Narcissistic Love is Not Really Love

The experience that I write about here on PF was also my first experience with romantic love. This gave me a bit of a warped understanding of love for a while, but the problem was I didn't even know it was warped. It was my first experience, so it was my blueprint. With a faulty blueprint for love, we're bound to stumble and fall, over and over again, until we find the real thing. Here were some of the things I learned about love.

Narcissistic love:

• You are perfect
• You are flawless
• You are beautiful, sexy, the hottest person in the world
• Constant communication is good
• Adoration, praise, attention are good
• Negative emotions are unacceptable
• Consumes your entire life and thoughts
• Frantic and intense
• Addictive

This is a lot of ego stuff. It feels really good at first, like all their attention is laser-focused on you and you're the most important person in the world. It's intense, they're on your thoughts all the time, they make you feel special and unique. Everything you do is perfect (at first). And when they leave, you worry you'll never find that feeling again.

But what if that feeling wasn't even love? I mean, of course we were in love. But what if there was a much more powerful kind of love that we had yet to discover? One that made the above type of love look like complete nonsense (because it is).

I think Yogi Berra said "You don't know what you don't know", and that's exactly the problem here. We're not going to look for another type of love if we don't even know it exists, or how it feels. So it's easy to get stuck with this false blueprint of love and develop all sorts of maladaptive needs based on that. Suddenly we're looking outward for love, imagining a savior, or saving others, stuck with vengeful thoughts, seeking external validation and approval, trying to do everything perfectly.

In order to find a different kind of love, we need to tame this ego that has been hugely inflated, criticized, and ultimately betrayed. Underneath all of that is where you'll find the good stuff: feelings, the heart, the real you. As your feelings come out, they're likely to be pretty unpleasant. Inadequacy, anger, jealousy, rejection, self-doubt, shame.

Instead of turning away from these difficult feelings, we need to welcome them with open arms. This won't be easy at first because your brain is used to thinking in a certain way, but you can rewire your brain with new habits and daily practice. Every time you try non-judgmentally allowing a feeling to exist (instead of analyzing it to death), it will melt a bit more, like an ice cube. If you can't find this in yourself, turn to spirituality. Imagine an infinitely loving presence, warmly accepting even your darkest flaws.

The more we do this, the more our blueprint changes. As we work through the feelings, we find a softer place in our heart. We cannot think our way into this place. We cannot find it in anyone else, only ourselves. When your own feelings are at home in your heart, you'll probably start to feel bursts of joy and gratitude. Relief, like you can breathe again. This is when we start to discover another type of love:

New love:

• Freeing
• Joyful
• Grateful
• Spiritual growth
• Forgiving
• Open to flaws
• Calming
• All emotions are welcome
• Independent
• Kind and humorous
• Patient
• Infinite

This place is always waiting for us, and everyone is welcome.

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