When we do things to maintain a false sense of love — accepting jealousy, caretaking someone’s emotions, suppressing our own needs — we lose our power in the relationship. And as power erodes, so does attraction.
“Everything that we do to get the love, which is a false sense of love, to maintain the love, which is a false sense of love, erodes our power and reduces the attraction in the relationship.”
Two people who’ve been together for a while often find the attraction and sex have disappeared — not because of time, but because they’ve been caretaking each other in ways they believe are necessary to maintain love. They abandon themselves to receive love, and the relationship becomes a management process rather than a joining of two people.
The fights that emerge come from the resentment of self-abandonment. Someone who learned their job is to keep their partner from getting angry will eventually build resentment that explodes as aggression or passive aggression. The meta-process in the fight becomes about minimizing the other person’s anger rather than genuine connection.
Related Concepts
- We attract what we learned as love
- Codependence comes from not owning wants
- avoider dynamic in relationships
- What we do to maintain love erodes our power
- Walking on eggshells guarantees resentment
- Caretaking is a strategy to feel love through managing others’ happiness
- Fixing your partner’s emotions is manipulation, not love