When emotional abuse is a roller coaster of love

‘Conditional’ is not something that fits with the word love.  It makes of love a hypocrite.  It makes of love something it isn’t.  ‘Conditional’ doesn’t just cheapen love, it renders love unrecognisable.  It turns love into a weapon, and that’s just not love.

The worst of love, then, is a ‘love’ that wavers, making it a never-ending quest of manipulation, which is the opposite extreme of love, further away from love than anyone could even imagine.

It is reprehensibly sad, and unimaginably painful, to live within the memories of a life lived with someone we perfectly depended upon for love who betrayed us all the time.  And we should’ve been able to rely on them, given that that was their role.

Emotional abuse, then, is the product of a heart that sees us as expendable, that sees us as a means to their end.  We exist, then, for their benefit, for their gain, for their sustenance.  It is a sick reality to live in.

And these are just some of the situations we find ourselves in:

Þ           effort goes in if there is a reward in it for them to be had

Þ           we seem not to be worth the effort otherwise

Þ           if there is an argument, the outcome is heavily dependent on our view, not who we are

Þ           there are too many dependencies on conditions being met to determine whether we are loved or not

Þ           those who love us conditionally are themselves often loved conditionally by those who were supposed to love them

Þ           guilt is an inherent part of the cycle, for them possibly, but certainly for us

Þ           we want to love them, we need to, but it’s interminably hard when betrayal occurs serially

Þ           guilt just contorts love and makes sad and wrong of what was intended as generous (as the afterthought)

Þ           there is always something missing, and the underpinning cause is a lack of truth

Þ           if truth had its way, their painful reality would be faced and could be repented of

Þ           but instead the transmitter of emotional abuse is happy to continue meting out harm, so long as they stay in the strong position

Þ           the strong position depends on winning at all costs, and sometimes winning calls for them taking the weaker position and accusing us of being the perpetrator through gaslighting

Emotional abuse involved in being conditionally loved is a rollercoaster that never stops, and even if we become nauseated, as rollercoasters are apt to do, we cannot get off this ride, unless we institute strict boundaries.

But there are always losses in doing such things, because invariably they involve family; loved ones who will suffer for the fact we need self-protection, even as they also need to be protected, themselves.

Nobody wins in the game of conditional love, because all the rules of life that are designed to give life are broken.

God is treated with contempt, as one person makes it their role to be a god — to get it all their own way and to make life hell for all if they don’t.  It would only take one person to set it all straight again, and if only the one treating God with contempt would come to meet God.

What can be done is to be Jesus in skin among those who are so poorly loved, and to be His love is something we can thank God for.  Though there will always be losses, we can do it.  We may find, as we live life in followership with Him, that there are miraculous boundaries set and maintained through the leading of the Spirit.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash