“So it’s true when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love”. -E.A. Bucchianeri
At the slightest thought of love, most of us imagine candlelight dinners, wine, and roses.
So why does it hurt?
Throughout history, it has been the subject of countless poems, stories, and artworks. Although some of these works celebrate the joy and happiness that love brings, many of them cannot overcome the pain that love often brings. This kind of pain usually comes from the changes and changes that occur during the relationship. However, this pain is not necessarily a negative thing. It can prompt you to discuss your needs with spouses and can enable you to reassess this relationship and its value.
Love is a beautiful thing, but won’t always be like the one portrayed in movies, in novels, or according to your imaginations, it comes with its fair share of pains.
Many reasons are falling in love can cause hurt, and no one is more right or wrong than the other. I prefer Jung’s interpretation and understanding of the soul. For this article, I will keep the description short and oversimplified, hoping to replace it with private or public dialogue and allow people to gain deeper personal insights and learning opportunities.
Let’s start with what happened when we fell in love. When you fall in love, you will fall in love with the ideal woman or man living in your inner world, your fantasy. Therefore, you will never fall in love with someone, just a fantasy about whom you think you should or should be.
Love hurts, and there are causes why it does, but they are not all in the negative. We’ll first look at complicated feelings that pose as love, but in the real sense, it’s not. This feeling covers most issues that lead to hurting. This feeling is;
- LUST
The difference between love and eroticism is one reason love hurts. Lust is described by the ending of romantic stories and fairy tales: a strong, overwhelming, and all-encompassing lust, which cannot be stopped from thinking about how to capture the heart (the body) of the objects of our lust. That is lust and not love.
Lust is a purely sexual response. Everything is (the only) need for reproduction, although it is most often described by visual attributes: when we have a desire, we react more to smells than to visuals. If our feelings tell us (usually unconsciously) that a person has the most different immune system from our own, then we will plead with someone. If we are pregnant with this person, our smell will tell us we will produce the healthiest and most disease-resistant children.
Lust is idealized and projected. It allows us to see what we want to see and what we want to see only in another person. It allows us to ignore any malfunctions or defects in them. When we are in desire, we see another person as a perfect person, just like a desirable person.
Lust is a more instant reaction. “Their eyes meet and the feeling is electric” -this describes lust, not love. This is an immature body response whose purpose is to ensure the survival of our DNA. It touches our senses and stimulates the production of the same neuro-chemicals (especially dopamine), which are awakened when we are addicted to narcotics. Sadly, this overwhelmingly pleasant experience is only temporary. In a few weeks (in a few months, if we are lucky), we fall out of lust.
Only in this way, if we choose, we may love.
Love is true love for another person, best defined by a psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck. He described it as the willingness to expand oneself at any personal cost to cultivate the growth of another person. Love is ignoring your own needs and having fun in letting your loved one discover their potential and become their best person.
When we truly love someone, our focus is on their self-expression, not on ourselves.
Those who claim to “love” someone because they want to fill the void in their hearts will only make that person feel suffocated and resentful. Neither is the love that scores at night. It does not expect any return. Love just flows out. As Gibran put it: “Love does not possess, nor will it possess, For love, love is enough.”
Another is:
- THE UNKNOWN FUTURE
When you want to know why love is hurt, one of the biggest reasons is the uncertainty of all this.
Love is beautiful, and when we fall in love, we feel so beautiful and safe. And happy. To some extent, we are used to this kind of safety and comfort, and we don’t want it to disappear.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of love. We know this from experience. We are terrified in our hearts that this kind of relationship will seem like other people’s and bring us pain once again.
Therefore, not knowing the future of our relationship and how it will develop will cause us physical pain. Anxiety can cause stomach pain, real heartache, dizziness, and other physical symptoms. Symptoms that cause us pain, both literally and visually.
Try to manage your concerns about the future. No one knows what will happen and worrying about it will only be freed from the happiness you feel now.
The good news is; there are thousands of people who have been hurt by love, are still hurting, and would soon get hurt, but do you know love heals?
Yes, it does, it heals.
You need an equal amount or more of love that brought you hurt to heal. When love hurts, you must open your heart up to love again because if you don’t, you’ll keep hurting as you keep thinking about your experience.
You can only overcome bad memories with good ones, so open your heart to love again because you deserve to be happy and you deserve to be loved.
