Why Relationships Are Hard

I’ve been finishing up with watching this TV show called The 100 but ever since she first appeared on the cast, I’ve had a crush on Echo.

Please don’t ask me why. I don’t know. I don’t know especially considering that there is/was/will be Lexa who is far more impressive than Echo. But Echo is Echo.

Just like Echo, the crushes and consequently feelings that I develop in the real world are rarely swayed by equally or more impressive persons.

One might think that this behavior of mine is what denominates having a crush. You could be right but answer this… How often do you have crushes that render all other crushes powerless over you?

Never mind if you have never felt that way before. I have. I have such a crush on Echo in the fictional world, just as I have one in the real world.

It is very important to set the stage that helps you appreciate the difference and significance of such crushes. And if you do, it is from this perspective that we can explore how unplasant love can be.

You may think that my crush on Echo is steadfast since her presence renders all other fictional crushes in my world useless. Sweet delusion for sure. And you (even I) could be made to think that nothing can stand in the way of that.

You (just like I) would be wrong. There is one thing that can cut through all those feelings of exuberance and get straight to everything horrible about how we human beings approach love.

Love is a fulfillment of selfishness

While I was crushing on Echo, the one thing that turned me off about that crush is how selfish Echo can be. I want to resist all spoilers and I will try.

One consistent theme about Echo is that from the time she shows up, and I can bet, till the time she will end her role in the show, she is selfish. Love makes her selfish.

Yes, I am focusing on Echo here but all those characters in the show do the same thing. I understand, it's about survival and all but the selfish attitudes that are tied to love are just too much in this show.

But all this critique is not unique to the show. It is how we all operate.

You would think that love makes people selfless but no. It makes them only selfless towards the people they love. Which is actually a selfish act in its own sense.

But more importantly, these people remain just as selfish if not worse to the people that they don’t love or care about.

Take romantic feelings for instance. When I say I have a crush on Echo, I’m not a poet!! I would most definitely not crush on her if I had read a book instead of watching the show.

I crush on Echo because, in real life, I crush on Tasya Teles (the actress who plays the character of Echo).

If another actress had played the character Echo, I also wouldn’t be here shouting about Echo and crushes.

But I don’t know Tasya. Heck, I have never and don’t think that I will ever be even within 1000 miles of her being. This means that I will never get to know her as a person which only means that the crush on her is not about her personality.

For those that do cross paths with us, we can tell ourselves how much we fell in love with their personalities and all but let's not lie to ourselves. We fall in love with an idea of them and we make sacrifices depending on how strong that idea is.

That is still selfishness but for many people, that selfishness never stops there.

Our idea of love has us thinking that reciprocity should happen for us to have a perfect ending to a love story.

Because of this, when we crush on someone, we sooner or later label it as love (if the crushing feeling doesn’t go away fast enough) and when that happens, we expect the other person to reciprocate that feeling.

But sometimes, the people we love do not love us as much as we love them if they love us at all. According to our expectations though, we then force them to love us.

This takes on various forms of manipulation and stalking because we need to satisfy some deep desire to be with the other person.

And I’d argue that men’s disposition for asserting our will even makes it harder for us to accept anything other than what we want. I’m not saying that all men will always fail at accepting what they don’t want but many will fail.

I can’t speak for women though but women also have their selfish tendencies that are part of their love languages.

At the core of it all, therefore, is the need to satisfy some longing within us.

Our selfishness grows in proportion to our unwillingness to leave this longing unsatisfied.

I speak about romantic love in this article but this is true for all forms of love that we know. Yes, even the divine forms of love.

We never practice selfless love which has even gone so far as to have a lot of people think that there is no such thing as selfless/unconditional love.

And they’d be right to some extent because they’ve never practiced it. Why would their logical brains return a positive argument to that discussion?

In the real world, I see my crush and am overpowered by feelings of what I call love. I can assure you that my brain is on board with the possibility that I truly love her. But how do I know? I’ve never spoken to her long enough to even get into the discussions of being together yet I wanna spend the rest of my life with her?

Sure, she might be the most beautiful person I’ve seen but can that be proven, or is it my selfish attempt to make sure I get her when I still have my high on?

Our constructs of love blind us to the considerate paths of this journey. Even those considerate paths that are revealed to us are also the least traveled because we want to satisfy our deep desires and the truth may stop that from happening.

Do not quote me about this for sure but when it comes to unconditional love, I have written about it here as well as here but this is only my theory on the topic.

The underlying theme of it all divorces our longing for this deep satisfaction from the love we seek. Can we do it? I don’t know. Although, I think we can try and that is why I propose it as merely a construct that can happen to a certain degree.

Unconditional love takes away the selfishness we have towards the way we approach love which means that the more unselfish we are in our love expressions, the more unconditional love we have.

Our selfishness grows in proportion to our unwillingness to leave this longing unsatisfied.

How do you practice unselfish love?

It is about your willingness to consider others beyond yourself.

If you are a man who desires a woman that wants nothing to do with you, unconditional love could mean letting go of your unwanted efforts to make her change her mind.

Easier said than done, but we all must start somewhere.

Unconditional love is something that we need to practice constantly. Can you try not to stalk your ex for example and instead, replace that with goodwill and well-wishing thoughts towards that person?

The extent to which you can do that is the extent to which you can practice unconditionality in that relationship.

As a step-parent, can you love other people’s children in your care as much as you love your own children by noticing when you are unfair to the children in any way? The effort needed to do this reduces your selfish need to prioritize your children at the expense of other children in your care and therefore moves you closer to unconditionality in that relationship.

Can you love people who hold radically different beliefs from you? Maybe through dialogue, you can listen to what they have to say and if you find their ideas beneficial, can you have the courage to drop your own unhelpful beliefs and try on theirs?

Conclusion

The general discourse on unconditional love for me is one that always seeks to get rid of the selfish tendencies that seek to serve my interests without considering those of others.

But that doesn’t mean that I am always getting it right. But even implementing a small part of it in my life has helped me have much more meaning in the relationships I choose to have with people.

My behavior naturally pushes away some people who can’t understand my unconditional quest but the few who remain are those that make me feel lucky to be alive.

So, to answer your questions…

Why are relationships hard?

They are hard because people approach them with selfishness which leads to unfulfilled or violently fulfilled expectations.

Do they have to be hard?

No. They can be easier if we learn to embrace unconditionality when relationships with others don’t seem to be going our way. This we do through limiting our need to always have our way and instead respect what others tell us is best for them or better yet, learning to listen to our voices of reason amid our convincingly loud desires.