Is loving the same as being loved?
This is such a common mistake that more than three out of every ten women will make it at some point in her life and at least an equal percentage of men will too.
There was a story which caught my eye about a woman who could not choose between her fiancé and another man both had cheated on each other, were reluctant to break up, other people were involved, if it did not involve adults living and working in one of the world’s most advanced economies I would have started to suspect this was kindergarten stuff in some developing country somewhere where people are neither very well educated nor do they have access to help, information and advice.
The problem posed by loving and being loved is that they both tend to make us feel that we are involved with people. Biochemically our body responds to the attention and we get a feeling of being on a high and both situations engage us as fully as it is possible and make us feel alive. The catch is that one has the capacity to take us further while the other will only get us caught up in a cycle that seems to be spiraling downwards as it devolves into ordinariness.
Loving requires engaging in a relationship that requires a deep level of trust and an opening up of oneself whereas being loved is an entirely selfish, self-absorbing, passive position which requires others to work hard to give you the emotional and psychological high you feel you need.
If you are in a relationship which really matters it is easy to understand what you feel because the other person becomes the focus of your world. This never quite happen when you are caught up in the self-need to feel wanted and that’s the difference.
