by Angie Lewis

Created on: February 15, 2008

As most of us know, we can't love without first loving ourselves. Did you know that love is a choice? We choose to love or not to love. It's that simple. But I believe the non-loving choice is not our "true selves." The non-loving self is absorbed in anger, judgment, resentment, and all kinds of things that we allow to control how we love. We haven't let go of past hurts. These hurts control who we are and how we react to people around us. The bottle controls an alcoholic and a hurting person is controlled by resentment.

My husband used to tell me, "I love you, but I don't love the disease." What he meant was that he loved me for who I really was, not the alcoholic. The alcoholic in me couldn't love either. I was selfish and cold. I couldn't give of myself to my husband because I was too needy living inside of my addiction. My thinking was distorted to the point that I actually thought that it was him who needed to give more of himself to me! Boy was I way out in left field, and blind to boot.

In essence, this is how we allow feelings and thoughts to control how we will love, and when we will love. The person who is controlled by their feelings is unable to fully love another person. Unfortunately so, many of us are restricted from ever loving properly because of negative feelings. This is why I stress how important it is to watch out for what we allow into our hearts and minds!

In marriage, some of us are incapable of giving any love until we decide to give up our position that our way is the right way, and the only way! Feelings make us see things in our spouse that causes us to scrutinize the person they are. But trying to dissect our spouse's feelings and experience them as our own doesn't help the love process. Most couples when they profess to love each other, it is what they imagine them to be, not what they are. This is phony love and phony self. It's not real.

We need to love ourselves first before we can love another and be real. Loving our spouse means to give something of our self to him or her, right? To give is to love and to love is to give. It's really so simple. And I think we should be giving to our spouse even when we don't feel like it! And so how do you like them apples?

On the flip side of the coin, we shouldn't change to be what our spouse wants us to be. If we do that, we'll become a clone of who they are, how boring! If we change to be just what our spouse wants then we have become a people pleaser. Well, let me tell you this. People pleasers

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