The real way that love hurts

 

How absurd it would be if a mistreated and deprived child were to look at the happy, confident students in her class and say: “While I have none of these gifts of life that chil­dren need and deserve, I am happy for them. I am happy that they have a wonderful life.” We know this would be a brain­washed or terribly neurotic child. She cannot be happy, for herself, for these children or for anyone. Yet adults say it as a rule of right behavior. An incest victim who can’t have chil­dren tells her pregnant cousin: “I’m happy for you.” A seriously ill man, the family scapegoat, says he is happy for his healthy sister, whom their mother preferred, who has a loving and stable home. He is deluding himself. The truth remains hidden because adults cover the fire of their childhood.

When we are not given the love at the beginning of life that makes us a whole person, later in life our uncon­scious will know that it is too late. Any love that we see then, any that is offered to us will trigger the pain of its deprivation. We will feel uneasy or even tragic when we are compli­mented. We will not feel comfortable with loving people.* One man I know, shamed by his mother through his childhood, at age fif­teen was praised by her for his expertise at tennis. He immedi­ately lost the ability to play brilliantly. His skill disappeared: His spirit left his arms and legs.

Many clients feel unworthy of love: They were made to feel they are unlovable and it is now too late: Love would send them hurtling back to their childhood fire, or rather, the vast desert of their starvation. A woman can’t believe her long-term boyfriend loves her. She accuses him of wanting other women though he is loyal. A man feels a reconditely bad feeling when his fiancée kisses him. We can’t charge these people to feel good about themselves. The only healing that comes will be from grieving, with convulsive tears, their loss of love to a therapist who cares about them. Then they may become a whole person.

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* This explains the phenomenon named in the codependency (or “dependency”) literature such as Robin Norwood’s Women Who Love Too Much: “If female, you are not attracted to men who are kind, stable, reliable, and interested in you. You find such nice men boring.” https://ta-tutor.com/sites/ta-tutor.com/files/handouts/ram167.pdf. That’s #15 on Norwood’s list. #1 is: “You come from a home where your own emotional needs weren’t met. Alcohol, drugs, compulsive eating or working, constant arguing, refusal to talk, and/or extreme rigidity were the norm.”