What do you do when you love someone you shouldn’t? For more reasons than one, you believe that this person that you love is the one for you. Most of us when we think of love we hold on to the belief that when you love someone you should be with them. If you love someone, why would you ever want to be apart? This is a question many of you have asked me and I thought I would dive into it. Maybe give you some insight or a different viewpoint if you are currently feeling the burn of forbidden or unrequited love.
Love Shouldn’t Control You
I know the feeling of being in love can be overwhelming. When you love someone you want to be with them all the time. You think of them all the time. As beautiful as love may be, the problem is that it can cloud your judgment. Make you believe things that aren’t true. In addition, make you see things that aren’t real either. When we love someone often times we put them on a pedestal. It’s okay to see the best in someone, to believe in them. It’s okay to overlook their misgivings because there is no such thing as the perfect person.
The problem arises when their misgivings, their flaws impact you in a negative way. Love shouldn’t diminish you. The saying “take me as I am” doesn’t mean take my bullshit too. Nor does it mean you need to accept less for yourself in order to be with someone. Love that is good, wants more for you, wants you to demand what’s best for you. I know, relationships have their ups and downs, we are after all spiritual beings trying to live our purpose. It’s not easy to be your best all the time and this will impact your relationships.
I will say that love should make you feel like you are soaring. Make you feel like you are free to live your true potential. If you are feeling controlled or burden by love you are most likely not with the right person. Sometimes this can happen inadvertently. Some relationships may make you feel like you need to change or make concessions in order to be with this person. It’s important to make changes that also benefit you. I know this may sound selfish but putting yourself first is an act of self-love. The person you are with shouldn’t require you to want less and be less. In a good partnership, both individuals should flourish.
Love Shouldn’t Be The Only Reason
One of my favourite Tony Braxton songs is “Love Should Have Brought You Home”. Ideally, we would all like to think that love is the driving force of a healthy relationship, it’s not. I don’t think love should be the only reason why you are with someone. I don’t think love should justify why you put up with what you shouldn’t. Love isn’t always enough. I feel that love is an important aspect to relationships but it can’t be the only building block to build a strong life long bond.
Sometimes we confuse toxic love with good love. We think that the more it hurts, the more drama, that this equates to passionate love. What many people fail to see is that passionate love is inspiring, it’s enlivening. Feeling lost, insecure and hopeless or walking around in a haze of disillusionment is the type of love many people have attached themselves to. There is this false belief that we must fight for love. The “fight” is generally perceived as heartache, turmoil and drama. One of the reasons why many people stay in bad relationships. When in love, we work, we put in the effort through our actions and behaviour in order to cultivate and sustain it. There is a difference between working and fighting. What exactly are you fighting for?
Aside from being in love, I think that the way someone makes you feel, not how you feel about them, needs to be what matters most. As I mentioned above, love should make your soar. When we are living our true potential one of the things you will notice is that the people that you surround yourself with energetically are apart of this process. Falling in love isn’t just about falling in love with another person, it allows you to fall deeply in love with yourself. Feelings of unworthiness or lacking self-love are a signal for you to evaluate your relationship.
Self-Love First
I want to ask you, why have you put yourself last? What’s wrong with you loving yourself first? Why are you always trying to fix everyone else before fixing yourself? You keep looking for love in all the wrong places in order to avoid the space that scares you the most, yourself. Even when someone tries to love you, the best way they know-how, if it isn’t chaotic, it’s not enough, if it isn’t painful, it’s not “real” enough. This is a cycle many people find themselves in. One could say that this self-destructive behaviour also leads you to love someone you shouldn’t love. It’s the reason why we sometimes find ourselves in unloving relationships.
Self- love should top your priority list when you think about relationships. The relationship you have with yourself will dictate all the relationships you have in this life.
So what do you do?
It’s hard to know what’s good enough if you don’t feel good enough. Chasing love, something that will come to you in a beautiful way when the time is right, never leads you into the arms of the person who will love you the way you deserve. Further, just because you love someone, this doesn’t mean you need to be with them or that they will feel the same way.
We can’t control who we love, or I should say have feelings of love towards but we can control whether we act on those feelings. It’s okay if you love someone you shouldn’t. Just accept that this love will be from afar. Let go and allow the person you should love find their way to you wherever you are patiently waiting in the world.
