Growth of the Heart

In my office, I have learned not to argue with love.  You can’t win over love.  If someone tells you they are in love, you have to accept it.  So I only ask about it judiciously.  Often when I ask someone what keeps them with another person, I specifically tell them not to use the word ‘love.’  In part I stay away from the word because I don’t know what it means.  

Love changes as a person matures.  The ability to love changes across the life span.  I don’t know how mature the individual is when they enter my office.  Therefore, I don’t know what they mean when they say they love someone.  

When I was a child, I would have told you that I loved my mother with all of my heart.  At the time, that was true.  Looking back at it years later, I know that it was more of a need, a dependency.  Dependency was what I thought love was when I was a child.  I literally needed my mother to live.   

Then there were all those great relationships.  I believed that I loved everyone of the ladies that came through my life.  At that time of my life, it was true.  Again, looking back years later, it was a love that was also a dependency.  It was a different kind of need.  My love at that age was almost a hunger.  With each succeeding relationship, I was more capable of connecting, being unselfish and loving.

When I describe myself in those relationships now, I remember how I held on so tightly to those girls, that they had to break away to breath.  I choked the relationship with my dependency.  Dependency is easily recognized at this age as jealousy, insecurity and controlingness.  At the time I didn’t know what it was. 

Then my mother died.  This had two profound affects which were at opposite ends of the spectrum.  First, it was the devestating tragedy in my life.  I was 26 years old chronologically, but 15 years old emotionally.  It was a pain like I have never experienced.  Some nights I cried a million tears.  Other nights I would learn every trick in the book not to cry.  However, it also freed me up from the strong hold my mother had on me.  It was like getting thrown in the deepend and not knowing how to swim.  As I grieved, I slowly put my life back together.  I began to swim on my own.  Through the process of grieving I let go of the dependency and increased my feeling of responsibility for myself.  When I met my wife I was ready to love in a more mature inter-independence.  It was a new form of love.  It certainly was healthier.  Now, when I look back on it, I experienced it as the ultimate level of love.  I was wrong. 

We had two children.  This was a totally different experience.  I knew down deep in my heart, I would take a bullet for either of them.  It was a new level of unselfishness.  Even with that depth of love, I wanted them to fly.  I wanted them to someday leave me and live their own life.  Their happiness and future is my goal.  

This level of love can then be found with my wife.  What we learned from loving our children, we can apply to our relationship.  I do believe my wife and I have been able to bring this level of love back to our relationship.  

All love changes over time.  I think the best way to explain it is with the bacon.  When my children were growing, the last piece of bacon on the plate was theirs.  No question about it.  Then, as my son began to approach 18 years old, we started negotiating the last piece of bacon.  Sometimes we split it.  Sometimes it was his, sometimes he’d say, “it’s all yours.”  We still do that sometimes.   Now that he’s almost 20 years old, sometimes I just say, “I want it.”