For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.  Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. – Kahlil Gibran

We’ve heard so many people warn us that we shouldn’t love like that, that we should reserve some love for ourselves just in case.  It seemed practical, but it certainly didn’t sound romantic.  If love is like that, what’s the use of it?  How could it be love? And so we ignored these things and we fell in love, and then our hearts got broken and we remembered everything they told us about.  Was it wrong to have given up everything in the name of love?

The answer is yes and no.

We’re not wrong to think that love should be all-consuming, and that we dare sacrifice everything for it.  It’s the people and things we gave our hearts to that’s wrong, because only God deserves such kind of love.

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ – Matthew 22:37-39

Our love for God should be first.  Our love for others, even our most special beloved, should only be second.  Why?  Because people are not perfect.  No matter how much we love others, we still fail sometimes, we still hurt those whom we love the most.  Expecting perfect things from imperfect people isn’t romantic, it’s foolish.

The reason we need to be guided first by our love for God is that God’s love should be able to fill us first.  If not, we crave for so much love that nobody on earth could realistically be able to give it to us.

Nobody could stay with us 24 hours in a day.   Even our partners would certainly have something else to do.  Nobody could enjoy the same things with us all the time.  We’d have different interests and different ways of spending our days.  We’d have different ways of expressing love, and of receiving it.  Most of all, nobody could fully read our hearts. Only God knows the deepest yearnings of our soul, and only He could fulfil them.

Giving up everything for imperfect people is actually not being able to give them the best you could possibly give them.  Will giving up our self respect help others?  Will giving up our conscience be a true sign of love?  The best that we could give others is the best of who we are, and who else knows how to achieve that but God?

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

-Kahlil Gibran

I’ve realized that in order for a relationship to work, both parties must be willing and interested to work out the relationship.  It can never work when only one person cares about it.

This is the reason why God respects our freewill, because He doesn’t want to force us just to love Him back.  It can never work out that way.  Even if God is all too willing to give us the best things, His love wouldn’t be able to form a relationship with us unless we are willing to receive that which is being given us.

Even The Sincerest Affection Can Be Ignored

In human relationships, our love, no matter how sincere it may be could also be rejected or ignored.  Though we do not love as unconditionally as God loves, we have a certain capacity to go on loving another person even if that person doesn’t love us back.  Still, without being able to respond to our love, a relationship is not truly forged, and both could not reap the sweet fruits of a truly meaningful and mutual relationship.

Why We Fall For Another Person

It can happen that we fall in love with a certain person because we see something beautiful in him, something he may not even see in himself.  Seeing this beauty that we may also have failed to find or develop in ourselves, we transfer all our love to that person who has it, and that person becomes our world, the very meaning of our lives.

Why The Relationship Doesn’t Work

That person however may not support us back, he may not even love himself the way we love him.  Thus, his actions do not produce a return flow of love either towards himself or towards us.  He is like a cistern with many holes that never gets filled, and that never really gets happy and satisfied.

For this reason, we don’t feel satisfied too, for all that we want is his happiness, for we have anchored our happiness upon his.

One question would be, “Why does he still maintain the superficial relationship if he doesn’t care so much about it?” Maybe he still derives some benefit from it, like someone who can always listen to his complaints or someone who could keep him company or maybe he just feels obliged somewhat to return the favor.

But he is not as attached to the relationship as the other person is because he may not have seen the beauty in the other person to really capture his heart.  His heart may also be closed such that he can’t accept anybody in it.  Or he could have a lot of filters, he wants some form or type of love which the other person couldn’t offer him.

Not having found his pearl of great price, he has the tendency to desert the relationship anytime.  Note that even while he is in the relationship, he is not happy and is not able to avail of the full benefits of the relationship.  He could then threaten to leave anytime whenever he finds another relationship that gives him the same benefits or even more, or whenever he already feels uncomfortable, irritated or guilty by being unable to meet the demands of the other person.

Do you have a true relationship with both people mutually working out for its good?

In my book "30 Days to Heal a Broken Heart" , you will be guided thru 30 days of healing just when you're hurting and you feel like no one really understands: Why am I hurting so much? What's wrong with me? Could I ever have him back again? Whatever happened to love? Should you end a relationship even if you still love each other? Can I ever be happy again? Must I forgive him? How did we end up hurting each other so much? Why couldn't he try harder like me? I don't know if I could ever forget him. Is there anyone who could ever love me? Why do I always seem to fall for the wrong person? Why is he not suffering as much as I am right now? What if he suddenly comes back to me? But he could be the one! Read more...

When a relationship ends, it’s hard to separate the good memories from the painful ones. It’s hard for us to let go because we don’t want to put to waste all the good things that has happened to us all those years.  At the same time, we can’t just discard the painful memories, we can’t pretend that those things never happened because they have, and they have taught us things we just can’t leave behind.

Maybe one way to reconcile this is to think that even our painful memories have turned out to work for our good. We are now wiser and stronger because of them, and they’re as much a part of us as all the other good memories we had with the people we loved.

One relationship may end, but a new one may still begin, a new relationship formed by two people who have already changed and become better from everything that they’ve been through, both the good ones and the bad.