Has Love Ever Left You Gutted?
As I think about the friends in my life, some have been life long relationships others were there for only a season. Each of them played a part in who I have become. I may never know why some relationships ended. It helps to look at the impact my friendships made on my life during the happy times. Some relationships were filled with betrayal and pain. As I look back I can see that growth took place in my own life as I learned to deal with those times.
Broken relationships left me with a choice — to become bitter or better. Bitterness destroys me and leaves the person I was hurt by unscathed. There really is no choice but to forgive. I’ve learned that there are times when people hurt me but their motives were otherwise. Sometimes my perception of the words and actions of another eclipse the motives of their heart. It helps to try to look at the situation through their eyes and then realize I need to go past it. I know I will grow through each relationship and the influence it has on my life.
Love is definitely a risk. Love requires honesty and trust and vulnerability. Love shows us who we really are – both at our best and at our worst. Love holds up a mirror, but it does not show the whole picture. If we’ve been hurt by love, it’s easy to believe that everything we saw, everything that was said about us it true. But it’s not. There’s more to our story than that.
Love can be a wonderful teacher, a balm, a safe place, a restorer. When love goes sour it can shatter much more than our hearts. The hardest thing in the world is picking yourself back up after a heartache. If we’re going to love again we have to learn from what went wrong and then leave it in the past. It feels like the end of the world when love walks away, but the world keeps spinning. I have to risk loving again or spend my life alone. It’s rarely easy, but love is always worth the effort. Love is always a risk, is it always dangerous? Has love ever left you gutted?
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I feel the same way. Its like what is my propose?
It is very difficult when you feel as though life has no purpose. This truly can happen when you have trusted love and thought you were in a safe place only to find that you are not. It kind of leaves one reeling. The tendency is to withdraw and not want to love again. That is a tough place to be. If you want to talk to someone who does care, you can talk to one of our mentors at http://icravechange.com/talk
I feel like I always try not to love or trust easily because of the people ive seen hurt by it. I feel getting out of such a rut is only harder, because it feels awkward and scary to trust a a new environment or person for the first time easily. I guess I’ve got to work on being less vunerable. *sigh* itll be tough, but ill try. :) thanks for the article
I agree as I had a situaion this week at work in which I felt I was the only one working on the project that they gave me. I also know that the other person was doing other things. I just kept my cool and kept working at the project.
Yikes! Yet another “tall” order to which i do not respond well too, esp when you say,”Have compassion on those who mistreat you or others you love and ask God to help you see them as He wants you to see them, or remove them from your presence until you can so you don’t become a stumbling block”…SO I DON’T BECOME THE “stumbling block????” i don’t BEGIN to understand this statement! For 7 yrs i followed your suggestion and it got me deeper and deeper into an addiction with a “proclaimed” christian. He mistreated me with lies, manipulations taking advantage of my Bible “principaled” ways! He took advantage of a whole choir he conned his way into so they would give him what he wanted…sympathy, money, food and someone to feel SO sorry for him not having a car (b/c he has a severe gambling addiction)that they let him use thiers. When he managed to get another one…he left the church. God’s been allowing him to get away with this kind of behavior all this life! i was another one of his victims until i basically had a nervous breakdown and got help to get him the heck out of my life. i ‘turned’ my cheek, i held “no records of his wrongs”, i forgave and forgave and FORGAVE AGAIN! Is he now my “enemy”? YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT! i DID “try to SEE him as God did”…this is what kept me taking him back over and over again! i “saw” his potential, i “saw” his giving, loving ways and kind heart which apparently was nothing but a disguise! UGH…i can’t stand this kind of devotional Julie b/c when i read the WORDS that’s all they are…a bunch of WORDS which go in one ear and right out the other. It’s thinking that i have to “live up” to these kinds of principals set forth by the LORD that make me feel i don’t even want to BE a christian anymore.
Lily, my heart breaks for you. I too was in an abusive church situatuation. I tried to show love for a long time with no result. I left there 2 years ago, before I had a nervous breakdown. I could not go down the street for months without fearing I was going to run into them. I felt like I had failed sometimes, because I couldn’t stay but God met me in my weakness and over time, He lead me on a path to Love. I can now forgive those who hurt me and can see that it is “powers and principalities” I wrestle with, not flesh and blood. This man may have had a terrible up-bringing which caused a lot of the way he is…I know that’s what happened with the main person in my case. Give yourself time, and allow God to heal your wounds. He will…..if you let him.
Yes, i do feel gutted bt love at times. And I realise why. Most of th time, for girls at least, we feel insecure about trusting someone else because we’ve been hurt before. Whether its caused by someone else who tried to love you, or while trying to love someone else. We as humans can only love someone conditionally, and therefore we tend tonly love someone else because of conditions like, they can love you back, feeding you w what you don’t have. That’s what causes our insecurity to be drawn to that person, thinking that we’re actually loving that person. But when they hurt you because they were not able to feed your desires, we become afraid to love.
Once we have been hurt by someone that we have trusted, we will always be a bit gunshy to love again. Love and trust are intricately linked Esther, you are so right about that. The only person that can truly love unconditionally is God himself, which is known as ‘agape’ love, love without condition. However if we allow God to work in our lives, then there is a greater chance that we too will be able to love unconditionally like He does.
You find yourself giving everything you have to try to get this man to love you only to realize it will never happen. how do you walk away after 20 years and you still love him ever though he doesn’t love you in return?
Sounds like you are in a difficult place Amy. Are you talking about walking away from your husband after 20 years? Marriages go through tough times that take hard work but in my own relationship with my husband I have found that with commitment and communication we have been able to work through those tough times and come out even closer together. We have a wonderful team of online mentors that would love to walk alongside of you. You can just fill in the form at http://powertochange.com/discover/talk-to-a-mentor/ and someone will email you back.
Gutted.. empty… yes and its painful…seems just the nerve endings are left behind so that you can feel it… every minute of it. I know god loves me.. I need a partner and Ive tried so hard to attract the right people to me. Ive almost given up hope… I guess my soul still craves because I havent lost hope.. but why does it have to be so painful
B
@Bob I understand your helplessness in trying to find someone. When God looked at my life I knew that I needed to change areas so he would send someone into my life. Take this to heart first don’t look give up on looking trust me I spent $10,000.00 of seeking looking and traveling the Americas! The last relationship I was involved in I decided to surrender to Christ and ask him which areas did I need to let go of. You see our insecurities magnify when we meet someone and the fear becomes so vast that the relationship falls apart it happened to me many times… When you 100% forget about looking and 100% ask Christ which areas in your life need work Christ through the Holy Spirit will change your and pray that God will send the perfect person for you and he will. Don’t get anxious or impatient just pray continually and he will provide someone…
btw like the children of Israel God will allow you to wander around in the desert until you surrender… God Bless
I feel so guttered and wretched about a lost love.
Years ago I foolishly chose one over another but at the time the one I chose was single the second person was not (although we would spend many hours in bible study) he was a blessing to me.
Put it this way the single man was totally wrong but for many years we chatted. While the married man said to me that if I left it would never be the same again.
I accepted that taking his meaning that he would never talk to me again.
I realised what a fool I was to even consider the first one, and wished he had never come back into my life again.
Then he dumped me for another. Apparently I was not ‘spiritual’ enough for him, yet he would refuse to do bible studies with me enabling me to grow. What sort of Christian man does that? None that I know of. So that ended.
In the meantime the married man got on with his life and one day when I was going through my phone numbers I found the number of the married man.
I phoned to see if my number was blocked or what, he answered and was happy that I called.
Soon after we resumed bible studies, going in depth with them. I am sure it blessed the both of us.
I never would have done anything to come between him and his wife as that is not right, but recently he announced that he was telling his wife that it was finished, there had been problems in the marriage from the very start and he realised that she had deceived him by not joining together with him as a man and woman should.
Lo and behold he found another. I always thought that one day if the marriage did fail completely we would get together only when the timing was right.
I told him that I did love him and he said it is only since he met another that I have said this,, but said, no you made your choice years ago when you left me for the other man. It is done!
We have been very ‘close’ over the years and I consider him my best male friend and he considered me his best friend. Suppose he will not feel like that about me again.
I have begged him to reconsider his thoughts about us, but said I killed it years ago, but would still study with me.
Today I feel like an absolute mess and guttered and wretched.
My marriage broke up 14 years ago and have not met anyone I would like to be with,, I am already 60 what is left for me now?
I feel childish and hopeless atm.
Hi Janet, I can imagine how you are feeling hurt right now. It can be so heart breaking to have expectations and then get let down by the poeple you love.
Tell me, do you feel like God was leading the choices that you made about these relationships?
WHY LIFE in my World always ended up being used…..betrayed? I AM TIRED …..with this people i loved always belong from a Disfunctional family. Living in a world of shame. I just had 2 serious relationship. First one then after 11years i thought i found the right one …… but …. even worst. Too PAINFUL …. First time I met an individual seems like very professional. An actress, a player but i think a whore. The question is…… How come that she’s been very very nice for the first 2 years. It’s a long distance relationship…..lasted getting 4 years. She LEFT me nothing at all in my identity. Physically i was abused with a broken bone behind on my head….. Mentally wait and wait and wait for her while on my recovery fron the hospital due to my stitches….emotionally after 12days she texted me saying I AM SORRY I AM WITH THE MAN of MY LIFE… and before we get parted at the airport….. Finacially 100% on her stay with me i shoulder it til gave her money for her bills to pay when she get back to her place Australia. Now….. I really don’t know….. To think she knows that my dear mom of my life just past away. I CAN’T BELIEVED IF SHE IS A HUMAN BEING.
good article and yes Esther I am agree with you on your comments I do have trouble trusting people thank you for all of the comments good comments too
I have a messed up view of love. I fell in love once, but it was marly physical. I was still not satisfied by the love that I had. I continued to seek out love from other boys and was left extremely wounded. When the guy I loved found out about what I had done, he left me, and rightly so. I guess that I still hold onto a lot of that guilt. Even though I have accepted the love of Christ into my life, I believe that it is my wrong actions that make me unlovable. I believe that since I continuously fall and make mistakes, that I am unlovable. I want to be loved, and I want to believe that I am loved, but I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that Christ loves me for who I am. I believe that love is conditional and I don’t know how to change. I want my soul to be satisfied by Christ, but I believe that I am defined by my right actions, and therefore when I don’t make right choices, like spending time in the word or in prayer, that i am not loved.
Thank you for your response Aisha
av bn in a rlxhip sacrificing al i could for 1year bt av never got any lov in return until recently i spotted a gal i thought was ma main chick is dating 4 men at ago!!bt always claiming dat she lov me only wants to dig up man frm them,, am confused plz help do i quit?
HI Brian, why would you want to remain in a relationship where you are 1 of 4 guys? I don’t know how that could ever lead to a fulfilling healthy relationship. What is it about this girl that you love?