How to truly love someone
“The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.” - Erich Fromm
This quote struck my attention as I was scrolling well beyond my bedtime the other night. I’m assuming it was meant to be a message to us all from @ariannahuff as a bit of a beacon of light, helping us find our way through this unknowing time. “Yes!” I thought as I read it. “That’s it!” But I wasn’t thinking about the stay at home order or sheltering in place. It didn’t even dawn on me at the time that the pandemic was probably the reason she posted it. No, I was geeking out over the message as the most enlightening way into any relationship.
Being alone and being lonely are two entirely separate emotions. Ask any single man or woman who’s been trying to online date and they’ll tell you exactly what the difference is. Alone can be a choice, lonely feels thrust upon. So who would want to be alone and why would we need to truly in order for the “ability to love”?
Most of us dive head first into loving someone else at some point in our lives. Without a doubt there’s love that comes from a place deep inside, one that you maybe didn’t know existed. Because it’s so strong, there’s such a pull, it must be love, right? Maybe. But we don’t even pause to take a breath between passion to ask ourselves the right questions. Could I live without this person? In young love, in lust, in codependency, oftentimes the answer is a resounding “no!” In movies, this is romantic. This is the kind of love we want people to feel for us, to make any ultimate sacrifice for us and us alone.
But this is also the kind of love that makes you feel the electric buzz of anxiety and the depth of depression. Broken. Completely swallowed and then split into two. This is a choiceless kind that feels overpowering. Like all is well in the world only if all is well with my lover. This isn’t love. This, more than anything else, is the response when we’re desperately afraid of losing love. Love and fear are a toxic relationship, holding hostage the vulnerability needed so desperately in order to truly connect. Passionate yes. But love? I don’t believe so.
People have argued for centuries over what love is and/or is not. It’s many things to many people, and most of the time very different. But true, deep love, of the most vulnerable type can only come from one that knows this feeling themself and is able to gift it forward. It’s definitely not choiceless in fact, it’s incredibly intentional. It’s grace, it’s giving, and it may look very much like every other kind of love yet it’s where it’s coming from that sets it apart from the rest.
It comes from a place where one’s been in their experience of learning who they are. A place where you know your why. And it comes from a place of courage, courage to be incredibly vulnerable in owning a story or, at the very least, recognizing that the chapters are yours to hold and not destroy or cast off. This love comes from a place of vulnerability in the most alone sense, willing to stand so strong in values and love that if alone, so be it. A place where you’ve gone into the arena that Brené Brown so often refers to.
Conscious, intentional, graceful, kind, compassionate.
You want it because you know exactly where it’s coming from within your soul. You feel it reach for the person across from you and it lands exactly where you want it to because it’s a gift that’s given purposefully. Not thrust upon, not made to believe to be true, not haphazardly and irresponsibly but so boringly obvious to an outsider maybe that to explain it is difficult to do.
And how are you so familiar with this? Because it’s your love for yourself from which you give to another human being. You know this feeling, you can identify this feeling and it’s not surprising because it’s exactly what you feel for you. It’s familiar, it’s obvious, and it’s yours to give.
