Why Do We Hurt the Ones We Love

The world is an ever changing dynamic place. If you step out of your daily routine to open your mind and alter your perspective, it can become clear that there are few absolute certainties in life, few but not none. The taxman will get his money, death comes for us all, and the sun rises every morning except for the one morning when the prior point proves true. Furthermore, if you are capable of loving and being loved and choose to do so, then you will get hurt and hurt someone at some point in your life regardless of whether you intend to or not. If you think you won’t get hurt if you don’t fall in love, you may be right but don’t think for a second that precludes you from hurting someone who falls in love with you. Why is it that in most cases we end up hurting the people we care about and that care about us? It’s not always malicious spite with full-intentions. Some of the deepest cuts just sort of happen in the heat of the moment. I’m not talking about your reaction at arriving home from work early to plan a surprise engagement proposal and accidentally walking in on your significant other in a gangbang with your cousin, best friend, and worst enemy. I mean the little things that happen in relationships that build towards failure and sour partings: buying tickets to an event and they decide not to go, inviting them along to a social outing to get to know your friends better and they prefer to stay in at home, wanting to see them no matter the circumstances and they simply don’t do enough to allow it to happen. These incidents are often not the be-all end-all, but together in repetition they contribute towards that threshold we all have when we choose to care only about ourselves and to hell with the other person. At that breaking point, guards go up, defenses come out, and past hurts and failures bubble to the surface as a reminder of the first time you got hurt and it felt like your world was ending and you just wanted to die. Except you didn’t, and while the experience made each of us stronger, it also changes you and even makes some of us jaded. Perhaps that’s why we often act as if we know the exact moment when someone is going to hurt us and preempt it by running away or striking first blood to lessen the blow. We know we’re just protecting ourselves because we know who has hurt us in the past and how it felt, but in doing so we give nothing to the other person. Just as we need to be understood and loved the way we want to be loved, we just as quickly cease to show love, understanding, compassion, or consideration when they strike our nerve. How can we expect to find and embrace love when our way of caring about and loving someone is to levy OUR expectations on them? If we’re going to be with them, love them, and be loved by them in return then why do we demand a return on our investment and seek proof that they’re not like everyone else we have experienced and therefore measure them by? Why is it that when we love someone, we grow to expect certain things from them: an honest effort, honest communication, fidelity, trust, our words being heard, our emotions understood, and our needs met? It doesn’t seem to matter if we can’t meet our own needs by ourselves, but if they can’t meet our expectations then someone is bound to get dismissed and hurt, and better you than me, right? It’s with that thinking that I’ll argue most of us love selfishly, if at all. Everyone has their own agenda and the relationships that last seem to be born out of mutual interests, matching agendas, and compatible approaches to life much more than deep, profound, passionate, uncontrollable love. We all want equality in our relationship, a fair exchange, the terms of which are decided between the parties involved over various meetings and compromises. It’s more a business transaction of an optimal 6% return over the long haul or short frenetic 11% gains based on aggressive posturing because we all want our time, effort, and energy to be worth it. But the demands and expectations that work in business and business relationships simply don’t apply when it comes to real love. When emotions are involved, you can't ask for or demand things from someone especially if you are not willing to make that same effort. Emotions only care about themselves. They want, they feel, they shake, rattle, and roll you and try as you might but you can’t forever suppress them. The heart wants what it wants, when it wants it, and it either gets it or builds walls to protect itself no matter what toll it takes on the one we once gave the keys of our heart to. Love isn’t self-serving, it’s that we’re afraid of rejection, of getting hurt. Love is a powerful, addictive, drug, and we often keep coming back for that next hit. But we want to know that it’s ok to indulge in that next hit, that it won’t break us and they won’t hurt us if we fall again. Yet do we promise that we won’t hurt them if we fall out of love with them? When it doesn’t work out do we promise to answer the phone and talk them through the weeks and months of heartache and heartbreak and all those wishes unfulfilled, dreams deferred, and hopes never realized? If it was love, then why so often when it ends, is no love shown? Whether it was or wasn’t, ultimately we must accept we all selfishly seek what we want and that manifests itself in the expectations we push upon whoever we choose to be with and possibly even fall in love with. Many think that when someone loves you they won't hurt you. Realistically, it’s inevitably that someone who loves you will hurt you. But when someone really loves you they are willing to accept they did you wrong, apologize, and work to make sure it doesn’t happen again. When you love them, you’re willing to forgive them because you know the love you share is profound. You both believe that together you can weather any storm and be much greater than you ever could be as individuals. You understand that you'll continue to make mistakes separately and together, but neither of you gives up or walks away because you're in it together. Then again, if you don't want to get hurt, then don't fall in love, and if you don't want to hurt someone, don't let them fall in love with you, as if either of you can control who you fall in love with. Your experiences apart will never hold a flame to what they could be together if you can figure out how to make it work. I suppose that's the way love goes, you’re either able to love each other with everything you have or you end up hating each other with the same fervent passion until eventually your love for each other fades and you become nothing, no love shown and a distant memory, another reminder.