The 13-year-old
is being treated for a sexually transmitted disease.* Her parents are angry
with her and they blame the school for teaching about sex. The child tells her
therapist that she has always felt unloved: She thought her father left because
he didn’t love her. When mother remarried, “I felt she now had someone to love
her, but I still had no one to love me.” Don’t worry, readers. The cure is
simple: Her parents of course love her. They just don't know her particular “love language.”
Clients: Please
fire your therapist if he or she speaks of “the five love languages.” And
therapists, please find the appropriate curse words to break the hypnosis of
your clients who have swallowed this bilge. Then again, that might be dangerous
for your practice, as ninety-eight-percent of all help-seekers apparently
have read this book, possibly the one self-help book they have read in the past twenty
years. Or did it materialize in their neocortex upon awakening one morning?
“I need to be
loved by someone who chooses to love me. . . .” “That kind of love requires
effort and discipline. It is the choice to expend energy in an effort to
benefit the other person, knowing that if his or her life is enriched by your
effort, you too will find a sense of satisfaction. . . .”
Maybe the
problem is that people want to work, while I don’t. I don’t want to work to
love.
“Love is a
choice.” No it isn’t. It is not an “effort,” it is not a decision to expend
energy. As Alice Miller said in her fatal diatribe against the Fourth Commandment:
“Genuine
feelings are never the product of conscious effort. They are quite simply
there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not
always apparent. I cannot force myself to love or honor my parents if my body
rebels against such an endeavor for reasons that are well-known to it.”**
(Please feel free to change “parents” to “spouse”.)
Actually, the problem is that adults and teens use the word “love” for a need that the past didn’t fulfill and the present can’t. The need is at its root a childhood, full unconditional one. Whatever the adult finds, it will never be the full, it will never be that quality. Therein lies the real compromise or “choice” and “energy”: We chance upon a plausible person then accept what he or she cannot do, where we are not loved.
Actually, the problem is that adults and teens use the word “love” for a need that the past didn’t fulfill and the present can’t. The need is at its root a childhood, full unconditional one. Whatever the adult finds, it will never be the full, it will never be that quality. Therein lies the real compromise or “choice” and “energy”: We chance upon a plausible person then accept what he or she cannot do, where we are not loved.
Love is not words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service or physical touch. That 13-year-old doesn't need a bicycle, a trip to Disney World or a dutiful hug, and neither do you. Love is a feeling. If you have it to give or receive, you are lucky. If you don't, you will find the five languages foreign to your heart.
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* Scenario and
quotes from The 5 Love Languages, Gary Chapman.
** Alice
Miller, The Body Never Lies, p. 20.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.