January 4, 2008

Different Kinds of Love
Love. No one can define it because each person brings their own perception of it.

Givers: One type of love is the Giver. In our society the majority of Givers has been women who often put in a fifteen hour day: in outside employment, cooking, housekeeping and raising a family, but to do justice to men there are many who sacrifice their lives for us each day, as soldiers, police, fire-fighters and the exhausted man working long hours coming home every night to his family. These wonderful adults make sacrifices in order to maintain the family unit, often at the expense of their own desires.

Takers: These are some men and women who want only to have their needs satisfied whenever and whatever they want.
The desires may vary:

The goal of certain takers is to grab all the love in the family jealous of even the children having any share of it.

Others might not wish to cooperate with the partners activities, but only cooperate if the idea originates with themselves. Not giving of ones time leaves the spouse or child abandoned. If one is not sharing time communicating then there is also a lack of understanding in which couples and families eventually disintegrate (even if the outside world thinks it is the perfect marriage-because no one is complaining).

The Takers may insist on excessive or unpleasant (to the partner) sexual activities or refuse sex - giving sparingly or not at all.

It is impossible in so restricted an article to list all the problems, but one major one is demanding more financially than one can afford or using all the resources (even if affordable) for oneself.

Irresponsible: There are those who do love in a way that many of us do not understand or have sympathy. They want to love without having to work for it. They walk away. An example of that would be not paying child support, but leave all that to the parenting person. Often irresponsibles can not even remember that they had promised a meeting and never show up.

If the Takers and Irresponsibles relationships last, it is at the sacrifice of the other spouse. These aberrant individuals are too self-concerned to care if their spouse is willing to accept the aberrant behavior and only the victim(s) know the actual truth. In fact the victims often hold on to the illusion of what they want to see rather than what they are living until the denial cuts deeply into their soul.

Truly look at yourself. Which category are you? If you are the Taker or Irresponsible type, make changes because even if your family is allowing your behavior to continue; at any time that could change. For what I hear in the office is “I don’t know what happened” when the offended spouse requests a divorce. Put some Giver love into your relationship. You’d be amazed how much happier you will be.