HELP! I DO not KNOW HOW TO RECEIVE LOVE.

If you have lived at least up to two decades on Earth, you’d have heard at least one of these sayings below as regards giving/receiving:

“It is more blessed to give than to receive..”

“Givers never lack!”

“You must be a giver in order to be blessed..!”

I hear them a lot. It can be a good thing to hear, depending on which side the listeners might be on: To those who may have been too used to some sort of a greedy lifestyle, it’s a timely sermon that may help with a change of lifestyle, possibly. For one who has been at the giving end almost all his life, he may wonder when he'd be ever deserving of the receiving turn.

If all you’ve been used to most part of your life is giving, I think you ought to learn how to receive too. After all, for every withdrawals made from a bank account, some more deposits ought to be done in order not to deplete the resources to nil.

“..There is nothing that I have which I have not received from You.”

There is nothing that we have which we have not received. Somehow, we might have to agree that there's that element of receiving before the giving? This might help rethink any negative thoughts we might have had about the acts of receiving.

In the matters of love, similar sayings like these are repeated in other words. You are told to “love others.,” and to be “more willing to give out love..” And if you’re one of the about-to-be- married- Nigerian-brides, you may soon be pulled aside and told by the “advising elders,” how it is you should “love” your husband and take care of him. As if the bride isn't human and deserving being taken care of!

I am not saying that you shouldn’t display your love to a lover. Neither is this a case against the habit of giving. I am both a lavish lover and giver.

Here’s what I am trying to say. And it is what you are rarely told, and probably one of the reasons many people are frustrated in relationships.

Unfortunately, we live in a part of the world where expressing one’s opinion is like a forbidden fruit; especially if, God forbids, those opinions are not the generally popular norm.

You see, not all relationships end because of lack of love. For some, it is because of one partner’s inability to receive the given love. This can be as frustrating as not being loved because the beloved may be rejecting love out of distrust and suspicion of the motive for the love being shown.

Your inability to receive love openly can also lead to vexation for your lover because he’s being denied the pleasures one derives from being received. May be you are not aware there’s an awesome pleasurable feeling which a giver gets to enjoy by virtue of his giving that comes from the joy of seeing another appreciate his gifting of love.

He feels a sense of contribution. These heartfelt feelings can be quite difficult to relate in words and part reason many people indulge in the act of deliberate giving of kinds.

It is why we talk about gratitude and reasons we should express thankfulness even to God for his many blessings.

Then what do you expect of a human being whose loveliness is being rejected?

Inability to receive love can be frustrating for the supposed receiver, too, because as much as she may wish to make you feel good about your giving to her, she finds herself almost helpless to what she’s experiencing from your show of love because of the mindset she holds.

Your giving may be like flattery to her. She feels no pleasure about your efforts because of her own prejudices whose bearings isn’t really about you, but more about herself, and the experiences she might have had from receiving in the past. In order to please you, she may show pretense about your lovely gestures; sometimes for guilt and for her own helplessness about how to deal.

Then like most cases of pretenses, it projects in other ways that the giver can also decipher. He feels sad that he’s being unappreciated for his loveliness. Confused about how his show of kindly affection is being mistreated, he may conclude that he’s not accepted, and therefore feels unloved.

And gradually resentment begins to build up like a cancerous cell around the love dome. It is just a matter of time before either one starts peeking for any loose ends in others’ love branch where they can nest their own feathers in hope for the pleasure which they feel denied at their own love abode. Or both head to separation.

Not all broken relationship is a result of love lost. A lot are because of love not well received.

The beloved may require healing from her own past and shadows. The giving lover may need show more concern in order to find out the rationale behind her inability to accept his love willingly.

While it is prime to be a giver of love; to be loving and all that, to show affection to the beloved, and make them feel always at haven about being in a relationship with you, you must also sing at the other end of a love affair a song about this love being received gratefully.

For many, the ability and willingness to give is no longer the issue. The long years of being taught about the habit of giving has prepared them for this. But who teaches us to receive? Rarely. And in any case mostly against.

I'm writing this for balance sake.

Balance is always a delight. As much as we give, we should be open to receive.

Unfortunately, due to the many strange dogmatic teachings about receiving, some people do not know how to receive. Whether it’s love, care or affection.

Love oscillates between the two acts of giving and receiving, and both parties play a different role at some point. When it's your time to receive, and you refuse to enjoy that turn, you frustrate the to-fro oscillation, thus breaking the line.

We owe it to people to let them know that it is not selfish to receive, especially if you have been giving. I had to emphasize this because it was an issue for me personally.

For a long time, I wasn’t so good at receiving because I had thought it was a self-centered thing to do. And so I felt more guilt about receiving. I'm aware of some people who still struggle with this.

I have since realized the importance of balance - giving and receiving. I’ve learnt to enjoy and show appreciation for what I receive rather than trying to quickly reciprocate the giver with a giving. Sometimes, by doing so, we deny the giver the opportunity to enjoy the sense of contribution he feels about the giving.

How does your inability to receive your lover’s love affect your relationship?

You can subtly reject your lover’s desires to express the love he feels for you every time you either through your body language, words, or with deeds, reject his affection towards you.

By this act, you’re in a way showing the lover that you don’t want him closer to you. This is the interpretation he gets from those signals you make at him any time you reject his loveliness.

He can feel rejected and drawn back. This way, you’re inadvertently creating a close door against intimacy in the relationship.

When we receive from another, we are saying that "my heart is open towards you and you can come in." Thus allowing room for intimacies and more love.

For some the reason they won’t joyfully receive love in the relationship is because of their fear of vulnerability and of letting go.

Naturally through giving, you can have the upper hand at calling the shots in most things with life. The backdrop of this opinion is the reason a lot of people are not willing to let go by consciously or unconsciously rejecting love because of their fears and assumption about the motive for the display of the lover’s affection.

This is quite common among people who may have been jilted in their previous relationships where the act of trust becomes almost difficult, if not impossible for them to do. They feel afraid and suspicious of being baited by the similar show of love from their new lover.

In order to maintain their control, they’d subtly refuse to receive the love they’re so dying to have shared with them. For these kinds, they’d rather be lonely than become vulnerable through openness to receive love.

However, there are another kind of people who haven’t learnt how to receive anything all their lives without having to work hard for it. Whether it's because of the compliments they had received due to their good grades while at school, or from the high ends transactions they brought to their companies through excellent sales.

For these set of people, receiving love without having to work hard for it is scary to them. They’ve been so used to being complimented only for what they’ve done or accomplished rather than for just who they are.

They make equal attempts at working hard for the love being dotted them. They tend to reject the opportunity to receive openly for fear of having some strings attached.

There are so many love moves without strings attached to any sides of the tender ropes other than a show of appreciation being the motive from the caring heart of the giver for the grace to share his life with you.

The best bets to the unstinting affection for you who find it hard to receive love is a simple show of appreciative receiving in thankfulness. Without the needful willingness to reciprocate even, or immediately.

Here, both souls can feel equal in the atmosphere of receiving and giving love, neither feeling ashamed of whichever role each may take on at that moment of awesome courtliness.

When you have this going, then you can be sure with all certainty that love’s in the air!

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To your successfully evolving life.

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Joy Iseki