Is It Love Or Manipulation?

Do you really know what love is?

What is love? Oh baby, don’t hurt me Don’t hurt me No more

Oh baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me No more What is love? Yeah

No, I don’t know why you’re not fair I give you my love, but you don’t care So what is right and what is wrong? Gimme a sign -Haddaway, What is love

Why do we seek love?

We have evolved to seek love. It has brought people together for survival, safety, and the continuation of our species. Love is a concept that is universal, it spans across generations, cultures, and geographical borders. Our age-old instincts trigger our waking energy to inadvertently seek a relationship. We desire to love someone and pursue that amorous feeling reciprocated. Though, contrary to popular belief, love is inherently free.

What love is not

There is no catch when it comes to love. You can not quantify the energy output of love, it radiates independently of our fears and desires. Love is not a commodity that can be legislated through a monetary system. The monetary system has been ingrained in our psyche to the point that we believe without conscious thought that love can be bought, sold, and traded.

People think they can stage love through sexual stimulation and manipulation. Don’t fool yourself by thinking love is transactional. The only experience you can buy is the remanence of infatuation. Trying to fool someone is the act of fooling yourself. Love has no bounds, nor does it have limitations. It does not ask of you to be someone that you are not. There are no expectations when it comes to the timeless phenomena. Expectations and assumptions of what love should be are the mothers of all fuck ups.

What is love?

According to clinical psychologist Deborah Anapol, “Love cares what becomes of you because love knows that we are all interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and empathetic. Love knows that the “other” is also oneself. This is the true nature of love, and love itself cannot be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law.”

A powerful gift that I was able to experience once I began loving myself. My experience with love blossomed within me without relying on someone else to give it to me.

The price of experience

For years, bouncing from relationship to relationship, I could not grasp the phrase “you just know”. What does it mean to just know? What I have witnessed as “love” was transactional. If anything, dutiful for the family. If you do this, I will do this. You provided this, so I will provide this. In my youth, it felt like a scam. It felt as if it was consensual theft in exchange for a bed that was sometimes warm and instant noodles with coke to quiet the rumbling sounds of young bellies.

I thought I experienced love many times in my adult life. What I had experienced was the universe begging me to look inward, something that I steered clear of for years. I felt the love from my family but I didn’t understand why it came with limitations. To this day, I don’t believe that I felt their love as deep as I could have. What I did realize was it was what they knew. I thought the secret sauce was an ambivalent persona cloaked in honey. It tasted good when it’s all that I knew as a child.

I didn’t know any better, I sought confusion in every relationship, thinking it was the north star. My acquired notions of love were tempered with obligation, it was sealed with the acceptance of silencing of my truth. The way I used to love was a combination of my developing personality and childhood experiences. I always thought the other person was the issue.

Later in life, I learned they were a mirror to the hurt I’ve been avoiding. My relationships were my teachers to a new future. I was arrogant and ignorant of a new reality. A new reality meant that I had to break the habit of being myself. It was frightening. To unlearn all that you know, putting it all on the line for the idea of a new life. To birth what was an impossible dream in my mind, felt discouraging. Especially when you never believed in yourself in the first place. Despite early resistance, I pressed on in hope for a new future.

What love does not allow

Love for yourself and love for others means to have and give freedom. Though, please do not get it twisted. The power of love is a personal responsibility. When you misuse love, it will make you notice the repercussions of hurting yourself or others. Love does not allow destructive behavior to be excused. It doesn’t withhold itself or reward itself for personal gain.

Love is not great sex and perpetual happiness excluding anger, it holds space for ALL emotions and feelings to be expressed and released. All emotions and feelings are honored in a space of empathy and compassion.

Indirect and direct signs of manipulation (aka red flags)

• Love does not say “Promise you’ll never leave me”.
• Love does not say “If you give me this, I will give you …”
• Love does not say “If you do that, I won’t love you anymore”.
• Love does not say “You embarrass me, I can’t be seen with you if you don’t listen to me”.
• Love does not say “If you want to show me you love me, you will…”
• Love does not say “It’s me or them. Choose.”
• Love does not say “If you want to be loved, you have to be nice”.
• Love does not say “If you are a good girl, I will love you”.
• Love does not say “Mommy doesn’t love you when …”.
• Love does not say “Daddy’s little girl doesn’t do that”.

Love houses forgiveness

True love can not be used as a tool of manipulation. It took years of “falling in love” to learn the difference between love and manipulation. I thought that I had to sacrifice who I was and what I wanted in life in order to be loved. Years of people-pleasing and abandoning myself made me give up that love was possible for me. It never once crossed my mind that love welcomes you as you are and cares what becomes of you. People can have good intentions but be unaware of the destruction they are causing.

You are not at fault for what others have done to you. What you are responsible for is picking yourself up after each experience and allowing the acquired discernment to guide you. But if you ignore the lessons and blessings with each experience, like me, you will experience what feels like tumbling in a washing machine endlessly as you continually choke on the suds that are trying to cleanse you. You get nowhere.

When you allow your love to dance with forgiveness, you experience freedom. You do not forgive for the sake of forgiving the other person. You forgive for the sake of your own heart. You forgive for the sake to make more space to love yourself and others.

Look for the green flags

In a lifelong journey of red flags tempting you at every corner, there are green flags. It is easy to become jaded and cynical after years of broken trust and pain. I understand you because I was. For darkness to exist, its counterpart, lightness exists. It does not mean that there are dark and light individuals. Our wholeness requires the integration of our shadow and light. People are not inherently evil. They may favor their shadow traits for a sense of security and protection. Afraid of what light could feel like if anything, it could burn. And I guarantee at one point in their life, they were burned. With that level of understanding, here are the signs to look for in a healthy partnership:

• “I choose to grow with you”
• “ I want to stand beside you and take on the trials of life with you”
• “Your pain is not too much”
• “ We may not spend forever together, and that’s okay”
• “When we are in conflict, what is something I can give you to help you feel safe?
• “What are your dreams?’
• “What can I do to love you better?”

In conclusion

In partnership, safety counts. No one wants to get snubbed. When you rebuff someone enough, they get the signal that it’s not safe and a message to pull back. To create safety and true partnership, we have to release any urge to try and make our partner be more of what we want. When we can witness and accept our partners for who it is they are, we create opportunities to watch them bloom. We must do that for ourselves too. Embodying practices of conscious partnership also means that the self is a priority. It is the foundation from which all relations may falter or flourish.

It’s up to you to accept or reject what is love and what is not to create what it is and what you want out of your limited experience.

I want to share with you more tools that helped me build stronger relationships with myself and others. I welcome your thoughts. Let me know which articles helped you see a new perspective. May we heal ourselves and our world.