The Limits In Love
To love it is not necessary to renounce what we are. A mature love integrates love for the other with self-love, without any kind of conflict of interest. We must learn to love without forgetting ourselves.
Loves that are governed by dependence and total surrender without analysis make the person lose interest in himself, disappearing completely in the loved one, being totally absorbed. And once the limit is crossed, making denial our way of life, correcting is not so simple, because we find ourselves in a web of feelings and thoughts that we created along with the assumed duties.
It is true that in a romantic relationship, acceptance and renunciation of certain things are required, since to be in a relationship as a couple and to have an emotional relationship, it is necessary to negotiate many things. But the problem arises when this negotiating response goes too far and exceeds reasonable limits, directly affecting someone’s personal evaluation or causing their destruction. There is no negotiation, but power relations. How far should we love?
As Walter Riso says in one of his books, the limit is in our dignity, our integrity and our happiness. That is, when “being for the other” prevents us from “being for ourselves”. This is where the dark side of love begins, which does not mean that our affection has to diminish, but that, from that point on, love is not enough to justify the affective bond due to the moral, physical, psychological and social costs. And even if sometimes we can’t fall out of love, we can fail to maintain a destructive relationship. Of course, many times while we’re in the eye of the hurricane we don’t notice and the weather seems calm and peaceful.
Our culture has a great influence on us in these respects, often transmitting clichés about love and irrational love relationships. Misconceptions based on absolute categories and ideas of suffering as conditions for great love, such as thinking that if someone doesn’t suffer for us, it’s because that person doesn’t love us, or believing that love is achieved on the basis of constant sacrifices. Perhaps, the love we plant and plant is dogmatic, with a great deal of imperatives and rules, losing its capacity to reinvent itself and fostering dependency.
Thus, if we move to the dark side of love, each new day we can feel it as a sudden drop or a permanent lack of motivation, failing to sensitize ourselves on many occasions to pain and suffering, using self-sabotage , which has its own arguments.
set limits on love
Therefore, it is necessary to create a two-way relationship, a two-way love, through a worthy self that allows us to balance the affective exchange. It is not a question of dressing up in egocentric individualism or exalting rigid autonomy, but of including ourselves in the relationship by saving our self-love. Your partner is important and you are important, keeping the balance on both sides, including both of you in this back-and-forth.
Self-love opens up more space for love, making it more mature and more respectful.
Thus, some of the advantages of exercising responsible individualism in a loving relationship are: the development of human potential on the part of both, the encouragement of reciprocity and the search for consensus, the end of assumptions about the emotions of the other, healthy concern on the other hand, and the exercise of good communication and respect, always counting on the proper emotional support.
Love is two-way. When we give love, we expect love. Love relationships feed on exchange and balance.
Remember “While you expect to live, life passes.” (Seneca).
