Love and pain🔗

Why do love and pain always seem to go hand in hand?

In the first place, isn't your idea of 'giving freedom' to your beloved a very wrong one? Love itself implies giving the other total freedom, unconditional freedom. To say that you are giving a certain amount of freedom to the other itself shows that you are holding back something in your giving.

It is natural to want to possess your beloved; that is the play of the ego. It is difficult to imagine that your beloved may need space and time away from you, isn't it? You try to do the right thing by 'giving freedom' to your lover. But when she actually uses that freedom, you end up feeling exploited. Actually, you never expected that she would ever use that freedom to do what she wants, be with whom she wants. When you see her giving time and energy to something or somebody else other than you, you start feeling possessive and cheated.

The reason that love usually brings with it so much pain is that lovers unknowingly force each other into the golden cage of their own expectations. But true love can never blossom in captivity. You try and imprison your lover and she does the same, time after time, until you end up feeling that love is so much misery that perhaps it is better not to love at all.

Love can be a door to joy and freedom, or it can become a living hell. To experience love as pain is to miss the whole point of love. There is a saying, 'If you love someone, set him free. If he is yours, he will come back to you. If he doesn't come back, he never was yours anyway.' This is the freedom any relationship deserves.