“Love is the will to extend oneself to support one’s own and another’s existential growth.” (Based on Scott Peck, the road less traveled)

 

Most people want to love and to be loved. However, in my own search for deep connections, I noticed that my desire for love sometimes made it more difficult. If I would not feel loved enough or not in the right way, I would be lonely, angry, trying to control partner, just to get my needs met. 

 

That made me think: can it be that what I call a desire for loving and being loved is a beautiful disguise for my fear of loneliness and my need for affirmation. And when I started to let go of it a bit, I felt more relaxed and funny enough, more deeply connected with the people around me.  

 

So I wondered: What would happen if we would give up our desire to love and to be loved? Can we then be together without seeking to fulfil our own needs? And if so, would that make it possible to stay intimately present with someone who is very different from us , and allow them to express their way of being human?

 

That’s the topic of this chapter: love as being different together.

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Emotional investment versus love

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Do you recognise yourself in any of these scenarios?

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• Your partner becomes angry and silent when you give attention to another attractive man or woman.  Afterwards he or she apologises, and says that it is because he or she loves you so much. 

• Your parents keep giving you suggestions about your garden, your parenting, your clothes and shoes, out of love, they say, but you feel as if things need to change.

• A friend is always offering to help, but even when you gratefully decline, he or she insists and imposes her or himself.

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All these scenarios have something in common. The person that claims to do something out of love, actually is seeking to fulfil his or her own needs. They all confuse emotional investment with love. 

 

According to Peck in his book “the road less traveled” emotional investment is the process of attraction to, investment in, and commitment to someone or something. For example, you can be emotionally invested in playing the guitar. You feel attracted to its sounds, you start investing time and money in taking lessons, buying books, buying instruments, and you become committed to your guitar playing, sometimes even taking time away from important relationships. Colloquially we would say you love playing the guitar. But this is emotional investment. 

 

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Defining love

 

Love, he proposes, is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of supporting one’s own and another’s spiritual growth. 

So it is not a feeling, but something you do, something you offer to another.

 

In this manuscript, I’d like to replace “spiritual growth” with existential growth. Many people don’t identify as spiritual, but they do search for their own expression of what it means to be human. 

 

Existential growth refers to growing in self-understanding, self-recognition, and self-expression. It is finding and expressing your own way of being human. This includes any religion or ideology you subscribe to. 

 

So love is the will to extend oneself to support one’s own and another’s existential growth.

 

But what if supporting the existential growth of another is going against our own existential growth? 

The key lies in the act of extending oneself. To truly allow the other to express their own way of being human is to offer "a petition to become undone" (Judith Butler). This means falling apart, allowing myself to be deconstructed, letting go of limiting identities, and making myself fully present and available to be devoured by the moment (Eric Baret). To be touched, triggered, and shaken. If I can witness this process and ask myself, "What makes it difficult for me to be with what is, without trying to make anything happen or prevent anything from happening?" then it has the potential to deepen my self-awareness and self-recognition. In this moment, means and ends coincide, and the process supports both our spiritual developments simultaneously.

 

But can this not be harmful to myself? Am I not at risk to get hurt or damaged by allowing the other person to undo me? 

 

Let’s rethink our ideas about self.

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