The Miracle of Love Isn't What You Think It Is

We're all too busy trying to find the perfect love. We're seeking the feeling (drug) instead of the medicine (healing). We search for Top Ramen love: instant. We search for overlaid love, like a furry Korean blanket on a chilly day. We search for the kind of love that makes you want to call in sick so you can do nothing with this person, because there’s no greater feeling.

The feeling makes every part of your life better until you hit bumps, which all collisions have. Then comes resistance and activation and a ton of anxiety. Then every part of your life becomes worse. What we miss about love is that the miracle isn’t in the feeling. It’s in the healing. And the healing doesn’t come in the beginning. It’s not the main song, it’s the B side.

The miracle is the healing and the healing comes after working through the rub of two people — the activation and trauma of their stories. Healing comes after the honest look, the reactions and hard conversations, the processing and reviewing of self and our unhealthy patterns. But most do not get there, because most won’t look in the mirror. Most love with a pointed finger instead of open palms. Most chase feelings instead of sitting with pain. Most run. Because love is scary. The miracle of healing is earned, not given.

Imago Relationship Theory suggests that the purpose of a relationship is to complete childhood and heal the wounds we experienced early on. We seek a partner that has many of the characteristics of our parents, a bit of a mash up of aspects of all our caregivers rolled into one.

This ideal person is our “Imago” or perfect image. We unconsciously hope they will help us to feel whole again, or feel whole for the first time. We seek a redo. A second chance. We fantasize that if we can get this perfect image to love us in a way our parents didn’t or couldn’t, the pain we felt when we did not get our needs met as a child will heal. Simply put, we are looking for a corrective experience.

Wait, sit with that a bit. It’s as seamless and beautiful as plants converting sunlight into energy, the body’s ability to regenerate tissue, decomposing organisms returning nutrients to the soil, and continually renewing the nature of life, emphasizing the beauty and wonder inherent in the natural world. This is the miracle: that love is meant to heal us.

A “Strange Safety”

Vanessa, my partner of seven years, told me last night she feels a strange safety with me that she doesn’t with anyone else, including her friends and family. This spun off after a conversation about how we both feel in our friendships, exploring dynamics and residue from our past. What is ours to own and what is theirs?

I stayed objective and curious about this “strange” safety. I checked in with myself, wondering if I felt the same. And I did. Listen, we’re not perfect. We have our own problems. I know in many ways, she also doesn’t feel safe with me. But overall, cumulatively, there was a safe feeling with me/us. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I told her I could narrow it down to one word: Capacity.

We both have not been in a relationship where our partners could hold space for us to be truly ourselves, without judgment or control. This was the first long-term relationship that held that kind of space. It was “strange” because it was foreign, new, unfamiliar. But as I thought about this over coffee this morning, I realized it wasn’t just capacity. That may be the ability needed to create a safe space, which both of us possess, partly because we have training as therapists.

But I believe the “strange” is not the space but rather the feeling of healing. Vanessa and I continue to work through our activation, attachment, childhood traumas, awareness of old blueprints being traced, etc. over the last six years. And I believe we are starting to heal each other now.

By repairing ruptures and continuing to love each other in the most honest and healthy way we can, in ways our parents didn’t and couldn’t, we give ourselves corrective experiences. Not just once, because it take times for our bodies to trust and absorb, but over and over, until we start feeling “strange” — healing ourselves and tapping into the miracle of love.

Relationships Essential Reads

3 Things You Should Always Speak Up About in a Relationship

Deep-Rooted Relationships

I believe I’ve had other corrective experiences in previous relationships. Like exploring kinks that allowed me to scrape sexual shame from when I was married to a conservative Christian woman years ago. Or feeling truly desirable to a Southern girl who loved me in a way that dissolved false beliefs about myself formed as a Korean boy with a crooked smile growing up in the '80s.

The corrective experience I am having with Vanessa runs deeper. It’s not just about creating spaces where we believe we are lovable and fully accepted. It’s about the relationship container that's growing us as individuals to not need each other. Our union then is based on choice, not dependence. To experience being held instead of grabbed reconditions our bodies to swim instead of survive. We let go of the ledge.

The result of this corrective love experience is the ability to love from love, not fear.