“Unhealthy sacrificial love is not really sacrificial; it’s self serving. . . . . it must come from a pure heart where we are giving not to get, loving not to be loved, and caring not to be cared for.” (Alfred Ellis)
Does the above make sense to you? I am not sure it would of made sense to me years ago. I would of somehow manipulated it into statements like “I just really love to serve” or “treat your woman like a queen and she will treat you like a king”. Heck, I have a Youtube video about that, it is my most watched one, with hundreds of comments with men calling me “_ _ ssy whipped”! Now, many of the comments were extreme and I am in no way saying don’t love and serve others but our motives must be correct. My motives were off and I was really good at twisting them, fooling myself, all the while loving and serving but deep down feeling frustrated because I felt I was not being loved or served in the way I wanted to be. I felt I was being a good husband and giving sacrificial love but as stated above it was less sacrificial and more doing to try and get. It was an unhealthy codependence. It was not loving in strength but loving in need. It was a need to be needed. How do you think it makes the person feel that you supposedly loving sacrificially? Well, most of the time they know it and eventually begin to feel more used than loved.
So, what to do? Well, what I have found is a sense of freedom when I began to realize and/or understand that my needs were truly met in my intimate relationship with my Heavenly Father and not in others. Now please hear me, it has been a BIG process and is not always easy to not fall back into loving to be loved and giving to get mentality. It is one of those natural desires that just because it may be natural doesn’t make them ok. BUT, when we become aware of this unhealthy sacrificial love we can hopefully shift, more often than not, to begin to love others as we should without expectations or a need from them. To love freely in strength not in need. We may desire things from others but there is a subtle difference between a need and a desire. That subtle difference is actually HUGE. It is amazing as well how much “pressure” you then take off of the other person and soon there can be a better untethered flow of love moving between one another. . . less friction, more freedom to love and be loved.
So be aware in your life. A verse I love to and pray when I feel I may be feeling “needy” and/or doing things for the wrong reasons is “Search me God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”(Psalm 139: 23-24)
I would love comments and thoughts on this. . . . BUT I DON'T NEED THEM :) :)
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