Learning to be Loved Well

I have come to realise that as people we get used to substandard love and treatment from those around us. This can be in friendships, in relationships, even in working relationships with colleagues. Humans are flawed, that’s just how it is. In my own life I have realised that you never stop learning how to love others well, and you never stop learning how to be loved well. I have noticed that once a person has had a bad experience with someone either mistreating them or not showing real love, they tend to have a hard time being on the receiving end of good treatment and true love as a result. 

This change, is not as a result of not being able to spot the difference between good and bad treatment. No. It is as a result of not seeing themselves as worthy of receiving that love, and also being afraid that this new and good treatment will not last. There’s that thought at the back of their minds that this treatment is too good to be true and cannot be maintained. We get so used to being treated and loved badly to the point where it doesn’t surprise us when someone does us wrong. It no longer takes us a back when someone who professed to love us is not acting in our best interests.

We then have the mentality that everybody else that is going to come into our lives is going to treat us the same way. We then think that everybody else is going to disappoint us, break our trust, misuse our kindness and take advantage of us. The problem becomes that we then start attracting people that are going to treat us badly because that’s all that we’re expecting. By internalising all the mistreatment we unconsciously create a standard for how people ought to treat us, and we carry that around with us into every new friendship and relationship that we enter into.

The problem comes in where we use the same mentality when it comes to God. We forget that God is not like man. God’s love does not change, it is patient and perfect at all times. God is love, it is in His nature to love us with a flawless love. We have to learn how to be on the receiving end of that love. We have to almost format our brains and programme them to understand that unlike man, God’s love does not require any input from you. He loves you, whether you know it or not, whether you acknowledge it or not. His actions towards you are laced with His love and are not dependent on what you do.


It is quite something to be loved perfectly, when we’re imperfect. But that’s how God designed it to be. We have been misled by our experiences, by the media and our own defense mechanisms to believe that this incredible and ridiculous truth does not apply to us. You can be loved perfectly. You are loved perfectly. You just have to learn how to receive it. 
I am an Occupational Therapist by profession, but I have many roles that bring meaning to my life. In short, I love people, books and love.

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