BENEVOLENT LOVE
How to love with maximum tolerance?
Infants often behave in scandalous and wicked ways; they would scream at the person looking after them, deliberately cry their lungs out if they are not pleased, and throw away things they had just requested. Nevertheless, we rarely feel agitated or wounded by their behaviour. This is because of our innate ability of not assigning a negative motive to them and we benevolently shroud their negative attitude with the blanket of optimism thinking that they are not intentionally hurting us. We tend to think that the child is being rude, crying in a deafening manner, because he or she is hungry or diaper needs changing. We have a large repertoire of alternative explanations ready in our heads; and this is what I like to call as the “infant approach of interpretation.”
While it is rather nice to think of this benevolent interpretation of negativity, this is quite the contrary when we deal with our lovers, wherein we tend to think that he or she is intentionally making our lives worse by doing acts that are hurtful to us. When our partner is late, we usually turn their perfectly valid reason into an excuse; when they did not notice our new haircut because of exhaustion from work or school, we tend to assume that they do not care about us; when they failed to reply to our text messages, we may think that they are flirting with another. Most of the time, people are inclined into relishing thoughts that their partners are deliberately hurting them.
On the contrary, if we make us of the infant approach of interpretation, our first thought would be quite different and rather good for the relationship. Maybe, they are late because they had to run some errands for others or perhaps they did not notice our new haircut for they are overburdened by a problem unknown to us. It is possible that they did not manage to reply to our text messages due to their work or school requirements. From thing perspective, our lover’s off-putting behaviour does not magically and instantaneously change to one that is acceptable, but at least the agitating effect to us is kept safely low and tolerable.
This model of interpreting our partner’s attitude may at first seem despairing or strange for it would be rather ugly to think that one’s partner is a child. However, this may come in handy in managing times when the other is very difficult to cope up with. Come to think of it, when a person fall short from what society expects from an adult, we hastily brand them as “childish” or even “immature.” Such an act is nothing but a harmful accusation which we need to eradicate. Instead of doing so, we need to look at it the other way around and recognize such negative act as an ordinary feature of the human condition.
We should interpret our partners the way we interpret the annoying acts of an infant. We should treat them as an infant. Our ability to love and calm around children – which is based on the fact that they cannot explain what really is bothering them – should be extended into our partners.
Nevertheless, being benevolent towards our partners in the same way as we do towards children does not mean infantilising them or treating them as a child per se. It does not mean that we award them with star every time they make something good or pleasant to us, nor is a call to congratulate them in a satirical manner. The infant approach to interpretation means being charitable, loving and patient in decoding things they say in terms of their deeper meaning. It means translating their rude words into what they really feel: “leave me alone” might actually mean “I’m afraid and I do not know what to do;” or even “I hate you” might mean “I really need you right now.”
With this in hand, our relationship will have some therapeutic benefits with not just our partners but also with other people around us. In the infant approach of interpretation, instead of arguing with our partner about why he or she did this or that, it will give space for soothing and healing hence, making our connection with them grow into a more stronger one. We must learn how to love them tenderly amidst their frailties and shortcomings, rather than hit them back with equal force.
This may seem like a one-sided relationship but this is the real essence of love- to love others fully while being aware of their weaknesses and inadequacies. When we adore someone because of their strengths and disregarding their flaws and blemishes, is this called “love” or just an “infatuation”? We must remember that loving a person is not like harvesting a fruit, where the labourer picks the good one and throws away the bad one. There is no such thing as a partial loving or one-sided relationship because loving a person is seeing their flaws and blemishes and accepting them.
This is what makes the infant approach of interpreting others a plaster to broken relationships. In this way, we re-imagine our partner as consumed by what we like most about him or her and at the same time, accept his or her flaws. This accurate, constructive and correct reimagining of the inner lives of others is a piece of empathetic reflection we constantly must perform with ourselves and with others. We need to imagine the turmoil, disappointment, worry and sheer confusion not just with our partner but also to people who may outwardly appear merely aggressive and interpret it into an act of a child which we must not attach any ill motive. When they behave badly, perhaps they would like to say, “Right now, I want to be an infant and I need you to be my parent. I need you to guess what is truly ailing me, as people did when I was a baby, when my ideas of love were first formed”.
We do our lovers the greatest possible favour when we are able to regard at least some of their bad behaviour as we would those of an infant. We are so alive to the idea that it is patronizing to be thought of as younger than we are; we forget that it is also, at times, the greatest privilege of someone to look beyond our adult self in order to engage with – and forgive – the disappointed, furious, inarticulate or wounded child within. Perhaps, if we do this more often – or always – less relationship will be found in the trash bin. mav
