I was talking about this with one of my friends a few days ago and he freaked out. I know there are a thousand reasons to freak out as we learned from our childhood that love is everything. But let me explain what I feel about this, why I'm saying this and why you should change your mind also.
Is it possible to love someone but not feel emotionally close? The answer is YES
Do you sometimes feel a responsibility towards love but don't feel that way inside you? Maybe this answer is also YES
Do you notice how people get frustrated with their relationship but are not prepared to let it go? The answer is YES for sure
So, why we put this in our mind that love is everything? Is not this just creates 'over expecting' from a relationship?
The answer to all of these questions is hidden on the concept of 'Defensiveness.' If you see a person is not giving up on his/her abusive relationship, don't think that it's all because of Love. Maybe love doesn't exist on them. But they do this because they feel to make a defense on their relationship, they have the fear of society, they don't have other option and they are doing this coz they think that love is everything and it's gonna solve everything. But how fool are they, no need to say.
What we really need is to get our mind open to the "other." For example, you want to be with a good woman. But you don’t feel safe with her. You just want to feel safe with someone who is a positive influence. But really you don’t know if a positive influence is one that is going to make you unhappy, so you’ll only be safe with a negative one. You don’t want to have a lot of negative love relationships, then you'll never experience happiness of the inner feeling. It takes time for us to open our heart to the other. So many people think that one good friend is sufficient to support us in our relationships. That is just wrong. It is possible to support our relationships through our "good friends." That is what it is important to understand
We make a defense to protect us from blame, judgment, rejection. And we act like we are normal, our love life is going well. Maintaining this invisible wall becomes a barrier that doesn’t allow our heart to remain soft and open. And we try to show everyone how happy we are. But actually we are not.
You see, what the over expectations of love make us do? Rather, we can choose to be ourselves if we can think love is not everything. And there are many more things related to it to make a relationship works. If you are not feeling loved/love, you have other options to choose rather a defense that and act on that relationship.
I know it's hard to accept but this is how it works. Think and you will probably gonna started to see things differently.