I hate math!
Ok, now that I got that off my chest I can post myself a blog before Friday rolls around and I get a disapproving glance from Liza.
Friday is the day my former English class gets together for lunch. I cherish this little event by the way.
So… lately I have been thinking about love. My thought is that if you have to change who someone is or own them to love them…well then you don’t really love them, maybe just maybe you love love, you love being loved or, you simply love being in control.
Recently, after leaving the cult, I started getting in touch with some of my old pre-cult friends. We can not be terribly close, that’s because my friends were mainly male and now I am married.
Propriety rules out, even if the friendships were platonic.
One of these friends, Davin*, came by to visit with Derek and I the other day. While he was there I asked him what happened with the girl he had been engaged to a few years back. He said something I thought was rather insightful, “Sarah* loved the role I played in her life not me.” That was not good enough for Davin*. I have thought about that a lot. It is something I used to ponder (pre-cult) when observing relationships. He went on to say, “anyone that did the things I did for her would be a fine husband for her, it didn’t matter who I was.”
My thoughts on “Role Love”.
Role love, my name for the love you have for any person as long as they fill a certain role, it is plenty good for most people.
But it also has many faults
#1 It is the lowest life form of love, Jesus even said, anyone will do good for those who do good back to them, most will do anything for their kids, and even the worst “sinners” are good to their friends. Think mafia. He said its something special to love someone who doesn’t have anything to offer back (I am heavily paraphrasing).
#2 What happens if you cant fill your role anymore? Say, you get really sick and can no longer perform your former role related responsibilities, those who supposedly loved you will be out lookin for someone else to fill your role quicker than you think. I have seen it happen. I have seen woman, good, good woman, in my own family, who were faithful, good wives for many decades. Then they got cancer or their kidneys failed and guess what?? Romeo (el husbondo) gets a new girlfriend before they are even gone and he is happily remarried before the grass even has a chance to grow over their grave.
#3 The person who “role loves you” loves how you make them feel, what you do for them, it has nothing to do with appreciating your individual soul, this kind of love is based on works. As Janet Jacksons so sagely put it, “what have you done for me lately? Oh, oh, oh, yea!”
The cult I left portrayed God’s love for us this exact way, if you are doing church prescribed good works then God loved you. If you were not doing the works then you better put on you fire suit (like it’ll do any good) because you are on a grease poll heading straight to a devils hell.
Now I will not dispute that if you love someone you will try to fill roles in their life that make them happy but if all you have is roles then it’s not the person that you love, its how they make you feel.
As far as the control issue goes, I think that proverb about the bird and the cage explains the situation well enough.
*changed names to protect identity and so no one will get pissed off at me.
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I absolutely agree with D's insight: that often the people we love/care about need the role we play in their lives more than they us, especially when WE think that the people we love/care about should love/care about US, not what we do for them!
ReplyDeleteIf we take the concept that "God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son ...," as a metaphor, each of use also give just because we love, not because of what we can get from the relationship. The love should stand on its own, not as either a pre-condition or as a condition of the relationship. The fact that I LOVE is enough: anything else I bring to the relationship is a bonus, for ... "the greatest of these is love."
Now, that probably explains why I am still single: I want the love in and of itself, without any strings attached, such as I should lose weight, wear better clothes, learn how to cook, enough your hobbies as my own, attach myself to your lifestyle at the expense of my own life. I think that kind of love is rare, but it's out there -- if we focus on the love, not the stuff that surrounds it.
As I said before, D left his life to be with you, which is a pretty incredible sign of the quality of his love. Perhaps you are the one in the relationship who attaches strings to your love?
Yes, I should have previewed the comment before posting it as there are some errors that affect meaning, but I think the idea came across mostly intact.
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