Love Is Asking to Be Loved.
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Last month, I wrote an article whose message was that it is okay to not be okay. I still wholeheartedly stand by that message.
It is important to be able to express from a place of authenticity and be heard and accepted, but now I want to address the other side of it: how our expectations of others during our dark times may keep us from feeling their acceptance of us, how we may misinterpret or miss love entirely and push it away.
This can keep us stuck in a state of pain and belief that it’s us against them, that no one is ever there for us, or that we are hopelessly and forever alone.
Have you ever tried to help a person and found that you couldn’t get through to them, no matter what you tried? Commiserating, giving advice, presenting other ways of looking at the problem, or simply saying I hear you and being with them — none of these methods worked, or you were left with a sense that the person didn’t think what you offered was adequate.
Even if you don’t look for people to rescue anymore, and find that they naturally seek you out to ask for your help, what you give may not always satisfy the seeker. When it doesn’t, the problem more than likely does not lie with you, but it is more that the person’s expectations of you and how they wanted you to respond did not match how you responded.
As they held these expectations, they also did not ask you specifically for what they needed.
We have all been on the giving or receiving end of this situation. Last year, I went through a major transition in my life. I moved across the country for a new job, and set up home in a place I had never previously visited. I had no family or established friendships in the area. It was not my first cross-country move, but it was the first move in which I did not have a support network within a short physical distance.
I experienced depression and anxiety. While I should have had more enthusiasm to explore my new surroundings, I found that I only wanted to sleep, go online, or watch TV in my free time. I felt extremely sorry for myself and thought my family should have called me to check in more often. I’m sure that they would have, had they realized I wanted that.
I fell into the trap of not expressing my needs but holding on to the feeling that, if people really loved me, then they would have been meeting my unexpressed needs. With time, this created a huge sense of resentment, sorrow, and isolation.
What made matters worse was that I imagined people were judging me for my feelings. I felt like everyone I knew was so much more successful than I was.
Sure, I had managed a major move and acclimated to a new job all on my own, but according to my Facebook feed, other people were getting engaged or married, having children, publishing books, backpacking through Europe, winning the lottery (maybe I am exaggerating a little)… I judged myself as inadequate and hated that I felt sorry for myself, so I imagined that others did too.
No one knew this was happening inside me until I was past the point of being reasonable and wanted to cut everyone out of my life. Someone may have been able to listen or travel to visit me, but I never asked. Instead, I pushed away those I loved and exacerbated my own pain with expectations of how I thought they should have behaved.
It would not be self-loving to place the entirety of blame upon myself, and that isn’t what I mean to do here. I do mean to examine the ways I could have taken more responsibility to improve my circumstances. One of my favorite quotations is from the John Lennon song, “Love.” It says, “Love is asking to be loved.” And it is.
There is a widespread idea that if someone really cared about you, they would make time for you, text you first, call you, show up for you, and do all this without the need for you to ask or tell them what you want. But this is reinforcing expectations and defining love from a limited viewpoint. There are plenty of people I love, although I rarely call them or spend time with them in person without being prompted.
There are many reasons for this, but the main ones are physical distance and routine. I think of my loved ones numerous times throughout the day, and can sometimes sense when they need me even with hundreds of miles separating us. I don’t always act on these intuitive impulses. It’s not because I don’t care.
The top reason that I think of someone but don’t reach out is that I’m going through my own stuff, and I am not in the energetic state required to be fully present with someone.
The people you deem emotionally strong, comforting presences, are that way because they spend time within cultivating these parts of themselves. It takes a lot of work, and it’s not a group effort. It’s something that they must do for themselves. Of course, they can influence and support you just as you can influence and support them, but you cannot do the work for each other.
You can go on trips with friends, you can sit together on a flight, but you cannot walk through security for each other.
It’s important to understand that love manifests in different ways. If we only see love as unsolicited contact or concrete physical actions, then we can miss the other ways it shows up. Sometimes, love is giving someone their space. Sometimes, love is taking a little distance to work on oneself. Love can be connecting to someone in an energetic or dream state.
Love is being able to understand that everyone has different ways of coping with the things that we can’t always see; if someone isn’t doing what you expect, there may be a valid reason for it. This is not about who is right and who is wrong.
This is not about accepting mistreatment or being patient with someone whose presence is not expanding you. It is about an expansion in perspective so that you can see the love you might currently be missing. If it’s truly not there or not manifesting in the way you would like, then maybe it is time to ask for it.
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Heidi Hendricks has called many places home throughout her life, but currently lives in Rochester, New York. Her work has been published in Adelaide and Buck Off Magazine. She is passionate about writing (obviously), music, and healing. It was only a year ago that she began to start sharing her writing with the world, but now that she’s started, she isn’t going to stop. You can find her on her blog.
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