098-from-being-loved-to-knowing-how-to-love

A child first needs to be loved.

This is one of life’s most basic needs and the first responsibility of the family. When a child comes into the world, he cannot establish security alone, confirm his own worth alone, or naturally know that he deserves love. He must first, through the eyes, responses, embrace, protection, respect, and stable presence of parents or caregivers, gradually form the most basic inner certainty: I am seen, I am held, I am worthy of love, and my existence itself has value.

If a child has never been properly loved but is required to be sensible, strong, successful, grateful, filial, and independent, this is not maturity. It is deprivation.

Therefore, Family Civilization first emphasizes: a child must be loved.

But human life cannot remain forever in the position of waiting to be loved.

Children need to be loved. Adults need to learn how to love.

Being loved is the foundation of early life. Knowing how to love is the ability of a mature personality.

If a person was not properly loved in childhood, he often enters relationships with a deep love deficit. He longs to be understood, soothed, protected, chosen, and firmly kept close. These longings are not shameful. They show that a person was once deeply deprived of love, and that a child within is still waiting to be held.

But if this deficit remains unconscious, it will turn relationships into extraction. A person may turn a partner into a parent, a child into a life substitute, a friend into a rescuer, and a relationship into proof that he deserves to exist.

At that point, he thinks he is loving, but he is waiting to be compensated; he thinks he is giving, but he is demanding repayment; he thinks he is being intimate, but he is fearing loss; he thinks he is sacrificing, but he is creating debt.

This is not mature love.

Mature love must move from “I need to be loved” toward “I also have the capacity to love.”

First, being loved is a human need, but not the whole of a human life.

Everyone needs love. Denying the need for love does not mean maturity. A person who seems to need no love at all may not be free; he may simply have closed himself.

Family Civilization does not advocate cold independence, nor does it ask people to suppress all vulnerability. Human beings exist in relationships. People need to be understood, responded to, accompanied, and accepted. To acknowledge one’s need for love is not weakness.

But if a person’s entire meaning of life is built on whether others love him, he loses sovereignty over his own life. When others love him, he feels valuable. When others leave, he feels unworthy of living. When others become distant, he falls into fear. When others deny him, he collapses completely.

Such a life is dangerous. It hands one’s value, happiness, and sense of existence entirely to external relationships.

Therefore, maturity is not the absence of the need for love. It is not handing oneself over completely to being loved.

Second, knowing how to love means not forcing one’s deficit onto others.

Love-deficit projection is a root cause of many relational sufferings. A person deprived of fatherly love may search for a father in a partner. A person deprived of motherly love may search for a mother in a partner. A person who was not respected as a child may demand that his child obey in order to prove his importance. A person who lacks security may use control to prevent others from leaving.

Behind these behaviors are real wounds.

But the fact that a wound is real does not mean others must be responsible for it. A partner may understand a person’s wound, but cannot replace the parents. A child may love the parent, but cannot become the filler of the parent’s love deficit. A friend may accompany someone, but cannot carry all of that person’s loneliness.

A person who knows how to love first distinguishes which parts are his old wounds, and which parts are the other person’s present responsibility; which are reasonable relational needs, and which are the endless demands of childhood deprivation.

When a person can say, “This is my wound. I will take responsibility for it rather than handing all of it to you,” he begins to possess the capacity for mature love.

Third, knowing how to love means respecting the other person as an independent human being.

Much harm in relationships comes from a mistaken expectation: because you love me, you should exist in the way I need.

Parents do this to children. Partners do this to each other. Adult children sometimes do this to parents.

But true love cannot cancel the independence of the other person.

To love a child is not to make the child a copy of the parents. To love a partner is not to make the partner a slave to one’s emotions. To love parents is not to abandon one’s boundaries.

To love a person means recognizing that the other is not one’s tool, attachment, medicine for wounds, or extension of life.

The other person may be different, may have feelings, may have boundaries, may have choices, and may not live in order to satisfy oneself.

Without this respect, love slowly becomes control.

Fourth, knowing how to love means having the ability to stop harming.

Many people speak of love, yet do not stop harming. They can give money, but cannot stop humiliating. They can sacrifice time, but cannot stop controlling. They can say they cannot live without the other person, yet cannot stop emotional blackmail. They can say “I am doing this for your own good” while suffocating the other person.

Family Civilization must state clearly: true love is not better because it gives more. It is more civilized when it harms less.

A person who knows how to love is not necessarily perfect, but he is willing to notice his harm. After saying something wrong, he is willing to apologize. After losing emotional control, he is willing to review what happened. After violating boundaries, he is willing to step back. After discovering that he is controlling the other person, he is willing to learn respect. After discovering that he has turned the child into an emotional container, he is willing to take back his pain and deal with it himself.

Knowing how to love does not mean being gentle forever. It means being willing to continually reduce harm.

Fifth, knowing how to love means taking responsibility for one’s own life.

Many people understand love as: someone makes me happy.

But mature love is the meeting of two people who are willing to take responsibility for their own lives.

If a person hands all happiness to a partner, the partner becomes pressure. If a parent hands all meaning in later life to a child, the child becomes debt. If a child hands all self-worth to parental approval, the parents continue to control the child’s inner world.

Therefore, a person who knows how to love must take life back.

My emotions are mine to notice. My wounds are mine to repair. My life is mine to build. My happiness is mine to participate in creating. My loneliness cannot be entirely handed to others to fill. My value is not decided by any one person.

Only then will relationships no longer become mutual devouring.

Sixth, moving from being loved to knowing how to love is the path of relational maturity.

Family Civilization does not ask people to stop longing for love. It first acknowledges that every child should be loved, every wounded person deserves to be understood, and every love-deprived person needs to be treated with gentleness.

But Family Civilization also points out that an adult cannot remain forever in the position of waiting for others to compensate for what was missing. The maturity of life is to move gradually from “Why did no one love me well?” to “How can I stop passing my wounds to others?” From “Who will save me?” to “How can I rebuild myself?” From “I need others to prove that I am worthy of love” to “I will first learn to love myself and others in a civilized way.”

This is not blame toward the wounded.

It is a path toward freedom.

As long as a person waits for all deficiencies to be filled by others, he remains ruled by the past. When a person begins to practice inner parenting, self-reconciliation, self-love, self-soothing, and self-boundaries, he begins to take life back from the past. When a person no longer treats a partner as a parent, a child as compensation, or a relationship as a lifeline, he finally has the capacity to enter healthy love.

Being loved is the beginning of life.

Knowing how to love is the beginning of civilization.

A child who has been properly loved more easily grows the ability to love. Even an adult who was not properly loved can still learn love again through awareness, repair, and practice.

This is the hope of Family Civilization.

The love that was missing in the past cannot be fully restored. But the love expressed in the future can begin to change now.

A person cannot return to childhood and make parents love him again. But a person can begin today to stop expressing love through harm, stop proving love through control, stop disguising extraction as love, and stop forcing the next generation to bear the misplacement of love.

Moving from being loved to knowing how to love is the road from woundedness to maturity, and also the road by which a family moves from a system of harm to a system of civilization.