Why Being Loved Is Not The Same As Being Understood

Most people are looking for that one person whom they can love and who can love them – that one person who will be there for them, care for them and understand them. Being understood is often confused with being loved; the two aren’t the same.

Most people assume that those whom they love, they understand and that those who love them, understand them as well. The problem is that this is not always the case. Understanding and knowing someone is very tricky. People aren’t static beings – their personalities change over time.

Knowing someone takes a lot of work, just as does love. However, the more compatible individuals are, the more they will get to know and understand each other and the deeper they will fall for each other. The issue is that sometimes the more you get to know someone, the less you love what you see.

Do we need to understand people in order to love them? I don’t believe so. I understand that many individuals believe love to be some magical, otherworldly, spiritual experience. And sure, it is – sort of. But, in reality, love exists where everything else we experience exists: in our brains. Your brain is where you process information.

It’s where you experience the things around you, where you experience the way you feel, and where you experience love. Is there some tangible force that draws people together that we call love? Science says no. The reason I am bringing this up is to show that it is possible to be in love – or to believe that you are in love – with a person that you know absolutely nothing about. It’s fathomable that a person could fall in love with someone that is putting on a persona completely different from who they really are as individuals. Many people make a living doing so.

You can love someone whom you believe you know, whom you believe you understand, even when in reality you know nothing about that person. Because we are so keen on falling in love, we allow ourselves to be blind to the truth – it feels better that way. This is not to say that loving someone you don’t know and don’t understand is common, but if loving someone you don’t understand even the least bit is possible then loving someone you don’t understand completely is certainly possible.

I’d even argue that when we first fall for someone, we do so without really understanding him or her as an individual. We allow ourselves to fill in the gaps with our imaginations, creating a person in our minds who doesn’t actually exist.

It takes time to get to know someone and then understand that person. Hell, sometimes we know someone and still aren’t able to understand him or her. Understanding isn’t knowledge alone. Understanding is knowing and being able to relate – it’s being able to comprehend the logic that is behind the actions of the individual.

It’s understanding the thought process the person goes through. It’s basically knowing the way he or she thinks and why he or she thinks that way. You can understand someone without loving him or her, but when you understand and love a person it’s because you can relate to that person in some way.

This is the connection that we feel with the people that we have loved for an extended period of time. Time is necessary for understanding and loving an individual. The reason many relationships fail is that, with time, we either feel that we aren’t able to understand the person we love or that we aren’t able to love what we understand about that person.

What’s the trick? The trick is finding the ideal candidate. You can’t force yourself to love a person and you can’t force yourself to continue loving him or her once you get to know that person extremely well and understand him or her deeply. With knowledge and understanding comes a price: We often don’t like what we come to know and understand. This is why people fall out of love. This is where all the drama within a relationship originates from.

We don’t understand why the information we are coming across doesn’t match up with what we thought we knew about the person we love. Knowledge doesn’t always lead to understanding and without understanding, you won’t be able to love someone indefinitely.

Sooner or later, you will come to recognize the shallowness of your relationship for what it is and you’ll be forced to make a difficult decision: either continue lying to yourself or accept the facts and move on.

Photo via We Heart It
