She’s lovingly critical, instinctively nurturing, traditionally Christian (in a very how-can-you-have-a-church-without-hymns way) and opinionated in her ideas on culture, ethics and morality. Her ideas are always crisply illustrated with vivid anecdotes, featuring some colorful character.
This also usually means growing up with certain conceptions of what love and romance look like. It’s heteronormative, conventional and traditional.
My mother is all of the things above, with a healthy serving of atypicality, and expectedly, so are her thoughts on love and loving.
I grew up being taught these beliefs, and I understood them within the confines of the lived experiences and wisdom of a child. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve found a new understanding and fascination with her ideas on love and loving.
They continue to inform my emotional growth and define the ways in which I navigate my romantic life. Below are some of my mom’s not-always-typical ideas on giving and receiving love.
1. Find someone who loves you more than you love him.
When I was younger, I remember my mom telling my sister, “Find a man who loves you more than you love him.” Heteronormative and presumptuous? Yes. Unfair? Not necessarily. Shrewd? Definitely.The reasoning behind this advice was simple, and having lived and loved some, I finally understand what she was saying: To truly love is to be vulnerable.
As Derek Morgan on “Criminal Minds” puts it,
“Love is giving someone the ability to destroy you but trusting them not to.”Consciously or subconsciously, we are predisposed to selfishness, and we easily fall into taking the people who love us for granted. Hence, being with someone who loves you more than you love him is a fail-safe against being taken for granted.
The idea is certainly not to settle for someone you can manipulate, but rather about being with someone you can feel safe loving, in the knowledge that he loves you, without the fear and danger of being vulnerable.
You could argue that’s an incomplete, perhaps even contrived, way to love. But the truth is that as deeply as two people might love each other, one always loves deeper than the other.
It’s about being conscious and mindful about how you give into the often-fickle bewitchment of love. It’s about giving in where you are valued and cherished.
Read Full Story in : http://elitedaily.com/dating/4-love-lessons-from-my-mom/1156385/
Author: Nana T. Baffour-Awuah
