Is My Love For Me or For You?

We work so hard to learn unselfishness and make every attempt to be concerned for others that it may seem strange to consider the idea that loving someone might be more for us than for them. The self centered life is familiar to most of us since most of us start out in life that way and examples of selfishness are all around us. There are many forms of it including over talking someone, cheating, lying, demanding that someone do something for us, affairs, excessive gambling, inappropriate drug use, an unwillingness to sacrifice, and criticizing the other person for failing to pay enough attention to us.

So what is this idea about loving someone and doing it for our own satisfaction? Before explaining, I think I should state that this is an often overlooked key to marital happiness and more of us would be happier if we learned how to use this idea.

The idea is derived from the notion that in marriage the outcomes we want most are to feel a great deal of love and happiness. Then there is more of both and each person is a better partner if each believes he and she are responsible for creating some portion of those feelings for themselves rather than depending wholly on the spouse to make them happy or feel loved. This is followed by the question of: “How does one person create those feelings?” Any sincere person who wishes to try out this idea will shortly come to the conclusion that creating feelings for himself will include saying and doing things which look like gestures of love for a partner, but which also have a reflected self oriented benefit.

Suppose a husband, for instance, sent his wife flowers as an indication of his love for her. She thanks him for them, but he says, “The flowers are for you but the sending of them is for me.” What does that mean?

He has found delight or fulfillment in the act of showing his love for her. This internalized reward for his actions will motivate other forms of similar behavior. She won’t care because she gets the flowers, but there is more. If she thinks about it, she will discover a new dimension of being loved. She is the person whom he finds the most delight in loving, she motivates him, inspires him, and he lifts himself to higher forms of behavior because of his love for her. That is much better than the flowers.