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What is love? (part two)

Transference

Love is the unconscious expression of longings, desires and hopes onto a person who ‘fits’ because of who they are and who you are to them. This mutuality of hoped for experiences, combined with sexual attraction, results in a powerful combination of emotions and physical desire which we call falling in love. In simple terms, transference is a repetition of old feelings, desires and fantasies onto someone in our present life. Therefore, love will always have a transferential element to it.

We fall in love not only with the other person but also with what they mirror back to us about ourselves. Lovers mimic many of the early experiences of mother and baby, such as the loving gaze, facial expressions, sounds and touch, as we once again experience the bond in which we felt loved and safe. If we didn’t, then the longing is for the experience we never had.

Lovers merge as they become highly attuned to one another in a natural process of forming an attachment bond. The other becomes the most important person in our world and we become completely immersed and preoccupied with them. This goes back to how humans live, survive and procreate, and therefore the process of forming a bond becomes the most powerful drive. This is why love can be so intoxicating, all-consuming and painful at the same time. The early stages of falling in love are fragile. Both parties are open, vulnerable and full of hope. But because of such fragility, there is a parallel experience of being out of control and deep uncertainty. Will this feeling last? Will they keep loving me, being attracted to me? Am I a loveable person? Can I hold their interest? Etc. These are questions about potential loss, and fear of disappointment and hurt.

Falling in love and loving

The initial stages of a relationship often start with an idealisation of the other, followed by gradually getting to know the other for who they really are, rather than the idealised version. This process of getting to know each other takes a long time and is more realistic.

Partners will either stay together or separate based on their compatibility, life circumstances and desire to continue the relationship.

Over time, love grows, changes or dies, depending on many factors at play in relationships. How we were loved and taught to love in childhood will have a major impact in our adult relationships. And whilst upbringing and attachment style matter a great deal, how we grow and develop in adulthood carries a lot of weight in how we do relationships. For instance, someone may come from a family which was dysfunctional and decide that they do not want to repeat this dysfunctionality in their lives. They are determined to work on the relationship with their partner and their children, as opposed to sleepwalking into repeating their family history.

Loving is intentional. The decision to stay in a relationship needs to be made again and again throughout its life cycle.

Loving more than one person

Fortunately, or unfortunately, love does not constrain itself to our social rules of marriage, monogamy and ideas of romance. It is possible to fall in love and be attracted to more than one person or multiple people, either in succession or at the same time. The capacity for multiple types of love, or loving more than one person at once, can also be linked to the family environment and upbringing. Some children grow up with multiple attachment bonds, whilst others grow up with one or two primary carers. Parents, extended family and siblings all influence our capacity to form bonds and love. The beliefs and values we grow up with also impact our view of multiple love bonds and the extent to which we will allow ourselves to love more than one person at once.

Love in long-term relationships

Helping love to continue and flourish in long-term relationships can be a challenge. It requires ongoing effort and intention. Couples need to cultivate positive habits that nurture the bond they have. Everyone does this differently and some unfortunately not at all. As couples drift apart and become habitual in their way of relating, the relationship can die a slow death.

Sex and non-monogamy

Sex and sexuality can be used as expressions of our aliveness and our relationship with self and other. The ability to feel pleasure and desire says a lot about our ability to engage with life and our capacity to feel alive. Partners may differ in their sexual preferences, levels of desire (for one another and other people), and capacity for pleasure.

As partners levels of desire and preferences change over time, they must navigate these changes within the relationship and find new and creative ways of living a sexually and emotionally satisfying life. Some couples choose to open their relationship and experiment either alone or together with other people. Although affairs continue to be treated as taboo, humans have always found ways of meeting their sexual and emotional needs
through illicit or open extramarital relationships. There are many and complex reasons for engaging in sex outside committed relationships. This can range from a step towards leaving an unhappy marriage/partnership or wanting to inject life into one which has become stagnant.

Falling in love, being in love and learning to love

Whichever of the three phases you are experiencing or wanting to experience right now, couples or individual psychotherapy can be a good place to explore these feelings. Some of the common reasons people seek relationship therapy are:

  • Beginning a new relationship and not wanting to repeat old patterns.
  • To explore early family relationships which impact present ones.
  • Marriage counselling or couples therapy to help couples who are struggling to communicate and/or keep their relationship alive.
  • To discuss non-monogamy and explore differences in sexual preferences and levels of desire.
  • To discuss life transitions and their impact on relating.
  • To learn to love, stay in love or even fall in love.

 

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Clinical Superviser, Leadership Coach and BHP Co-founder. She works with individuals and couples in Lewes and Hove.

Further reading by Sam Jahara –

Radical self care as an antidote to overwhelm

The adult survivor of neglect and abuse – lifelong considerations

There are no shortcuts to growth

5 good reasons to be in therapy

The psychological impact on children who grow up in cults

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What is love? (part one)

Perhaps a question that has occupied humans since the dawn of time, it may seem like an odd title for an article, however, the answer to this question in psychological terms is profound.

What love is not

Firstly, love is not really what most people believe it to be; the opposite of hate.

Love can only really exist in the context of a relationship whether with ourselves or another. In fact, it is a prerequisite that we love ourselves in order to be able to love another. And loving ourselves has itself a prerequisite, which is that we have internalised the felt experience of being loved by another. Love begets love.

Love is also not the same as falling in love. Falling in love is generally a phrase that we apply to romantic relationships. It is a powerful and wonderful experience filled with a range of diverse emotions that make us feel quite ‘out of sorts’, and in presentation can be a little akin to psychosis, in the old-fashioned sense of the word – we do not see the other as they are, but idealise them to the extent that we can ignore reality.

Therefore, love is neither the absence of hate, nor is it idealisation, which is really another way of saying the same thing.

The opposite of love

Returning to the question of what is the opposite of love, it is indifference.

Indifference implies no relationship. Now, this may be all well and good in the context of others with whom we have no contact – people we pass in the street – but relationally, indifference is problematic.

Indifference towards someone with whom we are supposedly having a relationship means that we are unable to care about them. We are unable to relate to them as a separate human being who has their own set of thoughts, feelings and needs.

In relationships where there is an indifference towards the other, the relationship is inherently based on power and control dynamics in lieu of love. This would also psychologically constitute a sadomasochistic relationship, one that is based on a need for the other rather than a love for the other.

Such relationships are rigid, uncompromising, unsatisfying and based on fear of abandonment rather than on freedom.

What love is

Put simply, love is the capacity to value another, despite a lack of control over them and an acknowledgement of difference.

Love is the capacity to tolerate frustration and disappointment in a relationship.

And real relationships are the integration of both love and hate.

Who can love?

Human beings are relational in nature, meaning that we are born into relationship with our mothers. Like other mammals we develop in utero and are dependent on the relationship with our mothers for our survival – and more so and for a longer duration than any other mammal.

It is through our relationship with our mother (or primary carer) that we learn about love. Through being loved we learn that we are lovable and therefore worthy of love. We learn over many years to love ourselves and then with this comes the capacity to love others. That’s if it all goes to plan.

Infants cannot love and nor can some adults

Most people tend to idealise babies seeing them as lovely, sweet and adorable. However, babies are little tyrants. Babies and young infants are entirely consumed with their own needs. They have no capacity to love their mother, father or anyone else – they simply need to be loved. That does not mean they don’t form an attachment to us or that they don’t need us – on the contrary, they need their mother for their very survival.

However, an infant never wakes in the night and thinks to herself: “My mother is asleep so I will put off needing a feed for another hour so she can get some rest”. They simply cry. Over time infants must learn about surviving feelings before they develop the capacity to love, and one of the main feelings they must contend with is frustration.

Mothers frustrate their infants enormously, in that despite the fantasies of the young child, they have no control over their mother. They can cry, scream and make a mess but ultimately it is up to the mother when she appears and if at all.

Most mothers do appear, but not magically at the exact moment the infant needs her. This presents the infant with a problem. The young child, in order to cope with feeling helpless and impotent, initially constructs a story of the perfect mother. When this jars with reality as a result of the ordinary failings and humanness of her mother, the solution for the infant is to create two mothers: one good and one bad.

The two mothers – love(d) and hate(d)

The infant creates this split in order to cope with her frustrations and rage at not being able to control her mother. The good mother is the one who attends to her needs, the bad mother is the one who disappoints. It is a developmental step and a way of psychologically managing conflicting feelings – love and hate.

Over time, with a good enough relationship between mother and child, the child reaches the painful conclusion that there are not two mothers, but rather one who is mostly good, but also disappoints her. This is a huge developmental stage and means that the young child can not only start to bear reality and the separateness of others, but also forms the foundations of being able to love.

So, the answer to the question “who can love?” is that it is those who have reached a developmental level of maturity that in the world of psychoanalytic object relations we call ‘the depressive position’.

The sad reality is that there are a fair few adults who are simply unable to love. They continue to see the world in terms of good and bad and therefore oscillate between idealisation and denigration – neither position being real except in the world of fairy tales.

Personalities that can love

In the world of psychoanalytical psychotherapy, we tend to focus less on the behaviour of a person (although it still matters) and more on understanding, through the therapeutic relationship, two key diagnostic criteria: personality organisation and personality style.

Personality organisation is a term used to understand the psychological maturity of a person – what ordinary developmental stages of emotional and psychological maturity they have worked through. There are three categories, neurotic (most of us), borderline and psychotic. Please note the term ‘borderline’ has nothing to do with the DSM diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

All of us have a personality style and whilst there is no such thing as a single personality style as we are all a mix of different traits, most of us have a style that dominates. The more dominant one particular style and the more rigid that person’s personality combined with having a borderline personality organisation, the more likely it is that that person may be described as suffering from a personality disorder.

The narcissistically organised patient

If we take the example of a strongly narcissistically organised patient who has been on the receiving end of childhood neglect and as a result has a borderline organisation, this person is stuck developmentally at a very young age.

I have chosen the narcissistic personality style as an example, as the developmental process of shifting from a one-person world to a two-person world is one we all undergo – we therefore all have narcissistic personality styles as young infants.

This patient will not be able to love nor feel loved. They will oscillate between idealising and denigrating others, and be indifferent to the feelings and needs of anyone around them. They need others strongly but hide this, as vulnerability is shameful to them.

Why does love matter?

Love matters enormously as we are born into, defined by and continue to need relationships throughout our lives. Ultimately, it is love that gives life meaning.

Devoid of love, the world is a fearful and dangerous place – a place that needs controlling and managing.

Without the capacity to love, we cannot have psychological freedom.

Psychotherapy is a cure through love

Freud talked about analysis (psychotherapy) as being a cure through love. I have written about this here.

What has been damaged or hurt in relationship can only be healed in relationship. And real relationships are always based on love.

 

Mark Vahrmeyer, UKCP Registered, BHP Co-founder is an integrative psychotherapist with a wide range of clinical experience from both the public and private sectors. He currently sees both individuals and couples, primarily for ongoing psychotherapy.  Mark is available at the Lewes and Brighton & Hove Practices.

 

Further reading by Mark Vahrmeyer – 

I worked as a Psychotherapist with Death. Here’s what I learnt

How do I become more assertive?

What is the difference between loving and longing?

Why do we expect women to smile and not men?

Is there something wrong with me for hating Christmas?

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What is the difference between loving and longing?

Loving and longing can be frequently found in song lyrics nestled up alongside each other as though they are somehow related, however, I would suggest that psychologically they are very different and perhaps opposites, especially in the context of relationships.

To understand longing, we need to understand desire. We can only desire that which we do not have: we desire another until we have them; we desire food (have an appetite) until we eat, after which desire is replaced by satiety. Longing is related to desire but it refers to a desire that cannot be met – a sort of unrequited love.

I work with patients who find themselves in romantic relationships which are deeply frustrating and stuck and yet they cannot seem to leave. Mostly, these people do not understand why they are attracted to men or women who seem unable to meet their needs and unable to commit to anything real. These relationships, or repetitious encounters, seem to be characterised by a lot of excitement followed by a rollercoaster of other feelings but fundamentally what keeps these people stuck in a loop is longing.

Longing is a form of pseudo-desire that promises much and delivers very little. In relationships of the nature I have defined above, longing is addictive like a drug or a desert mirage that drives the thirsty traveller ever forward without the oasis ever appearing.

Is it a girl thing?

At risk of perpetuating gender stereotypes, there is a painful dance that takes place around the impossibility of intimacy that both the masculine and feminine contribute to – after all it is pretty lonely to dance without a partner.

Sex and the city and Mr Big

Anyone who is familiar with the long-running series ‘Sex and The City’ will be familiar with the storyline of Carrie and Mr Big. There is nothing particularly original about them in that it is a modern version of the woman chasing the unavailable man, and research has shown that this storyline forms the basis of most female sexual fantasies. In Sex and The City, Carrie eventually gets her man and Mr Big, in realising how much he has hurt Carrie, pursues her and they eventually marry. It’s the promise in all of these fantasies which is that as long as the girl hangs in there long enough and works hard enough, she will get her fairy-tale ending. ’50 Shades of Grey’ follows the same recipe.

Whether liberal fairy tale or modern-day blockbuster series, the principal message remains the same – hang in there long enough and you will get the love you want and deserve. In other words, longing pays off. It’s an uplifting and encouraging message but largely false.

Relationships that are defined by longing and unavailability and yet both partners cannot seem to give them up rarely end in the fairy-tale ending because that would negate the unconscious function of the longing.

The longing is a re-enactment of past abandonment or loss that has not been worked through. Sadly, romantic relationships are where we often tend to replay these painful dramas from our past and the unconscious ensures that we manage to successfully locate a co-star who will play the opposite role for us, as it corresponds with their relational traumas and loss.

And men?

Archetypally men who are ‘longed for’ are depicted as the unavailable man – think ‘Beauty and The Beast’ and you are on the right track. A man who is untamed and / or has shunned society but who with enough love can be won over and will make a great partner.

The reality of these men is that they are dealing with their own childhood losses but rather than the solution being one whereby they relentlessly hope, instead they relentlessly withdraw. They are not waiting to be loved into a good relationship, they are terrified of intimacy.

So what about love?

Well love in its psychologically mature meaning is a state in which there is mutuality of feeling in the here-and-now. In other words, love recognises the reality of the person who is in front of us, their qualities and their limitations, which is weighed up against the degree to which they can meet our needs. Let’s be clear, this is not the same as ‘falling in love’ which is a very different thing and as Freud so succinctly put it, akin to a form of psychosis as we are consumed by a delusion about the other and only see what we want to see.

Love is the ability to hold ourselves and the other in mind and have this reciprocated. Love is the ability to receive as well as give and to be present for each other’s vulnerabilities. Where love is, longing is not required.

Relinquishing longing

Longing is not really an emotion, it is rather a sentiment. Like melancholy, it has yet to develop into something that resembles a real set of emotions. Beneath longing lies grief which tells us that longing is very different to desire in that it acts in lieu of something that cannot be felt or processed.

Sex and The City Finale

In the show, Carrie and Mr Big get married and live happily ever after which is exactly as it should be in a fairy tale. In real life, a painful relating pattern such as this can really only end happily if both parties are willing to do the work (therapy) and discover why exactly they are both so addicted to longing and being longed for. Then and only then can the grieving begin.

 

Mark Vahrmeyer, UKCP Registered, BHP Co-founder is an integrative psychotherapist with a wide range of clinical experience from both the public and private sectors. He currently sees both individuals and couples, primarily for ongoing psychotherapy.  Mark is available at the Lewes and Brighton & Hove Practices.

 

Further reading by Mark Vahrmeyer

Is there a Good Way to break up with Someone?

Can Self Help become an Identity?

Can psychotherapy help narcissists?

Are we becoming more narcissistic?

 

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Some existential musings on love, generosity, and the relation between self and other (part two)

(Adapted from a presentation given at the SEA conference November 2022) – (Part two)

Speaking of life itself as a movement of becoming. Have we forgotten the isness and replaced it with beingness, an allegedly unified subject of self-consciousness, contained and stuck within a name or a label? Must knowledge be part of it, must we always think our way in?

Does that remind you of anything? The masculine economy of desire tells us I think therefore I am (Descartes, 1998). It invites us to believe in the binary. But Nietzsche (1886/1978) tells us differently. He gifted us multiplicity, and music to dance to. He invited us to affirm life beyond the narrow confines of self-preservation: to play with all the dynamic forces and tensions.

Perhaps generosity is a type of life force? Bazzano (2019) says, in Nietzsche there is no individual will to power but “power understood as a generous expenditure” (p.95). But generosity is often suppressed in favour of rigid identities. In current culture it seems the human animal is seen as depending upon an idea of self, perhaps influenced by patriarchal forces. Discourses of subjectivity rely on notions of individuality, autonomy, and self-preservation. The different other often becomes a threat as does the potential for an unstable, non-unified experience of self.

And what about suffering? Are we allowed to suffer anymore? Is that not sometimes where the gift of transformation lives? Yes there is a paradox here, as Nietzsche (1974) writes, suffering is markedly personal because it is an aspect of self-expression, in time. In which the very process calls us forth to reshape and become; reinterpreting the past through healing and releasing what was and opening to the new. However, don’t we all rely on each other for that too?

Helene Cixous (1991) tells us “only when you are lost can love find itself in you without losing its way” (p. 39). This feels important to me. In Renshaw’s interpretation, Cixous seems to refer to “the very structure of desire that is made
possible in a non-possessive, feminine relation to difference. She goes on to say:

“Only when we are lost to ourselves, to the extent that being a self means being one and unified, are we opened to the possibility of a becoming that is expansive, abundant, and opened to the indeterminable difference of the other. Only then can love descend upon us the way it wants, in one of its bewitching, magical and divine forms” (p.183)

In her essay, The newly born woman, Cixous (1986) writes of the feminine economy of desire as a notion able to grasp the abundant and often incongruent aspects of desire, refusing to “exclude the contradictory, and the ability to
embrace a cycle of relations that are constituted in movement …never static …marked by movements, towards, away and elsewhere” (p.125).

There is much to consider here. In her book, ‘The Subject of love’ (2009, p.6), the academic Sal Renshaw offers us some questions to ask ourselves.

Perhaps we can explore them together.

“Can we love as a gift that does not return?
What would it take to love the other as other, neither to refuse nor to embrace the
other but to create a space in which the other is met, is brushed against, is
perhaps felt as well as seen”
Can we live our subjectivities in a way in which love emerges in the in-between,
not as something the ‘I’ does or has, but rather as something that happens to us,
that emerges, in the very space of meeting?
What kind of being or becoming, does it take to love the other in their otherness
and not to sacrifice oneself in doing so?
What kind of relations to and between subjectivities make possible a generous
meeting in difference?”

Part one of this blog can be found here.

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Susanna, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

Susanna Petitpierre, UKCP accredited, is an experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor, providing long and short term counselling. Her approach is primarily grounded in existential therapy and she works with individuals.  Susanna is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre –

Some Existential Musings on Love, Generosity, and the Relation Between Self and Other? (part one)

On living as becoming (part two)

On living as becoming (part one)

Some thoughts on becoming (part two)

Some thoughts on becoming (part one)

 

References – 
Bazzano, M. (2019). Nietzsche and Psychotherapy. Oxon: Routledge.
Carson, A. (1998). Eros: The Bittersweet. Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press.
Cixous, H. (1986 [1975]). ‘Sorties’. Trans. Betsy Wing. In Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement. The Newly Born
Woman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Descartes, R. (1998). Discourse on Method. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Merleau-Ponty, M., (2012) Phenomenology of Perception. Oxon: Routledge

Nietzsche, F. (1886/1978). Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. R.J. Hollingdale. London:
Penguin.
Nietzsche, F. (1974). The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House.
Renshaw, S., (2009). The subject of love. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Some existential musings on love, generosity, and the relation between self and other

(Adapted from a presentation given at the SEA conference November 2022) – (Part one)

Anne Carson (1998) wrote,

“‘Now’ is a gift from the gods and an access onto reality. To address yourself to the moment when Eros glances into your life and to grasp what is happening in your soul at that moment is to begin to understand how to live.” (p.153).

Was it Merleau-Ponty (2012) who showed us that, without you, I do not know who I am. I cannot see the back of my head. I need you, the other, to tell me so I can build a picture of it. Yes, it seems we are made in the social.  But that means there will be ruptures too. Losses and suffering will prevail without our control. Can we transform in them? Do I need your help for that too?

Sal Renshaw (2009) describes the relation between self and other as a continual movement intrinsic to our becoming. Not only does the relation between self and other reveal the movement of becoming. It also signifies the impossibility and impermanence of the unified subject or absolute being. Encountering self and other reveals difference, perceived “somewhere in the space between that which returns to us that which we recognize as the same, and that which escapes us” (Ibid, p. 2).

Sometimes difference is felt as a conflict, sometimes as a threat, sometimes as an interest and an opportunity. But difference can be, and is, an opening into our becoming.

It may entail a complex exploration: maintaining positive regard for the other without being implicated in a kind of sacrificial logic rooted in Christian morality and its derivatives and without being caught in the web of patriarchal narratives. As Renshaw states (2009) writers such as Helene Cixous inform us of the extent to which “women have traditionally borne the brunt of sacrificial logic in a patriarchal structure” (p. 7).

How can we hold a space for a version of selflessness that is generous, alive, affirmative and does not fall into self-abnegation? A difficult task, no doubt. But an important one: “loving the other as other, allowing them and oneself to be born into the present in love” (Renshaw, 2009, p. 176). Perhaps they have forgotten or never knew that difference is the astonishing source of their love.

Isn’t there always more to the story, yes, more to come, more to become?

Is not life itself a movement of becoming …

Part two of this blog can be found here.

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Susanna, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

Susanna Petitpierre, UKCP accredited, is an experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor, providing long and short term counselling. Her approach is primarily grounded in existential therapy and she works with individuals.  Susanna is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre –

On living as becoming (part two)

On living as becoming (part one)

Some thoughts on becoming (part two)

Some thoughts on becoming (part one)

What is the Menopause? (part one)

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Magnificent Monsters

“The passions, these “magnificent monsters” (Nietzsche, 1967, p. 521), can we consider them a gift in which something valuable can be learnt?

Below is a consideration of the multiple, dynamic, creative and sometimes conflicting forces of energy that are often competing for dominance within us – what Fredrick Nietzsche sometimes described as ‘the passions’. Others may describe them as drives, passions and impulses. They are always present and seemingly are what constitutes and influences much of what is our lived experience. Despite their force and significance, they can often go unnoticed and our knowledge of them is always incomplete. They sometimes emerge into our conscious awareness when we are awakened into our existence, for instance when we are confronted by experiences such as uncertainty, grief and love.

Feeling passionate can be both enthralling and scary. Passions are sometimes encountered as other worldly, because they can appear out of nowhere and stir us and shake the ground beneath our feet. Passions can cross the many boundaries of our lived experience. They can symbolise our strong emotional states including joy and suffering. Perhaps many people can relate to the passions felt in the first stages of falling in love, or the sudden earthquake of loss.

At times, we may find ourselves running away from them. This is perhaps born out of a sense of needing to escape from what is being experienced. Perhaps this can be influenced by our conditioned beliefs, rooted in religious and philosophical beliefs, which might espouse that passions are dangerous, uncivilised and something that need to be tamed, and/or eradicated.

Other times we may run towards them, feeling that despite the fear they might cause within us, their intensity and irreducible form feels like an opportunity to live more vitally and come-into-being.

As time passes, human beings seem to be moving into spaces where connection and desire are dampened down by our addiction to technology, self-preservation and control. Even therapy can find itself, unwittingly perhaps, offering ways to master the ever-arising encounter with thoughts, emotions and sensations, so that we might never have to feel perturbed. Other times therapy may be seen as providing an opportunity to self actualise, by integrating all that we apparently are. Perhaps all of this in some way is a strategy to defend against feeling unsafe and uncertain.

But what if moving out of uncertainty is not possible or even necessary? What if these passions are revealing our possibilities, our strengths, our potential to move and become? What if we need them to create, to learn, to feel alive within our uncertain world. What if really feeling them slowly and subtly before acting on them or attempting to eradicate them is important? What if becoming intimate with them and patiently listening to them is what is necessary?

Perhaps this is where therapy can facilitate; by providing a space to feel, to explore, to experiment so that maybe we can change the relationship. What is perhaps significant to consider, for a while at least, are the desires and possibilities they are revealing within us. As Clarice Lispector (2012) wrote: “Life, my love, is a great seduction in which all that exists seduces.” (p 55).

Perhaps some passions must sometimes be tamed in order to live within a collective space. However, within any taming I feel it is equally, if not more significant, to understand what is being felt and moved within us with curiosity and kindness so that we may experience this brief encounter with life more deeply and compassionately.

Maybe letting go of a need to control, just for a while, and trusting our continually changing movements, just for a bit, is all that has to happen?

With gratitude and inspiration from Nietzsche (1967) and Clarice Lispector (2012).

 

Susanna Petitpierre, UKCP accredited, is an experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor, providing long and short term counselling. Her approach is primarily grounded in existential therapy and she works with individuals.  Susanna is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice and Lewes Practice.

 

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre –

A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies

Existential Therapy

Being embodied in Therapy: Feeling and listening to your body

 

References –

Lispector, C (2012) The Passion According to G.H. Trans, Idea Novey. London, Penguin

Nietzsche, F. (1967) The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufman London: Weidenfeld and

Nicolson.

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Is Love a Tameable Force?

Death like birth is a one off life event. We cannot learn through our experience of either to “get it right” next time. Love on the other hand (or the act of ‘falling in love’) is an event amenable to repetition. As such it is also available for re-definition by the forces of culture – political, philosophical and economic.

We no longer imagine or indeed contract for that (romantic) notion of love “till death do us part.” A vision in part predicated on (now outdated) kin-ship structures. These days it seems we care less to tie ourselves into lifetime contracts, or at least not without the freedom to change provider.

Love in a consumer age

One factor involved in the consideration of any investment is the risk attached. The ‘hookup’ model of relationship is a way of keeping (emotional) risk to a minimum. Its strategic focus is on convenience and short term satisfaction. It requires a particular vigilance to any (unruly) emotional undercurrents, with cost/benefit analysis consistently calculated and reviewed. When the initial (emotional ) investment is small there is protection against future insecurity in what can be a highly volatile market.

In his book, ‘The Art of Loving’, Erich Fromm describes how satisfaction in love cannot be attained “…without true humility, courage, faith and discipline” a vision at odds with the consumer age. Now the structures and forces of the market place promise something different. We can barely move for ‘expert’ relationship advice and books, articles and podcasts abound to coach us in the practice of relationship consciousness. In the online marketplace, the otherwise busy consumer may choose from an extensive menu of mouthwatering relational options. Available with an ease of access (and exit) and an abundance of choice, previously unknown. The new ideal of instant satisfaction takes the wait out of wanting with all risk insurance and money back guarantees there to catch us if we fall.

Love and uncertainty (uncomfortable bedfellows)

Love though is an unruly force and resists attempts at mastery or design. Love finds its own meaning in a continual state of becoming. Its creative forces are fraught with risk and like any creative force, we may never be sure where it will end. When we ‘fall’ in love, we enter into a great unknown, we  feel untethered from our usual moorings and suddenly vulnerable in the force field of another’s freedom. Indeed, love navigates a fine line between security and freedom and is threatened by both. ‘Too much security’ may feel like fusion or possession, stifling the creative urge. ‘Too much freedom’ (and a deficit of security) may lead to an overwhelming and agoraphobic sense of uncertainty.

There is then an inescapable duality in love and any attempt to surmount it ends only in its destruction. This paradox lies at the heart of loving. Eros forever haunted by Thanatos like an iron hand clad in a velvet glove.

Love seduces and emboldens us (at least in its opening gambit) to dive into the uncharted waters of ‘otherness’ and engage with the unknown. Love as an antidote to death soothes the ever present human dilemma of separateness. The blessing and the curse of individuality makes a mockery of us and all lovers seek to foreclose the space that separates them from their beloved. It is though in this very act that the death knell to love is sounded. Whatever else love might be a commitment to it inevitably involves the certainty of uncertainty.

To love is to risk and there is no algorithm to square that particular existential circle. The last word on love may perhaps always be best left to the poets.

Source – Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving(1957; Thomson’s, 1995)

 

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice. Gerry is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Gerry Gilmartin –

Why does empathy matter?

What is Intimacy?

Love, commitment and desire in the age of choice

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Love and Anxiety

In the latest issue of ‘The Psychotherapist’ Dr Geoff Warburton interviews Dr Harville Hendrix, co-founder of Imago relationship therapy and author of “Getting the Love you Want”.

In the interview, Warburton asks Hendrix about his definition of love. Interestingly, the topic turns to anxiety.

According to Hendrix, love is a sense of safety and connection, generated when we are not anxious. In anxiety, we feel separate from others and busy trying to regulate it.

Anxiety originates as a result of disruptive connections to our caretakers in childhood, and manifests in response to present situations. In adulthood we attempt to regain this connection through relationships with others in our lives. In Hendrix’s words, “connection is not experienced in your head. Its experienced by being with others and not being anxious about being with others…You are loving when you are not anxious, it’s your nature”.

Existential philosophers talk about anxiety as an unconscious fear of death and ultimately of non-being (hence the role of religion in installing hope of life after death). Our ultimate fear isn’t however of abandonment or even death, but of not existing at all. So, in connection we come into being.

Hendrix goes on to say that empathy is built into our system, but the presence of anxiety results in an absence thereof. Empathy is vital in establishing and maintaining connection; however in situations of conflict for instance, when the survival mechanisms in the brain are activated through perceived danger, our focus shifts from connection to reactivity. Having myself taken part in Hendrix’s couple’s workshop, it was interesting  to read that the whole purpose of these dialogue techniques is to create a climate of safety by switching the focus of attention from inner reactivity to your partner’s expression. The result is a balance between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

At the end of the interview Warburton asks, “could you say something about hate?” to which Hendrix responds by stating that hate and aggression are secondary symptoms of anxiety, as are most syndromes and symptoms. He finalises with: “If you help people explore their hatred, they become more hateful. You have to help them understand that they are just scared and then how they can regulate their fear. Then they become more connected and loving”.

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