What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Just saw the new movie, “The Roses.” I found it well produced and great fun as well as thought provoking.

On the surface you could see it as two unpleasant people snarking at one another. Or a couple who has lost “that loving feeling” and ceased to communicate. Many people would make it about love and the loss thereof or at least the transformation.

What stood out to me was how much we humans love to be in our story. We want to point out all the things we have “done” for others with the underlying theme being “look at how much I have sacrificed for you.” But have we?

Each person in the movie had the victim perspective. The desire to have those we purport to love and care for see and appreciate our suffering, our selflessness. Most humans are very good at making lists of their blood, sweat and tears. The “I worked hard so you could have…..” or “You never noticed all the things I did for you or the children or the business or fill in the blank.”

What ceases to exist in this scenario is communication. It cannot survive the hunkering down and embrace of each side’s perspective. It was interesting to watch the characters in the movie hurl their upsets and anger and hurt, but then to listen to what they were actually saying and realize that in the end most people simply want to be seen and acknowledged.

As a recovering codependent it I found it illuminating because it again made me see that what appear to be self-less acts are in some ways selfish acts. If you need to flash across other people’s psyche “look at all I have done for you,” then have you done it for their benefit or yours? We give what we give and if we find it not reciprocated in a manner we find to be enough, then we have the choice to stop or amend. It is not even about the other person’s behavior, but rather it is about our own expectations.

I believe I shall begin an experiment to see how I am entrenched and then help dig myself out of the bunker.

See you up top.