Couples therapist reveals: What you can see better with your heart than with your eyes

Oskar Holzberg
See with your heart

In short: Can I add anything else to this sentence? You even have to.

And now in more detail: Sigh. Our hearts swell, even if we have read this sentence a hundred times, because it has been printed in over 140 million books. The essentials. What really matters, beyond the clatter of the world. What defines us. What we long for. But what we constantly lose sight of because it is not visible. Because love is more than a ring on a finger, closeness is more than cuddling on a double mattress, trust is more than a shared bank account. We can only experience what is essential by feeling it. It exists between us, invisibly, as what connects us. And where, if not in our love relationships, do we look with our hearts?

But now comes the twist, the catch. Because as true and moving as what the fox says to the little prince is, it is too rosy as the sole guideline for our love life and we get lost. Just like Mrs. G., who saw that the man who had just walked into her life appeared to be a bit wide-legged. He was rude and harsh to their children, completely rearranged the living room on his own, and remarked angrily during arguments that he had broken other people’s noses for trivial reasons. The friends warned, but Ms. G. wanted to stay true to the basics. The good she felt with him. Just follow your heart, when otherwise we always look at, think about, think about and examine everything.

A year later she had a gun in her purse. She had met a violent man who stalked and threatened her despite court orders. Her fear of him slowly faded, but her terror of herself remained. She hadn’t looked so she wouldn’t have to give up her belief in love. Even as a child, she had to overlook her parents’ ruthless strictness and constant unreliability in order to continue to believe in their love.

The danger of romance

Because we all want to believe in the good and love in us as humans, we love this sentence from Saint-Exupéry. Because we want to believe that our little seeing heart is our compass that guides us safely through life and leads us to the best of all possible partners. Our romantic view of love seduces us. We naively cling to the fact that love lasts forever. And when it disappears from our relationship, it is no longer visible to our eyes. And we have to stick to what’s important and trust that our partners don’t mean what they say. And that love continues to exist underneath all of this, only accessible to our hearts. But this is how we end up in what we now call “toxic relationships”.

The essential is invisible. But we learn what is important to protect ourselves through our senses. Sometimes we need the eyes of close friends and family to see it. The encouragement to follow our hearts and not our minds, which are fed by our senses, touches us. But love doesn’t mean closing your eyes. That was certainly not what Saint-Exupéry meant.

Bridget