Love heals everything??

[Life2Christ]

I was just reading an autobiography of a famous woman who was married for 27 years and her husband said he wanted a divorce. They split and then 4 years later she met and fell in love with the man who would later become her husband. She writes in the book that love (as in romantic love) heals everything. Do you agree? Even if you are widowed, do you agree with this?

My immediate reaction was: what if you don't find love again? Does that mean you are not truly "healed"? (assuming you want it).

 

[memoriesbymichelle]

nope I don't believe it. Of course it can make our lives much much better if we feel the need to be loved and then find someone that can fulfill that need but like you said, what if we don't?
It's like that other saying "Time heals all wounds" no it doesn't. It might make them seem less painful, but it doesn't necessarily heal them IMO.

The only one that heals is Jesus, and IMO the only one that can truly fill the void we feel in our hearts is Jesus.

 

[CounselorForChrist]

This is just my opinion but what she had was not love with this new man. It was the same love she had with the old man. This is the problem with many couples. They forget that after awhile you get so used to each other that you think the love is fading when its actually not. You are for lack of better words... "immune" to noticing it.

So someone divorces and they claim to find love again... thus repeating the whole cycle of "Its real love this time that won't fade!". FAst forward 5 years later and think its faded again. >.<

Its something I talked to my fiance about before engaging her. I needed to know that she understands both of us may feel like the love is gone after many years. It seems common. She understands but she says she is loyal and I believe her. Its also why keeping that spark going is essential. The same old routines get old to our minds afterawhile.

 

[blackribbon]

First of all, love does not heal everything .... only God's love does this.

As for "immune" or building up tolerance, I disagree...it is more over time people start to take their focus away from serving each other and start looking inward at "what am I getting out of this?"...and if you aren't happy with what you are getting, then you give less...Vicious cycle that can leave everyone feeling unloved. It is a selfishness problem. We get lazy and don't want to do the things we did early in a relationship to make the other feel valued...especially if we don't feel valued ourself. It becomes a "you go first" situation.

I'd be stupid if I were to say that love healed everything in my marriage...it just often made the fight worth it. And sometimes it was because I loved him that I hurt the most (when he let me down).

Sometimes it takes wisdom to recognize that love isn't enough when it comes to some relationships and that it is might not be wise to marry or stay with someone you love because of other issues. (All those "fix them up ladies" who think they will "fix" their men with their love, fail to recognize this.)

And in the end, I hurt because I loved him. I could fall in love again, but that wouldn't remove the hurt of my husband's death...he is a part of me and is definitely a part of our kids. If I were to find love again, it could help in that I would hopefully find someone to share the burdens of my hurts...so maybe the load would feel a bit lighter.

 

[CounselorForChrist]

And in the end, I hurt because I loved him. I could fall in love again, but that wouldn't remove the hurt of my husband's death...he is a part of me and is definitely a part of our kids. If I were to find love again, it could help in that I would hopefully find someone to share the burdens of my hurts...so maybe the load would feel a bit lighter.

So true. Having finally met the right woman for me (we marry this Feb), she now has pulmonary tuberculosis and most of the time pukes up her pills to treat it. Without treatment or non stop pills, the only outcome is a painful death.

Someone had the nerve to tell me "Why not leave her if shes sick?", then the same person said "Well, if she dies there are others out there I am sure you can marry!". >.< People don't understand, when your with the right one you share EVERYTHING with them. Your two hearts merge together. You have a bond created by God.

Them dying takes away part of your heart. Sure, maybe I'd find another woman eventually. But it won't change the pain I would feel from losing her. Jesus is #1 of course. But my fiance is #2 in my life. As a human I just can't bare thinking about her death, if that should happen. But being presented with it makes me cry constantly.

I also was told by another friend that if she were to die, "Rejoice and do not cry, shes in a better place! Don't be negative!". Ugh, easier said then done. I realize she would be looking down on me smilling from heaven, but still being stuck wiht human feelings it would hurt me forever. Which is why I will likley never marry again if she dies. She had my heart and she will take it with her.

And yes marrying again might make the load easier. But many couples I've met who remarry after their spouse dies say they often still think of the other person, even when remarried. Which usually causes marital strife because the new spouse thinks you don't love them as much. Another reason I would stay single. I don't wish to have someone think I don't love them as much as I did the person I was with before.

Ok now that I am back to crying (lol) I need to stop typing. I feel for you black ribbon, I realize I am not married just yet, but I can understand the pain you must be going through (and your kids). Most people don't realize how bad the pain can be, even before the person dies. Its like watching a bad movie that you can't stop from playing.

 

[Life2Christ]

Oh xfreakazoidx, your post moved me to pray for you and your fiancee. I know God heard me for he hears all our prayers. I prayed for God to grant many decades of married life for you and she.

 

[blackribbon]

I have been praying for your young bride and you.

Marriages can work after someone dies but only if both people are willing to understand the unique dynamics involved. If your mother were to die, does that mean you have to forget her in order to love others? Of course not. God gives us an unlimited amount of love...in fact, it multiplys as we give it away. People shouldn't ever ask to be the only person a person loves...in marriage, you are asking for loyalty of life and heart...but you always love other people. If you don't, what happens when you have children?

 

[dayhiker]

This is where I find myself quite different than many people. First I don't hurt as much as other do when things don't got right or go the way we want them to. I'm taking Divorce Care at church. The strong words of hurt and pain they us to describe what divorce is like are so much stronger than I felt that its almost like they are talking about something else than what I went thru.

Second, I find I can accept my new situation very easily and quickly where most if not all of the others in the class still want something back from the past relationship. When my wife, who I would say to this day that I still love, said to me that I wasn't getting with the program to get our divorce moving, I started thinking OK I'll not hinder what she wanted. I'd learned years ago that being with someone who didn't want to be with me wasn't a healthy relationship, so why would I want to be with my EX when she wanted to move on. So I accepted the change in our relationship pretty quickly. I still see her, saw her last weekend, and talked with her about our son and what he is going thru. Her new husband is there also, so I talked with him also.

I think its a skill we can learn to let relationship go and seek new relationships. I've done it a hundred times or a thousand times depending how one counts it. How many times have I moved to a place where I knew no one? I moved to a new school in the following grades"" 1 3 9 10 11. Then I moved in the service to places I knew no one: boot camp, combat training, wire school, combat battalion, computer school and final work location. Moved back home, and made new friends again tho I knew quite a few from before. Then off to college, knew no one there. Married and had my wife and kids for the next 2 moves to places I knew no one else. So I can't add up how many good relationships I've had and have ended with no contract. OH, and there have been a lot of people I've known thru the web since 1985 that I'm no longer in contact with.

One of the things Divorce Care is saying that our heart, our spirit is torn when we end a relationship and the wound may heal but the scare is there for every. That sounds true to almost every one. It even sounds true to me with my EX wife and EXgf. I don't look it that way tho. They also say when we divorce our mate takes part of our soul with them. So we don't know who we are with out that other person by our side. They even have a two graphics: a man and a woman becoming one flesh(one graphic) and divorce rips that one graphic down the middle so one person gets a right leg and arm and the other person gets a left leg and arm. I'm sure that people feel this way, the description of their pain and hurts sounds just like that.

Life can be so busy that we don't do the personal feeling and thinking of who we are .. and who we are with our spouse and who we are with our friends and children and work so when a crisis comes we are lost, we don't know how to think about who we are in this crisis, who we will be when we come out the other side. But my whole life almost every morning before I get out of bed I think about my life, I've always been current with who I am and who I am in relation to my world around me. So when my divorce happened, I just had to do the meditating with regards to this new change in my situation.

In the process of my failure and my EX divorcing me I went to 3 counselors and talked often with my pastors and others. It was great to have these people with me, friends and people to talk with are so important. But they added almost nothing to my understanding of who I was. I already knew who I was. But the big conflict for me was that some of my Christian understanding was falling apart. I tried to understand what the Bible says about divorce in my 20's. Every view I read had internal contradictions. What the the church had taught me about my sexuality and my real life experience didn't match up. Was I going to deny reality of the world God created and believe a make believe world that I'd learned from the church and made sense to me in my also most perfect work or look for answers that worked in my real existence. But since I believe the Bible is the word of God I had to study that to find what I was missing. I therefore read a lot of material, a couple dozen books and at least as much material on the web. Wow, I found there was answers in the Bible just like I had always been taught by the church but which often the church wasn't telling me. Now in many ways this didn't surprise me as I'd encountered this a few times before. Ask a tough question and get a reply to just believe, don't ask tough questions.

I think a new love changes ones emotions in a very dramatic way. It shorts the grieving for the old relationship and beings the person into a new relationship. One changes ones judgement about ones situation and so the emotions change. So to me its not the new love that is a problem, the new love does fix the pain of the old loss. But in the case of divorce, we need to learn and not make the same mistake again, fall in love and the pain stops so forget about learning the lesson just enjoy the new love, but we might have fallen in love with the same type person and have gotten our self into the same problem again.


Hope I didn't ramble too much. I was interrupted a few times writing this. grin

 

[Life2Christ]

Good post dayhiker. I would give anything to have your peace about being divorced. You sound like you have a good relationship with the ex. I'm trying so desperately to have peace about my divorce so I'm always looking for healing about it. My husband did not discuss divorce with me but packed his bags one night and left. This was right after I gave birth to our daughter. It was sudden (like a death) and we never lived together after that night ever again. So it was "fubar" right from the onset. There was no discussion about it from either of us.

It gets better though and my life is way more fulfilling than his becuase I have Jesus and I also have the prayers of people who care.

 

[blackribbon]

People are wired very differently. And I think some people "feel" emotions differently than others. I believe that on some level we can learn to compensate so that our emotions or lack of don't rule our lives...but there is a certain amount that is just born into us and makes us who we are.

Over the years, I have had to learn to interact with my brother differently than other people...he feels hurt and love...but he experiences it very differently than others...the highs and lows aren't there. I also have to choose my words carefully if I want him to be able to understand what I am saying...not because he isn't smart (just under genius IQ) but because emotion words don't carry the same meaning for him. Me, I "feel" the emotions but am able to compartmentize them and put them on the shelf until I am able to deal with them...this is more a "male" way of dealing with emotions. Other people just put them out there because the emotions are every bit as important as the words and sometimes, even more. A person like this might not be able to accept an apology until they FEEL like the person meant it. The other extreme...will take a the words "I'm sorry" at face value and may not even be bothered by a sarcastic tone.

I don't think one way is more right than the other...or that there is a reason for anyone to strive to change...just recognize who you are...and be open and recognize others may not feel "love" or "hurt" the same way you do.

Dayhiker, I suspect that you feel your way is better because you aren't affected by hurt as deeply. For me (and this may be a girl thing), I am looking for love that is deep enough that it will hurt if it goes away...to me, feeling that deeply is very good even if it means the potential to hurt deeply. Since I am not as emotional as some other women, it is harder to get to that emotional level but I still prefer it. This is just my personal preference. It isn't right or wrong...but it is who I am.

 

[blackribbon]

In grief group after my husband died, there was one woman there who mostly attended because her child needed the kids program. The daughter's daddy had been murdered but the parents had never been married and were not in a relationship. The facilitator of the group also obviously had not lost anyone very close to her because they were sitting there discussing that maybe the correct way to be married was to make sure that they never "lost their identity or individuality". I personally think that if they entered into a marriage with that attitude, both parties lost.

God says "two become one"...that doesn't just mean bodies...but rather two hearts and minds start working as a team with one goal in mind. It is that "oneness" that marriage something special. In my husband's last days, I don't think we communicated with words very much...we had grown to the point where we could communicate by just looking at each other...even to the point where I could get his needs met when he was mostly unconscious (I know I was right because his body relaxed when those needs were met).

When my husband died, I lost more than half of who I was...my dreams changed...not because they weren't really my dreams...but rather, I needed him in the picture to make the dream complete. My future changed because the circumstances of my life changed. Even down the very basics things like what would I cook for dinner changed...because dinner was a combination of both our preferences. I knew who I was...but my identity did change...and I lost my best friend...and my strongest support system...and that unconditional love. So, in my opinion, I would have had to love him less in order to not have felt torn in half...and I wouldn't have ever picked that.

 

[dayhiker]

Black, I used to feel that emotions caused more problems than they were worth and was thankful that I wasn't very emotional. But I came to realize that God created emotions and so they are part of God's design for us and so good. As you point out very effectively different people experience emotions quite differently. Most of my life I had no way of understanding that.

A while back I listened to Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions by Prof Robert C Solomon. He give the history of how philosophers have understood emotions. Basically, most of human history we have not really understood emotions. He goes on to say that it seems the best understanding is that emotions are judgements. So emotions are a result of our interaction with the world(including people) around us and our emotions come from how I judge that is happening around me. So emotions not only tell me how I'm judging things but also other people around me know how I'm judging things from my emotions. We know its very hard to really hide emotions and just hiding them isn't healthy.

This and now knowing God created us as emotional beings has really helped me understand emotions and respect the emotions others are having/feeling. So someone who really enjoys their emotional view of life as as right as I am for enjoying my intellectual view of life. The stoics in Roman times thought a stoic life would be more moral, but its pretty clear to me that intellectuals can be as evil as person who lets their emotions lead them to do evil things. Likewise a person's emotions can motivate them to correct injustices that an intellectual wouldn't be concern with, while the emotional person is showing empathy to someone who is in pain and bring comfort, it might take an intellectual to figure out how to fix things so that the pain can go away. Of course, no one is all emotion or all intellectual. God created us with both and there is variety in us as in all creation.

How I apply this to emotions that I find painful and want to not experience any more, such as my divorce, is I think how do I want to judge this situation. Well, I don't want to judge my EX as doing anything wrong, I was the one who did wrong. So I judge her as having done what she needed to do. She is who she is and I'll not judge her negatively for being herself. So my emotions follow that judgement. I accept her and her new husband as a good thing for her. So my emotions are thankful she has someone who she wants in her life. If I feel the judgement coming back that I should be the one in her life, I just say to myself that that isn't a correct judgement and then my emotions line up the way I want them to be. With practice I've become very good at changing how I view situations to judge them the way I want to.

Also reading my judgment that I prefer a more intellectual experience in the world doesn't mean that I judge you negatively for choosing a more emotional experience in the world. done sermon ... LOl

​

 

[blackribbon]

I never felt judged...and don't think that we face life too much different. I think how I accomplish this might be different though. I tend to rationalize away a lot of the emotions because I don't want to have my life decisions made by emotions...that isn't practical. I'm glad I had this skill because it became necessary when I had to make some very hard end of life decisions for my husband...ones that I am fairly sure that his family wouldn't and couldn't have made for him in my absence.

On the flip side...just for me...I think that there is much in life that is missed if we only face life on an intellectual value.

As for the philosophers...the problem with them is that they only faced life from a male perspective...and even today, they are only now starting to realize that both psychologically and physiological, women ARE different from men. Even basically things like how a man versus a women "feels" a heart attack are different...our educated observations and scientific studies up till recent times have only studied only one half of the human population.

And as to how you experience life...I have no problem with it at all. I honestly believe that it is more God given than personal choice too....and I'm not really that far off...I just desire more emotional attachments and you are satisfied.

 

[dayhiker]

Ya, I was good at the rationalizing thing ... but once I heard the judgment model of how emotions work, that made more sense to me and seems to describe clear what I'm doing.

Your right about the philosophers, they are almost exclusively men!

I have finally got to the place where I can understand a persons desire to really feel the love and hurt that comes if a love ends. I had a GF break up with me in high school that hurt bad and I didn't enjoy it so I guess I didn't see any good in it. But its clear to me that some people find that very meaningful to go thru or to experience. So I don't see myself looking down on that like I did in the past.

I have been more interested in intimacy the last few years. So I've worked at hugging more, having better eye contact and even non sexual touch if the person is open to that type of thing. I've found that to be meaningful in communicating acceptance, trust and caring. Yet, while I'm open to that, very few understand how to do it and for the most part feel uncomfortable with it, especially men as we all know. But its one way I'm working to be more in touch with my feelings.

 

[memoriesbymichelle]

Wow, this is a really really good thread! I am finding out so much about all of you and I agree with mostly everything you all said.

For me, as far as the getting re-married and loving spouse number 2 less or him feeling that? Well all I can say, because there isn't someone in the picture at the moment is, that IF I did meet and marry someone, I would know them beforehand and would know that they weren't that insecure as to be considering themselves some sort of competition to my late husband. I could love them equally but differently, just as I do my children. Before I had kids, I didn't understand how people could love more than one kid without the other one feeling less loved. It was a silly notion, I now understand that of course it's possible and we all love more than one person in life as in our mothers, sisters, brothers, lovers so...

And dayhiker, I am not like you in how you are able to not "feel" as much if you don't choose too, but I totally understand how you think since you explained it so well. If only more of us could analyze our lives as we go thru experiences, maybe there would be less failed marriages/relationships.

And blackribbon, as always I love how articulate you are and how your brain works. You have such a way of communicating your thoughts/feelings and I always appreciate reading your posts.

Alot of things in life are easier said than done. I never in a million years thought that I would be a widow at 46 and I'm 53 now. I actually never thought I would live past 25 for no apparant reason, it's just some thought that I've always had. Ironically, or not, my husband and I were married for almost 25 years when he passed, so it had me thinking maybe THAT'S what the 25 meant, IDK. Some things we can control, like we can go to school and study to get the kind of job we want to have, and we can kind of plan how many kids we want (some of us) and so on, and other things are just dealt to us, like my husband dying and leaving me to raise our 2 boys by myself. But God is good ALL the time, and He does have a plan, and He is trustable. And by looking at the world and our current state in that regard, it doesn't seem like things will get better and they could very easily get worse. We have to take the good with the bad, and be grateful for the good (of course I know we all are here).
So to me...Love alone doesn't heal anything. God's love however, is the ONLY thing that heals and if more people would realize that, the world WOULD get better. IMO.

 

[blackribbon]

I don't know that I'm willing to hurt again (hence the deepest I'm in a relationship is just thinking about it)....but in order to love that much, you have to be willing to risk being hurt an equal but opposite amount.

And I love you guys...I learn so much from this board...and also I learn about myself.

 

[Life2Christ]

I don't know that I'm willing to hurt again (hence the deepest I'm in a relationship is just thinking about it)....but in order to love that much, you have to be willing to risk being hurt an equal but opposite amount.

but you are not exactly a 20 year-old ingenue with hearts for eyeballs. You're a grown woman who knows the value of God's love. You'll hurt for a second but not the same as when you were younger. Ya ever think of that?

 

[CounselorForChrist]

Thanks for the prayers means alot to me!

I often post on my facebook to nevet take things for granted, more so when it comes to a spouse. We dream of being together until old, but its not always a fairy tale ending. Love the people you are with while they are here.

Whats odd is the woman I was with before my fiance was terminally ill. She had maybe a year left to live. I stayed with her until almost the end, then she left me because she didn't want me to deal with her dying. I begged for her not to leave me. But she did. I think she passed now sadly. But it was another life lessons that showed me how strong I can be and that I won't leave someones side. So with my fiances health scare I know I will be there forever!

 

[blackribbon]

but you are not exactly a 20 year-old ingenue with hearts for eyeballs. You're a grown woman who knows the value of God's love. You'll hurt for a second but not the same as when you were younger. Ya ever think of that?

I know for a fact that it hurts more. However, I also know that I love people more and more deeply too...so the two may go hand in hand. God never promised to protect us from hurt...only that He be there when it hurts.

 

[memoriesbymichelle]

At our church the current series is on dumb things smart christians believe (or something like that) and this weekend they spoke about a saying that says Faith fixes everything. Of course it does not, but when I re-read the title of this thread it seemed to be along the same lines.

There are alot of things we see, hear or believe that are just not true and definitely not in the bible even though they sound like they might be.