I spent thirty-five years looking for a man who would truly love me. I was relentlessly driven by my need to stop the pain of feeling love-starved that I focused on doing everything I could for him so that he would love me. In my love-starved mindset, I didn’t understand that my definition of love was unhealthy and toxic, and it led my emotions and decisions.
I didn’t see that my love was unhealthy and toxic. I also didn’t know I had the option to choose or change my imperfect definition of love. Not knowing these truths kept me in the cycle of three toxic-abusive marriages for thirty years.
Because love is one of our core needs in life, we must understand the definition of pure love versus what we have experienced. Many people don’t realize that they can only give and receive the definition of love they believe and are operating from right now. If our love is healthy, unhealthy, or toxic abusive, that’s what we will choose to give and receive by default?
Imperfect Love Can’t Create Perfect Love
So many fairy tales encourage us to find our “true love.” As children, through stories and movies, we are led to believe there is a “perfect” person for us. However, they leave out what healthy, unhealthy, or toxic-abusive relationships look like or how important it is for us to be healthy first.
If we grow up in unhealthy or toxic environments, we can’t comprehend a healthy one because we have no reference. God understood our dilemma, and He put stories in the Bible to help us. One great story of two sisters, Rachel and Leah, is found in Genesis 29.
I often related to the struggles of Leah feeling loved in the story of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. During those times, polygamy was acceptable, but thank God not now. In this story, Rachel was the beautiful younger sister, and Jacob loved her. He got permission from her father to marry her.
However, Rachel’s older sister Leah was unmarried, so their father made Leah pretend to be Rachel, and Jacob married her first. Jacob was tricked. But he stayed married to Leah and worked for fourteen years to marry Rachel.
The story is heartbreaking at first, as Leah gives Jacob sons with the hope that Jacob will love her. The struggles between Leah and Rachel show us how important it is for us to feel loved. However, after a season, we see a change in Leah’s heart.
Leah no longer looks to her husband Jacob for love but to God. She changes her focus to God, and I believe Jacob begins to love her somewhere in the middle of their story. Rachel dies first along the road during childbirth. However, Jacob buries her along the side of the road.
At the end of Leah’s life, Jacob buries her in a tomb he will use. Jacob gives her the honor and respect of someone he loved. But we all know this happy ending doesn’t always happen in our marriages.
Only Jesus has Perfect love
The only perfect love that ever walked this broken planet was from Jesus Christ, the son of God. God is love and love comes from God. (1 John 4:16) I really wish each one of us was born knowing the perfect love of Christ and the Scriptures of God. But God wanted us to have the power to choose to love and serve Him or to love and serve ourselves. He designed us with a desire to find His pure love, but that is our decision.
My search to find a man to love me led me down some very heartbreaking paths filled with destruction and all types of abuse. I was operating from my imperfect definition and understanding of love, so I didn’t recognize the aspects of healthy love. I made decisions based on my unhealthy role models, which ended in three abusive marriages and divorces. Nothing changed in my life until I learned all the aspects of Christ’s healthy, perfect love and implemented them in my life.
What Are Our Choices?
- The World’s love is influenced by the devil and focuses on self-gratification. Webster’s definition of love focuses on our feelings and desires. It’s not founded on respect, equality, or healthy partnerships. The World’s portrayal of love varies from perfect fantasies to toxic-abusive relationships full of abuse and violent sexual acts. People are seen as objects and possessions that are disposable. Working from these definitions of love will only bring pain, destruction, and possibly death.
- Our imperfect love comes from our messages, experiences, beliefs, and role models. We will continue to operate from our imperfect definition of love until we learn another kind of love and implement it in our life. Although I have known Jesus since age seven, no one taught me the differences between Christ’s pure love and my imperfect definition and understanding of love.
- Christ’s perfect love is the only pure love that can fully satisfy our heart, mind, soul, and spirit. His perfect love is founded on the first and second greatest commandments to love God first and with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. The second is to love others as we love ourselves. Christ’s love is founded on respect, honor, freedom, healthy boundaries, loving friend partnerships, loving marriage partnerships, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
It took me forty-five years to understand that I had the option to change my definition and understanding of love to Christ’s. I stumbled around in the darkness and endured thirty years of abuse in three different marriages because I never knew I had the power to choose Christ’s love or that it was possible. Jesus came that we would live abundant lives in his pure love.
Learn what his pure love is and work with him to transform your imperfect love into his pure love. Living in Christ’s definition of love will change your mind, heart, soul, and relationships!
