A woman I know (not an ex-girlfriend) told me that, when she was
younger, someone wrote her a song. I asked her why had she not married
that man, and she said that writing a song means nothing; what matters
in a relationship is sacrifice.

My mental response: Then you've gotten precisely what you deserved in
an abusive marriage that followed.

Sacrifice? What kind of vanity - what kind of sense of entitlement -
what kind of utter lack of concern for the man you claim to love -
would demand such a hideous thing? What kind of cruelty, ignorance and
destructiveness would want someone to sacrifice himself for you? This
is a recipe for misery, not for love and certainly not for happiness.
As people sacrifice themselves to each other, their anger at each
other grows; their resentment of each other grows; and soon enough it
turns into mutual hatred of one another and, from that, abuse by one or
by both parties.

Sacrifice? The only thing you have to sacrifice in a loving
relationship is evil attitudes and bad habits. Consideration, yes;
caring, yes; compassion, yes; charitability, yes; sensitivity, yes;
sacrifice, no. Loving relationships are life-affirming rather than
death-seeking. Loving relationships affirm and validate each other's
selves rather than demanding their destruction. Loving relationships
help each other be happy rather than dragging each other into mutual
self-annihilation. Loving relationships help each other to be the best
of who they are rather than seek to demolish each other's selves as
though they were each other's worst enemies - the enemies which, of
course, as a result of such attitudes they become.

The idea that relationships are about sacrifice lead the partners to
see each other's self as their enemy - as something that needs to be
sacrificed in order that the relationship can exist. Is that a recipe
for happiness? Is that a recipe for a life worth living? Or is that a
recipe for mutual hatred - the hatred that is rightly directed against
someone who seeks to destroy one's self as the price of being with
them?

It is attitudes like this that are responsible for misery in
relationships. I repeat: Nobody who loves you will demand that you
surrender your self. Love is affirming rather than negating, and to
claim sacrifice as the price of love is against everything that is
loving.

After the people who have such attitudes come to their logical
consummation - the morass of resentment and mutual hatred a few years
or even months down the road - they blame it on love, or on romance, or
on youth, or on beauty, when the only thing to blame is their beliefs
and actions they take in pursuance of their beliefs. The people who
demand self-sacrifice as the price of love are people who see the other
person's self as their enemy and treat them as their worst enemy - and
there is nothing - nothing - less loving and charitable than such an
outcome; the outcome that is the logical consummation of such beliefs.

So to those who believe that love is about sacrifice, I say the
following: You are the reason for most misery in relationships. You
cannot love a person and see their self as your enemy - as something
that needs to be sacrificed - at the same time. And true love is love
that affirms each other's self rather than seeking to destroy it, or
that seeks sacrifice, or that sees obedience as price of love.

Ilya Shambat.



--- UseNet To RIME Gateway {at} 2/11/05 10:44:21 PM ---