Love Is A Practice: Mature Love Is True Love
“Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling; it is a practice.” ― Fromm, Eric
Eric Fromm, the German psychoanalyst, and psychologist, wrote a book titled “The Art Of Love“. In his book, he breaks down the different types of love that the human-animal can experience.
The two major loves are Mature love and Symbiotic love (immature love).
Mature love is a love that requires that two individuals come together BUT DO NOT GIVE UP THEIR INDIVIDUALITY. They come together to grow with one another. And they grow by learning from one another.
Immature love, symbiotic love, is the love that many people worldwide have and sadly only understand.
In this love, a person comes into a relationship believing they must give up their individuality and connect with their new lover.
And many people, who have been thoroughly conditioned to believe this, live the majority of their lives under this FALSE LOVE.
So, in this article, I will break down all the negative things about this FALSE LOVE and explain what mature love is and how you can only get this love by…NEVER GIVING UP WHO YOU ARE.
NEVER!
Symbiotic Love Will Kill You
Entering into pop culture for a minute to better explain what immature love is, I will be talking about Spider-man.
Everyone knows who Spider-man is.
In one of the character’s most popular story arcs, “The Symbiotic Arc”, Spider-man dons a black costume. It is revealed that his costume is a living creature (later on in the arc). This creature that forms his suit is known as a symbiote.
These creatures look for a worthy host to connect with.
When Spider-man connected with the symbiote, the symbiote made him act irrationally and very recklessly.
IT CHANGED HIS BEHAVIOR AND DEMEANOR.
Spider-man, usually the nice, funny, and humorous superhero, became a dark, rude, and somewhat hostile superhero.
When he separated from the symbiote, realizing it was making him a darker version of himself, the symbiote went insane.
And bonded with someone else to try and…KILL HIM.
Not Too Dissimilar To Real-Life Narcissist
Narcissists are very much like the symbiote from Spider-man lore. They try and connect with people they deem worthy and valuable.
And much like the symbiote, they turn people into WORSE VERSION OF THEMSELVES.
People lose their smiles, their glow, their happiness…and themselves trying to love these creatures.
These creatures thrive on connecting with the person in a way that they will never be able to separate again.
Narcissists, as I have already written in a previous article of mines, are parasites (check out the article “Narcissists are Parasites and We Are The Host“.)
They need a host to survive. They can not survive on their own.
And much like the parasitic symbiotes they are, they require that their host give up something about themselves to connect with them. They need an opening to borrow their slimy beings into our lives.
A vast majority of people have this symbiotic love or immature love in society and why so many people have BAD RELATIONSHIPS.
We are taught that love is passive. In the sense that one must FALL IN LOVE or be SWEPT AWAY BY LOVE.
But love, TRUE MATURE LOVE, is not like that.
Love is active, NOT PASSIVE.
Narcissists Are Passive Lovers
If you ever wonder why your narc is always angry in your relationship, they expect you to deluge them with an unlimited amount of praise, adulation, and love. To them, love is about unlimited giving.
And although they very much represent symbiotic love in the sense that two people come into a relationship and give up something of themselves, narcissists are more like nefarious parasitic symbiotes — in a sense they come only to reap the rewards.
To them, they want us to give, give and give. And they also want to live off of our success.
The frustration that they show in relationships such as but not limited to:
- Constantly blaming
- Devaluing their partner
- Cheating on their partner
- Ignoring
- Attacking
- Humiliating
- and so on
Are all means of trying to keep themselves connected with their partner.
See, in their twisted, immature, and childish minds, if they can do wrong to us, we will always remember them and be linked to them.
They truly are like the 8-year-old kid who draws on walls to get mommy and daddy’s attention.
They connect with us in a way that will make us NEED THEM. And the only way for us to need someone like them is to need them to stop:
- Talking bad about us
- Spreading rumors
- Gossiping about us
- Teasing us
- Mocking us
- HOLDING US IN COURT (They don’t want to divorce and if they do they want to make it so we always have to deal with them)
This…this is immature love. And this is the love that SO MANY PEOPLE fall for.
Active Love Is True Love
Love is active, meaning that one WORKS to be loved.
Both parties work to show their partner they are valued and loved. In this love, one doesn’t sit there and wait for someone to make the first move.
In this love, one doesn’t wait for someone to tell them they love them.
Both parties, MATURE PARTNERS, actively go out of their way to show their love to their partner.
In this love, both partners grow and develop into their greatest versions.
Love Is A Practice: Narcissists Will Never Give You True Mature Love
I come across many people who want and desire SO STRONGLY to have their narcissistic partner love them. These people work so hard to show their partner they are loved. They work so hard to show their narcissistic parasite of a partner that they are willing to give up who they are.
And in the end, what happens?
- Divorce
- Overwhelming stress
- Depression
- Devalued Self-worth
- Suicidal Ideation
- Massive Self-hatred
- and much worse
Narcissistic people cannot ever give you love. And this false love that Hollywood and society (because almost every culture on earth does this symbiotic love) passes off as TRUE LOVE, is what causes so many heartbreaks.
Love without work...is not love. Click To Tweet
And if you are in a relationship, and all you are doing is giving and pouring out…and you aren’t getting anything in return…
LEAVE IT.
These creatures will suck you dry and move on to the next person.
You love someone for WHO THEY ARE…not for what they can do for you.
And with narcs, they cannot do anything positive for us anyway.
“The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one’s narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one’s desires and fears.”― Erich Fromm
