You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free. – Thích Nhất Hạnh
Many of have seen or experienced this – that someone in our life focuses on control in relationship to others. They may seek to control the behaviors or thoughts of others around them.
In right relationship, control is simply not relevant. There isn’t a need to control others or to be controlled. Instead, relationships are based on love and trust.
With love and trust, each of us can look out for ourselves and for others. Each of us can hold others tenderly in our hearts and minds. Looking deeply, we can see that only by starting with self-control, can we have an impact on the love in our relationships with others.
Being our true selves, we can more fully emerge into the joy of fully being our true selves.
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Hi Vincent, good to see you posting. I just read a novel on possessive erotomania — Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love — and it’s really quite a frightening disorder. [a.k.a. de Clérambault’s syndrome, after French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault.] All best wishes, Hariod.
a sweet
useful
practice 🙂
Oh my, Hariod, that does sound frightening. That syndrome does sound well beyond unrequited love. Enduring Love sounds like the movies Play Misty For Me or Fatal Attraction.
After reading Enduring Love, perhaps you’d be interested to read this account in the Telegraph:
Royal family obsessive’s body found lay near Buckingham Palace for years
As Thich Nhat Hanh offers, loving so that others feel free is a very different direction from those suffering from erotomania.
Being a secret admirer may seem charming, and yet isn’t it best to make one’s intent and love clear in a gentle way, and without demanding anything in return?
Thank you
Thanks for the link, Vincent; that’s an interesting story I’d not heard before. Coincidentally to the theme of your article, I shall be posting a piece on metta on Thursday. 🙂
You’re welcome.
I’m looking forward to your piece on metta.
Cheers,
Vincent
These days relationships don’t last longer as we find it controlling ourselves..the other person tries to make us act their way..no personal space
And boundations definitely ruins it
What I’ll feel is..that if you like someone then you should go around seeing them first,try to know that person and not just get attracted to the beauty.. so that there is lesser chance of relationship failure
But the thing is we don’t have patience for it.we haste and regret later
Of course the freedom is higher value than love. Why did we make a prison for someone we loved? I think we need to think over it.
Yes we could think on it, and we could also let our heart have its say. We just might see that we always are free. So, let’s choose love.