By Kristen Tobias, M.A.
Humans are relational beings, and loving and being loved throughout the lifespan can engender a vitality that is hard to find elsewhere. The experience of love, of mattering to someone, someone who bears witness to our life by celebrating our accomplishments and making the difficult times easier, that we experience a sexual connection with, can be utterly transformative. Love gives meaning to our lives. It is a cruel twist of fate (although by no means counterintuitive) that the same experience that can so easily enrich our lives, can also be associated with profound hurt, disappointment, anger, depression—the list of potential love ailments goes on and on. The lyrics to love songs, films, and novels reinforce the notion of great love and utter devastation with its departure. So, how do we reconcile passionate love with rational thinking? Here are some tips, straight from Albert Ellis, in Conquering the Dire Need for Love:
1. Give up the demand that you must be loved by the person of your choosing. Even if you really want someone to love you, and only you, for the rest of your life, there is no guarantee that this will happen (and 50% of the evidence in America is proof that this does not happen). Long or desire for someone to love you, but don’t escalate this to a need.
2. While loving relationships require sacrifice, don’t be too sacrificing. When we do this, we give up other things that are important to us and other pleasures.
3. Give up the demand that you are only worthwhile if you are loved. Your worth does not change based on whether or not your beloved loves you back. Stop thinking that love gives you worth or value, instead, work to fully accept yourself.
4. You do not need your beloved to love you 100%, 100% of the time. This is an obsessive demand that will likely isolate you from your beloved, as well as make you boring.
5. This is such a great quote, I want to give it verbatim: “While loving is pro-you…the dire need to be loved, is anti-you, because you give up you…you don’t get time for what the f***k do I want to do in life to enjoy myself, that gets washed-out…”
6. Many things give meaning to life; so don’t mistakenly think that love is the ONLY source of meaning.
7. The evidence is that there are lots of potential loves in the world. Give up the idea that your current beloved is the only person that you can ever love, or that will ever love you.
When I first considered the idea of rational thinking in love, I have to confess that my gut reaction was an association with diminished passion…did I really want to love rationally? If we think that life can go on without our beloved, do we really love them enough? I have since reconciled my romantic ideals with non-disturbed thinking. Unrequited love or the ending of a love relationship hurts…badly. But, demands about love, awfulizing, or condemning ourselves when love relationships don’t work out doesn’t mean that we love more, that is just faulty logic! So, love truly and deeply, but not madly (which is a synonym for insanity)!