In my last blog entry, I quoted the lyric’s from Meatloaf’s song, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad and talked about the differences between wanting and loving someone. Today, I am going to share specific examples of how to distinguish between being loved versus simply being wanted. You are welcome to disagree with my thoughts on these differences, and I welcome others’ perspectives as I am currently working through all of this with a relationship in my life.
When I love someone, I make the effort to “see” him or her. I listen when the other person talks, and I take note of things that make the other person happy or meet his or her needs. As an example, when I was across the country traveling with a friend, she really wanted something from a gift shop but talked herself out of buying it for herself, which I knew she would do because I pay attention – she has a difficult time spending money on herself. So, I purchased the item for her as a Christmas present. When she opens it, she will feel my love – not because I spent X amount of dollars on her but because I listened and got her something that she really wanted.
I have another friend who has Celiac disease and cannot eat any wheat. She told me that she had not eaten a birthday cake that she did not make herself (with rice flour) in several years (since she got her diagnosis) and that this made her feel unloved. So, I found the very best wheat-free cake on the planet here (I love it and don’t have gluten issues!) and shipped her the cake for her birthday. She cried – not because of how much she loved the cake (and, believe me, she LOVED that cake!) but because I listened and took action to meet her need, which showed her how much I love her.
If someone loves you, he or she will do loving things for you. The person will listen to you when you talk and “hear” you – about your hopes, dreams, and unmet needs. If it is within the person’s power to act, he or she will take action to show you that you are valued and loved. My examples above were about spending money, but it doesn’t have to be. I told one friend I loved her by offering to babysit her children when she needed some time to herself. I told another friend that I loved her by proofreading her papers before she submitted them to her college professor. When you love someone, you look for ways to make the other person’s life easier.
I have people in my life who want me but don’t love me. Their focus is on what **I** can do for **them**, and they pull away when I am not in a position to meet their needs, such as when I am sick. Our relationships work just fine as long as I am meeting their needs, but these are one-sided relationships, which is “want,” not “love.” It’s OK for me to have these people in my life because I do get things from the relationships as well, but it is very important that I recognize them for what they are so I don’t invest more than I will receive in return.
Image credit: Hekatekris
This is a lot to digest. My initial, gut feeling is that it’s correct. It’s a hard thing to admit, and it was hard to read about the loving gestures you mentioned because it illuminates the degree of love I am missing in my own life, from people I think love me. I often will do small things to show that I was thinking of someone, yet I do not get repaid in kind from the people I love. It doesn’t have to be much, it just has to be a demonstration that they thought about you when you weren’t in the room; that you exists as part of their consciousness even when you are not actively doing a favor for them or giving them a gift. Sometimes I will pick up a friend’s favorite food on the way to her house, for example. Or it could be a kindness of omission, such as making sure to phrase something in a way that avoids their trigger words, or not bringing a meat dish to a potluck when you know another attending guest is vegetarian.
By these standards you’ve mentioned, I do not have very many people who love me in my life. But perhaps I can say instead that I don’t have people who know how to love me in healthy ways. That is still accurate, and doesn’t feel as lonely.
I can not write about love it is just not a word or cognitive thing for me. I can write about gifts. I start thinking about love only when it is gone or leaving.
I used to think I was a gifted gift giver. I do pay attention, am not cheap and do not make the error of only giving what I would want.
Here is the thing. What I am really good at is choosing who to give my gifts to. I am lucky as I have to two best children in the world or ever have been in the world. They are great gift receivers and I learned much from them.
Knowing I was a good chooser of who to give gifts to did change things. I am much more OK with not giving when I can.
One of my children once said. “The greatest gift you ever gave me is I never doubted that you loved me. Even if I was in a Matrix you would still love me. We text back in forth “Even in a Matrix.”
My children have been and are in many performances and I give flowers. Might be ones I picked. My other child said “I would know you love me if you did not bring me flowers. It is nice to have other people know you love me even though they can not understand how much..”
When I give a gift I get so excited I do not want to wait. So I often don’t.
It is much about risk. Sometimes a gift does not connect the way I wish. That has to be OK.
A gift that incurs a debt is not gift at all not for the giver or the one which receives. Michael
This brings to mind an old native american belief that when you make a trade or exchange of any kind, whether it’s energy, healing or product that the exchange must be fair or else one or both parties will become sick in some way due to the imbalance. I don’t think their definition of sick is the same as ours though. I think it refers to repercussions resulting from an imbalance which can happen in any area of life. At least this is my interpretation of it.
I’m glad that you’re talking about this. I pretty much agree with what you’ve said here, but I do wonder if you’re familiar with the “5 love languages” it’s a series of books by Gary Chapman. He talks about how there are 5 basic love languages.
They are (in no particular order) 1. Gift Giving, 2. Acts of Service, 3. Physical Touch, 4. Quality Time & 5. Words of Affirmation.
He suggests that we all have one or sometimes two primary love languages and by default we love others in our “native” love language – which may not be theirs. So although I’m showing someone love in what appears to be an obvious way to me if it’s not their primary love language they may not feel loved or realise that it’s my way of trying to love them.
For instance if my primary love language is quality time and some offers to come over and cook dinner for me or baby sit the kids – although I may appreciate that and recognise that it’s a NICE thing for them to do I’m not necessarily going to feel “loved” by it. I’d perhaps feel loved if instead they offered to come round for a coffee or go for a walk together.
Anyway this is just the bare bones of the concept, but I’ve found it very useful in my life and relationships, it’s helped be to be able to more effectively show others that I love them; by learning their language. As well as recognising more clearly when someone is “trying” to love me using the wrong language. I’ve even been able in some circumstances to educate people in what is my love language and have had the pleasure of them making efforts to use it.
Anyway it’s just a thought… and that’s not to say that there aren’t definitely those relationships that are “want” not “love” and it’s very important to recognise that, but sometimes it could just be a language gap.
Peace.
Hello Faith.
I think you are writing about something that is not really understood. By this, I mean that I doubt you really understand love, but that I don’t know that anyone else does, either.
Sternberg proposes a “triangular theory” of love where what we think of as love is comprised of intimacy (closeness or friendship), passion, and commitment. John Lee has identified what he believes are different “love styles,” which he calls Eros, Ludus, Storge, Pragma, Mania, and Agape. Then we have Dorothy Tennov’s “limmerence” and “loving affection,” which could be thought of as sexual and non-sexual love styles; limmerence is characterized by a sense of unwilled affection, intrusive thoughts regarding the beloved, fantasy, and desperate hope for reciprocation. These theories do have some similarities, but are ultimately incompatible. Ultimately I don’t know what love is, beyond something that I point to and say “that sounds like love” or “that sounds a little bit like love” or “that doesn’t sound like love at all.”
When I last checked into your blog a few months ago, I noted that you were feeling taken for granted, and am sorry to see that this doesn’t seem to have changed. I’d like to do something about it, and honestly I would if I could, because even though I’ve only read your blog, I care about you. Yet truly, I wouldn’t say that I loved you in any sense of the word. In fact, there have been people I truly listened to, kept my word to, encouraged, helped out, and was supportive and gentle with, that I despise.
Moreover, I have young children who, through some of their life, were quite selfish and demanding. (I blame this on their being spoiled by grandparents, but age is a probably a big part of it.) Up until very recently, it was next to impossible to get these kids to listen to me or their mother at all, let alone hear who we truly were and understand our feelings. Yet even back then they would spontaneously snuggle up with us and give us hugs, bring things to show us, and suggest shared activities. You may dismiss this as mere want or need, but I understand it from them as childish love which has since then started to mature.
Ultimately I don’t know what love is. I suspect it has various components which can be separated, and that however it works, it probably interacts in odd ways with personality and circumstance (for instance, investigations with Lee’s love styles find Mania, the intense, jealous, possessive, and insatiable love style, find it correlates with Neuroticism or negative emotionality).
So while I don’t want to invalidate your sense of dissatisfaction, I think you should be careful about saying that someone doesn’t love you because this person’s actions don’t align with what you understand as loving behavior. Most people are not perfectionists like you, or therapists looking to get past the guarded heart of an abused client. It stands to reason that love for them could simply be experienced or expressed very differently from the way you might expect.
I agree to some level with the previous poster, but it really depends on the people you are talking about. I have a lot of the same issues with people in my life. There are people who go out of their way to show me they love me – and I feel loved by them, and there are others who don’t. The way I am with others is much like you, and I attribute a lot of that to wanting to protect others from feeling the rejection and abandonment and lack of love I have felt in my life, particularly growing up. I never want someone to feel unloved like that.
I think people are at different levels, and I think you understand that. What I hear you saying is that there are people in your life that are not at a point to give what it is you need and rather than cut them out, you accept that and give to them. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that so long as you see it for what it is and don’t run yourself ragged trying to please them.
I have one friend, in particular, who simply does not meet my needs when it comes to this area. We’ve been friends since we were very young and our friendship has been a source of frustration and stress for both of us. Recently I have come to realize that we show love in very different ways.. in ways that almost conflict. She wants her space completely respected. She wants to be able to say what she thinks without negative response from the other person. She’s very un-emotional and matter of fact. Her way of showing love is give what it is she wants – space and emotionless response. For me, those two things equal abandonment and rejection. And when I give what it is that makes sense to me – feedback and closeness, she feels that her space has been disrespected and invaded. And it really comes down to a difference of need on this one. My ways of showing love don’t really mean much to her and she, at this point, has not developed certain listening and supporting skills that I need to feel loved. That doesn’t mean someone else wouldn’t feel loved in a friendship with her – possibly someone more like her – but I don’t feel it.
That being said there are definitely people out there that will just take and take and take and you’re basically a supply source for them. If they don’t value and appreciate you, that’s not okay. But if they are just broken and weak and you don’t mind being there as a support to them and they value you for that, it might be okay. I think that each relationship is very intricate and requires its own analysis in a way.