Aug 21, 2018 Adapting to Infatuation

We have all experienced love and love loss at some point in our lives. The question is, what made us get to the point when we realized the love was lost? And was the love really lost, or had the infatuation phase disappeared or diminished? MOST of the time, it’s cut and dry. Either it’s real love or it’s real infatuation. When it’s infatuation, we find ourselves being obsessed with the parts of them that we lack in. In today’s lesson, let’s talk about “Jordan” again. (I may go back to him in a few blogs, he offered I few life long lessons that I will NEVER forget).

Jordan was strong. When I say strong, I am speaking of physically, mentally, emotionally, and (on the surface) spiritually. Immediately, I am attracted to strength—I lack it. I am of (and was even more back then) small stature, I tend to be anxious a lot, and an emotional wreck. I gravitated to his ability to stabilize me in those areas. His relationship with his mom wasn’t that great, so he had learned how to compress his emotions—I wanted that. I wanted to be relieved of always showing people how I felt about them on my face. I wanted to appear as if I didn’t care, sometimes. Jordan did that effortlessly. This is what attracted me to him initially. Now that I reflect, I realize I was selling myself short. He never even took me on a real date and I saw it as him being “manly”. BULL!!!! *excuse my language* It was his way of keeping me at bay, while not being fully committed and I accepted it.

He constantly played the victim and here I am thinking that I need to “prove” my love to someone who is emotionless. IMPOSSIBLE. No matter how much proving I did, he COULD NEVER reciprocate it because he lacked the ability to show compassion. I didn’t see it as a deal-breaker but as an attraction. This is what we must be careful of. This is also why it’s so important to know and love ourselves first. If I had taken the time to do that, I could recognize my weaknesses, embrace them instead of attempting to REPLACE them.

Love is constant. Even when the person pisses us off, love is so deep that it remains the same at the change of our emotions. Love surpasses death. Love covers flaws. Love protects. If you are exposing him every time he messes up, you don’t love him. You don’t even love yourself, yet. You’re hurting and that’s ok. Recognize it—and heal. We get into these relationships that are only built off surface issues and find ourselves questioning our ability to love when things don’t work out.

Sis, you CAN love. Just maybe not him…. in my case JORDAN!

Infatuation is based only on what your eyes can see and your body can feel. Love is BLIND (Come on Eve !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *goes to find song on Apple Music*).

So now you want to know… how do you know when it’s real love? All I can say is, YOU WILL KNOW. It’s different for everyone. I know I love someone when I see potential in their flaws and when it’s reciprocated. It’s easy to “love” when you’re benefiting, but what about when you’re losing?

Love is NOT to be confused with toleration… we will talk about that on the next blog…

In the meantime, don’t force it. Let love come, but you must first learn to love who you really are, not who you want people to see you as. I love us for real.

Today’s read is dedicated to my cousin…. Myia R. Sanders is one of the strongest women I know.