To feel what is being felt in the now...and then move on. Operative phrase: "move on". Sounds easy, right? Of COURSE it isn't. That would be Pollyanna-ish and foolish to think that you could so easily get over having your heart broken, your dreams dashed and/or your love betrayed. No...not easy...but it gets better. Only if you want it to. God can replenish. He's in that business, you know? And if you don't believe in God, but in your own autonomy...then either way...you have the power to heal thyself. Affirm the positivity around you. The beautiful parts of that union. The love that you were blessed to feel...however it ended. Know that, the one person who is now gone does not encompass all love. Love is bigger than one person. No man or woman should be able to take love from you and leave you listless in pain.

Another thing...if a person is broken or damaged all on their own. Has issues of insecurity and self-esteem. Hates themselves and anyone who reminds them of who they are...that is not your pain to own. People do and be to their own capacity. Every action "against" you is not against YOU. Personalizing and internalizing someone else's demons is a sure fire way to end up beating yourself up to the point of pulverization. Reciprocity is only possible, if the person embodies the capacity to give that very thing to themselves.