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To love and be loved is our first necessity. Love is the foundation of our personality. Maybe that’s why we are so unbearably hurt when she leaves?
For us, this is the first vital necessity, the foundation of our personality. The love of another always confirms our value. And if this feeling is mutual, it fills us with strength and our life.
“He left me and trampled”, “She got rid of me”, “I feel like an unnecessary thing” … What words to describe despair when relationships collapse, how to express your feelings when a loved one leaves? Why do we hurt so much if we lose the love of another?
Part of the reason is that we don’t love ourselves. We are arranged in such a way that, in principle, we are incapable of this. When we think about what we are really worth, our internal response is always the same: we feel like a complete nonentity. And no wonder – after all, we compare ourselves with the ideal and, of course, do not stand comparison. “People who look at themselves too critically, most likely, were criticized, evaluated in childhood, and it can be difficult for them to treat themselves differently,” says psychotherapist Marina Khazanova. “The more they accepted us in childhood, the more they appreciated us, and did not evaluate them, they rejoiced at us, our originality, they allowed us to be ourselves, the less doubt we will have that we have something to love for.”
When we are not loved, we again find ourselves in childhood, we return to that moment when we suddenly discovered: mother loves not only me, not only I make her happiness, she has a life without me! Or maybe I’m a burden to her?
The unconscious does not know half-heartedness, and in the case of love, it throws us from one extreme to another, we feel either “shit” or “treasure”. The lover seems to say: “I see in you all the riches of the world.” And a secret. Something that delights him, but which he cannot define, because love is not knowledge, but only conjecture and imagination. “And this is one of the reasons why we are unable to truly love ourselves: we cannot assume anything about ourselves. But we have confidence in our imperfections, in our insufficiency, because we are constantly chasing our ideal “I,” says psychoanalyst Patrick Lamboulet. – My patients often exclaim: “I just don’t understand how you can love me!” To this I answer them: “Agree at least with the fact that the other can.”
We are tied to each other in different ways.
Partners build love relationships in different ways. Researchers describe four types of attachment*.
Safe.
You have been together for a long time, and you like everything. You know how to express your emotions, do not suffer from bouts of depression or anxiety disorders. You enjoy being with each other.
Anxious.
Despite the fact that you strive to be together, love relationships are a source of anxiety and conflict for you. You know how to express your feelings, but you are often under the influence of negative emotions, which makes your union fragile.
Removed.
You are so confident in yourself that sometimes you are mistaken for a cold or calculating person. This negatively affects your personal relationships. It sounds like you don’t want to get close.
Fearful.
You are very anxious and afraid of intimacy. In a love relationship, you first of all pay attention to the difficulties and disagreements. It is difficult for you to trust a partner, even if he is dear to you.
* R. Fraley, N. Waller, K. Brennan «An item-response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment». Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, № 2.
Read more:
- love for real
I am loved, therefore I exist
“If someone loves you, you are already attached to eternity,” said Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh. The fear of losing ourselves in the face of life’s difficulties, of losing ourselves in this harsh world is strong, but the love of another person allows us to maintain integrity. We have an almost physiological need for attachment, but an even stronger existential need for it: it develops and stays with us because it gives us the most compelling justification for our existence. We no longer have to ask ourselves, “Why am I here?” We feel incredibly relieved that until now we have tried to define ourselves through our social, family and professional roles, but continued to doubt. And suddenly our life is assured by the love of another person. This feeling is much more powerful than what our idea of ourselves as a set of functions can give. We are simply loved … We are inspired by the look of another, we can abandon the flat and dull perception of ourselves. We get proof of our uniqueness: me and no one else. I was chosen, I was recognized and appreciated. “That is why people who do not feel loved seek love, it is for the sake of it that they “indulge in all serious things,” says Marina Khazanova. “Promiscuity in relationships (including among adolescents) is a manifestation of precisely this need to be loved.”
Yes, we all want to be loved, but do not deceive yourself: being loved happens to us much less often (and is much more difficult) than to love ourselves. We are afraid to lose our freedom, to enter into relationships that oblige us, in which we risk feeling like debtors. The one who loves seems to say to us: “I hope that you can take me with you to a place that you can only dream of. I’m relying on you”.
And if love does not find a response in us? Then we may have to delicately dismiss the feeling the other has for us. “People are different: someone ends a relationship, realizing that they cannot love in return, considers it dishonest,” comments Marina Khazanova. – I have such people inspire respect: they do not want to be only an object of love, but they want to fall in love themselves in order to experience the fullness of life. And someone trusts the feelings of another, tries and as a result falls in love himself.
To love means to change together
When we cannot reciprocate, an emptiness arises in the soul, an acute feeling that we are missing something. The love of another makes us alive, but it cannot infuse desire into us. Something resonates in us, but we cannot accept this love for which we are not ready, open ourselves to something that can completely change us. If the feelings are mutual, if the person we love loves us, we become stronger and learn to accept the other as he is, and not as we would like to see him. We agree to change, we are ready to doubt ourselves and start moving towards another. “There is a feeling of unity with the one you love, a feeling of complete trust in him, a deep intuitive understanding of his soul, his experiences, desires, joy, pain, fears and aspirations,” adds Marina Khazanova. We discover new, different worlds, and love lights the way for us.
About it
“The Sacrament of Love” Anthony SurozhskyMetropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (1914–2003), theologian, philosopher, preacher and real teacher of love, reflects on the essence of love and marriage as an expression of ultimate joy and fullness in this book of conversations (Satis, 2010).
Tatyana Lazareva, 46, TV presenter “I did not believe that they could love me”
“There is an opinion that people of public professions were disliked in childhood, and then they gain this dislike of theirs with the attention of the audience. This is true for me: as a child, I heard too much criticism, and even positive ratings implied a “but”. “You’re doing well, but you can do better,” parents would certainly add. I still feel this lack of unconditional love. Moreover, it is in him that I see the reason that for a long time I could not trust men: I did not believe that they could love me just like that, without any conditions. If the relationship did not work out, I thought it was fair – after all, there was absolutely nothing to love me for. It is unpleasant that, realizing the mistake that my parents made, I reproduce the same model of relationships with my children, and I can’t manage to remove the “but” …
Quite late, but I still found the person with whom I finally connected my life. In our relationship, a lot is based on competition: we have one profession, and everyone strives to prove to the other that they are also worth something. It’s like we need to constantly prove that we are worthy of each other’s love. Of course, I cannot speak for my husband with all confidence. But I really “set records” in my work precisely for the sake of his love. I need to be loved, it gives me strength. It’s good that we can compete in public, not seriously, and in this way we manage without family conflicts.”
Recorded by Elizaveta Zamyslova