true love

I believe that a basis for a good relationship is a love for God and a desire for God that is greater than the love and desire you have for the other person. This will free you from the sin of making the other person an idol and therefore being ruled and controlled by them.

Obviously, we would agree that if we set up a relationship with someone in which their role was to meet all of our needs, and we were going to be cruel to them and punish them if they didn’t meet those needs, we are setting up a very wrong (self-centered) and in fact abusive relationship. We are also allowing ourselves to be dependent on them and ruled by them. When we allow our wants and needs to rule us in any relationship they become severe masters. Our wants and needs are no longer normal human desires but lusts.

As Dan Allender says in his brilliant book, Bold Love:

Lust may be sexual, but it may also be directed toward a person or object in a nonsexual manner. [He said earlier that “Lust is the fallen desire for union gone mad.”] Lust may be directed toward a person, object, position or state. Many lust after being happy (state); others lust after reputation (position), antiques (objects), or people. In any case, destructive lust involves the heart of a thief whose passion is to be satisfied, not the heart of a lover whose desire is to give.

The current “disease” labeled “codependency” provides an excellent paradigm of nonsexual lust. The person who lives for approval and involvement with another is often willing to sacrifice life and limb to “possess” the heart of another. The energy behind possessive love is lust—that is, the desire to find a host who will provide a vital energy that appears to be missing in the codependent.

The codependent is usually aware of an emptiness, an ennui, a boredom, a soullessness that seems strangely relieved in the presence of the beloved. The fullness experienced in a smile from the beloved is often enough warmth to endure the literal or figurative blows of rage that icily strip the codependent of any remaining shreds of dignity. It is not unusual for codependents to bind themselves to the stark task of trying to draw blood out of a stone. The frustration of emptiness seems to lead to even greater sacrifice and commitment to serve the object of their desire. In turn, the object of their desire usually intensifies his rage to disentangle the threads of sticky, absorptive enmeshment.

This process looks like a dance of death, where codependents ask their partners to provide intimacy, while subtly inviting an avalanche of hatred to be unleashed. The person who is the object of the codependent’s needy lust often feels alternately prized and then violated in the heat of absorptive passion. The whirlwind of desire and destruction sabotages the self and intensifies self-protective despair.

When satisfaction is not forthcoming (of course, it never is fully), lust will inevitably turn darker and meaner. A private fantasy of sexual gratification with an attractive object of desire will likely not suffice over time. A more intense, more consuming desire to be captured or conquer will take over. It may not be enough to be merely wanted by an attractive man or woman; the “wanting” will likely descend into darker control and subjugation. Soon the fury of emptiness will be conjoined with the desire for absorption, and perversion will be born.

Lust almost always becomes perverse. Perversion is the wedding of lust and rage. The soul is never satisfied with the taste of pleasure; it demands to be satiated. When unrequited hunger mingles with the fury of wanting someone to pay for the pain of emptiness we are forced to experience, a tumultuous interplay of violence and passion is fused that simultaneously seeks to use and destroy.”

Obviously, this is very destructive and doesn’t work. It may even be motivated by a good desire to change oneself by being connected to a person with an “opposite” quality. But this desire becomes consuming/is a consuming lust, and we have made the mistake that the other person can change us. The way we change is to realize that we are wrong and take responsibility to change in that area. However, we can appreciate other people’s support. Another thing we do with desires in this case is to believe that they are needs, when they are merely wants, which would be “pluses” if they were fulfilled.

A lot of people try to solve the above problem by being “nice” about asking for their demands/needs to be met and by being aware of the other person’s requirements/needs and trying to fulfill them. They try to “even it out” and believe that they have become a lot more easygoing and unselfish by doing so. But is that true??

Isn’t it a toned down version of the same thing? Sugar-coating selfishness doesn’t do anything! This will not remove the feeling of emptiness and listlessness that accompanies selfishness. And how does a person feel who worries that they might no longer fulfill the demands of the relationship? Can’t they be instantly terminated and removed? It’s frightening! They are so easily the object of the other’s scary and scornful manipulation.

Bob Dylan sang: “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re still gonna have to serve somebody.”

There is a third way. This way allows you to be free of manipulating and being manipulated and being afraid of the other person. Instead of trying to meet the needs of the other person, it allows you to be truthful to them for their good. That is truly loving.

The Bible gives us two choices for desires that rule us: holy passions or lusts. What rules us? A desire for God and His love or what we want? It’s not wrong to want good things, but are we wanting them more than God? If we are, they are lusts. But when we want God’s desires and love more than our wants, we convert all of our motivations into holy passions both for the other and for our own lives. As Edward Welch says in his book When People are Big and God is Small: “We need to need people less and love people more”. This is the only time when we can truly love unselfishly.

Now there is another group of people (myself included) who have the opposite kind of problem. They are really giving in their relationships, so much so, that they can easily be taken advantage of and often neglect themselves while giving to others. These people should learn not be naïve! They should strive to be strong in their relationships (both in regards to respecting themselves and confronting others) always out of a motivation to love/and of love.

The famous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi sums up what I have been trying to say so well:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.