Love- Expectations

Valentine's Day is my least favorite holiday. I always felt that if you loved someone, you probably didn't need it. If you have a shaky relationship, it just turns into more proof as to why they suck. People get their feelings hurt when someone who is supposed to love them does not make an effort to celebrate that love. The problems associated with Valentine's Day I feel, have a great deal to do with expectations. The expectations about romantic love come from many different places: art, romance novels, parental relationships, marketing strategies, and society. Each of us will have a slightly different idea of what love is and how someone who loves you should be treating you. The following ideal is the expectation that gets us into the most trouble in romantic relationships:

The ideal- A profoundly deep emotional connection, lasting passion, intimate shared understanding, and support, are all part of the ideal romantic relationship. Impossible, some would say, (mostly me). Why is the ideal romance ever brought up at all if it is not possible? "The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live." - Victor Hugo Idealized relationships fill us with hope and inspire us to attempt to form deep emotional connections, to keep passion alive, and to understand and support our partner. In short, they inspire us to want to strive for something, the pursuit of which can make us better people. Are you an idiot for wanting this type of relationship?

You- First of all, you are not selfish for wanting to be treated well. The desire for connection and meaning in relationships is a basic psychological need. The problem is that each of us likes to be loved differently. Much research has been done on how you might feel loved, the most famous being the five love languages. No matter what you find your love language to be, chances are you are expecting someone to care enough to find out and then show you love accordingly. The problem with this plan is the 'someone else'. Once we turn our happiness, our self-worth, and our peace over to the actions of another, we are lost. "Each one of us has to find its peace from within. And peace, to be real, must be unaffected by outside circumstances." - Mahatma Gandhi This is not to say that you should let people mistreat you or that you shouldn't communicate your needs, it is saying that your self-worth is not dependent on how they choose to act. If they hurt you, it is easy to say that there is no such thing as love and to try and hold onto your heart by choosing not to love anything. This is also an expectation that will play out painfully. "Whoever gives nothing has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love." - Albert Camus

Them- We never know everything about a person. There are no two people that have had the same parenting, background, life experiences, or mind. What holds meaning for them, their level of comfort with connection or physical intimacy cannot be known unless they are willing to share. If you want to know, ask, but don't expect that they will tell you or that what they say is honest. Ideally, then you would share your wants and needs, and an 'operation love' plan would be set in motion. But, here's the rub, other people don't have to treat us the way we think that we deserve to be treated. "I support anyone's right to be who they want to be. My question is: 'To what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?'" - Dave Chappelle You can explain, cry, demonstrate with graphs or pictures, pray, blackmail, manipulate, and try to force, but you may be asking them for something they are incapable of giving.

There is a difference between expressing your needs and demanding change. The one gives your partner a choice to listen, attempt to understand what you are asking for, and then either do it or not. You can then adjust your plans accordingly. The other puts pressure on them by trying to control their actions. This could cause them to feel guilty. Feeling guilty shows that they are just trying to live their lives according to other people's expectations of what they should do, which is not honest. It is a lose-lose situation for you as the attention given because of guilt never feels completely authentic and you are making them live a lie. "Anything that you can't control is teaching you how to let go." - Jackson Kiddard

Let it go- "Letting go doesn't mean you stop caring. It means you stop trying to force others to..." - Mandy Hale It is hard to accept the futility of getting someone to act like you wanted them to, but once you recognize it, letting go makes more sense. Trying to control is manipulation at best and force at its worst, and that is not loving. Love is a verb, an act of giving, and being able to put it out there without expecting anything in return is its ultimate expression. Behind all this, we must dig deep and answer the question "Why do I want to be loved?" Our motivation for wanting love is often selfish. It is our ego wanting to be fed. "The desire to be loved is the last illusion: Give it up and you will be free." - Margaret Atwood If you can't release that desire just yet, maybe look at it this way- "It's not a matter letting go- you would if you could. Instead of "let it go" we should probably say "let it be"." - Jon Kabat-Zinn "Let it be" is accepting what is, even when it is not what we wanted. It is better than living a lie.

Acceptance- Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance. - unknown I am sorry that it comes to this. If you are a die-hard romantic, with a clueless partner, I know that acceptance feels like loss. That's because it is, it is the loss of the ideal and you can let yourself grieve. The loss of an ideal is the loss of hope but there is a way you can get hope back. Another part of acceptance is faith. Faith in yourself that you are lovable, faith in the universe, that it will provide the love that you need through other means, faith that your definition of love can be expanded until you find it everywhere, and faith that by giving love without expecting any in return, eventually it will make its way back to you. "Do a good deed and throw it in the river, one day it will come back to you in the desert." - Rumi Is faith an expectation? No, faith is a belief, a trust in something more powerful. An expectation is a gamble, an assumption of how things should be, and comes with a sense of entitlement. Before we give up on love, perhaps we should identify which lens are we looking through, the one of faith, or the one of expectation.

Some would say that their regard for you should not be tied to one holiday. Truth. Maybe Valentine's Day should never be associated with just one person. A celebration of all the people and animals and the beautiful things in this world that we love instead should be what Valentine's Day encompasses. The Earth gives to us freely, with no expectation for what we can do for it. Imitating the Earth's example will get us closer to the type of love that can save us all. Maybe then the ideal will be possible. If you would like to print out the quotes used in this post, you can download them for free here.

Love and Hope,

Big Sky Baby