If You Love Me...
At this point human history
people don't really understand love.
This means even if they use the word I "love" you,
They can't really practice it can they?
To love something is to take it as a part of yourself.
Doing this naturally means,
that their best interest becomes a part of your best interests.
Doing this means you can't hurt them without hurting yourself too.
Doing this also makes it pretty easy to prioritize needs.
For example, if someone needs medical help
because they're hurt,
and we need food because we're hungry,
it will be easy, if we take that person as a part of ourselves,
to prioritize their need for medical help.
This mutual caretaking of each other's best interests
is ultimately what creates trust in a relationship.
But even people who understand this
at its most basic level,
can fall into a very damaging relationship pattern
that can ruin relationships.
And seeing this pattern,
is what it takes to not fall into that trap.
At this point in human history,
we are raised to believe that love
implies selflessness and self-sacrifice.
We believe that love
implies putting somebody's best interests over our own.
Sacrificing ours for theirs.
This is drastically different than prioritizing needs in relationships.
We also expect this from other people.
When this is our definition of love,
what we expect is for other people
to prioritize our best interests,
over their own.
We expect them to self-sacrifice.
That's how we know they love us.
Because of this,
the relationship inevitably becomes a fight
over whose best interests are most important at any given moment.
It becomes a zero-sum game,
under the guise of love.
To understand the concept of the zero-sum game in depth,
watch my video titled:
The Zero Sum Game ( What is A Zero Sum Game and How To End One)
Any time a needs or desires conflict arises,
we expect them to do what is best for us,
even if they have to go against their own best interests to do it.
We expect them to willingly lose that zero-sum game
and if they don't,
we decide it's because they're self-centered
and cruel and they don't love us.
For example,
imagine that a woman enters into a relationship with a man.
This man lives in an intentional community
and he loves it.
He also doesn't want children.
She's completely the opposite.
She wants to live in a single-family home,
a traditional way,
with just him,
and she's ready to start a family.
In the beginning,
it seems like they're on the same page.
But as the relationship goes on,
it's obvious they aren't.
She's always miserable when she's with the community
and no matter how nice their time is when it's just the two of them,
he never changes his mind and keeps bringing her back to the community.
Neither of them face the incompatibility
and decide together what to do with it,
so it begins to feel like he is simply fine seeing her in pain.
She decides that if he loved her,
he couldn't see her in this amount of pain,
and would choose to leave the community
and get himself in the mental space to have a child.
He doesn't because this is the opposite of his best interests.
When he doesn't,
she decides that he's a total self-centered asshole
who held her back from her true desires,
and whom she can't trust
and who doesn't love her.
This pattern is a setup.
The reason that it's a setup is,
we're putting them in a zero-sum game.
A zero-sum game that we're expecting them to willingly lose.
And when they don't willingly lose,
we decide they're not trustworthy
and don't love us.
We also decided because they don't willingly lose,
they're a horribly bad person.
Here's the funny thing;
The funny thing is,
we're the one that put them in a zero-sum game
there in the first place.
Therefore,
we're the one that can't be trusted.
Here's the bottom line;
We cannot put somebody in a lose-lose scenario
of choosing to fight a zero-sum game,
or to self-sacrifice
and call it love.
The main reason that this dynamic I'm talking about occurs
is because of incompatibility.
And I'll be honest with you,
incompatibility is the thing that humans
do not want to look at and accept
in their human relationships with one another.
When we don't want to recognize incompatibility,
it's a huge problem.
I'll tell you why;
When we can't face incompatibility
the conflicts that arise because of differences
that are non harmonious,
caused us to fight for the rightness and goodness
of our own preferences and choices.
We fight for them by fighting against
the other person's preferences and choices,
as if they are bad, wrong or dysfunctional.
The relationship eventually devolves,
into both people feeling shamed by the other.
What it devolves into is this classic:
"You can't win the argument"
type of the deal where, one person says:
"If you loved me you wouldn't do this"
and the other person says:
"If you loved me you wouldn't ask me not to",
dynamic.
It is very possible that we might find ourselves
in a situation with someone where,
no matter how much we love them,
there is no way to meet their needs
and meet their desires
or to create that alignment with them,
without hurting ourselves.
In these moments
what we have to get is that love is not demonstrated
by hurting ourselves for someone else's sake.
We only learn that this is the definition of love,
from our childhoods.
Because this is what happened in our childhood relationships
with our adult caregivers.
They taught us
that to love them,
was to let go of our needs and our desires
and our personal best interests,
for theirs and for the people's.
Because of this our wires are absolutely crossed.
The highest expression of love is not self-sacrifice.
And I have to be honest with you,
when people self-sacrifice,
the reason they usually do that,
is because they want to be seen as good.
So it's really self-centered, isn't it?
"I need to see myself as good
and I need you to see me as virtuous and good.
What this essentially is it's a zero-sum game,
played for the sake of personal happiness.
And when we let somebody win that game in our childhood,
we received praise for it
and avoided consequences for it.
This is ultimately what crosses those wires.
One thing that must be understood
when it comes to relationships,
is that we have a common way
of refusing to see incompatibility.
And it's by thinking that we know
what somebody else's best interests are better than they do.
Even in a hypothetical situation
where you could potentially see
what somebody's best interests were better than they could,
here's the thing;
It doesn't matter.
In a relationship all that really matters
is what somebody thinks their best interests are.
That's what you're up against when it comes to
their own assessment of their needs and their desires.
Which are super important to consider.
It is common when we can see
that a person is making choices in their life
based off unhealed wounding,
that we decide their best interest
is to make the choice that we would want them to make.
But we have to accept that a person has free will.
And what counts
is whether they see something as their best interests.
Not whether we see it as their best interests.
If someone is unwilling or unable to align with your best interests,
it is more likely an indication of incompatibility,
than it is an indication
that your needs and desires are wrong
or that they are a cruel self-centered person
who does not love you.
In order to gain awareness around this,
I want you to take out a piece of paper
and at the very top I want you to write this sentence:
If they loved me ______.
Now, I want you to think about a situation
where somebody acted as if they didn't love you.
(at least that was your perception).
And I want you to fill in that blank as many times as you possibly could.
For example, if they loved me:
they wouldn't go on that trip.
If they loved me,
they would have cancelled the meeting.
If they loved me,
they would have stayed loyal instead of cheated.
If they loved me,
they would have made an effort to impress my family.
If they loved me,
they would have known I was overworked
and made dinner for me, etc.
Then relative to these statements,
I want you to see how many of them fit into this category
of an expectation
for them to put your best interests
above their own.
How many of these fall into the category
of playing a zero-sum game,
where you expect them to willingly lose.
If someone loves you,
or if genuine love
is something that you think should exist in a relationship,
it is reasonable to expect them
to take your best interest as part of their own,
so that they can care take those best interests
and to directly address
any incompatibility that exists between you mutually
so as to decide what the highest and best for both of you is.
What is not reasonable,
is to expect somebody
to usurp their best interests,
for yours yours.
You cannot expect somebody
to abandon their best interests
for your best interests.
This is not love.
And this is only going to spell
absolute disaster for your relationships,
because a person can't actually do this,
without resenting the absolute hell out of you.
Needs conflicts naturally arise in relationships.
You're gonna see this in relationships a lot.
More so,
when there's incompatibility that exists.
When these need conflicts arises,
it's very easy to slip into a zero-sum game.
That zero-sum game must be avoided,
if what you want is harmony in your relationships.
You cannot define
how trustworthy somebody is,
how much of a good person someone is,
or how much they love you,
by their willingness
to lose a zero-sum game.
When we take someone's best interests as a part of our own,
it does not mean that we abandone ours.
When we love someone our own desires and needs
do not get thrown out the window,
it simply becomes easier to prioritize the various needs that exist.
It simply makes it easier
to see where incompatibility does and doesn't exist.
When we experience an incompatibility,
we can then find a third option.
An arrangement where by agreeing to changes,
both people can feel the best that is possible in that given situation.
The third option is not the same as compromise.
Compromise is essentially:
I'll take a little pain and you take a little pain.
This is not what we're going for.
With the third option, we're looking at a choice,
a decision or an arrangement that is the highest and best
for both parties, given the incompatibility,
in deciding upon what this is together,
instead of unilaterally,
is what makes a relationship safe.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com