Thomas Merton on Love


"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." --Thomas Merton

UPDATE TO THIS POST:

Sunday night my husband and I had a bit of a fight and Monday night we had a great talk about it.

What I realized during our talk was that our fight was exactly because I was not doing the above. I was asking him to be more like me. To think like me, to act like me, to have preferences about travel and family time that were just like me. I was trying to twist him to fit my own image and it was NOT working.

No matter how much I tried to argue him into being like me he just couldn't do it. Because he's not me.

I think we finally came to that realization by the end of our talk on Monday and it was both enlightening and a bit scary.

In order to truly love him, I have to let go of my delusions about who he is, some of which I really quite like. It feels both liberating and a bit disappointing to have to face this truth, but there is no other way to live. Or to love.

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