We have often read or seen about how joyful love is. It can be any form of love, not necessarily the romantic one. We often associate love with a beautiful image and portray it with beaming faces. Just as every coin has two sides, loving others has two sides to it too. Sometimes, loving can hurt.
But why does loving hurt so much? Is it normal to feel so much pain almost similar to physical pain? As Ed Sheeran sang “Loving can hurt, loving can hurt sometimes…”, loving can definitely hurt sometimes. It is perfectly normal to feel the ups and downs in any relationship in which you are emotionally invested. While no one wishes for any sort of hurt in their lives, we sometimes go through low times in our lives. And studies from around the world have shown that the pain caused by love indeed feels painful like physical pain because our brain interprets it the same.
There can be different reasons why we feel pain in human relationships. Most often it is due to the fact that the person did not meet our expectations or didn’t take as much effort as we thought he/she would. When we care for or love someone deeply we tend to expect more from them. And when they don’t do things as we expected, we experience pain. In such situations, we should realize that not every person will meet our expectations in exactly the way we wish. Not every person will reciprocate feelings exactly as we would like them to. Accepting this can help us overcome the hurt to a large extent.
There can also be situations where we were planning or we wish to do certain things for our beloved ones, but due to certain circumstances we are not able to. This also causes pain not only to us but to the person who is at the receiving end. In such scenarios it is always better to understand and accept the fact that not everything can be controlled. Certain things are bound to happen and often it is better to accept the fact and move on. This helps reduce the pain caused by it.
Heartbreak, rejections, negligence, broken trust or promises are some of the few reasons why loving can hurt. But that’s ok too. Life has its own way of teaching us through the ups and downs. Today we might experience the joy and thrills of being in a perfect loving relationship, tomorrow we might have to face the hurt too. But these are all part of our lives, where we learn and grow. Over time, we should also realize that bitter or hurtful experiences due to love shouldn’t stop us from loving someone again or being able to receive love from someone. We can learn how to forgive the imperfections in any relationship and always keep an open mind for healthy, open communication. Let’s keep loving wholeheartedly even though it might hurt sometimes and as the saying goes “Time is a great healer”.
Beyond all the things said above, only one person can love us unconditionally with a perfect love and that is God. There might be situations when we feel that everyone has left us and that no one loves us. But there is always a loving God who created us and His love for us never ends. Earthly/ human love is imperfect but His love is perfect. In His embrace we experience true love and this love empowers us to reflect it to the people around us!!
