Love without Compassion is Possessive, Controlling, and Dangerous Compassion is the most important emotion in marriage and intimate relationships, contributing far more to happiness than love does. Relationships can be happy with low levels of love and high levels of compassion, but not the other way around. Why is compassion so necessary for love relationships? For one thing, it sensitizes you to the individuality and vulnerability of your loved ones. It makes you see that your partner is a different person from you, with a separate set of experiences, a different temperament, different vulnerabilities, and, in some respects, different values. In contrast, if you feel the intensity of love without compassion, you cannot see the person your partner truly is. She becomes merely a source of emotion for you, rather than a separate person in her own right. When she makes you feel good, she's on a pedestal. When she makes you feel bad, she becomes a demon. Love without compassion is possessive, controlling, rejecting, and dangerous. It will certainly lead to resentment, anger, verbal abuse, and emotional abuse, and, possibly domestic violence. (The lack of emphasis on compassion is why your anger management class or anger control course failed to improve your marriage.) Compassion, on the other hand, makes you protective, rather than controlling. The difference is crucial. When you're protective, you want to help her achieve what is best for her. Most of all, you want her to feel okay about herself. When you're controlling, you want her to feel bad for not doing what you want her to do. |