05: Mirror of Romantic Love
Love is fascinating. Those I love and those who love me teach me the most about how I love myself. As humans, we may start to learn about love from a young age, but it’s romantic love that has revealed where I have misinterpreted love and have left myself to find it. Romantic love is one of my most intimate mirrors.
Many traditions, methodologies, and teachers I have learned from talk about how we learn about love from the families, communities, and systems we were born into. And regardless of how loving those who have raised us are, our experience of love has more impact than the words or actions that are demonstrated as love. It’s as if we are programmed to understand love by what we do (or don’t do) and what we receive in return, rather than by how someone is intending to show us love.
Through this lens of interpreting love, as a child, if I was punished for doing something perceived to be “wrong,” regardless of my motivation or whether it was “wrong” or perhaps “right,” I might tag what I did as something not to do if I want to receive love. And if I was celebrated and praised for being “right,” I might do the same thing again to feel love, even if I didn’t enjoy the very thing I was doing. It seems as though the more we are affirmed by our actions, externally, rather than being invited to explore our internal experience, love can become externalized. And if love continues to be externalized, we can grow up looking for romantic partners to validate or fill that external need for love rather than experiencing self-love, allowing the romantic partner to amplify what is already inside of us, instead of being the source of love.
My journey of romantic love has taught me what I have repressed and has shown me where I have distorted love. The depth and quality of the love I have received has revealed where I have not loved myself – inspiring me to love myself more. And the love I have expressed, withheld, or where I have passed judgment onto a partner, has revealed where I have not loved myself, have detached myself from my desires, led with fear, and have let unresolved parts of me stay buried. It has been a much slower and arduous process to get to a place of deeper love for myself for what I have not wanted to be with, but I have found that the experience of love on the other side of it is always worth the cost of going through it.
Mirror of romantic love, even though I have projected so much of my own wounding – placing expectations, demands, and judgment onto you rather than seeing my own reflection on the other side or have abandoned myself trying to fix and convince the reflection in the mirror to change – you have not failed to show me what I haven’t wanted to see. You have revealed the brightness and beauty as well as the darkness and self-betrayal. I have come to appreciate this mirror and pay closer attention to what is actually there. That has also opened space for more presence, letting distortion and fantasy fall away. I am truly thankful.
Acknowledgment:
To those I have loved romantically: Thank you for teaching me about love. Through our connection, I have learned to see myself, know myself, and recognize parts of myself more intimately. It has been a beautiful gift to realize where I have hidden, trembled, and numbed – the brilliant parts of me and the rougher, less polished ones I have shamed – and to let them be expressed, empowered by love. Thank you for loving me in the moments of joy, challenge, and everything in between. I am forever grateful.
