Neurotic Need For Love

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

The topic we want to discuss here is the neurotic need for love. This is a well-known to every psychotherapist, the exaggerated need of some patients for emotional attachment, positive evaluation from others, their advice and support, as well as exaggerated suffering if this need is not satisfied.

However, what is the difference between a normal and neurotic need for love?

We all want to love and be loved, if we succeed, we feel happy. To this extent, the need for love, or rather the need to be loved, is not neurotic. The neurotic's need to be loved is exaggerated. If the people around him are less kind than usual, this spoils the mood of the neurotic. It is important for a mentally healthy person to be loved, respected and appreciated by those people whom he himself values; the neurotic need for love is obsessive and not picky.

Such neurotic reactions are very clearly revealed in the process of psychoanalysis, since in the patient-psychoanalyst relationship there is one feature that distinguishes them from other human relationships. In psychoanalysis, the relatively dosed emotional involvement of the therapist creates the opportunity to observe these neurotic manifestations in a more vivid form than it happens in everyday life: we see again and again how many patients are willing to sacrifice in order to win the approval of their therapist, and how scrupulous they are in everything. which may cause him displeasure.

Among all the manifestations of the neurotic need for love, I would like to highlight one that is quite common in our culture. This is an overestimation of love, characteristic, first of all, of a certain type of women. We mean neurotic women who feel in danger, unhappy and depressed always, while there is no one infinitely devoted to them, who would love them and take care of them. In such women, the desire to get married takes a form. They get stuck on this desire as hypnotized, even if they themselves are absolutely incapable of love and their attitude towards men is deliberately bad.

Another essential feature of the neurotic need for love is its insatiability, which is expressed in terrible jealousy: “You are obliged to love only me. By jealousy, we mean here not a reaction based on actual facts, but rather insatiability and the demand to be the only object of love.

Another expression of the insatiability of the neurotic need for love is the demand for unconditional love. “You have to love me no matter how I behave. Even the fact that in psychoanalysis the patient has to pay the psychotherapist serves as proof to the neurotic that the psychotherapist's original intention was not to help at all: "I would like to help, I would not take money." In their attitude to their own love life, similar ideas prevail: "He (a) loves me only because he receives sexual satisfaction." The partner is obliged to constantly prove his “true” love, while sacrificing his moral ideals, reputation, money, time, etc. Any failure to fulfill these always absolute requirements is interpreted by the neurotic as betrayal.

Another sign of a neurotic need for love is extreme sensitivity to rejection. Any nuances in the relationship that could be interpreted as rejection, the neurotic perceives only in this way, and responds to it with hatred.

In the end, the main question arises, why is it so difficult for a neurotic to satisfy his need for love?

One reason is the insatiability of his need for love, for which there will always be little.

Another reason is the inability of the neurotic person to love.

The neurotic is unaware of his inability to love. He usually doesn't even know that he doesn't know how to love. More often than not, the neurotic lives with the illusion that he is the greatest of lovers and is capable of the greatest dedication. He clings to this self-deception, since it fulfills a very important function of justifying his claims to love. It is this self-deception that allows the neurotic to demand more and more love from others, which would be impossible if he were truly aware that he really didn’t give a damn about them.

Another reason why it is so difficult for a neurotic to feel loved is through exorbitant rejection. This fear can be so great that it often does not allow him to approach other people even with a simple question. He lives in constant fear that the other person will push them away. He may even be afraid to give gifts - for fear of rejection. The fear of being rejected and the hostile reaction to rejection makes the neurotic move more and more away from people. Such people can be compared to people dying of hunger, who could have taken food if their hands were not tied behind their backs. They are convinced that no one can love them - and this conviction is unshakable.

The fear of love is closely related to the fear of addiction. Since these people really depend on the love of others and need it like in the air, the danger of falling into a painful dependent position is really very great. They are all the more afraid of any form of dependence, since they are convinced of the hostility of other people.

How can this neurotic need for love be understood with its constant exaggeration, pathological obsession and insatiability?

One might think that the neurotic need for love is an expression of an infantile “fixation on the mother”. This is confirmed by the dreams of such people, in which the desire to fall to the mother's breast or return to the mother's womb is expressed directly or symbolically. Their childhood story really shows that they either did not receive enough love and warmth from their mother, or that they were extremely strongly (obsessively) attached to her already in childhood. In the first case, the neurotic need for love is an expression of a persistent desire, by all means, to achieve maternal love, which they received less in childhood. In the second case, it looks like it is a direct repetition of grasping at the mother.

In many cases, the obvious interpretation is that the neurotic need for love is an expression of significant deficits in self-esteem. Low self-esteem, attitude towards oneself as the worst enemy, attacks on oneself are typical companions of such people who need love in order to feel safe and raise their low self-esteem.

Often, the neurotic need for love manifests itself in the form of sexual flirting with the therapist. The patient expresses through his / her behavior or dreams that he or she is in love with the therapist and is seeking some kind of sexual engagement. In some cases, the need for love manifests itself directly or even exclusively in the sexual sphere. To understand this phenomenon, we must remember that sexual desires do not necessarily express a sexual desire as such - manifestations of sexuality can also represent a type of orientation towards contact with another person. The more difficult emotional relationships with other people develop, the more difficult the neurotic need for love will be expressed in the form of sexuality. In such cases, sexuality is one of the few, and perhaps the only bridge, thrown to another person.