Is Your Loving Sacrifice an "Investment"?

You may believe that love requires sacrifice, yet within that requirement may come a sense of deprivation if your sacrifice goes unrecognized. If you feel deprived of acknowledgement for your sacrifice you may seek for retribution and possibly even vengeance. You will do that through anger and guilt.

When you sacrifice for a loved one do you consider it an investment or is your giving free of all expectation? Does your sacrifice bind the loved one to you with the expectation that they sacrifice in return or else experience guilt in return? If your beloved fails to provide the expected sacrifice, or meet your standards of sacrifice, does that justify your condemnation? Does your indictment create guilt in him/her? Is guilt the glue that binds you to each other,  but also the reason for your distance and alienation?

If you invest in a loving relationship defined by sacrifice, you will expect a return on that investment. If your love is not completely defined by sacrifice, but only partially, and you believe that your sacrifice is unequaled by him/her, then you may find sacrifice magnified to become the chief defining quality of your love, as you demand an equal return on your investment. If that ‘return’ is not forthright, you will indict the other as guilty of NOT recognizing your sacrifices from love and you will expect that they experience guilt. How could they not? But, if you have frequently been the impetus of his/her guilt, why would you then expect his/her sacrifice in return? Would you not expect resentment?

Guilt is an insidious impediment to intimacy that can sit deep within the subconscious. It festers and slowly eats away at one's self-concept and one's concept of the other. The guilty may seek relief through psychic mechanisms that include repression, reaction formation, denial, displacement, passive aggression and of course, projection. If the ego-self  mind struggles so hard to deflect and avoid guilt, what could be the result of your constant reminders, often subtle and subliminal, of his/her guilt in not recognizing your sacrifices? A progressive, deep seated resentment will fester.

Anger projected onto a loved one becomes a substitute for love and has only one purpose; the establishment of guilt. But many believe that creating guilt in the other is an effective means of attaining results. Guilt becomes an effective punishment for a perceived lack of love defined by a lack of sacrifice.

Does indicting the other alleviate your guilt, thereby, increasing your innocence? The more guilty they are, the more innocent you must be. Your ego/self must struggle to be guilt-free, since guilt is suffering, and so it becomes very easy to project it outward in the hope of relief. This is often how many see the world. They are the guilty and then there is "me" (of course, you too are guilty, except when you can deny your guilt by focusing exclusively on theirs). In your relationship, there is the guilty 'other' and then there is you. The more you indict the guilty, the less guilt you experience, or so you believe.

Angry guilt tend to rip relationships apart, but also can hold them together, it is the ones we love the most, that bring up the most resentment and rage. You believe that if you can maintain his/her guilt, eventually, they will relent and sacrifice for you as you require. How else could they free themselves of guilt if not through greater sacrifice? Therefore, if they follow your plan for sacrifice they too, can be free of guilt and as innocent as you.

Do you really believe that by increasing his/her guilt you diminish your own, thereby increasing your innocence? But if we all make errors in judgment, are we not all guilty? Yet, how easily you forget in the moment of anger when they are guilty and you are NOT. But what are they guilty of? Indicting you as guilty, of course!

Guilt and innocence are the foundation of society, so we should NOT be surprised that our intimate relationships frequently follow the same rules.

Mutual indictment makes love more of a hell, than a “heaven on earth.” Many couples go round and round in the blame game never realizing that the game is so many years old and no one really knows who started it or who’s really guilty and who innocent (this is also seems true for the macro world).

Yet, as time goes by and needs go unmet, because sacrifices are ignored, the object of the game is to increase your innocence, by increasing their guilt. Unfortunately, you both know the rules of that game and he/she is playing the same game! Indict him and he easily and effortlessly indicts you. We seem programmed to repeat this compulsive drama countless times, often for many years and through countless relationships. If you find that guilt is an effective motivating strategy, you will employ it in all your relationships.

Guilt is your ‘baggage” and you will seek release from it by defending your innocence and, as we all know the best defense is an effective offense. But your attack now makes you the guilty party and you must in turn defend your righteousness. This is often the domestic hell 'loving' individuals perform, in which sacrifice for each other, (as well as sacrificing for the children) is gauged and measured. Woe be it to the one who fails to meet the most restrictive expectations of sacrifice and often we unknowingly 'raise the bar' following each and every guilty verdict.

Sacrifice is the chief platform in the foundation of our Judeo-Christian culture. We are expected to sacrifice for those we love (just as Christ sacrificed for our 'sins') and it has for some become an obligation regardless of any actual truth. Although I may have been abused and beaten by my parents, depending on what cultural rules I adhere to, I may be obligated to honor and love thy father and mother.

In addition, sacrifice has become the means of displaying not only our love for our partner ,but even our children. The problem is that we often enslave our loved ones to chains of guilt because sacrifice is based on relative terms and we all seem to vary in our definition of appropriate sacrifice.

Mother Teresa sacrificed beyond all expectation, but there are few among us who would even consider meeting those unconditional standards. It seems that we partake of a precarious balancing act of sacrificing the 'self' and embracing the 'self;' giving to others and expecting others give in return.

So, who wrote the rules for this game of sacrifice?

If we employ sacrifice as a measure of love, we may tend to compare and contrast sacrifice by ‘degrees’ and those who sacrifice less may be considered ‘selfish,’ while those who sacrifice more are ‘selfless’ and this can change from moment to moment and fluctuate based on the situation or person.

Thus, we have intimate relationships that exist within the limits of such contrasts and base their love on such ‘degrees’ of sacrifice. The battle of guilt rages on and resentments settle deeply in the background of our “love” waiting to rise to the occasion, “and after all of done for you!” For some, this is a true representation of 'love.'

LOVE CANNOT SACRIFICE, SINCE IT CANNOT SUFFER

Sacrifice from love is not an expectation, but an honest expression of truth. Love is free of conflict and when I give freely and honestly to you, I experience NO deprivation and therefore, how can I define my giving as “sacrifice” since I do NOT suffer loss. Loving sacrifice is not sacrifice at all and has no expectation of observance, need not be emphasized (that’s called ‘payback’) and has no obligation to necessity. It cannot be measured and is an investment made with NO expectation of future return.

When you make sacrifices for your loved one’s you may do so out of love, but then how could that be suffered as sacrifice? Therefore, deeper truth dictates that sacrifice from love is impossible and thus, you are suffering out of deprivation and not love at all. In our relative world facsimiles of love often pass for the real thing.

Yet, if you employ your sacrifice to contrast another's lack of sacrifice, you have sentenced yourself to the chains of righteousness and you will suffer from lack of love, as will they. But, at least you can rest assured that you were right and if there’s one thing the ego/self requires in this world of relative 'truths,' it is to be right.

In this way, love is defined as “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” which is less about love and more a business arrangement requiring numerous conditions on what we seek to have unfold as unconditional, or at least as a gradual dissolving of limitations. We so deeply long for that highest of all love, the love without condition. But, although we all seek this deeper love, we demand it be on our terms and that merely smacks of conditions and limitations.

If love is authentic, honest and real, the experience of sacrifice is impossible. If love is not 'real' then we should seek for its renewal or discovery in ways other than by measuring and comparing one’s degree of sacrifice. Keep in mind that when love wanes we may feel less inclined to sacrifice and this can occur over many years. Therefore, the other may indict you as guilty of not sacrificing when actually, after many years, it is love that has been sacrificed in the name of sacrifice and guilt.

This essay does not attempt to define "love" since that is a relative concept with many definitions contingent to the individual mind that thinks it. However, my objective is merely an attempt to identify the possible conditions which may obstruct us from our desire for a love free of limitations. Sacrifice, and the suffering inherent within that belief system, may be just such an obstruction. Love knows no sacrifice, because giving from love is an abundance, unencumbered by conditions and therefore, adding to you, not subtracting. While an experience of sacrifice is an experience of deprivation and this subtraction means you have less and suffer from it.

Therefore, if sacrifice is your experience, recognize that this can only mean that you feel deprived and if you feel deprived then make no mistake, you measure love through sacrifice. Many may contend that love is both giving and getting in return and I would agree.

My point is that giving from love should EXPECT no return.