Learning to Love -Key for happiness

by with One Comment Emotional IntelligenceSelf-awareness
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] I thought I knew how to love, and I won’t have to worry about learning to love. I was married to my beautiful wife, Zoraida. And was ready to make her happy for the rest of her life. So, I was confident that being raised in an Adventist home was more than enough to make me a good husband.

However, when the honeymoon ended, I began to see all my wife’s imperfections and suddenly began to mistreat her in ways I thought I never would. The good behaviors I wanted to practice with my wife, I did not do, and the bad behaviors I never thought I would show, I did. I had the same problem that Paul describes in Romans 7:19, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

Be able of learning to love

What was the problem? The answer we usually have for this issue is that we are sinners and that we have a sinful nature. This is correct, but it is not an excuse I could use to justify my negative behavior. Another answer is that we do not know how to love. But how could I say that I did not know how to love if I had been in love for almost my entire life?

It is a different thing to say that you are in love than to say that you know how to love. I am talking about Agape love, the divine love that is sacrificial and unconditional. The love, described in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 13, is not governed by emotion but by a principle.

Why the need of learning to love

So, why didn’t I know how to love? I did not know how to love because the way I showed love was connected to my lack of emotional growth. My biological growth was not proportional to my emotional growth. In other words, I could have been 50 years old, but I was still behaving like an infant emotionally.

Neuroscience generally divides the mind into two dimensions: the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is the one in charge of our short-term memory — everything we have in the present. The subconscious mind is the one in control of our involuntary actions, automatic thoughts, emotions, dreams, intuition, and impulses.

The important thing about these concepts is that, according to the psychological literature, the subconscious mind is the one that directs our life. 90 percent of all the decisions we make every day come from our subconscious minds.

A life script

Our subconscious mind performs certain actions before we can think about them consciously, thereby impacting our free will. These “little voices” are nothing but mere thoughts that emerge automatically in our minds. They are part of an internal life script that tells us where to go and what to do. This script determines the way we interpret the world and our basic way of being.

Unconsciously, we have been developing a life script since our childhood. We were influenced by our attachment figures, especially our parents or the people closest to us, and now we are almost obliged to represent these individuals in our life. This explains why I was behaving in ways that were hurting my wife’s feelings. My life was guided by the life script I had received from my parents.

What a life script is?

A life script is the mental programming that affects our lives. It gives us the language we want to use and the actions we are going to develop. It is not easy to be aware of the life script that we follow, but seeking to answer complicated questions about our existence makes the difference between conforming to the flow of “what there is” and truly following the path of a healthy heart.

Today, we all live life scripts influenced by someone from our past. That is the number one reason why we need to learn how to love. We are reliving the same emotional dynamic we had in our families, and if our parents were not teaching us how to love, we are probably going to find it difficult to show love for others.

Everyone lives love in a limited way until they learn how to transform their lives, and the fact that someone does not love may be due to a lack of knowledge about love. If we want to learn about cars, we will undoubtedly do it through a diligent study of cars. If we want to be chefs, surely, we will learn the culinary arts, and maybe even try to take some cooking classes.

How do we learn to love?

Nevertheless, it seems less obvious to us that if we want to give and receive love, we should devote at least some time, like the mechanic or the chef, to studying and learning to love. No mechanic or cook would ever believe that the mere fact of just wanting to obtain knowledge in these fields would make them experts. The same goes for love. It is necessary to learn how to love and be loved. How are we learning to love?

1. we need to practice self-awareness

We cannot change what we do not know. We need to find, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the imperfections we have in our lives that keep us away from God and others. In my case, if I wanted to learn how to love Zoraida, I needed to make myself aware that I was not managing my anger correctly.

I needed to understand the memories or experiences that I had in my subconscious mind that was preventing me from expressing my anger in a godly way. The first two chapters of the book “Learning to Love” present this issue and provide practical exercises to help readers make sense of their past and change their present behavior.

2. We need to increase our emotional intelligence

How do we grow in this area? By reflecting on our emotions and labeling them. Practice empathizing with yourself and others. Know your stressors. Be resilient. Practice responding rather than reacting. Increasing our emotional intelligence is a lifetime process, so do not give up.

3.  We need to renew our minds

The transformation of our minds is the work of the Holy Spirit. In the end, the most important task we have is to learn how to love God and others. The Apostle Paul said:

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).

We want to challenge our families and communities to learn how to love and be loved. We will conduct seminars in churches, schools, and many other institutions. And we also provide resources for every person who wants to learn how to love. Be part of this movement, #learningtolove. Visit our section where we provide more information about Learning to Love.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

How to deal with the insecurity in love

by with No Comment AddictionMarriage

When we talk about the basis on which our affections work, we can easily think that the experiences that a person has lived can determine the lens through which he/she perceives life and the interpersonal relationships that he/she has built. But how important are the early experiences we live in our childhood? Can they affect the process of developing insecurity in love?

Let’s start with the concept of attachment style from Jhon Bowlby. What is attachment? It is the behaviors that result in a person obtaining or retaining the proximity of another differentiated and preferred individual. The importance of early relationships with parents or primary caregivers, that is, with attachment figures, is a crucial element in the formation of dependent personality traits. 

Security or insecurity in love

In some cases, people do not establish an adequate secure attachment style and can establish dependent relationships with others. Such relationships create a feeling of insecurity in the person. It is due as their family and their home do not constitute the secure base of love, care, and attention that they needed during their formation and growth. So, it is here where the basis of a secure or insecure attachment determine. It is the way of perceiving and developing an individual’s interpersonal relationships that will depend on it.

When an infant receives affection, spoken with love and with words of encouragement while in his/her mother’s womb, the infant can enjoy the loving touches from the parents after the infant is born. The infant’s needs can be met when he/she is comforted in moments of anxiety or sadness, and when the parents are available whenever they are needed. 

When affective needs meet, the infant will build a secure attachment toward his/her primary caregivers. He will have a solid foundation to build future interpersonal relationships. This happens when concepts of love and what it means to interact with other people are clear, and later, in adult life, the person will be able to enjoy healthy interpersonal relationships in which he/she can feel happy, fulfilled, and loved.

Insecurity in love since the beginning of life

When the opposite happens: when, from his/her life in the womb, the baby feels rejected, feels neither loved nor expected, when he/she is born and does not receive enough love, words of affection, or caresses, when he/she cries and is not comforted, his/her needs are not met. When he/she experiences difficulties due to having poor communication and/or relationship with the parents or primary caregivers, the attachment formed will be an insecure one, leading to experiencing insecurity in love. 

That baby will not feel loved or supported and will feel that his/her needs are not important. He will feel that the demands for affection are illogical and have no foundation. So, he/she must seek his/her value in other people because it has not been given to them.

He/she will feel that they must seek to increase his/her self-esteem through the approval and admiration of others, he/she will not know how to establish a healthy interpersonal relationship; He/she will not know how to face and solve problems effectively. His/her concepts and guidelines for life as a couple or family will be distorted because he/she was a victim in his/her early childhood.

Two possible scenarios

As we can see, they are two different scenarios. In one scenario, those who have formed a secure attachment since childhood will be able to establish healthy interpersonal relationships. He will do it from a base of emotional intelligence, love, happiness, understanding, high self-esteem, and self-worth.

The second scenario generates insecurity in love

However, the other scenario is a negative one. There the person has a base of insecurity, fear, anxiety, fear of abandonment, and unmet needs. In this scenario, the person will function for manipulation, emotional dependence, and a search for the approval of other people. He will do that to achieve the value that was not received and the level of self-esteem that is so needed. He will seek the love that is longed for, though the person does not know how to achieve it.

When a person is based on insecure attachment, he/she feels empty or with his/her emotional needs unmet, he/she will try to fill that inner emptiness through a relationship with another person, and will not know how to be alone in his/her internal world.

That person will seek the interpersonal relationship he/she has established — with a friend, counselor, church pastor, family member, boyfriend (or girlfriend), or spouse — to feel the love and security that experiences have not provided.

The problem arises when the fear of rejection, of not acceptance by others, or of not being loved dominates the person’s behavior. It distorts the fundamental concepts of healthy human interactions.

How to make a self-analysis

It is not an easy task to analyze our interpersonal relationships from an “outside” perspective or to be objective. For this, we would need to visit internal spaces in our memory. Places that store painful memories about experiences that scarred us. These places determined our perception of friendship, love, attachment, and all the foundations of a healthy relationship.

But, to overcome the effects of insecure attachment, you must first understand what love is from God’s point of view. In 1 John 4:18, we read: “In love, there is no fear, but perfect love casts out the fear; because fear carries with its punishment. Whence, he who fears has not been perfected in love.”

In true love, there is no room for fear. You must accept and understand that you must love yourself as God loves you: with infinite, constant, unconditional love. Love yourself as you are. Love your essence so that you can fully see who you are and who others are.

Value yourself so that you do not seek your value in the other person. Work on the emotional deficiencies that you can identify. If you have resentment or hate towards someone from your past, ask God to help you forgive that person. To overcome what he/she made, you must not seek to solve the things of the past while seeking approval in the present.

How to deal with your insecurity in love

 If you feel abandoned, understand that God is with you and always will be. He accepts you as you are and will help you value yourself for who you are. Love without expecting to be loved the same way, not all of us love with the same love language. Do not seek other people for the qualities that you do not find in yourself. So, work to improve and give the best of you, without looking for them to approve of everything you do.

Get some alone time, do not become careless or lose yourself in trying to meet other people’s expectations. Do not disappear into who you are. You will do it by trying to please your friends, your partner, co-workers, church brothers or sisters, pastors … nobody. Have a sincere and true relationship with God. This way, you will be able to fill the emptiness you feel inside. Besides, you will be able to love and receive love as God loves you to be from the moment He created you.

Pray to God and ask him to transform your heart, to break your schemes and preconceptions based on fear. Love without expecting to receive anything in return. Strengthen your love and self-worth so that you can establish interpersonal relationships of full happiness and love.