To be loved for who you are is the most essential human need. The development and growth of intimacy in our relationships demands maturity and selflessness. It's difficult to find deeply satisfying relationships, but easy to have shallow and frustrating 'friendships'.
Due to our own insecurities and fears we often resort to ineffective and fatal behaviors in our relationships. Perhaps one of the most fatal of all is the manifestation of a controlling spirit. True love inspires, enables and empowers freedom of choice. All true love is rooted and grounded in the ability to move forward and maintain the relationship based on freedom and trust.
When we try to take control of another persons choices in relationship, we ensure the death of any possibility of true intimacy. A spirit of control closes the human spirit and damages the soul. We were not born to be 'controlled' and manipulated....we were born for real love.
The worst form of counterfeit love and intimacy is rooted in a horrific mutation of love known as narcissism.... the pathologic love of self. The narcissist doesn't love the other... he or she seeks to smother...to suffocate....to shape the other into whatever brings the ego the greatest pleasure of the moment. The root cause of a controlling spirit is the worship of self. The controller must be satisfied above all else...above all others. The partner of a controller is a slave of whatever they want: sex, attention, adulation, conversation, money or someone to hurt deeply.
The tragic end of someone dominated by a controlling spirit is the destruction of all their relationships and ultimately themselves. When we don't allow others to be free to love or reject us.... to set up boundaries in relationships based on trust and the natural patterns of growth over time that intimacy demands... to that extent we enslave ourselves to faux relationships based on lies and deception.
The more we attempt to squeeze others to conform to what we want....the more we dishonor them. People are made in the image of their creator who describes himself for us with three simple words, "God is love". God's image in us is honored and respected when we allow others to choose in relationship. God's great love doesn't demand a response....it wins a response through proving his love. You can't love someone you don't trust. You can't be intimate with someone who seeks to use you for his or her own selfish desires.
Intimacy demands freedom. Do you seek for deeply satisfying relationships? Begin today to set others free in your life. Stop demanding what you want and start giving who you really are... no strings .... no chains. Real love is both a choice and a gift. You can't demand it...but you can give it and receive it from a God who is true love personified.
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