In The End We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve
Its 4.00 pm at the hospital lobby. The weather was grey, with a light drizzle that made everything seems more gloomy. Its kind of rain that made people hesitate to put on their raincoat or not to. The security man glanced at me, then I dropped his my smile — Recently I decided to learn basic manners in order to survive.
As the rain quickly picked up to a steady spit and people decided to put on their raincoat, I felt the familiar, strange sensation inside my heart — its not like I had a heartbreak, its something else. It felt like having a hole in your chest — one you know wasn’t there (ofcourse, if the opposite situation occurred, my blood wouldn’t pump throughout my body and I would just die instantly) — but I felt it anyway. Its the despair longing of someone that I couldn’t put into words.
Heart is a strange place. It could make you feel like you’re missing someone random, out of nowhere, in the middle of the rain. But like another kind of emotion, its a fleeting sensation. We can easily miss someone for a few days, and then the longing just fades with time. I get used to it.
Again, heart is a strange place . Heart is often rather arrogant — it thought it had some kind of power over whomever we choose to love, often thought it had some power over our final decission about who we might choose as our partner and who clearly we don’t.
“We shouldn’t always trust our emotions… we should make a habit of questioning them.” — Mark Manson
I couldnt be more agree with Manson, that our emotions can not always be trusted. As far as my experience goes, the heart can led us to do such stupid things. For me, specifically, it onced led me to secretly crushing on someone back to high school only to took one conclusion that he MUST be hating me for no absolute reason. OR suddenly dumped someone who as close as the perfect form because my heart out of nowhere seemed to receive a strong belief about he must be not the right person for me. OR accidentally putting someone in a difficult situation from which there is no way out.
Then the next question popped out inside my head : then, in the end, who will we choose as our partner?
I heard this dialogue a long time ago when I watched the film. But it took quite a long time to really finally understand it. I tried looking for opinions from a psychology site on the internet and this is the statement that came out : “It means that people tend to end up in relationships where they are treated as well or as poorly as they believe they merit. If someone thinks they are undeserving of real love and affection, they may accept a toxic or abusive partner instead. The quote suggests we must believe we deserve goodness before we can have it.”
Go in front of the mirror. Look at your reflection, carefully. What do you see? How far do you think you know yourself? What kind of life experiences have you gone through? What kind of love you ever get in life? Because all of these things creates an internal working model for how we view relationships throughout our life. Our former relationships (romantic or not) affect our perception about love.
I will use toxic abusive relationship case as an example (I often exposed to the stories about if from my collagues). I never understood before why some people tolerate and just simply put up with it. I think everyone (at least a sane person) would easily, naturally have a basic understanding that it’s a crime, not love. But turns out it’s not that easy, and talking about human relationships, it could be very complex. Back to the idea that everyone is exposed to diverse life experiences and their own complex former relationships…. what if some people grow up believing that some abuse is also form of love? For merely easy example, we often see cases when parents committing physical abuse against their children with the excuse “I’m doing this because I care about you.” Later in life, of course that’s not a surprise if they tend to be trapped in a toxic, abusive relationship.
Also, our deep understanding about our own personal strengths, vulnerabilities, needs, traumas, insecurities — they contribute to our perception about the love we think we deserve.
In some many cases, it could be possible to falling head over heels in love with someone, you may think he or she is everything you need ; he or she is simply the air you breath — but at the same time, if your understanding about your own weakness and insecurities decide to consider they’re rather out of your league you wouldn’t choose them as your partner, no matter how real your love can be.
In other cases, they simply just speak the love you never understand, because you’ve never been exposed to that kind of love in your prior relationships with anyone. Then you wouldn’t choose them as your partner as well.
The rain started to stop falling as I was halfway home. Even after paragraph and after paragraph I wrote, the question remains a big mystery I still need to find out : what kind of love I think I deserve? Maybe I need to stand in front of the mirror a little longer.
