How to Love Well

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image.  Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."
Thomas Merton

We all know of relationships in which one or both people will try to change in the other person the very thing that first attracted them to the other person.  Perhaps we have even been in those types of relationships ourselves.  It is ironic, but it is almost always the things that first attracted us that begin to get under our skin.  The well informed person, who becomes the person who talks too much.  I am sure you know what I mean.  Thomas Merton is right.  The only remedy is to let those people we love be entirely and perfectly themselves.  Truly, that is what we love about them.  And, we can expect the same back.  To be loved well enough that we are loved for our essence, and not for how we can change for the other person.