Healthy Love

A teacher once asked her class to write down The Seven Natural Wonders of the World. The answer  for which she was looking would have been  the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Everest, etc.  However, one insightful little girl gave an even more appropriate answer: To touch, to taste, to see, to hear, to feel, to laugh and finally and most importantly…to LOVE…

The natural wonder of love is by far the most important, beautiful and fulfilling. There is nothing greater than the special camaraderie with someone you love—that easy chair kind of comfort that goes hand in hand with trust.

However, the emotion of love can be complex and painful…only if you allow it. Catch an episode of Jerry Springer and you’ll see love, if you can call it that, at its worst and most unattractive. It’s an unhealthy, possessive love that can manifest itself in extreme unhappiness…only if you allow it, I repeat.

There is a, however, a healthy way to love. The key is to not expect someone else to create your happiness for you. The job of “your happiness” is solely up to you and only you. In Scott Peck’s book, “The Road Less Traveled”, there is a chapter appropriately titled “Love is Separateness.”  He says that “if you expect another person to make you happy, you’ll be endlessly disappointed. It is the separateness of the partners that enriches the union. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other, but actually seeks to cultivate it.”

There is a lyric from a song by Bread that say, “I can’t live if living is without you.”  This sends the wrong message to all, especially our youthful teens who would feel  loss so deeply after break-ups—not realizing that healing can occur and hope for happiness can be there once again. The secret is for them to be fully aware of who they are and what their mission in life is to be. Guiding them to find their own intrinsic value is a parent’s greatest gift to them.

My mother used to say to my sister and me between boyfriend episodes to “utilize the time working on planting your own garden so you’ll be a better bloom for the next person.” Consider it a period of enrichment.

Another meaningful point is that love cannot be defined as the ownership of someone. There is a misconception that possessiveness is equated with love. There is no room for growth when you’re being grasped and held too tightly. Some people believe that dependency is love. Dr. Peck says, “in actuality it is not live; it is a form of anti-love. It nourishes infantilism rather than growth. Ultimately, it destroys rather than builds relationships.”

“If you leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me,” is a lyric from a song by Chicago. However, it paints the wrong image for a healthy style of love. It would imply that someone else is responsible for your happiness, A more appropriately healthy lyric would be, “If you leave me now, I will miss you a lot; but, you are leaving behind a whole person and the biggest part of whom is still intact.”

Another unhealthy falsehood of love, is  believing in the concept that love has to be proven to you by your partner. Don’t be under the mistaken impression that real love is synonymous with the bigger, better and most expensive gifts. Be content in the simplicity and security of just “being loved.” The relationship would be one of pure enjoyment of each other without unnecessary expectations and pressure.

The tradition of buying a diamond ring as an engagement present should never have been started. The focus of the marriage from the beginning is on superficialities. It promotes from the start a need to prove love by the size and quality of the ring. It would be more fitting for the ring to be a more simple band symbolizing the expectations of an everlasting, solid union. Perhaps, then the marriage, itself, would be the “beautiful jewel”…a true natural wonder of the world.