The nobleman plays the lute, toils and labours to earn the queen’s love. The queen regards him as a clown. She still regards him as a clown after he has worked himself to death.
''Once upon a time, there was a very hard-working man who collapsed just before he reached retirement age.''
The notion of unlove
Do you love others more than you love yourself? That will set you up for unhealthy and unloving relationships. Not only because you treat yourself unkindly but also because the people in your life will never be able to compensate for your own unlove. Unlove makes us put more into our relationships than they can bear and makes us endure things because ‘It’s probably my fault’. We ignore our feelings and rationalize solutions that help us survive but do not lead to a good life.
It is a common human trait to hope for unrealistic change, often without making an active effort to bring it about. In relationships, we need to consider the underlying motivations driving the behaviour we see and take responsibility for our own contribution to the situation. Is the interaction driven by voluntary choice and love? Or by involuntary actions and dependency?