Hello,

So I have written about love couple of times. 

My understanding of love has changed again.  

I went into contact with some people and realised how naive, immature and young I was when I was writing about love.  

On one of older posts I wrote – Love should be a calmness port, not a war front.

In 2021 I wrote – finally, I wasn’t expecting, I didn’t even want it, but love came to my life. (if you want to read that old post it is here – https://egles.uk/2021/07/01/people-love-goals-etc/

When I read a first thought I laughed at myself loudly. Yeah love should be a calmness port and not a war front. However, now I would change it to: love should be a safe shore and not a war front. Second thought about me not wanting love but it coming to my life was a biiiig red flag. Because this is where I abandoned myself, this is where I ended up in an abusive relationship.

At that time, I truly I didn’t know what love is. I was taught in a childhood that love means suffering. That you need to sacrifice yourself for your loved one. That you need to do anything they want you to because they are your love even if it means it is against what you believe. 

Now I have learned that it is absolute lie.  

It obviously takes time to redo programming I have had, but my view on love absolutely changed.

True love is supposed to make you feel safe. It is supposed to help you be yourself. It is supposed to make you feel comfortable. It is supposed to make you feel inspired. Love means that your intuition is working 100%.  

I wrote down once that love is supposed to make you feel calm. In my opinion, safe and calm are two different things.  

When we were taught unhealthy love, feeling calm with someone may mean that you are recognising a pattern that is familiar, and it means you are calm because your brain knows the pattern and knows how to act. Where healthy love could make you feel maybe even tense, or you might automatically reject it as it feels weird.  

That is how our brain works. It relies on what is familiar, what it was taught and what it learned. If you learned abusive love is normal, you will follow that pattern and therefore, feeling calm might not mean being safe.  

That is what happened to me. I thought I found love, because my brain recognised a pattern.

So. Very very important to learn – what healthy love is. What you have been taught. What patterns are you following. Are you healthy yourself. 

Probably we have heard that thought thousands of times from a book or a movie – The Perks of Being a Wallflower – ‘We accept the love we think we deserved’’. It is such a powerful thought because we unconsciously choose the love based on our experience. So, if our brain thinks, that abusive love is what we know of and deserve of.  

Only when you get out of that familiarity, heal, practice what healthy love means, you realise what you have deserved. 

My whole life, I was taught I am a bad person. So, my brain was like – you deserve to be punished. Therefore, I attracted people who punished me, situations, jobs, environment. Everywhere I was being punished and for ages I couldn’t understand why I am getting all the worst possible scenarios in life.

So many years I thought I deserved it, well, if people treat me badly or I get bad job or I live in bad environment, I thought well, I must have done something wrong.  

Until this year, I had such a breakdown where I realised, that it is not what I deserved. I didn’t deserve people who abuse me, nor jobs, nor environments, I just didn’t deserve that.  

I literally got like enlightenment, that all those people, all those situations and jobs, I got because somebody taught me, that this is what I deserve. Somebody else programmed me to think, that living like this, is normal.  

Well, I can tell you that, abuse is not normal, and abuse can never be love. That is survival and living in survival takes away from us a side of life, where you can actually be happy, safe and confident.  

Okay, you may ask, Egle, but what does it mean being safe?  

Being safe, means you can be yourself without being scared that someone may do something to you, if you don’t follow their demands. So, simple example, if you disagree with your partner and they get mad or aggressive – that is not safe, because in healthy love, disagreement should never feel like danger. Healthy anger is okay, but if anger continues and doesn’t stop – it is not healthy. 

Being safe, it means that you can be yourself, you can grow freely, and you get support. The best way to improve is when you are safe, the best way to achieve something is when you feel safe.  

You are safe, when you are allowed to feel all emotions. That no one will punish you for crying or being angry (again as long as angry doesn’t turn into madness or aggressiveness).  

Being safe, means you don’t get punished for saying no. Being safe means people respecting your boundaries and not trying to make you feel guilty or put blame on you.  

Being safe means that you have people who take responsibility for their actions, and you do the same. Not only they take responsibility, but they actually change their behaviour if they know it hurts you.  

Love should be easy.

That is what I learned. Love is never supposed to be difficult. We tell ourselves that if you don’t work hard, you won’t get anything or if something is too easy then we are suspicious of it. But this is a not reality to us. The only work we need to do is with ourselves. That is the hardest work any human being can do. Work with your own shadows. But life in itself including love – is supposed to be easy.

So, one more time – love should be a safe shore and not a war front.