(…) if we don’t withdraw those projections, then the “love”, in inverted commas, that we initially feel for those who become our idols or ideals, inevitably turns to hatred, to conflict. Sometimes you stay in relationship with those people or you continue to live with them anyway. We all know of relationships, marriages, where people have stayed together just fighting for thirty years, battling because they have disappointed each other in their initial expectations. We also know of many marriages, many relationships, many people in communities who have worked through those painful early stages of learning to love another. They have withdrawn those projections and have learned to allow the other person to be who they are with their faults and imperfections, and to accept that person as they are and to know them as they are, and then really to be able to revere them and to love them. It is only when we can learn to accept others as they are, in their imperfection, in their sinfulness, in their weakness, in their infidelity; it’s only when we can learn to do that that we can really understand them as a sacrament of God, and our relationship with them as a means of realising our union with God.
( Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
