Did you know that you could be in love with someone or someone could be in love with you solely based on the circumstances? I call it “circumstantial love.” You have to be careful with this kind of love, if one can even call it love at all. This love will have you stuck in a marriage or long-term relationship for years, all the while you find yourself waking up to this miserable nightmare that you refer to as your life. If I have never stated this before, I’m sharing it now. Everything that I say is based on my own life experiences, mistakes, and lessons I’ve learned. Though I read, the things that I share do not come from any book. It’s all literally mistakes I’ve made and keep making on my journey. I said all of that to say this: circumstantial love is or was the biggest driving force in all the mistakes that I’ve made in my life thus far.
The reason why I kept finding myself in this kind of love is mainly that I didn’t know myself, and most importantly, I didn’t love myself. See, when you’re leaving your happiness or healing up to other people, you’re bound to end up with circumstantial love. There are other reasons this can happen, such as financial binds, loneliness, or you’re a hurt person altogether. Nonetheless you find yourself, or I found myself, loving people because my circumstances at the time depended on it; or I thought they did anyway. However, this can also go the other way. Sometimes people will claim to love you only because of their circumstances and what you can do for them as well. It’s still all the same. Even with it being the other way around, if you’re codependent, you’ll end up loving this person because of what you think you’re doing for them, and you like the love that you think you’re getting back. It’s a sad truth, people!
Until recently, I have spent my entire adulthood chasing what I felt I lacked as a child. Unfortunately, what I felt I lacked was love. I attached myself to anything that I thought showed me any kind of love. Doing this is very dangerous because it causes more problems. I created so many circumstances in my life that caused me to bring in circumstantial people who could only give me circumstantial love. This so-called love is and always will be temporary. One can try and drag it out as I did, but it’s extremely painful to do this and holds you back from so much that is good in life.
When you find out who you are, then you can find out all the “whys” in your character. When I say why, I mean as in explanations for why you are the way that you are and why you make the poor decisions that you make. I could never get to this conclusion because I made sure I was never alone. Life forced me to be alone, and in this time, I was forced to learn or die. Chasing my circumstantial love was killing me on the inside each time it came to an end. I got so frustrated that I had to check myself on all levels.
I would say the biggest lesson I learned was that you don’t have to be in love to know or feel what love really is. I like a lot of people made the mistake of thinking this was the only way to experience love. I created so many circumstances that would allow me to feel what I thought was love. The “love” was always as temporary as my situations. It’s true, nothing lasts forever. So before you call something love, check yourself. Look at where you are and what’s going on in your life, and ask yourself whether I love this person if I weren’t where I am. Check your emotions. Are you loving this person because they are making you feel better, but only about what’s going on in your now? Find out what you actually do for the other person and make sure their love for you is not circumstantial either. Asking myself these questions helps me weed out false love. It keeps me from finding new ways to repeat old habits.
Romans 12:9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.