Faith Couch

It’s taken me years to understand what Eartha Kitt meant when she said she didn’t want to compromise.

I loved the sound of that when I was younger. Those words resonated with me deeply but I couldn’t grasp that concept as a teenager.

I now understand that her disdain for compromise was about self preservation. We misinterpret compromise to mean compromising ourselves, our values, shrinking, being quieter to acquiesce to others.

Oftentimes in our quest for love and to be loved, we adjust ourselves out of fear that we cannot be fully loved in the totality of our current existence. We reserve parts of ourself bc we believe that there is something too embarrassing, too weird, too hideous, too quirky that we cannot share.

In full love and honoring yourself, you cannot afford to compromise yourself. When we are truthful & hold space for the truth we allow others to be themselves.

We find ourselves in relation to people who we can only reveal parts of ourselves to & therein we meet limitations. There we can find contentment, but not complete freedom.

In Eartha Kitt's unwillingness to compromise; she grants herself complete freedom to be loved and to love deeply truly.

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I’ve heard people say they wish they could go back in time and never meet the person that they once said they loved. I could never wish that. People who have this sentiment try to apply the knowledge they have now to a situation where they didn’t have the language, tools, or agency they have currently.

In between the agitation, embarrassment, and shame, I hear their grief and pain. Grief for a relationship that they felt was unsalvageable and pain for a lack of love they received.

We forget that love is easy; that it flows.

When we try to drown others with love in hopes that their fundamental elements will change, it is not the care that we think it is.

Yes, people change within love, grow more refined in who they already are, but it is too difficult to ask and expect someone to change their fundamental values FOR love, for you. You can ask for change, but it is their inherent want that will drive it. The expectation that they will change at rate of your choice is not reflective of a loving space because of the subsequent punishment when they are unable to perform in your timeframe. Changing for themselves is exemplary of successful change in a relationship.

We aren’t doing ourselves or the people around us any favors in tolerating them under the guise of love. That act is in bad faith. Love is a choice of acceptance.

When I hear people with such disdain for their past relationship, I wonder if they know that they were operating In bad faith and sometimes utter selfishness. When we try to use love as a force to break, make, and mold someone into our dream instead of accepting them in that form then we open the door to inevitable pain and grief. Can we accept that we can love someone and they don’t have to change for us? It doesn’t mean they love us less.

When patterning and building relationships with people whose main components are only tolerable and not in alignment with your fundamental values, you will be disappointed and there will be dearth and imbalance.

There is always a choice to accept who someone is but it’s not a requirement. Interpersonal emotional violence is the expectation that they should be who you want them to be simply because you love them. The will and want to change has to be an innate want; a choice an individual makes for themselves, not something forced onto them. The force, not the love that exists, breeds resentment. It's our want that people be changed and transformed by our love which causes that.

Love in itself does not engender pain, agitation, embarrassment, and shame. It's our own disappointment when we cannot shape someone to fit our fantasy.