What Love Did to Me

Tracey Jazmin Photography

In one of my last posts '5 Relationship Myths (& Why You Should Ditch Them!)', I made a comment at the end that went like this...

I'm convinced that God uses relationships and marriages to mold us and grow us to be more like Him. I have never been so personally challenged and moved to change than I have been in my relationship with my husband. Never have I seen my flaws so clearly. The right relationship will edify you...but that's another post for a different day.

Well that different day is today! Let's get right into it.

Wrong Relationships

Before we can move forward with how the right relationships edify us, we have to talk about the role of wrong relationships. 

Wrong relationships, whether long-lasting or short-lived DO have an affect on you. I know people have different approaches to relationships. Some, for a lack of a better term, see it as widely recreational, others take it far more seriously. I'm a strong advocate for the latter but let me stay on topic. 

Entering into a relationship with someone says a lot about you. Not only does it tell the world what kind of physical appearance attracts you, it also displays what kind of personality traits you think mesh with yours, what kind of person you're looking for (vs. what you actually need), etc. The relationship itself will also show others your maturity level, your stage in life, your understanding of yourself and others, as well as potential conflicts between all these factors. 

I rely heavily on the 'other' in the previous statement because, as you may have heard before, 'love is blind'. Other people, (I mean those close to you who know you), tend to see a relationship for what it is (or perhaps warning signs), long before you do. 

I'm not a huge fan of the quote 'love is blind' because I think most people are introspective enough to see their partners' flaws, but choose to ignore them because 1) they're hot 2) it's what someone else wants 3) they don't want to be alone 4) insert any excuse here. Let's just say your friends can typically see the haze before you decide to clean your glasses. 

So, now your relationship has ended for whatever reason and you're recollecting yourself. It changed you. No matter how short it was, you now have a different understanding of who you are and what you're looking for. You may have thought you needed someone very outgoing to get you out of your comfort zone, but found out by dating x that you couldn't keep up with your extreme extrovert. Maybe the relationship didn't contribute to your growth...you were just stagnant. Or any other host of reasons. 

Relationships change you. They change you by increasing your knowledge about yourself (which should be seen as positive) but they can also have a negative impact on you (think heartbreak or mistrust). I'm not advocating for dating the wrong people so you can engage in self-learning, but God can use wrong relationships for the good, so be encouraged!

Either way, the wrong relationship will mold you, although not in the right way if that makes sense. So what's the difference between the change that occurs in a wrong relationship and what happens in the right one? Read on.

The Right Relationship

Ahh! Now you're in the right relationship. You know it, they know it. You're in love! Congratulations. It's truly a blessing to have 'found the one whom your soul loves', as Solomon put it. But true love is not fully what you expect. No, 

true love hurts

& not in the way you think it will.

The right relationship is more than romantic dates, having a ring on your finger and feeling comfortable. The right relationship will challenge you. It will force you to look at the ugly that you didn't know (or want to believe) you were.

The right relationship will challenge you. It will force you to look at the ugly that you didn't know (or want to believe) you were. 

Let me explain...

Love Made Me Comfortable

One of the most liberating parts of being in the right relationship is having the freedom to be yourself. After years of trying to present your best self you've finally locked in a poor sucker (I mean spouse, hehe) and their love for you has made you feel safe enough to let your guard down.

Love makes you comfortable. It makes you feel safe and at home with your partner. But look around your house right now, is it perfectly clean? You probably have at least a couple socks on the floor, maybe a few dirty dishes, right? Being comfortable and letting your guard down means the messy parts of your person will inevitably be left out.

Being comfortable and letting your guard down means the messy parts of your person will inevitably be left out.

Your partner should know your flaws beforehand, but bad habits and character flaws are shown exponentially faster when you live together. This is why the first year of marriage can be so tricky, as you're exposed to all of your partner's flaws seemingly (or quite literally) at once.

Love lets the real you come out, and sometimes we aren't ready to confront who we see.

Love Made Me Feel Ugly

Don't be alarmed. My husband makes me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. But true love at some point will make you feel ugly. What do I mean?

Love forces you to confront the ugly in you. Entering into a relationship with someone else means everything isn't just about you anymore. Your partner's strengths highlight your weaknesses, and girl, that highlight is glowing. 

Honestly, there have been many instances since I got married that I felt sad. Sad, not because my relationship wasn't what I thought it would be, no, sad because it was EXACTLY what it needed to be. I felt like an ugly person. I'd never seen my flaws so clearly and up in my face. But as I sat on my bed and worked through the things I was feeling, I realized that I didn't feel sad...I felt humbled.

But as I sat on my bed and worked through the things I was feeling, I realized that I didn't feel sad...I felt humbled.

You see, true love exposes the nasty about yourself that you've pushed down and ignored. There was no one to keep you accountable before and so you did what you want. The truth is, you think pretty highly of yourself. Sure, you know you're not perfect, but that's just a thing we say. I'm not THAT bad (like this and that person). 

True love will throw all that pride and pretension away. When I tell you it forces you to confront the negative aspects of your personality...DOES.IT.EVER.

Why?
Because love is in direct opposition with selfishness. Or insecurity. Or whatever the ugly parts of you are. Love, by nature, will just expose these things because of how different it is to whatever flaw we may have. 

The Bible says it this way:

Source

If we are honest with ourselves, we do a lot of the things that love does not. Now do you see how love will expose all the ugly in you? 

There are many times where Ricardo's selflessness has brought me to tears because it exposed how selfish I really am. My search for a husband did not have 'selfless' any where near it, but God was gracious enough to give me what I didn't know I needed. THIS is what the right relationship will do.

Love Made Me Grow

Nobody likes to feel ugly. When we feel ugly, we do something about it. Whether it's a trip to the mall, the hair salon or somewhere extreme like the plastic surgery clinic. You can imagine how feeling ugly inside (something that human beings tend to value more than outward appearance) would make you do something about it.

Love did that to me. Love made me grow. It made me see myself for who I really was, not just the cute highlight reel I posted to the social media of my mind. No, it showed me the behind the scenes, the nitty gritty. Like they say in addictions counselling, acknowledging the problem is the first step to recovery, and so I put aside my pride and assumed responsibility for my flaws.

Some days it's hard, I liked the cute way I saw myself before. But I know that working on these aspects of myself will make me a better person. Every day I can work towards making that cute self a real thing! Love did that to me!

Love Changed Me

Marriage is an incredibly humbling experience. Only say "I Do" if you're ready to be challenged in every way imaginable. It is an incredible privilege.

The right relationship will change you. It will expose you for exactly who you are. The right relationship will edify you.

You see, I'm a strong believer that God gave us relationship and marriage as a means to mold us into the person He wants us to be. He knows how He created us, and knows that we tend to respond better to the tangible and the things we can see.

A marriage is the literal manifestation of the relationship that we have with God. The way our spouse's love changes us is like how the love of Christ edifies us. 

Marriage is one tool that God uses to make us more like Him, but you don't need to be married to be transformed! You just need Christ.

God is love. If you're single, you can read this entire post by replacing 'love' with 'God' and you will have the same effect.

This is what Love did to me.