Love is not self seeking

Love is not self-seeking.

This means love does not look for benefits for self but thinking about what’s the best for the loved ones. It’s the opposite of manipulation, gaslighting, and exploitation. In words, it’s simple and strightforward. In practice, it’s not always clear and easy.

Usually we are not actively seeking personal favours in relationship especially with people we think we really love. However, if we are not constantly trying to think about our loved ones, we can easily fall back to our default setting of self seeking. Of course, this does not mean permissiveness, neglecting own wants and needs and only overly trying to please others as if loving out of fear or anxiety of abandonment. Rather, true love intrinsically motivates us to think about what would be good for our loved ones. It gives us joy to benefit them, more than ourselves.

As for parents, self-seeking love can be manifested in when we feel frustrated when kids don’t agree with us, when we feel actually only proud of accomplishments that we think highly of, or when we feel angry when kids make a choice we do not approve. Sometimes, it might be more unintentional. It happens when we falsely assume we know everything and seeking their gains when in reality we just give whatever we think they need without being on the same page. To avoid this, we have to recognize and really understand what our children needs and wants and work on truthful love directed towards their benefits.

What would be practical steps towards love without self-seeking? It goes back to the previous posting about respecting our kids as individuals uniquely created by God. With humble attitude, we need to learn about our kids constantly as they are developing, changing, and growing everyday, discern their needs, and then we can genuinely seek for their gains.