Published on 12, July, 2020
So here's a question of sorts that has kind of followed me around for many years and i wondered if other NDs felt a similar way or if it's just me...Ever since I can remember my emotions have been very confusing / vague I have 3 important people in my life my son, my mum and my ex wife (who I probably drove mad during our marriage with my behaviour though we get on great now and she is actually my carer so that's ok.) These three are the ones who I care about and who care about me but ive never really known what else I should feel and by that I mean love !!! I have never really known what that is I know if anything happened to one of these three I would be upset but that would most likely be in a self centred way as in how their loss would affect me. I often visualize scenarios in which harm befalls one of These three and to be honest my feelings are quite flat I know I should feel more but I don't know what that should be honestly there are times I get more upset when im interrupted or something happens that throws out my process or schedule or if I do something stupid like dropping something picking it up and dropping it again I feel like someone unseen is making this happen and I can get very agitated or angry...So i guess my question is do other NDs feel like this or am I alone in my behaviour ?
It seems to me that NT love can be very selfish, because I have been told by people that they love me and they have later betrayed me, whereas I would have done anything for that person and I have been completely loyal and completely vulnerable to that person until the point of that betrayal, and then the pain of what they did and the realisation that they hadn't ever loved me at all (at least not in the way that I loved them) practically destroyed me and I had to get away just to save myself, even though part of me still loved the person. I guess that part of me eventually died each time so now I am just the tatters that remain after those parts of me were ripped out.
Of course there is no way of knowing of how NTs experience love and how that differs from the way I experience love. I really don't think words are sufficient to describe such a thing, just like I have no idea whether all NTs or all NDs experience it in the same way. It's almost like talking about how someone else perceives the colour blue. We assume that when we say the word blue we are all picturing a similar colour, but the way you perceive blue in your mind might look red to me, for example.
Honestly, following my second (I think) vipassana course, I experienced what nt love is all about and I can tell you, I had the same ideas about it as you did, but it’s nothing like that. It is so tender and beautiful and not at all selfish. It’s funny, because they think our type of love is selfish and we think theirs is. Both are correct because until we love ourselves, unconditionally and completely, we can neither love others or receive love from others. They are both the same love but how it is experienced, between them and us, is very different. For example, I love unconditionally and I love all people, however, I couldn’t love and have in my life, as part of my life, the many people that nt people accommodate in their lives. Their love, to me, appears conditional and includes a small circle of people, but in fact, their love goes deeper in some ways and their love is more expansive, even though I love everybody and they don’t! I couldn’t love as many people as they do all at the same time. Compared to them, my ‘romantic’ love, looks more like an obsession! They can spread their love out. I do know that their love is experienced in a very different way to how I experience love, but it’s all the same love and fundamentally we all experience love in a different way to each other. It’s all about discovering our own love language and making sure we understand the love language of our partner and children and friends etc. The Five Love Languages is a good place to start to understand your love language.