When I was in college, I was in a creative writing class and one of our friends, Victoria, shared a story about an abusive relationship. In the story\u2014about a husband and wife\u2014the wife gets in her car and heads toward the highway. Her husband drives up alongside her, cursing and shouting, running her off the road, then leaping from his car to scream, \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you wearing a seat belt? How dare you! That\u2019s not safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Victoria seemed surprised and upset when we said it was a chilling portrayal of abuse. Because it was based on her experience with her own husband. \u201cBut he really loves me,\u201d she kept saying. And we\u2014kids in our late teens\u2014kept telling her, \u201cVictoria, that\u2019s not love.\u201d Not that it was never love. Not that there couldn\u2019t be love elsewhere. But she was describing something else. Something toxic where love used to be.<\/p>\n
We see Scripture doing the same thing, telling us not only what love is, but also what it isn\u2019t. In 1\u00a0Corinthians 13, Paul tells us several times, \u201cThat\u2019s not love.\u201d It has been a good reminder to me when looking at my own relationships. Here are four signs in a relationship that show what love is not.<\/p>\n
About five years after our time in the creative writing class, Victoria invited me to her house to catch up. We hadn\u2019t ever been close friends but had kept loosely in touch. I was sitting on her couch, and she was sitting in the armchair diagonal from me. We were just chatting about life. I was married now too. She had been working at a local grade school.<\/p>\n
Victoria was so jumpy. Every time her kids made a noise, I thought she would drop her tea, and she kept looking at the front door with an expression I could only describe as fearful. I asked her, as gently as I could, \u201cVictoria. Does your husband know that I\u2019m visiting today?\u201d<\/p>\n
She assured me that he did. So I asked her, \u201cWhy are you so nervous?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just that he might come home. Leave work without telling me. Try to surprise me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd .\u00a0.\u00a0. why would that be bad?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be doing something wrong. He\u2019ll say I\u2019m doing something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t normal,\u201d I told her. \u201cSomething is wrong, but it\u2019s not you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t understand,\u201d she said. \u201cHe loves me so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t. He did not love her. May not have ever loved her. He was an abuser, and what he enjoyed was the power and control he had over Victoria. I didn\u2019t say that to her. Instead, I quoted Paul. \u201cLove .\u00a0.\u00a0. is not easily angered.\u201d That\u2019s not love.<\/em><\/p>\n He did come home. For just a handful of minutes. Long enough to tell her, \u201cYou didn\u2019t tell me Matt was coming over\u201d and \u201cWe can talk about this later.\u201d She and I both took that to be a threat. He yelled at the kids that they were being too loud. Then he left. He had somehow known exactly when I would be there, though. He hadn\u2019t seemed a bit surprised.<\/p>\n This is an extreme example because it\u2019s not just a moment of anger\u2014it\u2019s a relationship built around abuse by a manipulative person. And if that\u2019s where you are, please know: That\u2019s not love. You deserve better. You can get out and be safe, and there are so many resources available to help you when you\u2019re ready.<\/p>\n But even on a smaller scale, anger chokes love out. How can you be patient or gentle or kind or forgiving when you are always angry at the person you supposedly love?<\/p>\n We can be angry for a time, certainly. And some of us\u2014like me\u2014have a harder time dealing with anger than others. But we have to learn to control it, to tame it, to deal with it. And yes, we can direct anger in constructive ways: to protect those we love, to bring justice, to defend the defenseless.<\/p>\n But anger is not, and never has been, an attribute of love.<\/p>\n Jealousy is about what I want. Love is about what\u2019s best for you.<\/p>\n When we get down to it, all jealousy has the same core insecurity. It\u2019s centered on ourselves, our needs, and our desires. We look at others who get good things and ask, Why them? What\u2019s so great about them? What did I do wrong? What\u2019s so terrible about me?<\/p>\n When my friend gets a big promotion at work and I feel jealous, it\u2019s not because of my love for him. It\u2019s because I wish I were the one who got the promotion. He has it, and I want it. There\u2019s no room for love there because I am focused on my needs, my desires, my wants. And my jealous mind says to me, Since he has it, you can\u2019t have it. I don\u2019t think, Oh, I should look for a similar job somewhere else. I am much more likely to start comparing myself to him in unfavorable ways. But he is late all the time, and I\u2019m punctual.<\/p>\n Jealousy is about scarcity. Love is about abundance. When someone we love has something good come into their life, we celebrate. We work hard to center their well-being, not our own. Awards or praise, raises or promotions, new children or new opportunities. We can mourn our lack of those same things, but that\u2019s separate. We would never try to change places with them because we love them. We are so glad that they have this wonderful thing in their life.<\/p>\n Love is not jealous.<\/p>\n When our family friend Shasta was going through chemo, I\u2019d often go to her condo and pick her up for her treatments. Once the treatments had been going for a while, she\u2019d feel pretty sick afterward, so I\u2019d bring her home, help her get settled, and make sure she had some ready-made food to eat if she was up for it.<\/p>\n She often went without a meal on those days because she was either too weak or too nauseous to eat. I would often skip eating, too, because I didn\u2019t want to leave her while she was getting her treatment. And, because a lot of people in the treatment room were sensitive to smell, I didn\u2019t want to bring my lunch into the hospital.<\/p>\n More than once, we\u2019d get back to her place and she\u2019d tell me to go look in the microwave (she used her microwave as a cabinet because she didn\u2019t like heating things in it), and it would be full of my favorite snacks: tortilla chips, white-chocolate-chip cookies, dates, macadamia nuts. At this point, I was often doing her grocery shopping, too, which meant she had made a special trip out to get these things for me.<\/p>\n It was a really sweet, loving thing.<\/p>\n If I had been focused only on myself .\u00a0.\u00a0. well, for one, I wouldn\u2019t have been at that chemo treatment. I wouldn\u2019t have skipped a meal that day. The more focused we get on our own needs, the more they loom up as the only thing we can think about or reflect on. We start to notice which of our needs are unmet. We insist that what I need is more important than what you need. It\u2019s \u201cmy way or the highway.\u201d We get to a place where we insist that if my needs can\u2019t be put at the center, then we should break our relationship.<\/p>\n But if I had focused only on myself .\u00a0.\u00a0. I would have missed out on Shasta\u2019s kindness. Being self-focused doesn\u2019t just prevent us from giving love\u2014it prevents us from receiving it.<\/p>\n When we focus on others\u2019 needs, we leave space for people we love to think about our needs. By thinking about the needs of others and leaving some of my own unmet, I opened up a place for Shasta to show her care for me.<\/p>\n At one point during Shasta\u2019s treatment, she didn\u2019t have the financial resources to keep going, and she was pretty stressed about it. Her friends got together and did a fundraiser, and many, many people\u2014some who didn\u2019t even know her\u2014donated.<\/p>\n All those people, family and friends, and strangers decided that instead of using that money on themselves, they would use it for her. They saw her need, and they wanted to meet it, and the impact multiplied beyond even her immediate community. That\u2019s a fascinating thing about love\u2014it keeps creating more space for itself. It spreads and grows.<\/p>\n Love is not selfish. Love gives, and grows, and receives .\u00a0.\u00a0. and gives again.<\/p>\n Once, when we traveled to Costa Rica with friends, my wife Krista\u2019s backpack was stolen. She was with her friend at a local caf\u00e9, they closed their eyes to pray together for a moment, and the thief snuck in and snatched the backpack. Krista came and found me\u2014I was with her friend\u2019s husband\u2014and told me what happened, and I asked her, \u201cAre you okay?\u201d<\/p>\n She was fine, just upset about her bag. We went back and looked around in the neighborhood, thinking maybe someone would have abandoned the bag after taking everything inside, but they hadn\u2019t. It was gone.<\/p>\n The friend\u2019s husband pulled me aside later. \u201cShouldn\u2019t you have yelled at Krista a little? Or made her feel bad for what happened?\u201d<\/p>\n Well, no. She already felt bad, for one. I asked him more about what was behind his question, and he told me that in his family growing up if you messed up, everyone would make sure you knew you had messed up. It would be pointed out, explained, dissected, publicly displayed, and discussed at length. By the end, he said, you would feel so stupid that you knew you could never mess up like that again.<\/p>\n I told him I understood why he had the perspective he did, and we laid out the situation again. Could Krista control that someone else had taken her backpack? Had she done anything wrong? Was she more important than anything that was lost in that moment?<\/p>\n Of course, he said, I was right. He told me he needed to think about this because his default in these moments had been built by his family, and he wanted to change it.<\/p>\n We could have gone a step further. What if it had been Krista\u2019s fault in some way? What if she had not been paying attention and had gotten in a car accident? What if she had purposely broken something or thrown away something important?<\/p>\n Those things might have been upsetting, but because I love her, I hope that I wouldn\u2019t publicly shame or dishonor her. When we love someone, we want to platform their best skills, abilities, and characteristics when we talk about them. Not that we\u2019re unaware of their worst qualities or never speak of them. In fact, we are more aware of those things in our close relationships than we are in casual relationships. It\u2019s just that we don\u2019t shame people for not being perfect, or for being in a growth process (or even stuck with some character issues). On the contrary, to love them fully requires not only that we know and love what is broken and worst about our loved ones, but that we love them despite those things.<\/p>\n More than once, I\u2019ve gathered the courage to go to a loved one to admit one of my own issues, only to be met with a laugh and a hug and some comment to the effect of, \u201cYou think I didn\u2019t already know this about you?\u201d<\/p>\n There is power in knowing my brother\/spouse\/parent\/friend knows the worst things about me and still loves me anyway. No matter how broken or terrible we think we are, we can still be loved and still receive that love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was in college, I was in a creative writing class and one of our friends, Victoria, shared a story about an abusive relationship. In the story\u2014about a husband and wife\u2014the wife gets in her car and heads toward the highway. Her husband drives up alongside her, cursing and shouting, running her off the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":645,"featured_media":453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n2. Love Is Not Jealous<\/h3>\n
3. Love Is Not Selfish<\/h3>\n
4. Love Doesn\u2019t Shame or Dishonor<\/h3>\n