THE FREEDOM OF LOVE
28 SEPTEMBER 2021 (16 MIN READ)
When people fall in love, they tend to become self-serving, needy, and egoistic, but how can that be? And can we really call that love? The whole point of falling in love is that you are no longer in control. Something outside of yourself is causing you to feel the most beautiful array of emotions. However, those feelings can get painful sometimes too, which is part of the deal. To accept the terms and conditions of love, you have to accept that reality. You may feel warm and fuzzy at this moment in time, but the person on the other end could suddenly wish to leave you, which is well within their rights. Many people are so petrified by this tough reality that they do whatever they can to hold control, but then they lose what love is all about: accepting no control and bathing in freedom. This need to control is rooted in our ego, which skyrockets to the surface when we fall in love. Since our heart is laid bare, our egos will do whatever they can to protect it, meaning our egoistic thoughts will tell us to control our partner’s behavior to make us feel more secure. Our egos are scared shitless of fearful uncertainty since all they want is protection, which makes love hard for those poor little suckers. This unfortunate truth is why so many relationships are coated in control—all the way from low-scale dominance to full-on abuse. Some popular habits are trying to control outfits, flirtation, methods of communication, social media posts, the list goes on. Control always starts innocently, but it can lead to an abusive relationship where one’s life gets away from them.
In one of my relationships, my need for control became incredibly toxic. Unsurprisingly, it was the most in love I had ever been, leading to my urgent need to control out of utter fear. I loved this girl so fucking much that losing her would mean losing myself. I was addicted to her beauty and kindness because it finally lifted me out of my swirling wind of self-deprecating chaos. She made me not hate myself, which I became dependent on. Due to this, she became a drug I needed to feel at peace, meaning I needed to do whatever I could to get my fix. Moments where she may have been flirting with someone else or didn’t text me back for hours felt the same as when my pill bottle of Xanax was empty. My brain treated those moments as if I could lose my life. As these feelings got stronger, and my conscious control of when to shut up got weaker, I started to try and change her behavior to suit my needs. This meant demanding her to answer my calls faster, making sure to not flirt with others, and telling me whenever a guy would hit on her. This allowed for the uncertainty to calm down and helped my ego know I had nothing to worry about. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this with any pride. My fucked up past is mine and I own it. You are free to judge me, and I welcome that, but I could not be where I am now without seeing that side of myself. I hope you can learn from my mistakes and not go down the dark road I did.
If you tell a kid he can’t eat the cookie, what’s the kid going to do behind your back? Eat the fucking cookie. So, if you tell a lover to not do something because it will make you upset, they will be much more likely to do it as an act of rebellion for their freedom. Thus, by controlling someone, you actually lead them to do whatever you were scared of in the first place. What’s the solution then? Simply put, accepting you do not know what the future holds and allowing that to set you free. If your partner is holding your hand and sending loving energy your way, then that’s what’s happening, so bathe in that beauty and do not worry about that moment evaporating. On the other hand, if they’re suddenly distant and feel repulsed by you, accept that reality and do your best to become one with it. This means that when a partner becomes unhappy with you for a long period of time, and you love them—you must let them go. Or else you wouldn’t really love them; they would be more of a possession to you. Love comes down to respect. In other words, respecting someone so much that you just want them to be happy, even if that happiness no longer has you in the equation. We have to accept whatever gets thrown our way in romance. Otherwise, we will be loving out of fear, which as shown above, leads to egoistic control—the opposite of love.
This article will list out the four best ways to internally change the way you view love—putting you in a better position to see it as freedom, and saving you from developing toxic relationships.
RADICAL ACCEPTANCE
To develop a meaningful relationship, it’s imperative to accept your potential partner for everything that they are—not some project you can perfect over time. Falling for someone’s potential is a honey trap that so many find themselves sucked into. For instance, take the romantic success of a bad boy with a sensitive side. His romantic partners become addicted to that sweet, caring side and wish to bring it out of him constantly. Additionally, consider the female Madonna type—an innocent, untouched woman—who often attracts toxically masculine men. These men are so obsessed with the Madonna in them that the minute they show any promiscuity, such as flirting with other men or dressing provocatively, they can react aggressively and violently. In other words, they fall in love with an idealized version of their partner, and freak out when reality smacks them in the face. (I am by no means saying women are to blame here. Toxic masculine culture is what I aim to break). What does this have to do with freedom? If you expect your partner to be someone they are not, you will be more likely to take their freedoms away. For instance, in the Madonna example, the toxic man will not let his girlfriend go out dancing alone in fear of her stepping away from that archetype. And the girlfriend to the bad boy will anxiously wait while her partner punches guys in the alleyway or whatever the fuck it is that bad boys do. All in all, you must completely understand and accept your partner for who they are before engaging in a relationship, or else you will be tempted to rob them of their freedom. How can this be done?
The first and most important thing I can say is don’t fall for looks. In today’s superficial Instagram/Tinder-crazed era, that is especially hard. Our minds have been wired to praise or discard someone solely based on their physical appearance, but we have to train ourselves out of this bad habit. No, I’m not that idiot who argues that looks mean nothing; however, they definitely don’t mean everything. Let looks open the door, but you have to see what’s behind it before you go on the adventure. Speaking from experience, I have dated women who are objectively beautiful, but their personalities had absolutely nothing to do with me. Growing up, girls bullied me at first, then rejected me, then slowly started gaining interest over time. Suddenly, when I turned nineteen, puberty smacked me in the face and I was getting a lot of female attention. But I was still that wounded child, who needed everyone to know he could be with the prettiest girl in the world. So all I cared about was getting the most beautiful woman, and nothing more than that. What ended up happening was I would forgive every part of their personality that I did not like. I just kept coming back to how good they looked and how manly it made me seem to be with them. But at the same time, I couldn’t have been more miserable, refusing to defend myself for the way I was treated or stating my needs. Also, my jealousy would get so out of control. If you get feelings for someone’s looks, then when someone else seems to be enjoying them, like checking them out or engaging in a flirtatious conversation, it feels like they could have what you have for them: lustful admiration. On the other hand, if you fall in love with someone’s personality and essence, that sort of stuff would not faze you. You’d feel delighted that someone is getting to experience the loving person your partner is. So, falling in love with looks also takes away freedom from your partner through jealousy.
Although no one can really know till they properly experience it, looks are not the be-all and end-all; they are nothing more than the starting line. You are more likely to forgive bad personality traits and red flags if you are too fixated on physical attraction, meaning you will not be able to accept someone for who they really are, which leads to less freedom in the relationship.
In order to properly gauge someone’s personality, allow them to put their guard down and see through the shield. This means that you have to create some sort of tough conversation or make room for an intense emotion. In those moments of deep vulnerability, if you admire and love their reactions, then that might be the person for you. These moments can allow you to look into your partner’s dark side. And you must become aware of and get comfortable with the dark side of your potential romantic partner, or else it will eat you alive in the future. We all have one, so you might as well get a taste of it early on. When that moment comes, ask yourself, is this something I can tolerate and support my partner through? If not, on to the next one.
Although we should aim to tolerate as much of our partners as we can, there will always be something that bothers us. This is a combination of two things. One, we can never really know the totality of someone. And two, we grow every day in life, finding new parts of ourselves along the journey. If you try to change or get mad at these new qualities in your partner, it will take away their freedom and lead to resentment in the relationship. To save yourself from this trap, I’m going to ask you to practice something quite unusual. Go hang out with your family and accept every part of them, especially if it pisses you off. If you are straight, this is especially important for your opposite sex parent. The way we treat and think of our parents transfers directly to our romantic relationships. In my own experience, the more I have grown to accept and love everything my mother comes with, the more accepting I am of my girlfriend.
FUCK FEAR
The key ingredient that coats every controlling move in a relationship is fear. So, fuck you fear. (Unless your partner is abusive or manipulative). Picture a time where a romantic partner was doing something that you deeply wished to change. For instance, going out late at night without answering their phone. Now, connect with what you felt at that moment. The answer is fear. And fear leads you to want to control to make yourself feel more safe. The problem with fear is that it is the most destructive emotion in human nature. It triggers all other negative emotions, like anxiety, grief, and anger, once it has arisen. This leaves you with an army of negative emotions, making you feel deeply uncomfortable and unsettled. Since fear has the capability to set off an emotional bomb in every human and leave them irrational—politicians and the media genuinely use it to manipulate populations. CNN uses it to keep you refreshing their app every hour and anxiously wait for a fear bomb. Dictators and politicians have used it to see your neighbors as dirty enemies, either racially or through medical status, creating a civil war based on evil agendas. The worst part is that fear is incredibly addicting. That fight or flight feeling you get comes with a ton of dopamine, making you unconsciously wish to receive that dopamine dump through engaging in fear.
Fear makes it incredibly easy to believe lies, since your reasoning capabilities diminish. And to make it even worse, since fear is addicting, you become addicted to those lies. What the fuck does this have to with love? In short, everything. If the leader in your mind sells you fearful lies and you choose to believe them, you will start reacting like those brainwashed citizens adhering to dark political agendas: believing whatever nonsense the leader throws their way and becoming addicted to their lies. In romance, if your mental leader is telling you to worry about your partner going out partying without you, and you believe them, then you will become irrational, controlling, and addicted to the worry. Thus, it is best to avoid that sort of fear at all costs. Of course, there are moments where it is justified. If you date someone abusive or someone who keeps cheating on you, then you have reason to fear. But you should never be with someone whose actions you have reason to fear.
I have a simple two-step process for fear that has worked for me: if you can take meaningful action to solve the issue, take it, but if not, you must surrender. The key word here is “meaningful.” So, if you fearfully believe a mental lie and take action from that, then that is the opposite of meaningful. For example, your partner won’t pick up the phone and you think they are cheating on you. Texting them fifty times and leaving angry voicemails is not meaningful action at all. On the contrary, you have to refuse to believe the lie and surrender to the uncomfortable feeling. Sit with the emotion and remove the thoughts that come with it. Allow the dark cloud to pass away and welcome rationality when the time is right. For those of you who turned off the TV when Trump was spewing his immigration nonsense, such as stating that bad hombres are coming to get you, then you know what it’s like to silence an irrational leader. Treat your compromised mental governor the same way. Once you feel like the emotion has gone, reflect as to why you felt the fear. Reminiscing on similar situations as a child is a great place to start. On the other hand, meaningful action consists of recognizing a fear as a lie, and taking real action to conquer it. Let’s say a beautiful romantic interest is eyeing you at a party, but you feel utterly terrified to go and say hi to them. This used to be me and this is the mental strategy I used to go about this situation. First, I would recognize that I was definitely scared, but that fear was not based in any sort of reality. In other words, I was not in danger, so my fight or flight response was not justified by any means. Grounded into this reality, I would then go on to use my fear as an energetic catapult to take action and prove how the fear was a lie. By doing this over and over again, and seeing how it was not a big deal, my brain stopped trying to trick me with seductive lies.
“Bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery is feeling the fear, the doubt, the insecurity, and deciding something else is more important.” - Mark Manson
STANDING UP FOR YOURSELF
Before you commit to a relationship, promise yourself one important thing: you will never sell your personal freedom to your partner. Any time they suggest for you to change integral parts of yourself, such as how you dress or important values, take that as a red flag and firmly state that you will not change that side of yourself. If they accept your wishes and never say anything again, you can give them another chance. However, if they retaliate and fight you on it, then on to the next one. Because the next person will love that quality that someone else hates. On the other hand, it’s important to give room for personal growth. For example, let’s say you yell a lot in an argument and that scares your partner. If they tell you to maybe consider stopping yelling, then that is a reasonable request, and it’s not an integral, beneficial component of your personality. You must remain aware as to what is important for your own personal identity and what could use some letting go of. The more you master the art, the better you will be at handling romantic partners.
If you find yourself continuously attracting people who want to change you, then you are repeating some sort of unconscious pattern. A good place to start is to reminisce on the relationship you had with your mother and father. Straight women with controlling fathers usually end up one of two ways: overtly rebellious or easily controlled. Since they could not stand up to their father, that fear and obedience can get repeated with a controlling romantic partner. The same holds true for men. If you recognize yourself in this situation, that’s ok, and you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. However, it’s time to regain some power and break out of this harmful pattern. To do so, tap into that younger version of yourself who was constantly controlled. (It helps to have a picture of you from that time). First, feel their energy and emotions. Next, speak and express whatever they wished to but couldn’t at the time. If that means you need to punch a pillow and call your dad a fucking asshole, then go for it. Don’t hold back by any means. Once you have done this exercise a couple of times, you should have made friends with that child. We have a tendency to treat our inner child like our parents treated us. Since you guys are friends now, there’s no need to treat them that way. Rather, coat them in love and understanding, and allow them to be themselves.
By giving yourself power to express yourself, you are healing your inner child and unlocking your own autonomy. After having gone through this, you are much less likely to attract controlling partners.
USE THE MIRROR
Another crucial way to avoid controlling your partner is using the mirror. For everything your partner does to elicit fear and negative emotions, it is actually a reflection of the work you need to do on yourself. (Big fucking exception for abusive behavior). For instance, if you constantly fear that your partner will cheat on you and they have done nothing to deserve that. This pattern will lead you to try and control them through not wanting them to go out or dress a certain way. In other words, you make your own emotional pain a “them” issue when it needs to be a “me” issue. If you turn your focus inward, and get curious about what got triggered from your past, then you can use these moments to grow, rather than hinder the life of your partner. Once you realize who created the reaction within you, usually a distant, unreliable parent or ex-partner, it’s good to remind yourself that they are not who you are dating now. If my girlfriend was called Jane and she triggered me of the way my mother would not hold me, I would tell myself: “Jane is not my mother. Jane is not my mother. Jane is not my mother.” (It helps to hold your belly and heart when saying this, triggering your opiate receptors). Do not use your partner as a blanket to hide under your personal trauma, or else you will bring them down with you. It’s ok to have traumas arise in the relationship and inform your partner about it, but only if it’s emphasized as a personal battle.
