Please Don't Eat Me: The Longing for Unity

I am beginning to understand that the deepest longing of the human soul is a longing for unity, for connection, for oneness. I think this is what makes our relationships with others challenging and painful.

I want to be valued,

pursued

connected

part of something.

That deep longing, the deepest longing of my soul, because it is extraordinarily deep and strong, can with just the slightest movement become a demand. Instead of simply longing for oneness, I begin to demand it. The longing becomes a gnawing hunger.

You must meet my expectations.

You must give me what I need.

You must love me.

You must fill the hole I have that is crying out to be one with someone, with something.

Henri Nouwen writes about the pure longing for unity in his book Life of the Beloved:

Don’t you think that our desire to eat together is an expression of our even deeper desire to be food for one another? Don’t we sometimes say: “That was a very nurturing conversation. That was a refreshing time”? I think that our deepest human desire is to give ourselves to each other as a source of physical, emotional, and spiritual growth. Isn’t the baby at its mother’s breast one of the most moving signs of human love? Isn’t “tasting” the best word to express the experience of intimacy? Don’t lovers in their ecstatic moments experience their love as a desire to eat and drink each other? As the Beloved ones, our greatest fulfillment lies in becoming bread for the world. That is the most intimate expression of our deepest desire to give ourselves to each other.

Nouwen's beautiful vision of the purity of our desire for oneness is sadly not the reality of most of our relationships. Too consistently, we move from that purity to demanding that other's fill us, feed us. I've read Life Together many times, and Bonhoeffer's profound understanding of humanity amazes me every time. In the chapter on community, Bonhoeffer writes about this distinction between longing and demand, labeling longing "spiritual love" and demand "human love":

Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force... Human love makes itself an end in itself. It creates of itself an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything.

You must love me. This gnawing hunger within me demands satisfaction, and I will eat you until you have nothing left to give. How many of us have felt the other side of this?

That person drains me.

I just can't do this relationship anymore.

Please stop asking me. I can't give you what you want.

I have nothing left to give.

It is heartbreaking. It is exhausting. It drives us to shallower and shallower forms of connection with other people. Because going deep is draining. Going deep is painful. Going deep means I will be chewed up and spit out.

Please don't eat me. Or I will eat you.