I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t get to choose how others love you.
You hear it in every relationship rant and every supportive gripe session. “If they loved you, they would…” We have come to see relationships as something we are entitled to get something for being in. Something tangible and beneficial to make it worth our while to grace another human being with the privilege share a space or to change their Facebook status to “in a relationship” with us.
I won’t sugarcoat this. If you think someone owes you anything in a relationship you are painfully mistaken.
If you have ever heard of love languages, you may be familiar with the concept that people have ways that they express and feel love. Whether it is touch, gifts, affirmation, or time, there are ways that people default to when they participate in relationships. This sets up the idea that people default to ways of showing their affection as well as the ways they most easy translate the behaviors of others as love. There are no table stakes to relationships in a way that could apply to everyone. While one person could care less who pays for dinner and another is very set on one person should or splitting the check, it is all about those love languages. The only key to success is being able to recognize and speak those languages, regardless of proficiency.
Ignoring the existence of different ways of expressing or receiving affection leads to some wildly out of touch expectations. When someone has unexpressed needs, wants, or expectations they are not willing to budge on, the seed of resentment quickly takes root in that relationship. It’s because, without acknowledging it, they are looking for someone else to fill some void for them, even if that means that they give something in return, like money, sex, or security. That isn’t a relationship, that is a transaction. While most relationships have some transactional features to them, it cannot be the foundation of anything resembling a healthy relationship and definitely not some sort of score card of love.
Even if the relationship doesn’t start with such expectations, they can creep in. Unnoticed, unintended, or even deliberately planted by someone outside the relationship, standards of expression can begin to be expected over time. It could be as innocent as “how many times do I have to point out that this annoys me?,” “her husband always asks how her day was and never lets her leave without a kiss goodbye,” or “his wife has sex with him three times a week and I am lucky to get it once.” It could also be the big things like infidelity or losing the retirement fund. Things that you would think would be a strict off limits areas that shouldn’t have to be discussed to know they are problematic.
No matter what the expectation, or even the action, people are very quick to throw in a “well they don’t love you.” It escalates fast to this. All of a sudden, someone’s actions, or lack there of, become a perceived, conscious attack on the other and could only be labeled as a lack of love. Circumstances are thrown out the window and any reasoning to the contrary is useless. No, forgetting to say good night is just one of the many things that demonstrate a lack of love.
What defense could someone possibly have against that argument? A quick jump to all the things they did do today with their partner in mind? Maybe a quick apology? They absolutely couldn’t call out the absurdity of the accusation. That would be minimizing the other’s feelings. While the best course would be to open the conversation about “what made you feel that way and react so strongly” would be the healthy way to move forward, many of us may not have the emotional awareness and fortitude for that.
No, in fact therein lies that sense of expectation and entitlement. They expected their spouse to act in a certain way, and for a million reasons, it just didn’t happen. Maybe it has been happening for a while, but the fact remains that placing such expectations on others will rarely yield satisfaction. Because, you see, people don’t love us like we want to be loved. They love us in the way they know how to.
Loving someone in a mature way manifests in deeper places than affirmation through actions and gifts. It comes from a place of selflessness and that can not be met with selfishness. That selfless consideration is seen through a person’s consciousness about the other person in their life. It is a deep level of inclusion into the operations of living our life as an individual, not a part of a couple of for someone else. Our consciousness is often aloof, but can be spotted if you are willing to see it. It is those moments when someone is thinking of you and some random small gesture comes out. It may be daydreaming of sitting on a beach as old people holding hands, someone completely incapable of remembering they were about to take out the trash. It could be speaking kindly of their partner spontaneously to their coworkers because they can’t wait to get home, but the butterflies flee at the site of a power bill and a sink full of dishes. Yes, it is the little things that often will never be expressed or even seen.
To feel this, you have to let go of managing the other and setting the expectations for them to meet. It is seeing how they present their love and truly acknowledging it, regardless if you think it is how you want them to present it to you. It is about seeing how they actually treat you differently than anyone else. Call it out. There are few phrases that could make someone instantly seen than “I see what you did there, you must love me.”
When was the last time you actually acknowledged seeing someone’s love to them? You partner, especially. Not expressing yours, that is easy to put forward or even fake. You can’t fake acknowledging someone else’s love. If you try, they will just call you out for mistaking the gesture. Give it a try.
Can you express how you want to feel love and appreciated? Absolutely, you should! You should express it with as much honesty as possible to them and yourself. Should they then be required to meet the criteria you set? No. They will take it into consideration, but it requires contorting their love language to meet yours. It is unnatural, so it won’t be easy for them to get it right and especially form habits around it. Hell, they may not understand it at all. Them missing the mark, even frequently should not be seen and especially voiced as a lack of love, it should be expected.
Yes, the only expectation is the other person to fall short of exactly what we want. Relationships are not one-sided. They are a bond between two, independent people and a commitment to move forward in life together. An unfortunate reality is the older we get, the more fully formed we are. We need less from partners, because we have spent significant time learning to be self-sufficient and not needing to support another adult in adult ways. We set expectations based on our needs to become better than we are by adding in another person. Sadly, it misses the point. The only challenge in that is training another person and that tends to not go well. The challenge should be integrating and bolstering each others efforts to common goals. That is much bigger than loving and feeling love in the “right” way.
The truth is that seeing someone else’s love requires more attention than it takes for them to show it. I challenge you to step out of your love language and dare to see the other ways love is expressed to you. Acknowledge when you see it and thank others for loving you in their way. Once you begin to see love in broader ways, the world really becomes a brighter place.