When All You Know Is Heartbreak

I had a conversation with someone that struggled to understand how some women have a strong, almost desperate desire to be loved or in a loving relationship. They saw it as desperate to deeply desire to be loved, especially if that desire led them to settle in order to have the feelings that come with it. I understood what they meant as I've said for years that I couldn't be with someone for the sake of having a "warm body". However, I also come from a place of knowing what it's like to be deeply and genuinely loved by somebody, so I do not know what it is like to desperately want to experience feeling that way.

I can't imagine if all of your relationship experiences included feeling as if you were not treated right.

I'm currently reading Elaine Welteroth's new book "More Than Enough", that has left me incredibly inspired as the former Editor in Chief of Teen Vogue (only the 2nd black person in Condé Nast's 107 history to hold the title) shares her rise to the top of the magazine world. As inspiring as her story is, her transparency in her dating life was incredibly honest and at times painful to read. It was hard to believe someone so ambitious and accomplished was also able to admit that she made terrible decisions in relationships, including skipping her dreams of attending an Ivy League to follow her college boyfriend to a state school. While it's easy to chop that up as a teenage mistake, she continued to mirror similar decisions well into her "boss girl" days as a magazine powerhouse in the making.

This is why I understand that for some women, years of being hurt can ultimately lead them to simply desire to know what being loved is. For women that know nothing more than what it feels like to be used, taken for granted, hurt, cheated on, lied to, strung along, misled, broken, damaged and made to feel worthless, it is understandable that they may get to the point of just wanting someone to do right by them. It may come across as settling, but to me I see it as having a mustard seed of strength. To continue to desire at all after being repeatedly mistreated takes incredible strength. It's unfair to place these women in the box of "desperate" after they have endured years of damage and hurt that could dismantle them from even entertaining the possibility of receiving anything less than what they've experienced.

For women that desperately desire to know what it feels like to be loved, I pray that they turn from "settling" in anyway in order to do so. Their desperate desire to be loved is not an issue, but instead an opportunity to receive love that no man could ever provide. The first answer is for them to seek Gods unfailing and unmatched love. He gives the perfect measure to know how love should feel, explaining it clearly in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.

He knows that we desire love from man, and even confirmed in his word that he desires for us to all have a "helper" (Genesis 2:18). He first wants us to experience his agape love that only he can give, experiencing his 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 kind of love before seeking love from a man. Agape is defined as "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for man and of man for God". This kind of love is patient, delights in you, protects you, and keeps you as the apple of his eye. Once you receive this kind of love, your fullness and completeness will come from him, and not a desperate desire to be loved by man. We should not shame women for desperately desiring to be loved, but instead, redirect that desire to God so that he can bind up their wounds and show them a love that will never, ever hurt them.

Photo Credit: Ogo