Near enemy.
"A near enemy is a bad quality that masquerades as a good one, allowing someone to believe they are doing the right thing by exhibiting near-enemy behavior"
I heard this the other day and found it to be incredibly profound. Their example was the inability to set appropriate boundaries, masked as love. It made me reflect on my life and my friends life and the pain we have faced because of relationships with people we "loved" or who we thought loved us. And I realize now, how often we believe someone is so incredibly meaningful and important to our lives, that we truly love them and they "love us in their own way", when really it is self-perpetuating dysfunction that is hard to escape from but rarely missed once free.
How many behaviors in our lives are our near-enemies, masking themselves as intimacy, success, love? The socialized aggressiveness of males, the violence we see in our culture, the inappropriate sexual relationships people have where they are emotionally unfulfilled and abused, among others. These are so easily masked as positives; masculinity is supposed to demonstrate strength and competence, but in reality is often undeserved success and undermining. Women in relationships where they are not equals is seen as religious adherence, femininity, nurturing but in reality is their subjugation, domination, and disrespect.
We all deserve more than what our near enemy leads us to believe, yet it is so cunning, so deceitful, we can rarely face it and see it for what it truly is, a menace and destructive force in our life.
I heard this the other day and found it to be incredibly profound. Their example was the inability to set appropriate boundaries, masked as love. It made me reflect on my life and my friends life and the pain we have faced because of relationships with people we "loved" or who we thought loved us. And I realize now, how often we believe someone is so incredibly meaningful and important to our lives, that we truly love them and they "love us in their own way", when really it is self-perpetuating dysfunction that is hard to escape from but rarely missed once free.
How many behaviors in our lives are our near-enemies, masking themselves as intimacy, success, love? The socialized aggressiveness of males, the violence we see in our culture, the inappropriate sexual relationships people have where they are emotionally unfulfilled and abused, among others. These are so easily masked as positives; masculinity is supposed to demonstrate strength and competence, but in reality is often undeserved success and undermining. Women in relationships where they are not equals is seen as religious adherence, femininity, nurturing but in reality is their subjugation, domination, and disrespect.
We all deserve more than what our near enemy leads us to believe, yet it is so cunning, so deceitful, we can rarely face it and see it for what it truly is, a menace and destructive force in our life.
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