My wife observed the other day: "It's very hard not to like someone who likes you." We have a need to be loved. But that's our ego speaking "I want" to be loved. I want, I want, I want... That's not love. Love is giving with no expectation of
anything in return...including being loved in return, including feeling secure, including being happy. Who want's
that!? Not me. That's a lot of work.
Actually, I
aspire to being more loving...but I'm nowhere close to being there yet.
My wife & I were just good friends before we got together. No romantic entanglement at all. No flirting. We were close, but just friends. Then one evening she told me that she loved me. It was like throwing a switch on an electromagnet...WHAM! The brain chemicals kicked in and I was completely and utterly hooked. We were (to quote Forest Gump) like two peas in a pod.
28 years later, I shared that story with our marriage counselor who promptly handed us a copy of "Codependent No More," and "Boundaries in Marriage." I think he was sending us a message.
Duh, right?
A couple of years later, with us both working our separate AA/Al-Anon programs and we're actually farther apart that we used to be...and loving it! We've got some separation, some space, between us, and we're each able to be fuller, more complete individuals. Being farther apart has
improved our relationship.
I suppose that if you asked 100 people what love is, you'd get 200 answers. Just to finish this post with a
non sequitur: I was scanning titles in the magazine aisle at the supermarket the other day and a headline stuck with me: "Why it's better
like her than to
love her."