Exploring Happiness #3- Loving Poem by June Stepansky

They will love me
if I speak
what they want to hear.
They will love me
if I become
their vision of me.
They will love me
if they can be my Pygmalion
and I their Galatea.
They don’t think
they demand much.
They only ask
that I give up
myself!


We all want and need love in our lives, but how much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice to meet this need.
Our dependency for someone to love us comes from childhood, when we couldn’t take care of ourselves, and actually needed others to help us survive.
As adults, it is nice to have someone in our lives who cares, but we have or can develop the skills we need to survive and even flourish by ourselves.
Many relationships are based on fear and neurotic need which can be ultimately destructive.
We need to be sure that respect for the individuality of the loved one becomes part of every really loving relationship.



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The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
Lao Tsu

Resolve to be thyself, and know, that he who finds himself loses his misery.
Mathew Arnold