"We accept the love we think we deserve."

Frm. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky





I've never read the book, but I'm really planning to now. I first saw this quote on PostSecret and thought Well doesn't that sound just beautiful... I wonder what it means... . After subconsciously processing it in my mind for a while I think I finally get it now.

Some people don't know what love is supposed to be like. Some people can't even tell if someone cares about them or not. I remember in Health class we watched a video about a girl whose boyfriend became very abusive towards her, yet would always turn around and say he loves her after each time he harmed her. She would always come back to him. I remember that some of my classmates and I were shouting at the TV screen, telling her to just get away from him (or was it just me who was shouting? ...). The poor girl's friend was of no help; she told her that the boyfriend only hurt her because he loves her so much, and that she wished that her boyfriend would have that same kind of love for her (WTF??). We accept the love that we think we deserve.

We look at these people and call them idiots for not seeing the signs that they were in danger, but the quote explains it a little. In these people's minds, they don't see an abusive person; they see an abusive person who loves them very much. And until they get beat to a pulp, their view may or may not change.

Here's another way to look at the quote. A kid gets accepted into a group of people who are supposedly "cool". The kid thinks that these people really care about him, but in reality they couldn't give a sh*t about him even if they tried. They take advantage of his smarts and his parents' overwhelming hospitality, using him to get answers for the homework and going to his house just to escape theirs. In the kid's point of view, they do these things because they like to hang out with him, never realizing that these people are just using him.

If they did anything wrong to him, would the kid stop hanging out with them? No, because these people are his "friends" and you don't abandon friends like that. We accept the love we think we deserve.

But how can we tell what love we deserve when we're too blind to see that there's something better?