LOVE WITHOUT CLINGING

Love without clinging
Cry if you must
But privately cry
The heart will adjust...

These are words from a profound poem by Ruth Bell Graham the wife of the world’s great evangelist Billy Graham. How often do some married people become very clingy and what you could call addictively dependent on their spouses. Well clingy love is very suffocating. It’s distressing and usually unreasonably demanding. People, who are clingy like this, usually are quite insecure and are dependent on their spouses for emotional strength and so on. They need their spouses to find meaning. They need them for approval. They need to hold on to them so tightly to feel their life is making a head way. They are very possessive. In short they are just needy people! Needy people make a relationship a drain. Unknown to them they put undue pressure on the relationship until the relationship caves in. Most often these clingy people define their need as love but love is not clingy and demanding. Love is rather giving! Love is giving meaning to our spouses and relationships. It adds or multiplies and doesn’t subtract or divide.

Unfortunately, many come into their marital relationships with faulty concepts that the relationship is all about them and is to ‘satisfy’ just them. In a way it could be true when placed in the proper perspective. Unfortunately, clingy lovers oftentimes don’t put their spouses into consideration and in the right perspective when making their emotional demands. A good marriage does satisfy but only on the premise that you have made investments into the relationship and as such you begin to enjoy yielded dividends that satisfy you. The primary thing is not to draw from the first day. Rather a good relationship is built on years of personal investing of time, ability, creativity, emotional support and love. When that’s done over the years then one can relax to enjoy the unprecedented dividends that accrue.

The question is this, what can we do to enjoy loving and being loved without becoming clingy and suffocating? It is said that if something is yours, lovingly let it go and surely it will come back to you. Sometimes clingy people are fearful people. The sad thing about such fear is that usually what they fear befalls them. When you are fearful that your spouse may leave they probably may, eventually, because unknown to you, you display certain attitudes and actions that either give you away and offends your partner who reads your actions as DISTRUST or you become a total put-off to your spouse who begins to feel unnecessarily pressured in the relationship.

BECOME A GIVER
One of the greatest things you could do in your relationship is see that you are a giver. Bob Marley quoted the scriptures when he sang “Blessed is the hand that giveth than the one that taketh”. What a true statement. To avoid becoming clingy and snuff out the life in your relationship, you need to position yourself as a giver. Of course there are those who take advantage of others and their kindness. That cannot be overlooked but there is a cord of truth that runs through the reins of life. You cannot do anything against the truth only for the truth. The power of giving cannot be overcome by a selfish recipient. When you are a life giver, you open yourself up for blessing and peace that cannot be quantified. Life in general is a risk. Marriage of course is a risk. We step into it with hope that it will work out. For it to work out there are principles we need to abide by and giving is one cardinal and fundamental principle that must of necessity be in place.



LOVE YOURSELF
You cannot give what you don’t have. Everyone who is clingy in their relationship is obviously devoid of self-love. Self-love could also become dangerous when it becomes self-centredness or selfishness and that is certainly not what I’m talking about here. Self-love here simply means learning the art of appreciating yourself for who you have been created by God to be, giving to yourself, pampering yourself when the need arises and getting to a point where you invest love into yourself such that it overflows into loving others and not being too needy about others loving you. It also gets to the point where you understand the art of loving others out of the fullness of the love you have for yourself and receiving love in return, graciously, when it is given.

RELEASE YOUR SPOUSE
Holding on too tight could be quite suffocating you know? Let your spouse go. In fact release your spouse on the wings of trust and faith. Trust many times is taken for granted by selfish and myopic individuals but the greatest anyone can give their spouses and themselves as well is the gift of release. It simply says “I love you enough to trust you not to hurt me but am not going to make you not hurt me. I f you don’t hurt me it is because you chose and love me enough not to!”. Big risk someone might say but best way to live y’all!

FIND YOUR ESSENCE
Nobody is born empty. Nobody is born to be totally dependent on anyone. We do need each other in what science calls a symbiotic relationship but not parasitic. Find the essence you have been born with and release it. Understand your uniqueness and ‘flaunt’ it. I use the word flaunt with caution. Someone may understand it as lewdness but I mean find your essence, that unique thing that makes you who you are. That core thing that is uniquely yours and maximize it. For some it’s their persona, for others it’s their intelligentsia, while for others it’s their warmth, for another its their ability to be strong and for others it’s their hearty nature. The list could go on and on but you just find what your essence is and touch your world, your environment, your family and especially your spouse. That way you will not be clingy rather you will have so much to give. One thing I have discovered is that everyone born of a woman has a lot of love to give. Its hidden way inside each of us but we need to understand how to let it flow.

On a final note, why be clingy? Excuse me; you have got so much love to give. If you don’t give it fully on this side of eternity, please what would you do with it in the grave? Reach out and touch! Be a giver and let’s make our world a better place!!

This is where I draw the curtains till next edition. Remember PRAYER CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!