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How
We Confuse Love With Longing
by Wendy Freebourne
Love and Longing
How do you tell the difference? It’s simple. If you feel a warm
glow and your heart expanding, you know it’s love. If it feels
like appendicitis in your chest, you've fallen in longing.
What Is Love?
Love is the delight you feel in another person’s company, and
the joy you feel in your own.
Here are some facts about love – your love checklist:
Love feels joyful.
It never hurts.
Only pain hurts. This includes loss and grieving.
You don’t fall in love.
Love is a state of being.
Love grows over time, as you get to know someone; as you get to
know yourself.
You can’t love who or what you don’t know.
You never stop loving someone you've loved.
Love is not dependent on someone else.
There is only one kind of love – the kind that expands your
heart and makes you feel good.
Love is the opposite of fear. Love and fear are the basic emotions;
all other emotions stem from love or fear.
The Behaviour, Not The Person
You can love someone but not like them.
It is possible, and OK, to love someone and
reject their behaviour.
not want to be with them.
If you love them, you can let them go if you need to or they need
you to.
What Is Longing?
Longing is the pain you feel when you’re grieving for something
you've lost. It is usually a rerun of your past. You fall in longing
because you recognize:
Something you believe you've lost.
Something you needed once, but may not need now anyway.
An ideal state you would like to be in.
You can fall in longing with your own reflection. This is not love.
If you love yourself, you will not fall in longing.
Longing is about loss you haven’t grieved. If you've learned
to associate love with pain and loss, you interpret the familiar feeling
of longing as love. This is dangerous. It can lead you to choose painful
relationships.
Remember, love doesn't hurt. Only loss hurts. Love doesn't cause pain.
Loss causes pain.
What to Do
Try to identify your pain. Grieve for what you believe you have lost.
Think about whether it’s something you need now anyway. Is it
appropriate to your current age and degree of maturity? Assess what
you can have now and (re)claim it.
There are three major losses you may be suffering from:
Mother love,
Father love and, most important,
Self love, loss of a sense of self, including loss of self-esteem
and self-worth.
Loving Yourself
You do not need mother love or father love as an adult. You are capable
of parenting yourself. When you regain your sense of self, you are
in your ideal state. If, as an adult, you try to get someone else
to mother you, father you or create an idealised state that is not
real for you, you are diminishing and compromising your true self.
It may be OK to make other compromises in your life, but, if you compromise
your self, who you really are, you will not be happy. You will continue
to long for that ideal state because you are not being your authentic
self, which is ideal for you. Self-sacrifice doesn't work, although
other forms of sacrifice might. You will have pain and conflict in
your relationships and in your life because you are not loving yourself,
the true self that you long to be reunited with. You may look for
this union with a partner, but it is not possible to unite with another
person when you are at odds with yourself.
Only you can return to your authentic self to reclaim the joy of being,
which isn't dependent on someone else. Then what you are, on your
own, is enough. When you feel this, you can share it with someone
else.
You cannot fulfil your potential through someone else.
Falling In Fantasy
When you fall in love, you feel like you know the other person. In
fact, you recognize your own reflection. You fall in longing for yourself.
You may feel love, but it’s not for that person. It may be for
yourself. Don’t waste it by sacrificing your identity or your
individuality to what is, as yet, only an illusion of love. When you
fall in love you lose your personal boundaries.
This doesn't mean you can’t grow to love the person you have
fallen for, but you will have to come to know them first. Remember,
the person you think you know when you first meet them is, in fact,
a reflection of yourself.
The reason you create the fantasy/illusion you fall into is to comfort
yourself for your loss of self. You try to use love as a painkiller.
The purpose of a mature relationship is not to comfort; nor does love
kill pain. If you heal your own pain, then you won’t need comforting;
then you can have a mature relationship with all the love and joy
it brings.
Love and Desire
Loving somebody and wanting them aren't the same either. If you want
someone you don’t know, it’s not love. It’s lust
or longing. In itself, lust is a healthy feeling, but, alone, it doesn't
signify a healthy, or viable, relationship. Desire is a feeling between
mature people who love each other. Even when there is initial attraction,
it develops over time. Much confusion arises in relationships between
love and desire. You may love someone dearly, but not want them. Remember
what I said about behaviour? You may not like their behaviour or lifestyle.
They may not turn you on sexually. Love itself does not make a viable
romantic partnership. You also need to be compatible on many levels.
What to Do
Be honest about what you do want and what you don’t want and
don’t confuse this with love, which will endure, whatever kind
of relationship you choose to have with the other person. If you’re
saying, ‘I don’t love you any more,’ then it wasn't
love in the first place.
Obsession
So why is it so hard to let go of a relationship that doesn't have
all the ingredients you need:
love
lust
desire
compatibility
to name a few? The answer is longing. Back to the painkiller. You’re
struggling with one another to heal your pain. You don’t want
to face that pain. You’re filling up feelings of emptiness,
which come from not having a sense of your own self, by obsessing.
Obsession is an addiction. Obsession, in relationships, stems from
fear of loss. It also creates more pain.
The pain you feel by facing pain and grieving is sweet and releasing.
The pain you feel by denying pain and obsessing is hard and enduring.
You have a choice between love and longing.
First published in Better Living Magazine, September 2004
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If you feel a warm glow and your heart expanding, you know it's love.
If it feels like appendicitis in your chest, you've fallen in longing.
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