If It’s A Mirror You Want…

Conversations this weekend, on and offline, have stemmed around love, affection, and the room for individuality in relationships.

Love is so easily confused with narcissism.

Loving for the sake of loving is an exercise in narcissism. It isn’t about loving someone else, it’s about the way love feels. It is passive-aggressive instead of assertive. It is needy and desperate and knows no boundaries. The purpose of this kind of love is not to share life with another, but to make a life from loving another. It is not love, as much as it is possession.

Those of us that refuse to be possessed, that will not love for the sake of loving are labeled as commitment-phobic workaholics, incapable of trusting.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

We’re the ones who fully understand what commitment really means, and therefore won’t do it unless we’re capable and compelled. We work hard and stay busy because we know that you can’t look for love but that you’re more likely to find it doing things you love to do. We don’t trust easily because when we do, we do so whole-heartedly.

Love built on the joy of loving won’t last. Trust me. I speak from experience. True love is rooted in your respect, admiration, affection and attraction for the other person, and theirs for you. The very things that created that love in your heart are the things that you compete with for your partner’s time and attention. Possession doesn’t allow anyone enough breathing room to remain truly lovable.

Make love, not narcissism.

If you need somebody, call my name
If you want someone, you can do the same
If you want to keep something precious
You got to lock it up and throw away the key
If you want to hold onto your possession
Don’t even think about me

You can’t control an independent heart…

- Sting