Today I would like to talk to you about the topic of "loving and being loved".
Nowadays, in love, people seem to be becoming more and more passive, afraid to love, afraid of being hurt, as if they love first, they become "low-level", only when they get love first, can they "grasp" each other and get happiness.
But can such a pursuit of "being loved" really make us happy?
Love is not just passion and attraction, but it takes effort and effort to create, maintain and manage intimate relationships in a long married life.
Love or be loved, which is happier?
The answer must be, love is happier.
Because, a passive receiver will never gain as much as an active giver.
If we passively accept "love" and fail to understand that the premise of receiving love is to give love first, we will not be able to reap true happiness.
01 What is true love?
Before discussing "which is happier to love or to be loved", we must first clarify what true love is.
There are a lot of misconceptions about love.
Love is not passion, it is not as simple as the secretion of dopamine and adrenaline.
Everyone aspires to have a deep emotional connection with others, and in this process, love is divided into two categories – narcissistic love and non-narcissistic love.
Narcissistic love refers to the emotion of starting from self-centeredness, longing to get something you want from the other person, or narrowing the distance between yourself and what you desire, and longing for everything you want to be accepted, tolerated and loved by the other person.
Instead of narcissistic love, it is an emotion that is willing to give and give, willing to sacrifice part of one's own interests for the other party, and willing to stand in the other person's perspective to make the other person better.
※Note that non-narcissistic love is not complete self-sacrifice, not for the sake of the other person, blindly giving, losing oneself.
Many people seem to give their all for love, but in essence they just want to control each other and keep each other. In the end, this is still trying to make the other person meet their own needs, which is actually narcissistic love.
Many people "fall in love" at the beginning, it is narcissistic love, they feel that the other party attracts them and can meet their needs, dopamine begins to secrete wildly, and then they fall in love.
But narcissistic love is not enough to support the firewood, rice, oil, salt and trivial daily life in the long years.
With the passage of time, the passion will eventually subside, and we slowly learn to give, tolerate, compromise, and support each other and grow together with the other half.
At this time, narcissistic love will slowly turn into non-narcissistic love, or in other words, the two have reached a balance that both parties can enjoy, and love at this time is true love.
In other words, narcissistic love is just a tool for many people to satisfy their own needs, and non-narcissistic love is love in the true sense.
For example, you fall in love with the other person because he is handsome, and you get married. After marriage, you face the trivial life together, and you learn to give, tolerate, and grow yourself. Although you will have occasional arguments, it is more likely that you will support each other and compromise with each other.
Then one day, he's disfigured, and the thing you fell in love with him in the first place is gone. You will find that in the long-term sharing of thick and thin, each other's company, his appearance has long become less important, even if he is no longer handsome, you still feel that you love him so much.
This is true love.
Psychologist Fromm once said in "The Art of Love" that the essence of "love" is actually giving, not receiving.
He said: "Love means that he gives to others what is alive in himself, that he gives others happiness, interest, understanding, knowledge, humor, sadness—to express and concretize all that is alive in himself, and this process enriches the other person, and he enhances the vitality of others by enhancing his own sense of vitality."
He does not "give" for the sake of receiving, but that giving is a pleasure in itself. In the process, something is resurrected in another person, which in turn affects him. ”
This is the process of creating love.
In giving, we realize that we are strong, rich, and capable. Our love flows out, it enriches the other person, the other person feels the love, and the love returns to us, and the love flows.
In this sense, love is actually an active behavior, a powerful psychological energy, and I am willing to give my subjective initiative to make "love" happen.
Love is courage, a journey that doesn't care about the result, I know that my giving may not be rewarded, but I am still willing to try, to give, to bear, to experience, to accept, to grow, to let go.
Love is determination, and I know that one day the secretion of dopamine and hormones will eventually recede, but I am still willing to go through the trivialities of firewood, rice, oil and salt, pick up the chicken feathers scattered all over the ground, and continue to love you.
Love is giving, and I am willing to let go of all my self-righteousness and really put myself in your shoes, to think about what you need, and to give you what you need.
Love is responsibility, and it is my willingness to see all the problems in the intimate relationship, face all kinds of difficulties in the relationship, and actively deal with and solve them.
Love is change, on the premise of not losing myself, I am willing to polish my edges and corners, to tolerate you, and even break myself and rebuild, and grow with you.
Love is understanding, I know that everyone around me is a projection of myself, what I hate about them is equivalent to hating myself, if I understand them with love, I am also loving myself.
Love is growth, through you, I see myself, I see my own lack, my own trauma, my own limitations, my own weaknesses, we heal each other, grow each other, and finally become a better version of ourselves.
Love is abundant, it is through you that I know the meaning of life, because I love you, I love the world more, and I love myself more.
As it says in "The Art of Love":
"If I truly love one person, I will love everyone, love the world, love life. If I can say 'I love you' to another person, I will be able to say, 'I love everybody because of you, I love the world through you, I love myself because of you.'" ’”
This is love, which is the never-ending self-growth and the vigorous spiritual power.
And happiness, in this process, happens unconsciously.
02 Being loved is a kind of "luxury" happiness
After talking about love, let's talk about being loved.
When we are longing to be loved, what exactly are we longing for?
In fact, we just want to find the meaning and value of our existence in the attention of the other party.
When we are loved, we feel that we are special, important, and worthy of love.
Indeed, this feeling is indeed blissful.
But this kind of love is still in the stage of narcissistic love, and the other half exists only to meet our needs and only exist for our feelings.
Happiness, what is it?
Happiness is not luck;
It's not about waiting for "love" to fall from the sky;
It's not that you don't do anything, there will be someone who will love you unconditionally.
Happiness is the process of active creation, the happiness that requires effort and effort to strive for, and the happiness created with heart.
Any happiness that does not work hard and waits for happiness from others is not true happiness, or rather, is not reliable.
In fact, everyone longs to be loved, and this is understandable.
But if you feel that the happiness of being loved is greater than the happiness of love, it is equivalent to saying that you think:
The happiness obtained passively is greater than the happiness created actively.
This kind of thinking is very dangerous.
This is equivalent to putting oneself in a weak position where one can only sit and wait for love, and it is equivalent to handing over the control of one's happiness to others.
Love is a kind of "psychological energy".
If a person only wants to ask for love, it means that his "psychological energy" is actually insufficient, and his inner heart is lacking.
He lacks love, lacks security, is afraid of being hurt, he does not dare to give, he does not dare to give, so he can only fill the lack in his heart by asking for love.
He has not felt the experience of obtaining happiness by creating "love", and lacks the ability to love others, so he cannot arouse the love in the hearts of others, and can only satisfy himself by taking and exploiting others.
On the one hand, he is unable to create love, and on the other hand, he longs to be loved by others, so he can only cede control of his happiness to others.
If a person's happiness depends on the existence of that specific person, then that object is gone, and his happiness is gone.
The happiness pinned on others is like a small boat rocking in the wind and rain, and there is a risk of capsizing at any time.
Therefore, it is not that "being loved" is unhappy, but that this happiness is a luxury and not something we should pursue.
If you think that love can only come from the outside world, from the giving of others, then you will slowly forget that happiness is in your own hands. We ourselves can also have the ability to create happiness!
03 Only by being brave to love can you get happiness
Why is it happier to love than to be loved?
Psychologist Fromm believes that giving brings more happiness than gaining, not because giving is a sacrifice, but because giving shows a better human nature.
There is a saying: what you give, you will eventually return to you.
This is not to say that the love you give will necessarily be exchanged for the love of others, in fact, a lot of efforts are not reciprocated.
Rather, we enrich ourselves by giving love to others.
It's like when we go to climb a mountain, it's hard and we don't know if we'll get to the top of it, but the scenery along the way is enough to make us happy.
In the process of love, we repair and fill our own trauma and deprivation, give birth to the will to grow ourselves, learn the way to solve problems, grow a strong heart, and have great psychological energy.
We have learned how to love others, to love ourselves, to love life, to love all things, to love the world......
And happiness is hidden in this process.
If you treat all things with compassion, all things will nourish you in turn.
"Which is happier to love or to be loved?"
This is not only a question of love, but also a question of life.
It's not just asking, which is happier to love or to be loved?
He was even asking:
Do we have the courage to take the initiative to strive for happiness?
And love is the answer.
When you curl up, holding on to what little psychological energy you have, and don't dare to love, dare to try, and dare not give, you will only become more and more scarce.
When you have the courage and open your mind to give, accept, face, and solve problems, you gain experience and growth, the ability to love, and you become both gentle and strong, you are the happiest.
It's not just about love, it's about everything.
There is a line like this in "Big Fish and Begonia":
"Life is a journey, this journey is very short, we might as well be bold, to love someone, to climb a mountain, to chase a dream......"
We may not get the results we want, but the process of giving and giving is enough to enrich our lives.
Even the great Albert Einstein not only lamented in his letter to his daughter:
Love is the most powerful force;
If we want our species to survive, if we discover the meaning of life, if we want to save the world and every living creature that inhabits it—
"Love" is the only answer.
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This article was first published on the Zhihu platform: Chen Man, Wang Xiao, Zhang Yan
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