Insights

There is a particular danger about being loved by someone who loves what you provide more than who you are.

They may hold your hand, tell you they love you, make plans with you, and convince you that the relationship is genuine. Yet underneath it all, they may be there for security, money, comfort, status, companionship, or simply because leaving would be inconvenient.

You believe you are being loved. They know they are being accommodated. That is the deception.

The frightening part is that you may never question it because their behaviour looks like love. You mistake dependence for devotion, gratitude for affection, and convenience for commitment.

Someone can love your house without loving you. They can love your lifestyle, your connections, your money, or the security you provide. They may even convince themselves that this is love because admitting otherwise would make them confront their own motives.

It is a little like getting a love bite from a snake.

The intimacy feels real, until you discover there was venom in it.

Perhaps the cruellest discovery is not that they never loved you, it is discovering they loved what being with you gave them, and you were the only one who did not know the difference.

Thought-provoking reflections on life, identity and relationships, written in the style of a modern-day Socratic journal and told through poetic paradoxes and emotional honesty.

by Paul Strydom.

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Read, reflect, agree, disagree, or just see things differently.