Why do we hurt the ones we love?

This evening, or rather early early morning, I write with a heavy heart. One of my good friends is currently going thru a situation that I would rather not see her in. The situation itself is not particularly relevant, because playing the blame game in life gets you nowhere... at least no where productive. The only thing that blame is good for is to rhyme with same or name or tame or came or dame or lame or... man I never realized how many words rhyme with blame! Getting back to my point, blame merely establishes the "reason" why you should be mad at someone and at the same time excludes yourself from any responsibility; which I'm gonna venture a guess that 99% of the time you cannot completely nix yourself entirely of fault.

Getting back to my point- while talking with her I found myself searching for the answer of why is it that it seems we hurt the ones we love? And not just hurt them- but hurt them more powerfully than we do the ones we don't love. Obviously, I can only wholly speak for myself but I think that many of you will find that this rings true in your own life.

There are certainly some logical exaplanations of this:

1. We care the most about the ones we love and are therefore more opinionated when it comes to matters in their lives and decisions that they make. These strong opinions sometimes (often) ruffle feathers (to say the least) and create tension between the loved ones.

2. We spend more time with the ones we love thus creating more opportunities for something to happen that could cause a fight.

The kind of hurt that I am talking about transcends beyond these logical explanations. I am talking about malicious, thoughtless, disrespectful, and often unwarranted, actions. In our own mind, when we commit these careless acts, we feel justified, maybe even self-righteous, knowing that we have done nothing wrong.

So this sort of answers my question- we are angry- which someone once told me that anger is hurt, sadness, and fear, which when you break it down makes perfect sense. So we lash out because we are angry... so what?

I think this brings me to my next question- why, or are we, justified in the said acting out, which ends in the hurting of our loved one? Is it constructive? Does it help solve the problem? Does it make me feel better? While perusing my memory bank of instances where I am guilty as charged, I can honestly answer no to all the questions (well, maybe yes to the last one right in that moment). So when we know that this approach brings forth negative results, why do we pursue it?

I would say quite simply that it is because we lack the self control and wisdom. This is something that I am earnestly going to try and improve on.

While talking with my friend, my heart went out to her as she seemed so isolated and lonely, confused and frustrated, and apathetic and hopeless... and after contemplating these emotions, I think we can all agree that we feel some, if not all of them, after a loved one hurts us.

As my eye lids droop, I am not sure how to close this off. I want to say something profound but the only piece of advice that I can truly say is that when someone makes you angry, take the steps that you need to, to keep it from elevating. Sometimes it means temporarily and physically removing yourself from the situation; it may also mean that you say to yourself first what you were going to say to your loved one.

If I may just say this... make an honest effort to no longer maliciously hurt the ones you love. Time and life can be cruel and sometimes what we are left with, is the love of our friends.