jeudi 26 janvier 2012
Conditional Love
Very early in our life as children, we believed we would be better loved if we complied to the wanting of our parents by being proper, kind, intelligent, hard working, industrious. Though the parental and filial love is amongst the most unconditional (love stays for the rebelled son, for the abusive father, for the failling mother, for the astray daughter), there can be in all those relations a game of swindling love that makes us believe that the affection is proportional to the submission.
"I'll love you more if you give me what i want; I'll love you better if you do what i want."
We encounter this belief in most of the love relationships where the behaviors are conditionned by the need to be approved and the fear to be rejected. Our "I love you" then mean : "I'll love you if you... I love you when you... "
Even farther, conditional love becomes countable love, barter love.
"I listened him, now it's his turn to listen to me, i can count on his care when i'm sick; I gave him my help, my time, i'm waiting for the same in return. If i take care of his pleasure, he'll take care of mine; If i accept to make love, he will love me; If i show feelings, i'll get his desire."
My "I love you" then say : I still love you because you owe me... You owe me all that you didn't give me... "
The affective accountancy is paradoxical, it carefully sums up all that never happened. It asks quittance for the refusals, the non-answers. It charges for all we didn't receive. It demands sometimes that the other stays in debt, which allows us to continue to make him feel guilty.
Jacques Salomé "Aimer et se le dire" (raw translation from the french book)
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I agree with this theory, I think it's true. That's why people seek to be loved elsewhere, outside the family, because family love is based around guilt and debt. The problem is, since that's all we know from the start of life... the same guilt and debt can happen in relationships with people outside the family.
RépondreSupprimerExample: "I'm unhappy at my job."
"Why don't you just quit?"
"I can't because I owe my boss, for his being nice for hiring me."
Classic example between intimate relationships:
"You never touch me, do you not like me?"
"If you loved me you would ...."
the word "love" is abused in those cases, because what it really stands for is gratefulness, appreciation, a contract, an exchange of services.
RépondreSupprimerYeah actually he says it at the start of the chapter :
RépondreSupprimer"Love, word so vast that it becomes 'catch-all', word that designates every positive impulse, that this attraction is turned toward french fries, Woody allen's movies, god, a child, or toward our partner.
Our couple loves are composed with miscellaneous ingredients, in proportion and combination infinitely variable.
Our "I love you" hatch from very different feelings, and carry a multitude of meanings. To each love, it should be added a qualifier which would allow to get the dynamic that we propose, to better hear the movement and direction of the feelings."
and what we all learn as children we apply then in every relation, and so a lot in couple relationships, and the satisfaction we sometimes get from those needy relationships only feeds the ego, which will be never satisfied and intimately related to the sadness of frustration we experience when what we expect isn't comming, that function is so common and so sad for those trapped into it.
'If you don't do what I want it means you dont love me...' It's really interesting how much emotional blackmail is involved in relationships. I guess at the end of it we want to be loved to validate ourselves and level our own haunting insecurities!
RépondreSupprimerExactly Sir... Miss?!... well Exactly! and the saddest is that most of the time people are unaware that they use tricks to get a bit of affection or recognition only to soothe their own fears and insecurities.
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