True Love (Untouched)

by Esmerelda

From the very beginning of the material life, the first form of love the human beings are generally exposed to is familial love, through the display of affection and acceptance by one’s parents, guardians, siblings, extended family and other connections. However, what if the ones with whom the human being has this first experience with have not learned love for themselves in healthy form and so lack the capacity to express love in an appropriate way? What if the full knowledge and understanding of what healthy love is and how to show it remains lacking among them? All too often, the upbringing of the human being surrounds conditional love (i.e love only existing or being shown within acceptable behaviors and actions), also verbal criticism (i.e verbal abuse or demeaning words toward another, which act as a blow to one’s self-esteem) or even combative hands (i.e physical punishments and discipline). It is all too common that the initial belief to the young and naive human being, is these forms of behaviors or responses must be acceptable, as it is observed from those who they believe would know how to show healthy love and who are to love them. This belief is often further accepted by the young human being by the witnessing of unhealthy partnerships or relationships amongst their own families with verbal combativeness, physical aggression, lack of emotional control, and lack of communication amongst one another.

As the human being becomes of age and begins to venture out in creating different external connections and experience platonic love amongst their friends in school or out in society, the same often reveals itself, that many human beings have picked up and cultivated these learned behaviors of others in some way, shape or form, that inevitably disagreements amongst friends of similar kind are also handled in the form of conditional love (i.e rejection, no longer friends due to the dislike of something another did), verbalized criticism (i.e gossip = verbal spreading and demeaning of another’s character outwardly to others, pointing out ones mistakes, verbal combativeness), or even at the worst of times, combative hands (i.e a physical fight amongst two who were once friends) as experienced and learned during the early stage of life during the upbringing. As time passes by, with eyes to see and ears to hear, one notices these behaviors are very common in the outside world, and not possibly just in one’s own home or family. Therefore, the young human being nurtures the belief that such behaviors must be a normal way of life and love. 

While the human beings are already autonomous thinking at the earliest age and already making conscious choices (even if not autonomously acting), it is usually not until later in the youth when they begin to realize this during the ‘coming into their own’ phase, that they ‘believe’ their personality begins to take shape as the frontal lobe develops (although this actually begins earlier on), but reaches maturity at a later age (ages 11 to 25) and ‘begin noticing’ more their consciously aware choices every day, deciding if one is going to pick up and mimic learned behaviors or do differently. What the human being must come to understand is that us human beings will have diverse experiences during the upbringing, as well as throughout the life, to which some may surely be viewed as very hard or even unfair, but it is what is made of these experiences (what the human being determines form it, then chooses to accept, reject and then create new from it) from which they usually shape their life path (carried out through self-choice-free will). It is actually the ill-perception or mis-perception from the lack of processing or ill-processing of life experiences (unresolved experiences) from the human beings themselves that usually cause the human being to cast fault onto another and justify the mimicked behavior, without the self-realization that one once rejected and/or disagreed with those behaviors, but now carry these same behaviors out by themselves. Naturally, it is easier for human beings to mimic what they already believe they know because it is comfortable and does not require one to step out of one’s comfort zone to be challenged, therefore they usually carry this into the next stage of life when they set out to experience romantic love (the state of being in love) for the very first time and beyond. 

When unresolved experiences dominate the human being, subconsciously the human being enters the realm of romantic love with a broken lens filled with negativity (unhealthy learned behaviors). Although wanting and hoping for a positive outcome, some may find themselves already consciously burdened by the painful possibilities of rejection, dishonesty, infidelity, fear of relationship failure, criticism from their partner and verbal or physical combativeness, because that is what one has allowed to solely become known to them (so is anticipated by others), while also combating one’s own usually gone unrecognized insecurities, low self-esteem, intimacy issues, wavering trust and any other hindrances that arose from the unresolved negative experiences of the past and the negative perceptions created from those experiences. If one continues on this path (lack of self-education, self-instruction and self-correction), after so many failed relationships or continued relationships that are unhealthy, a human being in this state comes to believe that these hurdles are the normal ups-and-downs presented in a healthy love form, which consists of the acquired negative and unhealthy forms, accepting them as normality and believe these as necessary to endure, in order to eventually have a prosperous outcome.

Most human beings walk through life lacking the understanding of why it is that one continues to attract the same form of tumultuous relationships within different, yet similar human beings and while lacking self-realization as well, fail to realize that they too mimic the negative traits from which they are trying to break free of (Law of Cause and Effect), not connecting that it is precisely the negative learned behavior and unresolved experiences, as to why one is attracting it continuously (Law of Attraction). Even perhaps, one may have yet to ponder the possibility that one may have developed an emotional addiction to certain negative emotional states over time, that one now seeks this out indirectly and subconsciously. The most common emotional addictions are the feelings of control, feeling of being needed, or feelings of excitement and chaos. Thus, the patterns continue to repeat until self-reflection and personal growth are achieved (if realized and carried out), as well as the necessary lessons to be learned are conquered, which may take much effort. This requires the human being to look in the mirror and come to terms with the good, bad and ugly within oneself (self-cognition).

The saddened truth that has gone unnoticed to mankind is that most never come to such a cognition, so in turn lack the capacity to break free of these patterns, because they dissuade from recognizing their own responsibility (having had truly recognized early on whether they were in disagreeance with certain behaviors, yet chose of free will to accept and adopt these behaviors as their own). If the psyche of a human being becomes damaged from constant negative occurrences and experiences, it becomes all more common that the human being in this state consciously decides to surround themselves with the unhealthy, as it is comfortable, predictable and addictive. If the human being who may find themself trapped in this repetitive cycle and state actively does choose to leave, one usually just enters themselves in a similar situation with a new human being alike, because the change must come from within first, in order to attract different. The hope for change is nothing without action. “You are what you attract” suggests that the type of people, environments, situations and experiences one encounters is often a reflection of one’s own inner-self, beliefs and energy (as within, so without). 

The true highest form of love is effective-love, whereas the lesser forms of love is affective-love, which is comparable to the state of being in love (defined as a changing/fleeting/transient state) and this form of affective-love is what the human beings of Earth mostly gravitate to. Far too often one binds oneself to another wrongfully (knowingly or unknowingly), whether that be through a committed relationship, marriage or shared offspring. Some may lose hope and give up trying, while others may settle for what one believes one deserves, and some at times falsely believe “the one” was found, if the one confined to displays even a small fraction of decency, while others no longer seek companionship to avoid any more disappointment. Very rarely does one find one’s true partner in the current time and what must be understood amongst the human beings is that due to the predominance among humans to cultivate misperceptions and mal-process life experiences, ones who may find their suitable partner may find that they struggle to hold onto them if the negative is not dealt with.

In healthy love, not only should it be unconditional, but it should be equal and fair. One may feel that one’s thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, opinions, way of lifestyle, wants and desires are challenged by the other half, and this can feel very unsettling mentally and emotionally to the human being who mistakenly believes that their true partner would be of a similar image to them. The dissimilar simply helps to push one to step out of one’s comfort zone, question one’s beliefs, lifestyle, purpose in life, behavior, and it incites one to look deep within at one’s own flaws and face them, to which in order to do that, one must confront the skeletons in one’s closet that were buried deep. This can feel uneasy, burdensome, difficult, scary and uncomfortable, causing resistance within the unhealed and possible clashing within the relationship. More times than not, the unhealed and unready human being may self-sabotage or simply run from the relationship feeling unable to fully commit. 

The human being tends to come to the understanding that if one is with someone in opposition to them, the presented difficulties must equate to it not being “meant to be”, so most human beings seek out another who is similar to them thinking the relationship will be easier, but that remains an unrealistic notion which may lead to unrealistic expectations of a partner, as no one human being is ever created alike, that differences of opinion or conflicts of interest would not arise. Even when seeming partners appear alike enough, as the human being is disposed to change (fleeting states of being), the wants, desires, behaviors, etc. are prone to change throughout the course of life, in turn leading to new wants, desires and experiences. So, the belief that one’s true partner should be fixed to one’s own perception proves as misconception. When one further considers that diversity, new experiences, constant learning and nudging of one’s own personal growth is precisely what pushes the human being’s evolution forward, the co-evolutive value of having a diverse partner becomes realized. The cultivating of unhealthy/negative behaviors and reviving/reliving of unresolved experiences are all factors, which make the path to finding one’s true partner less likely to occur, or simply holding onto one’s true partner, if found, all the more difficult, as the unhealthy/negative learned is more often mimicked than deflected, in turn, being continuously passed down from generation to generation like a chain reaction, which may touch more and more people until a possible point of no return, as long as these unvalues are continued by humanity. 

“Although it is seemingly the perception that one is mostly, or only, during the upbringing surrounded by human being’s whom are mostly, or only, capable of exuding negative-values (displaying misdeeds and/or appearing of a ill-nature), it however remains the case that in fact both values (positive/negative) remain equally present (Law of Fairness).

If one were to reflect upon oneself and recognize the various cultivated positive-values within oneself, likewise the good-deeds carried-out by oneself, one would heed that these positive-values were likewise present during the youth, in turn likewise displayed amid the individuals whom were merely to bestow an instructional effect. Thus, as negative was observed, learned and further cultivated via ones free-will choice, so too the positive was observed, learned and further cultivated via ones chosen free-will, which is in and of itself, ones own self-education, as it remains so, that one can not truly be taught by others, for it remains ones own education -or -lack of self-education and/or instruction to oneself (thus what is self-learned, carried-out and continued), which indeed constitutes the upbringing, if one were to truly reflect and were to acknowledge this.

Yet, as self-reflection and self-responsibility remain far from the masses (majority), it woefully often remains so, that mostly the negative perceptions and experiences are habitually reflected upon (constantly relived and/or revived), to which the responsibility of ones own displaying of negative (ungood) is placed upon the upbringing one, whereas the positive perceptions and experiences are all to often deflected (simply forgotten and/or ignored), to which the esteem of ones showing of positive (good) is mostly attributed to oneself (as though these positive values were not likewise observed amid the upbringing ones, to which only all negative values would to theirs) … Allow that Love be the work of forgiveness, paving the path to forgive others their trespasses, as one would equally desire that ones own errors be forgiven and forgotten.”

(Whose Lives are Illuminated by Love)

The world now normalizes hypersexuality (i.e focus on lustful desires, sex addiction), shared partners (i.e open relationships), fleeting partners (i.e jumping from person to person) and adultery, while simultaneously witnessing rises in unprotected sex and sexually transmitted diseases/infections, increasing divorce rates, broken relationships, homes and families, and the growth in anti-social and non-committal human beings (i.e incessant infidelity or simply no longer desiring companionship – deemed by some to be pointless/worthless). If the human being who suffers from unresolved past experiences does not come to recognize the vital importance of self-reflection (self-cognition/self-awareness), self-responsibility (self-education/self-correction) and above all self-love (self-acceptance/ true love for oneself), healthy love forms may become permanently unrecognizable to them. As a result, the path to finding one’s true partner may likewise continue to become the road less travelled and the potential looms for the future of true love itself of becoming completely untouched.