Being told that you’re loved as a child isn’t the same as feeling that you’re loved. There needs to be a spiritual connectedness between what we’re told and what we feel. When we’re constantly being told we’re pretty, beautiful, or special, we must inwardly feel those things.
Being born with cerebral palsy meant that people behaved differently towards me. It took me many years to make my own connections between being loved and feeling loved, and how I felt about myself.
But when we’re told we’re loved and those words are replicated in another person’s actions, we can begin to feel we’re loved. The more negative elements we encounter, the more we put distance between what’s said and what we feel, and so the gap between what it said and what is felt, becomes bigger.
It doesn’t matter how many times someone tells us they love us, there needs to be a spiritual and emotional connection so that we inwardly feel we’re loved, or we feel special.
Your first sentence is so true. You have to feel as though you're loved. It is a terrible thing not to feel that, when it is supposed to happen. We find love in different places with those people who support us and make us happy.
Cherish those people, because when you make a connection to another person like that it is magic. It has rarely happened in my life, but when it does there is no feeling like it.
Ditto. I totally agree.
I agree. Essentially you have to learn to love yourself. Not always easy, but surely that must be the first step to real happiness.
If someone genuinely loves for us, we will learn to embrace and love who we are through their love and guidance.
I agree with your sentiments that learning to love ourselves may be the first step to connecting with others on a deeper more emotional level and that needs to happen if we are to have the chance of feeling that we're loved.
Yes it is.
I've had the real feeling a few times.
As a child I don't really ever remember how I felt, but as a teen I thought no one loved me not even my parents because I just didn't feel it. The first real love I felt was with my first husband and even after our split I felt loved by him and now as he has died I still feel the love he has.
I feel it with my now husband of 17 years but It's not expressed as often as I would like, but still I know he loves me.
I have other connections now with my parents (one deceased) and of course with my daughter.
I'm glad you've had the real feelings Lisa; but I can remember going through what you went through as a teenager, crying because I wasn't sure my mother loved me. It's important to say that we love someone, it's not always enough for them to think we do.
Thanks for posting Lisa.
Ditto. Thanks for responding to my comment Randy.