Why do I always miss out? Why don’t people love me?

This post is for the Survivalist* thinker type, although the Idealists* can always struggle with this question, just that their answer is entirely different.

When people are children, they get love bestowed upon them automatically, everywhere they go (mostly). Everybody is nice to a child, everyone tells you you’re cute or precious, you’re amazing. And that’s the way your childhood should be. But when we grow up, these adoring messages will start diminishing, and they should diminish. Once we mature, love becomes earned. Gradually, we learn to do things that win people over, we make them laugh, we make them feel good about being around us, we learn to amuse, teach, comfort. We learn to arouse sexual attention and give sexual pleasure. And all of that that wins us love. We learn to give love, attention, and spread good feelings around us, and we get paid in love.

If you fail to mature in this sense, gradually, people will stop loving you. If you throw a temper tantrum when you’re not receiving enough attention or love, or when people don’t put your needs first, gradually ignoring you is no longer enough, you’re starting to draw a negative balance and people will want to get rid of you. They look away from you because you don’t GIVE anything. You only BRIBE people. You don’t give anything without expecting something, like love, in return. That is not giving, it is bribery.

You may begrudgingly do your chores and you make sure everyone around you know how much you are mistreated and how much love you are owed. Still, you don’t make anything better, nicer, or more enjoyable. You may make matters worse than they are, or make a perfect situation tainted by your negative presence. A child would be excused for being needy and attention-hungry, but as a grown-up, you’re supposed to not be entirely self-obsessed.

People don’t love you because you don’t love them. They don’t love you, because you assume people OWE you love. Because you haven’t accepted the fact that adult love is a reward for what you do for other people, and for doing it RIGHT by THAT particular person’s standard. Figuratively speaking; for knowing how they like their tea, even if they liked it completely “wrong”. Love is given to you because you actually make other’s lives more pleasurable by being in it. If you fail to do that, people will reject you. You’re not socialized properly.

If you were given everything automatically

Now, as an adult, do you remember stories you were read as a child of some princess or a prince who lived in the lap of luxury being given everything and anything her or his heart desired? They were complimented constantly, they had everything they wanted, and they turned bitter and resentful. Now, the moral of the story may have been that you have to be grateful for the things you’ve got because they may be taken away at any moment, but in reality, this reaction, this discontentment to freely given goods is a normal part of growing up. When you get everything too easily, everything loses its value. You, now, want attention, gifts, embraces, praise, and love for free because you’re not getting any. You realize that stuff has value. It has a meaning for you, and it does to everybody – once you learn and trust it’s not automatic. An adult shouldn’t be tempted by love meant for babies.

Babies and very young children NEED automatic, forgiving, all-suffering love. Their survival depends on it. Even the children that are not the most enigmatic, engaging, or talented, they, too, need that automatic love poured on them. When that child grows up, they are supposed to survive on their own, up to a point, at least. And it becomes up to each person to learn how to find allies or to survive alone. How to make friends. Inspire love and admiration – trust. If you can’t do it, it’s time to learn. The idea is to make the lives of the people you wish to keep around nicer. More pleasant and easier to handle.

And, another tricky part… You’re supposed to do this without actually expecting love to come out of it. Trust me you won’t have enough patience to get all the way to love if the only reason you do nice things to others is to be loved in return. You’ll have to care about other people without needing to be rewarded for it. You do stuff that others can enjoy because that’s what grown-ups fucking do. That’s what we do. Because that’s what being a grownup is.

And if you do it well, people will appreciate you for it. Because that’s what people do.

Be nice to be around. It’s not manipulative, it’s being… Nice.

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