Chapter One: Abundant Love

Listen with Your Heart : Seeking the Sacred in Romantic Love
by Eileen Flanagan

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I view my marriage as a spiritual path, a way of life that expands and fulfills me, that teaches me about myself and others, that brings me closer to God. This growth is usually not glamorous. It is the ordinary things that teach the most: deciding who changes the next diaper or who gets the last bagel, knowing when to speak and when to listen, learning to give of myself without giving up my self. Although I am still a beginner on this path, I know that my marriage is teaching me to be more generous and patient, in short, to be more loving.

For me, the process of waiting for the right partner and discerning whether or not we were meant to marry was itself full of growth. It involved letting go of some of my old ideas about relationships. It involved learning to listen more consciously to my inner voice for guidance. It involved admitting my own longing and learning to trust that my real needs would be met, though maybe not in the way I expected. A crucial step in this process was rejecting the consumer view of love. As long as I thought of love as a thing I had to find, I feared I would be love-poor. But when I shifted my focus to real loving-the process of creating love-I began to trust that the love in my life would always be plentiful, whether or not I ultimately married.

LOVE IS A VERB

"You will always have plenty of love," says Sharon, an energetic, joyful woman in her mid-forties. "That was the message most people needed to hear." Sharon had led a weeklong workshop on women's spirituality, and during the closing ritual participants had been invited to give each other the message they wished they had received as children. Without planning, most participants shared a similar message, the promise that love would be plentiful rather than scarce. For Sharon, whose mentally ill mother was physically and emotionally absent for much of her childhood, it had taken many years to learn to trust in love's abundance, and she was struck that so many workshop participants from different backgrounds needed the same assurance. Sharon recalls, "Hearing that message, ?You will always have plenty of love,' whispered in your ear repeatedly was an incredible gift!"

Most of us do not grow up assured of love's abundance. We believe we have to do something to deserve love, like an allowance we receive only after we've done our chores. Particularly in romantic love, we fear we have to dress a certain way, maintain a certain weight, or play a certain game in order to win another's heart. This message is reinforced by many of the self-proclaimed relationship experts who tell us we must follow a "love plan" or a set of rules if we have any chance of competing in the love market.

Magazines and dating manuals frequently use market language, telling us how to "advertise" our assets and "make the right sales pitch at the right time." Haven't You Been Single Long Enough? asks, "What is an advertiser's objective? To persuade and motivate someone to choose his product or service." "It's nothing more than supply and demand," states The Great American Man Shortage and Other Roadblocks to Romance. Many authors hook their largely female audience with questionable statistics about the scarcity of marriageable men. Highly successful women, we are told, have a disadvantage because men prefer to "marry down" the economic ladder; black women have it harder than white women partly because black men marry interracially at four times the rate of black women; and all women face diminishing odds as they get older and have to compete with younger women and widows. "Wake up!" warns How to Marry the Man of Your Choice. Unless you act now, "all you can look forward to is menopause, and a pet cat for companionship."

The belief that love is a commodity, like rubies or radium, with a limited supply, is one of the most toxic ideas in our culture. As long as we think of love as a noun-something that can be found, possessed, or lost-people will have to compete for it. There will be rich and poor. But when we think of love as a verb, an activity rather than a thing, love is as plentiful as we make it. This subtle shift in perception allows us to see the abundant potential for loving in our lives.

The author who clarified this distinction for me was Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and profound social thinker. In To Have or to Be, Fromm described havinghaving and being as two alternative ways of living. In the having mode, we try to make ourselves feel secure through possession. We are worth what we have: manicured lawn, beautiful children, advanced degree, executive office. In the being mode, what we have is unimportant. What we are is all that counts.

If we live in the having mode, as much of our culture does, we will try to grab love, to make it ours. We will think of it as something we must pursue when we don't have it and hold on to when we do. But Fromm asserted that love is not a thing that can be possessed: "In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying." True love does not mean possessing another's affections, and it cannot exist when our primary concern is receiving love. Rather, as Fromm defined it, "Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love."

This definition clarifies the difference between loving and trying to acquire love. Wearing a short skirt won't make us loving. Neither will cosmetic surgery. Such tactics are aimed at making someone love or desire us. They do not show an active concern for the life and growth of the other. Loving another means giving, not as a means to receiving, but for the other's sake. It may mean encouraging his decision to quit work and go back to school even though it will strain our finances. It may mean supporting her hunger for more solitude rather than forcing the closeness we desire. It may even mean letting our beloved say good-bye if that is what will foster her life and growth. Loving means giving when it is hard to give, not just when it is easy or convenient.

Loving does not require saying yes to everything our beloved asks. As the slogan "Friends don't let friends drive drunk" suggests, sometimes the most loving action is saying no even though it risks another's anger. Setting limits is more loving than lazy indulgence. Likewise, acknowledging discord is more loving than false sameness. Loving doesn't mean always agreeing; it means being honest and respectful about disagreements. Becoming a doormat for another person does not foster his or her growth, and it does little to foster our own. Loving ourselves, nurturing our own development, is part of being a loving person.

For example, learning to say "My feelings are hurt" was a huge step for me in relationships. I used to hide my tears, believing a fake smile was kinder than honesty. I was actually protecting myself, denying men the opportunity to know the real me. By holding back the vulnerabilities I feared were unattractive, I avoided the growth that can come through conflict. Gradually, I am learning to change this pattern. When I shared an early draft of this chapter with my partner, Tom, he gave me feedback I found discouraging. Rather than hiding my hurt, I let out all the tears, fears, and impatience of a frustrated writer. Tom listened. My outburst enabled him to appreciate my writing process and learn how to be more supportive; it helped me understand my own needs. By the end of the conversation, we both felt much closer. Feeling loved and appreciated, I was then able to hear the substance of his criticisms, which were very helpful in writing the second draft. In this situation, we were both loving. If Tom had merely said, "The chapter is great, honey," he would not have helped me grow as a writer. Likewise, if I had not shared my vulnerabilities, I would not have helped him grow as a lover. By sharing our true thoughts and feelings without blaming each other, we fostered growth in our relationship as well.

Sometimes we deny our painful emotions, believing this to be loving. We pretend not to mind when he spends every date describing the villainy of his ex-wife. We smile as we suffer through her son's first violin recital. We act cheerful as we clean up after a party for his friends. The ideal of cheerful servitude is another false image of love, one particularly ingrained in women. This behavior is often just another manipulation strategy, however. If we clean up the beer bottles in order to win his approval and affection, we are not being truly loving. We are merely trying to get him to love us-advertising generosity as we attempt to make a deal. This is very different from cleaning the party mess out of a simple desire to give, without any sense of martyrdom or proving our worth. The same action can be manipulative or loving depending on our inner motivation.

Sex, for example, can have very different meanings depending on our motivations. We may feel giving a partner pleasure gives us a certain power over him, enabling us to secure other things we want, such as affection, commitment, or fidelity. We may pursue a sexual relationship purely for our own pleasure, where sexual favors are simply assets to be traded on the love market. Or we may wish to give our partner physical pleasure, not for what we'll get in return, but for our beloved's sake. The exchange of lovemaking may be a wonderful expression of mutuality, helping lovers see beyond their own individual needs and desires and expanding their capacity to love.

Learning to recognize our real and often mixed motivations is an important part of learning to love. Our behavior may be influenced by unconscious fears and desires, and the difficult process of drawing these to the surface can help us see when we are being loving and when we are being manipulative. However, we should not postpone loving others until we are fully conscious and perfectly self-actualized. We never will be. Self-awareness, like loving, is a lifelong process. Indeed loving others is a powerful way to discover our own depth. Even our failed attempts to love can help us become more aware of our shadow side. In turn, the more honestly we know ourselves, including our own weaknesses, the more honestly we will be able to love ourselves and others. Learning to love and learning to know ourselves are ongoing processes that enhance each other, bringing us more in touch with our divine core.

© 1998 by Eileen Flanagan

About the Author

I don't know if this book will change anyone else's life, but it certainly changed mine! The process of writing about the spiritual nature of loving helped to open me up to love in my own life. Chapter topics presented themselves as I moved from singleness to dating to commitment. My writing and my life enriched each other along the way. The fact that I now am able to share that story with others through this book is an added blessing.