Love is a wonderful thing, but at times it can hurt. How to maintain our hearts open despite our wounds.
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When we fall in love, it feels amazing. Being in love floods our brains with feel-good chemicals (including dopamine, serotonin and endorphins). We’re literally on a drug-induced high.
This drug-induced high cannot be sustained indefinitely. If we’re lucky, the initial stage of romance morphs into a longer term, more stable relationship (and provides lots of the feel-good chemical oxytocin).
However, if we lose our source of love, we suffer withdrawal and loss, which is painful. Love is so wonderful that it can hurt simply by its absence.
“It hurts when you have someone in your heart, but you cannot have them in your arms.”
Why It’s Okay That Love Hurts (At Times)
Love is going to hurt at times, because it cannot always be present when we want it, in the way we want it. And this can be painful.
This means that to be open to love requires being open to hurt as well. This does not mean accepting unhealthy love, rather it is accepting that even healthy love carries with it a certain degree of hurt.
Here are two key reasons why love is going to hurt sometimes.
(i) Love comes with loss
“There is no love without loss. It’s a package deal.”
Brad Pitt
In loving someone, there will at times be loss. As much as we may wish otherwise, nothing lasts forever. Time brings changes and changes bring losses. Eternal, unchanging love only exists in fantasies with immortal characters.
Some losses can be particularly painful, for example, losses due to abandonment, rejection or betrayal. At times, the pain of past losses and the fear of future losses results in us closing our hearts. We hide behind closed walls hoping to shield ourselves from further pain. This leaves us isolated and ultimately impoverished as we live a loveless life.
Living fully requires staying open to love, riding through the pain of losses in order to keep experiencing the richness of connection.
(ii) Love does not always meet our expectations
When our expectations related to love are not met, this can bring pain. At times, this indicates that we have more to learn about love and need to reevaluate our expectations. At other times, it simply requires an acceptance that although our expectations may be reasonable, it’s not reasonable to expect them to always be met.
Love is not an on-demand, customizable item. You can’t expect to order love on Amazon, compare customer reviews to select the model that you want and then demand that love meet all your expectations or you’ll call customer service and demand a replacement.
Nor is love some kind of magical potion that will satisfy all your desires and convert all your problems into happiness.
Love is an energy that moves in its own beautiful way. We can work on creating the right space to attract love into our lives, but we can’t always control its comings and goings. Love is supposed to be free – trying to trap it and convert it into a domesticated animal that comes when you call and always stays there waiting for you is not respecting the true nature of love.
To truly appreciate love is to accept that it is a gift to be enjoyed. It is not something that can be controlled, demanded or molded into whatever form meets our expectations.
Turning Hurt Into Growth
It is important to remember that being hurt is not something that is inherently bad or something that we should try to avoid at all costs. When we feel hurt we are being given an opportunity to learn and grow from it. It is a healthy part of our evolution.
“Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.”
Robert Gary Lee
Keeping Your Heart Open To Love
Once it is accepted that all love carries with it some hurt and that hurt is the path to wisdom and growth, we can accept that being hurt does not require us to close ourselves off to love. We can instead choose to let the process of curing our wounds open us up to even greater love. 💛💛💛
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Rumi
Sobre La Vida 