Love Needs Boundaries

Now we know that the perfect love environment incorporates fun, food, finance and work or function. Today we want to deal with a fifth ingredient – boundary. The dictionary defines a boundary as something that indicates bounds or limits. A lot of people erroneously believe if you love them, you will let them have their way all the time. Nothing can be as false as that. Love must have limits. The creator clearly let them know that they could eat of every tree in their garden except one. There should be boundaries that love shouldn’t violate for it to be authentic.

FREE WILL

A lover must not violate their partner’s free will. Love isn’t by force. A kind of love that gives you no options is an insecure and domineering one. Many people have completely lost their freedom because of so-called love. Many can’t think for themselves, decide for themselves and act for themselves because they are under the influence of an oppressive partner who demands everything from them including their free will.

Authentic love doesn’t impose itself on another. It always gives another choice. It is remarkable that in his omnipotence the creator could have created man to love him by default, but he did not. Rather he created man with a free will so that man could choose to either love him or not. The reality is that love isn’t love if it is forced. It is only love if it is chosen. I don’t want someone to love me because they have to, I want them to love me because they want to. I don’t want them to love me because they have no options, I want them to love me because I am the preferred option. Only then can I prove that the love is genuine.

Over the years, I have discovered that whenever love is forced or imposed, it never lasts. It only lasts when it happens of the couples free will. No matter how much you believe a couple is good for each other, if they personally don’t believe they are meant for each other it will fail. Some coercive factors could be parents, pastors, friends, pregnancy, pity, disability all of these are to mention but a few. However, none of these external forces can make love last. If love is coerced, it will eventually disperse. The only long-lasting foundation that love can be based upon is the internal force of free will.

DIGNITY

Your lover is first a human being before they became your lover. If a person is not a believer in the fundamental dignity of a human being, they will be destructive in love. Those of us who believe in the dignity of the individual are obsessed about how valuable man is and we will stop at nothing to honour the value we perceive.

One early writer admonishes us not to cast our pearl before swine, lest they trample it under their feet, and turn and tear us in pieces. What he means, of course, is that it is not enough to have something valuable to give another. You must only give that valuable thing to someone who recognizes the value or else what you give will end up devalued. If you offer your valuable love to an unvaluable person you will end up devalued. Anyone who doesn’t recognize your value is not worthy of your commitment.

Our principal way of showing value for a thing is in how we treat that thing. Unfortunately today many are treated like trash in their relationships and they still hang on. You are shouted upon, insulted, beaten, publicly ridiculed and debilitated, Shouldn’t you know by now that you aren’t valued? You can’t value a thing and not treat it well. Please refuse to tolerate any love claimed that doesn’t consistently affirm your value, such a love is false.

LOYALTY

I can’t explain it but there is something about love that requires and desires singular attention. Something dies in a lover once they discover they have been cheated upon. I call it the love law of exclusivity. No man can serve two masters, either he will love one and hate the other. Anyone who is willing to share you with another is either through with you, in lust with you or is suffering from stunted self-esteem.

Not every jealousy is bad. Sometimes jealousy is a sign of ownership. Its presence simply means the person is beginning to take you personally. Of course, it has its extremes. A moderate amount of salt in your meal can be remarkable, but a bag of salt in a pot of rice will be devastating. The cure for healthy jealousy is affirmed and confirmed loyalty.

These three boundaries of free will, dignity and loyalty must not be violated if your love for another will attain its full potential. I see your love life working out for good.

THE GREATEST IS LOVE