Love And Neurosis

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Yesterday I gave a lecture about love, at the end of which a woman came up to me and clarified in disappointment, “This is how it turns out to love, it’s to act in a certain way, in general, something calm, coming largely from the head, what we do and choose ourselves … Some kind of calculation comes out? But what about flight? How to take your breath away? " "And smeared on the wall, right?"

We all love. As we can. How did you learn. Most often on the example of their own parents. Sometimes hysterical, sometimes cruel, sometimes traumatized, lonely, squeezed. A child loves his parents, and when he receives aggression, screaming, criticism, indifference from them, then the link "love is when …" occurs: they beat, leave alone, demand, force, suffer (emphasize the necessary). Then we go out into the big world: to kindergarten, to school (our big corn), to the world of cinema and fiction. And there, too, we recruit something - as lucky as anyone. And a certain formula of love is formed, which we take as the truth, a certain ideology that describes what love is, in what it manifests itself, what needs to be done in order to be loved, what cannot be done, what is permissible and what is not (or maybe, if this is love, then everything is possible, because loving …). And even if after life repeatedly throws up facts that destroy "truth", we cling to it with all our strength, bursting at the seams, because it is extremely difficult to rewrite what was written in childhood.

By adolescence, when a hormonal storm hurls us in streams of poorly realized and controlled emotions, we fall in love. And then love for a non-native person ceases to be something abstract, it becomes about us.

So:

or so?

or maybe so?

A personal love scenario that unfolds as a happy or unhappy love (with anguish or calm, reciprocal or unrequited), as a rule, is consonant with our relationship in childhood with a parent of the opposite sex, as well as the pattern of relationships between parents. If the girl's father was cruel to her, then in adulthood she will simultaneously be afraid of men and reach out to those with whom the relationship promises to be more painful. After all, love and cruelty from early childhood are linked together. Also influenced by how she saw the relationship between mother and father. Or if the mother was divorced, what messages did the mother give regarding men. For example, "all men need only one thing", "men are scoundrels, do not trust them", "the most important thing is appearance" or vice versa "the most important thing is the inner world" … In any case, the child receives certain frameworks, guidelines that follow in the future and which, alas, he does not always subject to his own criticism, he questions.

If the parents swore, were cold, restrained, or, on the contrary, hugged each other, supported, gave gifts, then this is the model that is taken as the basic, familiar one, the one in which the girl or boy, woman or man believes and is looking for.

Unfortunately, most people grow up in families where everyone was not so much happy in their own way as unhappy in their own way. That is why in our adult life we carry a "suitcase without a handle" filled with cruel parental messages, lack of faith in ourselves, low self-esteem, illusions and many other rubbish that we would leave, but it’s a pity, or we don’t know how …

We are in love and we are afraid. We are afraid that we will not be good enough, that our friends / business / hobby will be more important than we are, we are afraid of being rejected. We are afraid that they will not love us or stop loving us. After all, in the end, when it comes to love, then more often than not most of us are concerned with being an object of love, and not a loving subject. In other words, we want to be loved. And we rarely think about our own ability to love. Although the answer to the question why no one loves me is extremely simple, because you do not love anyone.

You do not love, starting with yourself.

But how is it to love? What does the notorious “love” mean, which psychologists constantly repeat?

There is probably no more confusing and foggy concept than love. Everyone invests in it his own: from the feeling of butterflies in the stomach to heroic self-sacrifice and clinical idiocy nurtured by popular music and television series. Sometimes love seems to be a kind of magic wand: love will come and all problems will disappear. Prince Charming will kiss and I will wake up …

But love does not come, we do not find it in relationships, but we bring it with us. Therefore, many may not worry - love does not threaten them.

And what then comes? What happens to us? Falling in love (attraction, passion) happens, which we biologically laid down with the main purpose of procreation, and lasts up to three years - exactly as long as it takes to bear and feed a child (under the protection of a "strong male in love"). Falling in love takes us entirely, blinds us. Being in love, we see not a real person, but the image we have created, our own fantasies - "I blinded you out of what was, and then what was, I fell in love." Popular wisdom says: "love is blind, and the goats take advantage of it." We invent a "hero of our novel", ascribe the desired qualities to him, and then we are indignant, angry, offended that he does not correspond.

Wounded at the break of fiction and reality, some especially persistent continue to believe in their omnipotence to remake another (out of a feeling of love), blaming themselves and losing months and years of their lives. For fear of being completely alone or alone, we "eat from the trash bin" again and again. Although love for oneself, if only a little to allow it to be, would have demanded to leave long ago, at least out of a sense of respect and care for oneself (oneself). To love yourself is to start to stop eating what poisons you: to communicate with those after whom you feel bad, not to do what takes away your strength, to disagree externally is not what you do not agree to internally.

The fact that the two have been waiting for each other all their lives, fell in love at first sight and cannot live a day without each other - this is not love, but neurosis. Usually the strength of such "love" is proportional not to the ability of each of them to love, but to the degree of unbearable loneliness.

In addition to biological function, there is another treasure that falling in love gives us - a fantastic sense of vitality. We feel alive. And the less a person allows himself to live generously, to desire, to do what he really wants, the stronger the feeling of being in love carries him. Falling down (and it certainly happens, because falling in love is short-lived) in such cases is extremely painful. In other words, the more boring and fearful life you usually live, the more needs you displace, the greater the chance that one day you will project all your desires, dreams, fantasies, aspirations onto one innocent person.

Falling in love and passion is dangerous for someone who does not know how to love.

Alain Eril, a French psychoanalyst, calls love a constant and attraction (or falling in love) a variable. It is in love, and not in love, that the core and taste of life. And unlike poorly controlled falling in love, love is what is in our hands, our position in life, which we choose for ourselves.

Love Is not a feeling. Among the basic feelings (given to us as a human species, and these are: fear, joy, print, surprise, interest, anger, disgust), there is no love.

« Love - not a sentimental feeling that any person can experience, regardless of the level of maturity he has reached,”writes Erich Fromm in his excellent book The Art of Love.

Love - this is a way of interacting with the world, requiring from a person inner maturity, kindness, wisdom, patience, effort, readiness to be alive, open (and accordingly vulnerable too). This is a way to relate to yourself, the world and other people. Relationships of kindness, acceptance, willingness to invest and invest. Love, unlike falling in love, is sighted, there are no illusions in it. In love, we see and accept ourselves and other people as they are. Choosing for close relationships those who also treat us with kindness, who show respect, who are ready to share responsibility.

Love does not seek to remake. Love is inherently accepting. Love is where we feel good, where they do not try to make someone who we are not, but they see the best that / who we could become, while remaining ourselves. If you feel bad in a relationship, it's not love. If you feel insecure in a relationship, that’s not love. If the person with whom you are close is a “distorting mirror”, where you see flaws, where your self-esteem decreases, and you don’t like yourself, this is not love. If you yell at your loved one, criticize him, want to rule, this is not love.

Let's call a spade a spade. Addiction, fear, lust for power, possessiveness, habit, but not love.

Much prevents us from loving. For example, comparisons. A neighbor's husband drives an expensive car, but my husband does not. Or a friend has a son, a swimming champion, and my clumsy bespectacled man. And the presence of this machine (physical superiority, fur coat, erudition, a large bust, good marks for the test, etc., etc.) prevents us from loving (ourselves, a child, a husband, a mother, a father). For example, we walked on the sea and mentally talked with the child, fooled around, fiddled in the sand, and suddenly we hear a strange lady next to him say another, they say “my son at the age of seven is already fluent in those languages”, and then a failure occurs, we remember that mine doesn't even pronounce many words in his native language, and you have to take him to a speech therapist, and immediately we pinch, frown, and already speak with our beloved child a minute ago in some kind of mentor's voice, and we feel terribly lousy.

That is, it turns out that in order for us to love certain conditions are needed. “For me to love you, you must” (alas, this principle is well taught in many families, and almost everywhere in school).

We are afraid to fall in love with the wrong, unworthy, accidental. We are greedy for ourselves. We are afraid to praise (so as not to spoil), we are afraid to support (and suddenly he will become a rag), we are afraid to give our attention, care (so as not to be used), we are afraid to say "I love" when we wish it. We keep meager bookkeeping: “you - to me; I - you and nothing in advance. " But only the mind grows rich by receiving. The heart is when it gives.

Any love (love for oneself, a child, a woman, a man) presupposes an active giving position (giving, not taking), care, respect, knowledge and responsibility (E. Fromm). If I love myself, I take care of myself (my physical and emotional state), I respect myself, I know myself, I am responsible for myself. The same applies to the other person (however, with responsibility it will be more and more difficult, since each adult is responsible for himself).

Love is a choice that we make every day: paying attention to what is happening around us, seeing the beauty of another person, his needs, his features, and not our expectations for him. Loving yourself is doing good to yourself. Treat ourselves the way we want others to treat us. When it's bad, wrap yourself up in a blanket, pour yourself some tea, put on a good movie, your favorite music, take a good book, and not again and again weaken yourself in anticipation, unanswered SMS, readiness to run on the first call, agree that you are in reality does not suit at all, because "wow, such a flight of the soul, such selfless love."

Love is not dependence on another. Addiction is manifested in the fact that the other person is needed: I may feel bad, it hurts, I feel humiliated, but I need you. Love, unlike addiction, is free: I do not need you - I love you. I feel good with you, but I can be without you.

Self-love means allowing yourself to desire, to hear your desires and needs, to hear your feelings. To love another let him desire, to listen to his desires and needs, to hear his feelings. This is a kind of dance of two, sensitive, requiring slowing down, introducing bright details (if you want) by yourself, and not expecting that the brightness will happen by itself.

In love there is freedom, in love we can freely express ourselves, in love we like ourselves. In love we are on equal terms: I am good - you are good, I am good - the world is good, I am good - what I do well. But both freedom and a sense of equality are not what brings us love, but what we must initially learn in order to be able to love. In love, we can choose: what to be, with whom to be and how exactly.

Isn't it time to be bolder? It's time to love, not hide behind fears. It's time to talk about love in the language of love: the language of kind words, support, touch, gifts, the time we devote to ourselves, loved ones, beloved things …