Loving without Being Loved

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love.” – Woody Allen

We like the feeling of love, but perhaps not so much the reality of falling in love. Because when we fall in love, we turn something so valuable into our vulnerability. Sometimes our love is ignored, sometimes rejected, sometimes even despised. Then we frustrate, hurt, suffer, or even become bitter. We suffer in love because we cannot bear loving without having love in return.

What makes it so difficult to love without being loved? The truth is what we love so much about love is to be loved. We love to be cared about, we love to be cherished as the most valuable thing in the world, we love to have someone beside us unconditionally whenever we feel happy or sad … When we fall in love, we fall in love with these imagined feelings. For most of us, love is intrinsically in a passive tense. No wonder that flattering is the most endurable method in the history of courting. Thus, we frustrate, hurt and suffer when our love fails to meet its equal.

Is it possible to love without being loved? Don’t we feel our eyes watered when we received a similar love from our parents? Don’t we feel so happy when we occasionally did something good to others without letting anybody know? There is fulfillment in loving itself.

There is fulfillment in watching quietly from a distance your loved one’s every single smile. There is fulfillment in knowing, even from far away, that your loved one is safe and living a happy life. There is fulfillment in sending your best wishes to your loved one when he or she is through a difficult time. There is fulfillment in extending your help to your loved one when he or she is in need, without expecting anything in return. We can have our fulfillment in loving, even without being loved.

One may object that “Isn’t this just another self-deceiving pretense?” It won’t help to just turn around and pretend not to see the painful reality of our human nature: we deeply desire to be loved. Why not face this fact, painful as it is? However, to recognize the possibility to love without being loved is not to turn a blind eye on our desire to be loved.  The point is simply that we should not let the frustration of that desire deprives us of our capacity to love, because the good in loving does not just come from its payment. Loving itself is sweet, meaningful and fulfilling. We fall victim to loving, because we fall victim to the desire to be loved. Once we release our love from that entanglement, we release ourselves from the suffering.

Love is priceless. It is the most precious thing that i can offer. So, it should not be sold for a price, even for love itself. To love is to enjoy.