Being loved isn’t a panacea — but loving is,I Forgive You,Being loved isn’t a panacea — but loving is

W e long to be loved — first by our parents then by our spouse. Feeling loved makes us feel whole right happy. Or at least this is what we expect. The truth is far more complex.

“I knew my parents loved me. But they couldn’t stop my pain. Thanks to my learning difficulties I suffered all through childhood.”

Can Love Stop the Hurt?

Love obviously doesn’t stop life from hurting. But still most of us see love as a cushion that can buffer us from pain and support us through it. While being loved may not make the world right or ensure our happiness we can say that being loved helps us cope on life’s journey.

“I know that Levi loves me but I don’t feel loved. I’ve always had low self-esteem. He thinks I’m beautiful but I know I’m not. He thinks I’m a wonderful mother but I know that I often snap at the kids. He loves me unconditionally but I just don’t love myself. When I was younger I thought that when I found a partner who loved me I’d feel good inside. I see now that I was wrong.”

Being loved benefits us to the extent that we can internalize it. When a parent’s or spouse’s love is received by our internal love-receptors then we feel the whole and good feeling of self-love. Someone else’s love for us is only healing and nurturing to the extent that it triggers our love for ourselves — and this is something that we can’t always ensure.

Many factors can block our internal love-receptors. Internal restructuring through personal growth and/or therapy can help remove blocks to self-love and happiness. This internal healing must take place before the love of an outsider can have a positive impact.

“I know Boruch loves me. He’s a doting husband who would do anything for me. But I’m not happy with him. He’s just not my type. The problem is that I don’t love him.”

Interestingly loving a partner actually leads to more happiness than being passively loved. Loving involves so many positive life-enhancing feelings: appreciation admiration adoration and more. When we actively feel love for Hashem our baby our spouse or even our new outfit we always feel energized by this overwhelming positive emotion.

Being loved on the other hand only generates whatever feelings you already have inside yourself. Depending on who is doing the loving you might feel annoyance indifference appreciation contentment or happiness. Although we sometimes feel as if our wellbeing depends on being loved it is actually more dependent on our ability to feel love.

Disappointment in Love

So being loved is clearly not the panacea that makes us feel happy and safe. Yet we often hold our spouses — and their love or apparent lack of it — accountable for the state of our inner world.

“He never acknowledges my feelings. I feel alone and unloved and I’m tired of living like this.”

We act as if our spouse is responsible for how happy we are how emotionally secure we are or how beloved we feel. In fact we are happy emotionally secure and loved to the extent that we hold these emotions inside ourselves. A spouse cannot give us any of these feelings. And because our spouses are human they will inevitably be lacking in their personal performance: They will forget things and neglect things and say and do things they shouldn’t. Despite all their imperfections they can feel love for their partners. Their imperfect (human) behavior doesn’t prove they don’t love their spouse; it only proves that they are imperfect.

“I used to think that my wife never followed my advice because she didn’t love me. I know now that it had nothing to do with that. She’s just very strong-willed. I love her and she loves me; I just have to forgive her for having that fault.”

If a woman internalizes the fact that her husband does love her and if she works on loving herself too then she won’t interpret every marital mishap as proof that she is unloved. She would simply see that her spouse has flaws — as does she herself. As she works on forgiving those flaws while holding her own love steady she emulates Hashem Who similarly holds a mutually loving relationship with us while forgiving our flaws. That is what love can accomplish. (Originally featured in Family First Issue 561)