Asking what nature is

Asking what love is in the world, we can teach you how to make love between life and death." This is a great question asked by ancient Chinese people through the ages. There are countless literati and philosophers at home and abroad, both ancient and modern, who have tried to interpret "emotion", but so far no conclusion has been reached.

However, one thing we can be sure of is that everyone wants to have "love" and longs for it to a level where "life and death are guaranteed." This becomes one of the great paradoxes of our lives: having a desire that is beyond our control and being willing to sacrifice our lives for it.

There was once an American writer Krishiya. Calisher Hortense wrote a novel called "The Scream on Fifty-seventh Street." In this novel, she describes an old woman living alone in New York on Fifty-seventh Street. One early morning, in the dark, she suddenly heard a strange cry coming from downstairs outside the window. She couldn't tell whether it was a male or a female voice. I just think the sound is a bit scary and creepy. Was someone robbing someone? Or was someone murdered? She began to guess.

After going to bed the next night, she pricked up her ears and listened again. Sure enough, in the early morning, the strange sound came from the same direction again. She jumped up, rushed to the window, and listened again, only to find that the sound turned out to be an old window downstairs in her apartment. Every time it was opened or closed, it would make a human-like scream. The story should have ended here, but it didn't.

Not willing to give in, she opened the window and listened again. She was shocked. It was true. It turned out that the voice came from herself, from deep inside her heart, shouting one after another: "Lonely, lonely, lonely!" Suddenly, she climbed up the window sill, stuck her head out, and stood there high There, facing the entire greater New York City, she listened again. I want to hear if there are people shouting "Loneliness!" in the darkness outside? She is waiting. As soon as she hears another person shouting "loneliness", she will immediately jump down and stretch out her hand to rescue the person in need.

This is a sad story. What is the story telling us? It's not just a woman's loneliness, but everyone in this world longs to be needed.

The late Mother Teresa once said: "In my twenty years of working with people, I have found more and more that not being needed is the most terrible illness anyone can experience!"

We need companionship, we need love, we need care, we need to be needed. This is no longer a choice in life, but a survival instinct. We need to have a "sense of belonging."

And this need does not diminish with age. All sociological and psychological surveys point out that a person has an inner need from birth: the desire to establish a meaningful interaction and an intimate relationship with another person in the world until he takes his last breath. This desire to “belong” is a design of God’s creation of man.

Why do relationships become complicated?

Since people long for a sense of belonging and intimacy with others, why do relationships between people become so complicated?

The writer Wang Dingjun once said: "Wars make people suffer, but fortunately they do not happen often. Natural disasters make people suffer, but fortunately they have a certain range. But there is a kind of pain that always occurs, everywhere, and will never end, and that is what people inflict on people. pain of."

This is a very strange thing. Human history has been around for thousands of years. Science and humanities have developed so maturely. People should be more able to grasp the key points in their interactions. Traditional wisdom should help us get along better. Why do we see more questions than answers? More?

Our four books "The Analects of Confucius" and the so-called Chinese Bible "Cai Gen Tan" teach us how to deal with others so as not to offend others, how to behave in accordance with etiquette, etc., but they do not point out how to avoid pain in our hearts and how to stop longing. , how can we be loved by our relatives and accepted by our friends.

In fact, when God created man, he had a beautiful design for relationships. Man and God, man and man, and man and natural animals can all get along beautifully and enjoy the richness of various relationships. It is the fall of man that renders all relationships crippled. The places where we were close to God and had the image of God in us have now become distorted, like an eagle with broken wings that can no longer fly in the air but falls and lives in the dust. Our relationship is no longer natural, but has become an endless desire for people, but it also brings a lot of harm.

Main causes of broken relationships

So, what are the main causes of broken relationships? I think it can be roughly divided into four aspects:

A. Want to use relationships to define the uncertain self:

A good relationship must be based on our having a solid awareness of ourselves. In other words, we know who we are and what our self-worth is based on, so that we can provide a good foundation for the relationship to start, and only then can we have some life content to share with each other.

But if the "self" has not yet been formed, just like the song "Live the Color of Life", if you have no color at all, then whose color should you live out? What we see is that some people will try their best to find color in the people around them. If you can't find it, you will be resentful and want to control, which will cause pain in the relationship.

I once met an aunt who got married very young. Her ego has not yet had a chance to develop. Then throughout the whole life of being a husband and raising children, life is all about the "big self", the capital "I", the collective self, and there is no small self, the small "i", the personal self.

Live like a martyr every day of the year, eat leftovers from your family, wear bargains from street vendors, and completely dedicate yourself to your family. Over time, she felt as if she no longer existed. Subconsciously, she was afraid that she would be completely submerged, so she began to ask for her affirmation and herself from this family. So she kept talking all day long: "I have endured so much hardship for this family! Without me, huh! This family would not be what it is today!" All day long, she used a lot of resentment and dissatisfaction to collect debts from her family. , making no one in the family grateful.

There are also some people who, for some reason, have never grown up in their inner self. As they enter adulthood, they still hope for recognition from those around them. If you don't get it, you will always be unsure of your abilities. Maybe he has become very big and tall at work, but his self-image is still like a dwarf because he is still waiting for others to enlarge his self-image.

That song sings "You are born to be useful, and I am born to be different." God has prepared a blueprint for each of us. We must constantly explore our own characteristics to develop ourselves and make the blueprint come alive. This is to increase your ability to interact with others. Every time you enter a relationship, you are bringing in a world to share with another person. It's an increase, not a decrease.

B. The original family has laid the foundation for the relationship:

Each of us is deeply influenced by our family. The way we think and feel, how we deal with others, our career choices, and who we marry are all inseparable from the influence of our families. Our family has laid the foundation for all our future relationships. Dr. Leslie Parrott mentioned in the book "True Love Constantly - An Aspects of Interpersonal Relationships" that there are three R's in relationships:

Family Rules (Rule): What we are talking about here is not just the obvious family rules set by parents. For example, eating should not be served until everyone is seated. This is an obvious family rule. Many of them are unspoken rules, but everyone knows them well. For example, no one will teach children: "Don't ask for help!" But from the impatient attitude of adults, children will know that some things are best done by themselves without asking for help. Different house rules can affect how we function in intimate relationships later on.

For example, one family rule is: "Never show your feelings!" and another family rule is "Never hide your feelings!". As a result, these two people from different backgrounds got married. One person is like a bottle gourd in the marriage and refuses to speak, while the other person wants to say everything and feels that the other person has no feelings and is insensitive.

Or one family rule is "Only after the other party proves himself, can he be trusted!" And another family rule is "Always stay sincere!" After marriage, one person will desperately save private money, and the other person will always be miserable and have to reach out. Want money. There are also "you will do anything to win" and "compromise if you can" marriages. The result is that one will always dominate the other.

Understanding our own family rules can help us consciously choose and incorporate them into our current lives.

Family Role: Everyone has a role in family relationships. Ranking and how siblings interact will strongly affect a person's role in the current relationship. My younger sister sometimes feels like she is living in her older sister's shadow, wearing her older sister's clothes, following her along the same path, and feeling like she can't be herself. In some cases, the eldest son of the family often becomes the housekeeper, taking charge of everything. Sometimes the youngest is always the one being taken care of. He can't get up in the morning and throws things here and there.

If the eldest brother and the eldest brother get married in the future, both of them may compete for the title of author. When the youngest and youngest get married, life will be extremely happy. If you can't get out of bed, I will sleep for five more minutes. If you buy a dress, I will buy one too. But a decision may not be made for three years.

In addition to some being the leader and some being followers, there are other roles in the family. For example, some characters are "problem solvers". When their parents quarrel, they feel that they should help solve the problem. The relationship between the mother and her brother broke down, and she also believed that it was his responsibility to reconcile. She would become anxious if the problem was not resolved. Some are "secret-keepers" whose mothers are alcoholics and say they are under great pressure and need to be liberated. My father always receives mysterious phone calls, speaks in a gentle voice, and then goes out. He cannot ask or tell. There are many secrets in the family that cannot be revealed. Once exposed, the family will break up. Some act as "protectors." For example, there is a brother and sister whose parents have died. The older brother becomes the younger sister's protector. The younger sister always lies and steals, so the older brother goes to get beaten and is kicked out of the house. If you find out your role, you can execute or transform more effectively.

Family relationship (Relationship): This is the most powerful influence because it is subtle. Is the way family members get along strict or relaxed? Should the elders stand back three feet when speaking to the younger ones, or should they put their arms around each other and say, "Oh, it's nothing!" Should they treat each other with respect and treat each other as guests, or should they jump into a rage when something happens? Is it cold and you don’t touch me, I don’t touch you, or is it a lot of physical contact? It all affects how we deal with conflicts and express love.

Different family backgrounds will bring a lot of uncertainty and adjustment needs to a relationship. We need to reconcile our differences with love.

C. Emotional baggage from the past has become an obstacle to current relationships:

Everyone has emotional baggage, some big, some small, some more than one, filled with pain and frustrations from past relationships. If you don’t let it go, you may bring it into your current relationship and repeat the hurt of the past. Some people will replace old pain with new relationships and constantly try to solve old problems in the new relationship.

I once wrote an article "Modern Nightingale" and mentioned that there was a girl whose father was often away from home when she was a child. When she came back, her mother would get angry and she would quarrel with her father. She blamed her mother and felt that it was her mother's fault that her father was not at home. It was my mother who didn't understand my father and forced him to leave home. As she grew up, her intimate relationships became distorted. All the men she loved were the kind of lonely men who were not always around and could not be understood by his wife, only she could understand them. Only she can put a bandage on such a man's heart. In becoming the third person, she is making up for the father she was never close to in the past.

There are also people who become relationally disabled due to the hurt caused by old relationships. Because I have been betrayed by others, I can no longer confide in others; because I have been abandoned by my parents, I have never dared to get close to others and establish close relationships. Children whose parents have had marriage changes are even more skeptical about marriage and no longer believe that there can be a happy marriage in this world.

All these emotional baggage need to be let go, which is a painful process and one that requires courage. In Greek mythology, there is a Pandora's box, which is full of things that she dare not face and wants to escape. But hiding it brings many problems. One day she actually opened the box, and all kinds of terrible things came out. But when she dug all the way to the end, she found something she had never had in her life. What was it? Poisonous snakes and beasts? No, it's hope.

This is also our hope. Move on from broken relationships and let the wounds be healed. But the key to healing is not held in the hands of the person who hurt us, but in our hands. The key is forgiveness. We need to forgive all those who have caused us pain, because they are also incomplete people after the fall. They may also use their relationship with you to define themselves, which is why they control you so much. He is more likely to come from a broken family of origin, which affects his attitude towards his family.

Recently, there has been a lot of news about parents abusing their children in Taiwan. It is unimaginable. The Chinese say, "Tiger poison cannot eat its seeds." How could they do this? Outrageous. Many parents who abuse their children do so because they were abused as children. Forgiveness can free you from the hooks of hatred, bitterness, and pain. Forgiveness helps you no longer live in the shadow of the past and carry the burden of emotional baggage.

D. Looking for the living water of life in the wrong pool:

In each of our lives, we often feel that something is missing and dissatisfied in our relationships. Often, we seek someone or something outside of ourselves to fill us. When someone goes shopping, they can choose what to buy or not to buy, which is a kind of control and satisfaction. It was recently popular in Taiwan that there was a long queue in front of McDonald's to buy Hello Kitty, which was so unbelievable that it was an example.

There are also people who use eating to satisfy themselves. They eat a lot when they are in a bad mood, and eat more when they are in a bad mood. There are also people who go online and become addicted to the Internet. They spend a lot of time talking to a vague shadow in the distance about their deepest thoughts. There was a news report in Taiwan that five or six college students were deceived by a fat girl on the Internet into thinking they were heavenly beauties. This is another example.

Therefore, people sometimes do anything but fill the hole within themselves. But what really causes the pain in our relationships and the emptiness in our lives is not the absence of a person, but the absence of a part of the soul, the "thirst" in the soul. Our entire Bible is simply one line, all talking about "thirst". The Bible also mentions two ways for people to quench their thirst:

“My people have committed two evil deeds: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)

What is a "broken cistern that cannot hold water"? It is the pool that our relatives and friends can provide us. But people are imperfect, and they themselves are broken. People may be able to avoid committing (legal) crimes, but it is difficult to avoid hurting others. At this point, none of us can be justified. Our relationship breakdown is our sin. And because of our sins, we bring harm to others.

We may be able to withstand the hardships of life, natural and man-made disasters, but we cannot withstand the knife in our heart from our loved ones. But what God provides is a "fountain of living water." After drinking, there is still water, which will never dry up and has an endless supply. And unlike ordinary water, which will make you thirsty and want to drink again after drinking it, "living water fountain" will never make you thirsty again after drinking it. This living water is God’s only begotten Son, Christ Jesus, because He once again guarantees God’s love to give us a chance to start over again.

Building healthy Christian relationships

We get hurt because we are human beings, and we live in a broken world. We are all injured people, raised by injured parents, married to injured people, and then gave birth to and raised our children in a mutilated way, causing them harm. We ourselves are "broken cisterns that cannot hold water", and if we try to rely on "broken cisterns that cannot hold water" to meet our needs, we will cause a lot of harm.

Therefore, we can only ask God to wrap up and heal our wounds personally, because He knows our experiences best and understands our darkness best, and can help us stop hurting others and ourselves. With His love, we can reach out to those around us and we can love into their needs. We can do all things through Him who gives us strength! We will have the strength to love, to forgive one another, and to be kind to one another.

All we need to do is to hold on to God’s promises, accept God’s forgiveness, and then rely on God’s grace to manage a down-to-earth relationship amidst the elusive emotions.

Author profile

Chen Huiwan, whose pen name is Mo Fei, came to the United States from Taiwan at the age of eighteen. He worked as a computer engineer for Hughes Aircraft Company in California for six years, and then specialized in writing. Now lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of the prose "Accidentally, I Stumbled upon Paradise" and the novel "Portraits of Six Women". He is a standard bookworm and lives in his head.