Love is indeed strange, if not difficult. As far as I remember, I never bothered with understanding love, emotions, or childhood trauma until recently. It has been two weeks since Alain de Botton's talk was featured on Big Think, but it wasn't until today that I watched it. At first, I thought it would be another lecture on the "how to listen to your partner" type of love, but I was wrong.
Love is actually a skill..a skill we never bother to learn because we assume we already know it. We think it is supposed to be natural, but it isn't. It is a skill we haven't fully figured out. In this modern age, we only concern ourselves with fluttery romantic love, "love at first sight," or "soulmates." If you are on social media, you see it everywhere: ideas about how you should find the right person who will make you feel butterflies, understand you without speaking, never try to change you, and be full of green flags without a shade of red. But is there even a single person who doesn't have a red flag? I doubt it, considering half of the population has attachment wounds.
In the past, marriages were about power and land. Royal families married off their children to build alliances, not for happiness. Around the 1700s, the idea of Romanticism changed everything. It taught us that we should find a "soulmate" who understands us perfectly without even speaking. We still believe this today, which is why we think things like talking about money or trying to help a partner change their bad habits is "unromantic." But wanting a partner to be healthier isn't wrong. It makes me wonder if our modern definition of what is romantic is actually holding us back from building real, healthy connections.
The Ancient Greeks saw love as an education where you help each other grow into the best versions of yourselves. Even though most of our life experience is shaped by our relationships, we rarely study how love actually works. Our ability to give and receive love is usually set by age ten, based on how our parents treated us and each other. If someone grew up with abuse or neglect, they might actually feel more "at home" with pain than with kindness. To them, healthy love feels foreign, while withdrawal or conflict feels familiar. This is why many people struggle to accept the very love they need most.
These people need a lot of love but are terrified of it. It is like being starved in a prison and then suddenly facing a giant feast; your body just cannot handle it. We often return to painful situations because they feel familiar. This is why children of addicts or violent parents often choose similar partners as adults. We do this because we are guided by patterns, not just pleasure. We are unconsciously trying to fix a problem we couldn't solve as children. We hope that by "saving" a partner now, we can finally heal that old wound, even if it keeps us stuck in a painful cycle.
It's not about finding someone perfect, but rather someone we can work wiht. The work is to turn a stranger into someone you can understand and who can understand you without bottling things up or throwing the relationship away. It won't be built in two weeks, and it won't be perfect, but it won't be suffocating either. More importantly, you have to work on yourself. You must work on yourself psychologically so that you understand your childhood script and do not simply project it onto an innocent person. You have to take responsibility for the problems you bring into a relationship.
You need to learn about the other person and tell them about yourself, how you grew up and what you struggle with. You need to talk about those things patiently and calmly. It should be, "I hear your point of view; it may not be mine, but I hear that it is yours," rather than, "You're an idiot and you're just like your father." The latter is not therapeutic.
It is funny how we all think about wanting to find the right person, but never about becoming the right person. We all have defense mechanisms that we need to understand, but we often try to run away from ourselves because self-knowledge is frightening and makes us anxious. However, you have to sit with yourself and let yourself heal; you have to "know thyself." We may wonder how long it takes to learn, but it might take our whole lives. Learning is not a one-time thing.
Socrates was considered the wisest because he admitted he didn't know everything. We should apply that same humility to love. You aren't looking for a perfect person, but a "good enough" person who is willing to do the work with you. We are all flawed and a bit difficult to live with, so it is much better to find someone who stays curious and asks questions like, "How do I annoy you?" or "Am I the problem here?" instead of someone who thinks they are perfect.
By getting back in touch with nature and being honest about our vulnerabilities, we can find a way out of an otherwise lonely and judgmental world. I honestly didn't expect to learn this much from a one-hour talk. Even though the topic can be controversial, taking these notes has been eye-opening.
Hello Tumblr! I have been here for years and finally decided to start posting. I only use AI to help with my grammar; these are just my personal thoughts on the things I watch and read.
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