Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: teartracks on September 29, 2009, 11:13:26 PM
-
Hi,
http://www.naturalchild.org/sidney_craig/feelings.html
This explanation of the two kinds of love has been very helpful to me. See the full article and reference to Dr. Craig's book at the link above.
Love is experienced in two different ways: (1) as an inner feeling or sensation and (2) as a series of overt actions. The person who is "in love" is aware of certain feelings or sensations taking place entirely within his own body. These feelings as such cannot be communicated to another person, except through some form of overt action. The person who is loved can know it or feel it only as he is the recipient of certain loving actions toward him on the part of the individual who is "in love." Unfortunately, in the human species there is no instinctive or otherwise inevitable connection or relationship between the inner feeling of love and the kinds of overt actions that demonstrate the love. This means that it is entirely possible for a parent to love a child totally, inwardly, and yet to act toward that child in ways that do not reveal his love.
tt
-
Hi TT,
This reminds me of something I once read, "I love you isn't saying anything about you." When I begin to examine the whys, hows and whats of Narcissistic love, I can see how they would believe they loved someone. On closer examination their love might be defined as, how I feel when people see me with you (love as an important possession), how X sees me when I am with you (love as conferring status with an important person), how I feel when you go to sleep on time and don't cry (love as meeting my needs). As stated in the quote, the problem with all this "love" is that none of it says anything about perceiving the needs of the love "object" of supposed love.
I think you can profess feelings and engage in seemingly supportive actions without real love. Infants seem to have a deep awareness of who loves them the minute they walk into the room. A male friend of mine loves babies and they will reach for him the first time they see him...and then there are some people who immediately set off a cry of alarm.
-
This is like the riddle about "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?"
If they love you and it's all in their heads and they never show it, then does it really matter?
I think that is just pure laziness and a stupid excuse for narcissistic actions. They may say they love us, but real love is about action. It's about how you treat a person, not about what you think inside your own head.
Come to think of it, since N's seem to live almost completely inside their own heads, I can see how they would justify this kind of "love" and how it would make perfect sense to them.
This means that it is entirely possible for a parent to love a child totally, inwardly, and yet to act toward that child in ways that do not reveal his love.
I don't buy it. Love is as love does, IMO.
-
Love is as love does, IMO.
What she said. :D
-
Sealynx, You are soooooo right about the love being a reflection of the situation. Amazing how affectionate N's can be when someone is watching or listening. And then you look cruel when you pull away from an embrace or some other strange overture you are unused to having from the person...
-
Hi,
I wanted to bump this up and ask y'all to analyze what Dr. Craig says about the two types of love, without looking through the old 'narcissist spotter' lens. I think there is some deep truth in what he says that applies to everyday people who may not have had adequate examples or instruction on how to translate their feelings of love into effective actions of love.
This article (a different article) has a portion on how to make deposits into the love bank of the person for whom you have feelings of love. It's about how to turn the feelings of love into actions of love. http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3550_summary.html
tt
-
Hi Teartracks,
I read both of these articles. Looking at them in their entirety does not change my first impression.
I have no doubt that my mother thinks she loves me. None at all. She is absolutely convinced that what she feels for or about me is love. If anybody asked her what she felt toward me, she would in all honesty say she loved me.
Now, I am talking about a woman who abused me physically, emotionally, and sexually. She did awful things to me herself and allowed others to do awful things to me and did not allow me to defend myself. Her dealings with me have not been marked by love, but by pettiness, jealousy, cruelty and anger. No matter how much she said she loved me, the driving force in her life has always been to seek approval and to avoid disapproval and confrontation. I will admit she did many good things for me, the kinds of things that good and loving mothers frequently do for their children. She also did things to me that she would never allow anyone else to know about. And when I really needed her protection and support, she was not there for me.
So, to be honest, I really don't give a rat's tail what she says she feels about me. She can love me all she wants inside her own twisted mind. All I know is that when I needed her, she cared more about her own agenda than about protecting her daughter.
If that's love, you can keep it.
-
Hi Erin,
No, please! Had enough of the 'held inside only feeling love' already! I wasn't trying to convince you that your mother is not a narcissist or that you could possibly interpret her actions differently. You've endured an even more insidious dose of it than I. I've had my 7 years of hell and in no way would I wish you or anyone else to write off the miserable legacy of being loved by anyone who only loves you with feelings held within (self-nurturing, not other-nurturing), with no actions of love to back it up. Obviously, whatever 'love' your mother had for you was accompanied by plenty of non-loving actions. I'm sorry for that, Erin.
I don't want to saw the concept to death, but the purpose of my second appeal was to ask you and others whether you thought it possible for a person to simply be ignorant about the concepts Doctor's. Harley & Craig make, i.e., learning to make deposits into the 'love bank' (putting actions behind feelings) of the ones you love. People perish for the lack of knowledge. My point I think is that there are many people who have the capacity to love but simply don't understand how to translate their feelings into actions. Some of them, no doubt would be found to be narcissists. My contention is that some would be found to be lacking in knowledge and not narcissists at all. My heart cries for the second example and for the damage it causes (IMO, nearly identical results as that shown by narcissists) to what could be perfectly healthy relationships with a short course in how to demonstrate love by learning how to add loving actions to the feelings.
Let's say two farmers own land side by side. The land lies on a fertile strip. They have equal opportunity to grow bountious crops for it rains the same on both and the sun shines the same on both. Farmer number 1, ploughs his land diligently, spreads the seeds, which germinate popping through the soil exactly the way they're supposed to. Things look good. Farmer number 2 does exactly the same thing. The seeds pop through. Things look good. The only difference is that farmer #1 fertilizes his land. His farm prospers and produces a bountiful crop. The only difference is that # 1 farmer went to Texas A&M majoring in agriculture. Or maybe he comes from a long line of prosperous farmers where good farming principles have been taught throughout the generations. He has additional knowledge that farmer # 2 was never taught for whatever reason. So until farmer #2 learns to fertilize the land he has tilled, he produces inferior corps and ultimately loses what he has worked so hard at.
OK. I'll quit pushing my point! :lol:
tt
-
I don't want to saw the concept to death, but the purpose of my second appeal was to ask you and others whether you thought it possible for a person to simply be ignorant about the concepts Doctor's. Harley & Craig make, i.e., learning to make deposits into the 'love bank' (putting actions behind feelings) of the ones you love. People perish for the lack of knowledge. My point I think is that there are many people who have the capacity to love but simply don't understand how to translate their feelings into actions.
Teartracks,
I do think that one of the more pervasive myths about love is that love is a feeling, period. Many people seem to stop there, partly, I think, because the feeling is the easy part and the action is the part that takes effort: heart, head, and gut.
Love is complicated. I don't think it can be reduced to just an interal state and an external state. I know you like to reduce things down to their very essence, but I'm not so sure this can be done with love.
For instance, I can do something loving without feeling loving at that minute (such as give my husband a backrub when I really want to be playing online Scrabble). I can also do something with loving intention -- for example, helping my daughter improve her study habits so that in the future she struggles less -- that doesn't feel particularly loving to me OR to her in the moment. Then there are the times, the wonderful times, when the feeling of love and the acting on the feeling happen at the same time. And sometimes the most loving thing to do is to NOT act on your feelings of love.
I don't think it's possible to have only feelings of love and call that genuine love. To me, love has two parts, feeling and action.
M. Scott Peck writes about this much better than I ever could in "The Road Less Tavelled." Have you read it?
-
Hi Lollie,
Thank you for all you said. Lots of wisdom there.
[q]I know you like to reduce things down to their very essence, but I'm not so sure this can be done with love. [q/]
It is true. I really appreciate getting to the essence of things, and you're right, it's not always easy. Maybe there are times when it's not even practical. On the board though, we (me included) spend a lot of time talking around the ways we were or were not loved. Right now, I think I'm in the, IF YOU SPOT IT, YOU'VE GOT IT stage. And as has been the case with all the recovery/healing stages I've gone through, I need people here to walk with me through this stage.
Thanks Lollie.
tt
PS It's been a while, but I did read The Road Less Travelled. I probably need a review!
-
Teartracks,
This thread considers a very interesting question. I'm glad you asked it. I read Dr Craigs article and the thing that jumped out at me is that he seems to be implying that anger and love are opposites. That surprised me. I dont think that is true--as a matter of fact, I have found indifference to be much more the opposite of love. I am not even sure that you can say "hate" is the opposite of love.
I think that that many people DO love and probably even deeply and still express it very poorly. There are a lot of other emotions competing with love in most people's relationships. Those of us who had terrible relationships with our mother's may have been dealing with their own self-hate (it would be interesting to see how many of us are first daughters--I think that those might be affected most by lack of boundaries in relationship with mom). I think we also have to deal with our mothers/spouses fears: fear for us, fear of us. I have had very significant relationships where the other person's fear was expressed as anger. They could not deal with their own fears so they became angry at me--the person who made them face them. I dont think that they dont love me--but its pretty hard to feel it when in the middle of those strong emotions.
I really do think that some people are psychopaths and many of us here have had to deal with those types. But many of the people that I have relationships with that dont act in a loving way, are really not psychopaths, but flawed human beings that DO love, that do deserve to BE loved. I feel as though I have really grown in my ability to recognize that.
TT, I have been drawn to several of your threads recently but am so pressed in life right now--time wise, energy wise--I would love to sit down and really think and write about almost all fo them. Just wanted you to know that I can see that you are onto something and that there is a lot of growth happening in you right now. I have a camping weekend coming up, but maybe I can get back here soon.
Keep unraveling the ideas you are having I think you are onto something.
CB
-
Hi CB,
I see what you mean about Dr. Craig's views on anger/love. Right now, I'm in the deep think part of getting it, meaning the big picture of all the recent threads I've put up. It feels like they're all connected somehow. This new stage of search and understand started with a lifestyle change that prompted the thread, How is a child to know. The subsequent ones seem to be tied in some way that I'm not understanding yet. Your intuition is right, some significnt shifts are taking place in my understanding of life. It feels good for it's different from the 7 years of affliction. I no longer feel that my feet are not glued to the floor of the process. No doubt, I'm still in the process, but it feels like I'm in a refreshing stage of progress as well. It feels good. Right now, I'll hold judgment about Dr. Craig's views on anger. The last three paragraphs of his article are what spoke to me the most.
Those of us who had terrible relationships with our mother's may have been dealing with their own self-hate (it would be interesting to see how many of us are first daughters--I think that those might be affected most by lack of boundaries in relationship with mom).
I am a first daughter. First child. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the above, so maybe when you have a chance you can expand on it a little.
I really do think that some people are psychopaths and many of us here have had to deal with those types.
Oh yes, no doubt about that! Some of them practicing their trade irresponsibly and dangerously in highly responsible positions. God help us!
But many of the people that I have relationships with that dont act in a loving way, are really not psychopaths, but flawed human beings that DO love, that do deserve to BE loved. I feel as though I have really grown in my ability to recognize that.
Me too, CB and what a joy to see past faults and minister to needs, often the same needs I have.
TT, I have been drawn to several of your threads recently but am so pressed in life right now--time wise, energy wise--I would love to sit down and really think and write about almost all fo them. Just wanted you to know that I can see that you are onto something and that there is a lot of growth happening in you right now. I have a camping weekend coming up, but maybe I can get back here soon.Keep unraveling the ideas you are having I think you are onto something.[/i]
I appreciate the validation, CB. I look forward (if you have the time) to what you have to say.
Happy camping...
tt
-
TT,
I get what you are saying. I guess it is possible for some people to be just plain ignorant. My husband was like this. He had lousy parenting and never learned much about how to express love until I got hold of him. It was a long, hard time for both of us while we hammered out the differences in our expectations and so on. If we had not had our son, I don't know that we would have held out so long or tried so hard.
But see, even before we were a couple, we acted in ways that showed we loved each other. We were not trying to build a "love bank" or anything, we just acted as came naturally. I dropped everything at 10 pm and drove an hour to his house the first Thanksgiving after his first wife left him, because he was miserable and lonely. I had no concept of building a relationship or anything, I just did what a good friend would do. Even when we were kids, he would help me with my paper route so I could get done earlier and spend more time goofing off. This was nothing more than a nice gesture, with which he showed me that I was important to him and that he wanted to spend time with me. People who care for each other do stuff like this all the time. It is instinctual and effortless. It's just natural.
I don't believe you can love someone and NOT have some of that show through on some level. Even the articles you cited state that expressions of love are instinctive. How can you truly LOVE a person and then act selfishly, hurtfully, or even indifferently? If someone says they "love" somebody but they don't love that person enough to follow through in any way, shape or form, that that is not really love.
-
Hi Erin,
How can you truly LOVE a person and then act selfishly, hurtfully, or even indifferently? If someone says they "love" somebody but they don't love that person enough to follow through in any way, shape or form, that that is not really love.
Good points, Erin.
And what about the person who feels intense love inwardly, but has little sense of how to demonstrate that love. A good example is what Dr. Craig says about the parent who tells their child that they love them, hugging and kissing their children thinking that they are nurturing the child. Only to find that as the kids become adults, they abandon those 'loving' parents, go NC, or even as far as General Douglas MacArthur's son who changed his name, and identity burrowing underground metaphorically, even though by all accounts, his father loved him deeply. I know there is more to the whole idea of showing love effectively. I have read and believe that a large part of it is when the parent (Dr. Grossman writes about this) has enough insight to enter the world of the child. After all, a yearling child can't be expected to always or even occasionally enter the adult's world.
But more than that for the sake of discussion, I am more fascinated with Dr. Craig's definition of the two kinds of love. It seems pretty clear to me that certain personality types are more prone to the first definition he gives, that of feeling love inwardly without much external display of the love they 'feel' inside. Just by observation, I see people who seem to effortlessly understand and display the fullness of both of the two types he speaks of. From what I can see, those to whom it comes naturally are much fewer than those who show only the feeling type. That breeds another question, which is, Why is that?
Thanks Erin.
tt
-
Hi Teartracks
Erin says "How can you truly LOVE a person and then act selfishly, hurtfully, or even indifferently? If someone says they "love" somebody but they don't love that person enough to follow through in any way, shape or form, that that is not really love. "
I agree with Erin and will explain using my parents as an example.
My father had very little in the way of loving examples in his life as he grew up in an orphanage. He found it hard to demonstrate love, but he tried and got better at it over the years. He also instinctively acted unselfishly to me. He was naturally interested in my welfare and in me as a person. It was obvious he loved me and I never doubted it. (Unfortunately he died when I was 18)
My mother always professed great love for me, but would swing between bouts of being controlling to ignoring and indifference. Her years of emotional abuse coupled with her self absorption and her total indifference to me as an adult would suggest that the professed love is a figment of her imagination.
-
There is so much going on in this thread. Sheesh!
TT,
I wanted to talk about this for a second:
Only to find that as the kids become adults, they abandon those 'loving' parents, go NC, or even as far as General Douglas MacArthur's son who changed his name, and identity burrowing underground metaphorically, even though by all accounts, his father loved him deeply.
I didn't comment in your other thread, but I believe the author described this as "relentless love." The description bothered me because it smacks of euphemism. Was he overbearing? Controlling? Smothering? Was he forcing himself and his worldview on his son? Was he not hearing his own son's voice?
How can genuine love be relentless? If I tell someone to back off, whether they are expressing their own version of love or not, and they don't respect my request or my boundaries, no matter how much they feel they love me, they are not acting in a loving way, and therefore are not loving me. They are violating a boundary in the name of their feeling. A feeling that they may associate and describe as love, but is not.
I think people can easily fool themselves into thinking they are being loving. I do it myself. We are human beings, afterall, with our own agendas, wounds, assumptions, baggage. One of the greatest tasks of life, IMO, is learning to feel, express, give and receive genuine love.
And I think to divorce the feeling of love from the action of love and say they can exist separately is a mistake.
-
My mother has said she loves me and still does but does he words meet her action? NO!!!!! I can see after reading the various comments and facts about how NM could actually think she loved/loves her child but I have actullay felt like when I have told my therapist what my mother has done to me...neglect, emotional abuse and some physical abuse and then tell her my mom says she loves/loved me that maybe I am making this stuff all up, because just like a few of you, my mother would say she loved me and she was a good mother, but she doesnt admit the abuse and there is very rare happiness from my childhood, but she thinks it was all fine and dandy.I feel like I have to prove to my therapist that I am telling the truth and in all things I have feel that I have to make people believe me because I feel that if I dont get my point across they will think I am lying. I have become a great people pleaser because of her. My grandmother knows what has happened in my life and agrees but do you think she would admit anything either,,, no!It would make her look bad and peole would look down on her for having a daughter that behaved that way. My mother gets her N from her mom but my gram isnt nearly as bad as her. But i do distance my self somehat from my gram as well. It's all about my mom and her and she says "I wish you and your mom would talk, you'll be sorry if she dies or something happens to her." Sorry for the rambling...I got lost trying to prove myself again I think, but O knpw in my heart that my mom does not love me or my children. It all about her
-
My father had very little in the way of loving examples in his life as he grew up in an orphanage. He found it hard to demonstrate love, but he tried and got better at it over the years. He also instinctively acted unselfishly to me. He was naturally interested in my welfare and in me as a person. It was obvious he loved me and I never doubted it. (Unfortunately he died when I was 18)
My mother always professed great love for me, but would swing between bouts of being controlling to ignoring and indifference. Her years of emotional abuse coupled with her self absorption and her total indifference to me as an adult would suggest that the professed love is a figment of her imagination.
Binks, this is exactly what I was trying to say. My mother really really believes she loves me and my son, but when I really need her, she is never there. Her own agenda and convenience are more important to her than my well being. She can "feel" love in her own head until the end of time, but that will not make her into a person who truely loves me.
This statement about youdad really struck me, as it is just want I was trying to express: He also instinctively acted unselfishly to me. He was naturally interested in my welfare and in me as a person. He didn't have any formal training in modern psychological parlance; he didn't even have many good examples on which to draw. But he cared about you, and that caring and love dictated his actions toward you.
As to the example of the farmer: The first farmer is like somebody who really had some god examples or maybe took a lot of relationship counseling. He obviously knows his stuff. The second farmer is like Bink's dad. He didn't do as well as the professional farmer, but he did his best and got some produce from it. To really make the analogy complete, we need a third farmer. The third farmer will not till anything or invest any time. If he even has any seeds to plant, he got them free somewhere. He may go mess around in his fields sometimes and look busy, but there is no real effort and no commitment. His "farming", such as it is, is entirely in his own head. Come September, he will look out in his fields, see only weeds, and wonder what went wrong.
Back on the other board, we had a discussion going about how "she (NM) loved you in her own way." As you all know, "her own way" ranged from damn peculiar to outright abusive, depending on the mother. It seems to me this whole concept about loving someone only inside your own head and not showing any loving actions whatsoever is just another way to justify "she loves you in her own way."
-
Or more like justifying their Narcissistic abuse!!!! :?
Bones
-
There's probably a 4th farmer, too, who did everything exactly like farmer #3, except when she looked out at the weeds, said to herself, "What an incredible farmer I am..."
There's a torment in the culture about the word love. I spent a summer in France when I was young and remember being seriously amazed by the verb, aimer, which means BOTH "to love" and "to like."
Je t'aime...I love you.
J'aime bien le vin....I really like wine.
Je vous aimez....I like you OR I love you.
Je ne l'aime pas....I don't like it/him.
I believe this is right. Anyway, I remember thinking quite hard about what a difference it made that in their culture, there wasn't such a BIG DEAL about when "like" becomes "love", and how context and modifiers were necessary anyway to communicate what one meant.
I was there at age 17 and here at home, girls and young women would OBSESS over "I like him" vs. "I like him as a friend" vs. oh god, here it comes, ta daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa: "I love him".
Getting the verb out triggered a cascade of fantasy, unrealistic expectations, projections of Ward and June Cleaver...mental furniture rearranging. I think sometimes we never saw each other as people after that, there were so many measuring sticks.
I had a stoic old uncle, fundamentalist preacher, who never knew what to make of my radical UU divorced self. I really loved the old guy and had practically herniated myself to get his attention when I was a little girl. He'd make a GAME out of not smiling, so much that I'd feel a little hurt. But I still SENSED something real and kind was in there (his own training didn't show him affection) and I never decided he was "mean". Anyway, worlds apart in philosophy, theology, and politics....he was the only relative other than my parents who ever came to see me at college. (Of course, now that I think of it, my mother probably urged him into it.) I was touched though, very. He hated driving, hated travel, hated big cities. Braved them all to come take me out to lunch. And when I visited him later at their remote little farm, one morning he looked at me and said, "I nearly wore out the knees of my pajamas praying for your soul last night!" and I said, "Well thank you. That must be why I slept so well."
Uncle never said to me, "I love you". But I knew that he did. In every single way he knew or had been taught, he tried to show me what he believed love to be, and in some natural way, I sensed he cared.
So even though I believe many factors in my uncle's belief system were repressive, and in the larger cutlure, are fueling destructive divisiveness...old uncle was one person I know loved me. He was someone I respected a great deal, even while I would never yield my feminism or independence to his point of view. Because he spent every Saturday evening for years, year after year, in rural nursing homes, holding the hands of and singing old hymns to lonely, abandoned sick old people.
He could've talked all day about love, never did...but when I learned that about him, I knew who he really was.
Love is kindness.
Love is thoughtfulness.
Love is affection (which we don't recognize often, since the culture has obliterated touch boundaries and subtleties).
Love is sacrifice (not self-abuse, but choices that we feel organically right about, not brainwashed into).
Love is, in my church, "Respecting the inherent worth and dignity of every person."
love (I feel this here, it's like wanting to bless everyone),
Hops
-
Back on the other board, we had a discussion going about how "she (NM) loved you in her own way." As you all know, "her own way" ranged from damn peculiar to outright abusive, depending on the mother. It seems to me this whole concept about loving someone only inside your own head and not showing any loving actions whatsoever is just another way to justify "she loves you in her own way."
Absolutely Erin. It is not the unconditional love that children should get from their mothers.
Hopalong - I really liked the 4th farmer idea!
-
Hi CB,
I appreciate your observations about Dr. Craig's article. Simplistic is a good way to describe the articles. I haven't read his book.
Anyway, again, it was the last three paragraphs of Dr. Craig's link I put up that caught my attention. I love all the comments everyone has made. My concentration has been on the simplicity of his 1 & 2 explainations of love and trying to understand how he arrived at those conclusions. Everyone has made interesting and in my opinion valid points. Dwelling on this has made me much more aware of the necessity of acting positively on my inner feelings of love. Right now, it feels las if I am looking out on a vast field of possibilities. I like how that feels.
Am going on a long trip for several weeks. Will be out of the electronic loop for a while.
Thanks,
tt