How do we love our enemies?
We do not intend to have enemies.
We think loving them means a personal emotional attachment to someone or something that may have caused us a great deal of harm and pain.
If we are responsible people we have learned, or are learning, how to navigate life without harming others, and we do this to the best of our abilities.
Sometimes however, despite our own good intentions and efforts, we find ourselves in a relationship with someone who is not mature, who does not care to be a responsible person.
These persons are self involved and are looking for any excuse not to develop maturity. They may even proudly announce their immaturity, elaborate on the reasons for the lack of maturity, which they believe are justifications, and declare the expectation that others will just have to put up with their poor behaviors and its consequences.
This is the curious position of the victimhood mentality which is so prevalent today. There is an excuse for every poor behavior and an expectation that everyone else put up with and continues to allow these behaviors.
If a person is rude, disrespectful or just plain nasty, in a public non personal environment, we may well be able to brush it off. We do not need to return to the place where we were met with poor behavior, and we may choose to view the situation as a lesson learned.
The difficulty arises when we have some sort of attachment to that person. If we want to disassociate from someone’s harmful and abusive behavior and we are attached to them, pain is inevitable.