Everlasting Love

I was 4 years old the first time I fell in love. His name was Mackie and he was older. I would sit at my window and watch him throw the baseball with his Dad. My mom has told me that after some time I worked out when he would be outside and I would go to the window a few minutes before and call out to him. “Mackie, oh Mackie where are you? Mackie, I love you.” Sometimes he would look at me and wave. I experienced our “romance” from the inside looking out and he experienced it from the outside looking in.

Something I have heard so often in my life: “You’re too young to know what love is.” To that I say BULLSHIT. Love knows no age. Mackie was the most uncomplicated romance I have ever participated in.

Relationships are challenging and lately I’ve struggled to get to the core of what makes them so difficult. There are tons of relationship experts and websites that take a lot of your money to give you information about compatibility or match you with someone who is right for you and yada yada yada…

When you get to the heart of it compatibility is just a word and like so many other words we assign it a certain meaning without realizing how clinging to meanings can limit us.

We enter into new relationships completely enchanted by the other person and their magic but after some time we expect their magic to be the same as our magic. We expect them to be just like us. And so begins the power struggle.

Realizing the other person is not like us, we usually try to become more like them. And in some cases the roles switch and they try to become more like us. This dance can go back and forth for a while. When none of this works we either call it quits or we cheat and then we repeat the same pattern with a new partner.

By not honoring one another’s individual magic we are poisoning the foundation on which the relationship is built. I have to question if there is a need inside of us to have someone love us exactly as we love do we truly love ourselves?

In healthy relationships there is an equal amount of give and take. Two people have the ability to put themselves to the side for a moment and tune their dial to match the frequency of their partner. But if you have never known a healthy relationship it can be near impossible to recognize an unhealthy relationship.

So say your partner is the logical, practical type and you are the artistic, emotional, head in the clouds type. Your partner brings you your coffee every morning and works 10 hour days to earn a nice income and support you but emotionally they lack the expressive nature that is so deeply engrained in you. Because they don’t give of their love the same way you do you begin to believe it doesn’t exist. At least not to the degree that your love exists.

They are loving you SO HARD in their own way but because you lack the ability to see it you are frustrated.

You tell them you feel unloved. They feel utterly insulted… “but I work 10 hours a day to provide for you. I bring coffee to you every morning when I wake you. I lock all the doors at night to make sure you are safe.”

Since you show your love in words and romantic expression you do not recognize these things your partner has pointed out as love. You tell them their way of loving is wrong. The truth is you are wrong. The problem is you think you are right. (By “you” I mean me too).

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