relationships

Love III: Not Loved Right

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, love, mindfulness, Personality, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness

This is the third of several blogs on love. Previously, I introduced this series noting that love is so important that it is undefinable, like other undefinable basic elements of life such as “feelings” which is so central to human existence and relationships, as well as time, distance, and mass, which are also undefined but are the basic ingredients of the universe. Having admitted that love is undefinable, we proposed that we learn about love from experience, just as we learn about time and feelings from experience. In fact, the more we experience love, both in the giving and in the receiving, the more we understand it. In the immediately previous blog we studied different approaches to love that people of different temperaments have. In this blog I want to discuss how everyone is love to some degree but that no one is loved perfectly. And there are consequences of “not being loved right.”

Not loved right

No one is loved right, if by “right” we mean perfect. Love is simply too complex, too godly, and too unique to ever be rendered perfect. “Not loved right” doesn’t mean that the person wasn’t loved, nor does it mean there is something intrinsically wrong with the person who attempted to love the person, nor does it mean that the individual who was not loved right was somehow unlovable. So what does this “not loved right” actually mean? It means that there are always elements of the loving process that are missing however much the person was loved. I often tell patients that they were loved right, and I have found that they are able to accept this statement without disparaging their parents or other loved ones. Somehow, people intrinsically know that they were not loved right because they feel it in their souls. I find it important to help people find how they were not loved right and consequently identifiable the results of this phenomenon, to come to terms with this apparent fact, and find ways to adapt and accommodate to having a good life without forever looking for someone to love them perfectly.

There are many ways that people are not loved right. Some folks were, sadly, raised in families where they were not loved at all, while others were loved in families where they were cherished beyond all reason. Let’s look at some of these ways of not having been loved right.

Not loved at all

You may have heard of the tragedy that occurred in Romania 30-odd years ago when the dictator under the Soviet-based regime fostered a program of excessive births in the country. Sadly, many of these children were placed in orphanages, or just “left on the doorstep” of these orphanages that were already overcrowded with children who had been abandoned by parents who simply could not afford to raise them. The tragic result of this overcrowding was that many of these children were simply not loved for at all. They were fed and occasionally diapered, but they often went hours or days without any kind of human comforting touch. The result of this was that many of these children were neurologically impaired, meaning that their brains did not develop adequately. They may have developed some cognitive skills, but many of them did not even do that. The conclusion of researchers of these neglected children was that they simply and profoundly had missed the essential ingredient of physical touch that somehow stimulated the brain to grow normally. While we don’t quite understand the interaction of physical touch, we now know that without it, the infant will not mature normally, and this lack of maturity may be permanent. My daughter, Jenny, volunteered a couple of weeks in an orphanage in Romania simply caring for some of these children, something for what I will be forever grateful as she possibly saved one or more children from a life without much hope.

While few children in America suffer such a tragic fate aside from the occasional situations that we have all heard about where a child was chained in a basement or something for months or years. You might also have heard about the instance of a child having been raised in the wilderness by some animal group and was discovered naked and completely unaware of her (I believe the child was female) humanity, much less any kind of human speech. This poor child matured in human ways after she was captured but never achieved anything like a normal life. Aside from the oddities of terrible parents doing terrible parenting, we do not have many such tragedies although we might consider what it might be like to live in a primitive society or in a society with a primitive religious orientation that does not allow for normal infant care.

While there are a few of these tragedies in America and in the other developed countries, there are many examples of less severe shortage of love that occur. In fact, as I previously stated, none of us have been loved perfectly right despite our parents doing stellar jobs with us. Let’s look at some of the ways we have not been loved right.

Indulged

It is with great concern that I observe a plethora of inadequate loving that many parents afford their children in the form of indulgence. Having been privileged to have grown up somewhat in the 40’s and mostly in the 50’s, I went “out to play” for most of these years perhaps beginning as early as three. I lived in Clearfield, PA at the time on the edge of town not a stone’s throw from an old coal mine as well as a myriad of Pennsylvania hills and streams. My brother, a couple years my senior, and I would often be gone for hours just playing in the words, the hills, and yes, in the coal mine. Such things are unheard of today. I agree that there were dangers in such free play, as it is called, but also much freedom that I think formatted by basic groundwork of self-confidence having had to get myself out of dangerous places and all the rest of free play. I see few kids who “just go out and play today.” This freedom of movement, which was a kind of libertarian parenting, continued into my adolescent years and often led me to understand consequences more than punishment, reward, and restriction. There is great value of freedom in such parenting but also dangers. I had the freedom to debate with my parents, and while rarely arguing with them, I was allowed talk back to my parents as if I were their equal. This indulgence did not prepare me well for the real world where I had to slowly learn to keep my mouth shut. So, I was indulged with freedom.

Some kids are indulged in other ways, often with material things. I dare say that my daughter, Krissie, indulged both of her kids, particularly her older child, Gavin, who yet struggles to find out how the world is not his mother. He has yet to find a balance of work, play, listening and talking that is essential in the real world. Many parents protect their children, seemingly out of love, that these children do not learn to face the uncertainties, failures, criticism, and other disappointments because they have been too shielded from such things. Aside from the indulgence of freedom and of protection there is the obvious indulgence of toys. I am always surprised that the bulk of items at garage sales are the plastic toys that have been purchased, used briefly, and tossed in a corner before they ended up on the sidewalk. I talked to a young man who said that his mother had given him four drones, each costing more than the previous one, to the point that he was simply not interested in it drones anymore. This indulgence can last into adulthood came in the form of a 23-year old who admitted that he had spent thousands of dollars on sophisticated motorized play cars and trucks before his friends and he lost interest in them.

We don’t normally think of indulgence as “not being loved right,” but it is indeed the case. I admit that I indulged my daughter Krissie, largely because of her “player” nature without knowing I was doing that. I attempted to give her the libertarian freedom that I had, but the world of the 80’s was substantially different from the 50’s, and it didn’t work for her. I think she never recovered from my indulgence, something that may have contributed to her untimely death two years ago. We will discuss the effects of indulgence and ways to correct it at another time, but first we need to attend to some other forms of “not being loved right.”

Neglect

Quite different from indulgence is neglect. While there are (hopefully) few children who are truly not loved at all like the Romanian infants and the poor children who are housed by profoundly disturbed people, there are many children who are neglected. They may have a “roof over the head and necessary food” for survival, they are not loved to a degree that allows them to fully grow up. With few exceptions children who are raised in truly neglectful homes have little success in the world. Theirs is an attitude of surviving, not thriving. As a result of their neglect and the consequences of their seeing the world as a place to survive, they often end up with very damaging intimate relationships, unemployment, and quazi-criminal activities. While we need to find ways to help these people, unfortunately, the culture also needs to protect itself from people who are surviving because they are dangerous. They are dangerous not because they are intrinsically bad, but they are like an animal cornered in some way. Such an animal will be dangerous because the fight instinct dominates when the flight instinct cannot be accessed. People who have been significantly neglected rarely find a way to thrive in the world because of the secondary problems they have created in their lives. We will discuss how to deal with such people at another time because many of these people end up in some kind of incarceration, financial difficulties, or in counseling offices with little hope of finding a meaningful life.

While there are many people who have been neglected to a profound degree, there are many more who have been neglected for a period of time in their lives or have been neglected by otherwise very good parents. Sometimes well-meaning parents restrict their children to such a degree that these children fail to thrive in childhood and hence fail to thrive in adulthood.

Restriction

Restrictions and limitations are absolutely necessary in life. We discussed the danger of indulgence in some homes where children do not have sufficient boundaries to feel safe and to prepare themselves for adulthood. Many more children are restricted from some of the essential ingredients of a home that include the three basic ingredients of life: feeling, thinking, and doing.

The most emotionally damaging restriction is that where the child is not given sufficient time to feel. As we discussed in I Want You to Know How I Feel, “feelings” are more than emotion. We suggest that feelings themselves are never wrong, but when we use the word feelings we are talking about the basic core that everyone has. Feelings are the most basic expression of our inner selves. When feelings erupt, they do so in the sequence of physical, emotional, cognitive, and active. Children can be unduly limited in any of these ways. Some children are restricted physically by their not being able to go outside, listen to radio or TV, go to school, go with friends, or simply run. Parents who restrict the actual movement of children are keeping them from understanding how their bodies work.

More significant restrictions comes in the form of emotions. Many children are not allowed the normal expression of emotions, like joy, sadness, fear and anger. I have many people in my office who report that they were not allowed to cry, sometimes with the addendum, “If you start crying, I’ll give you something to cry about,” meaning some kind of spanking. In some homes there is a danger of indulging children by allowing them to cry excessively, express anger excessively, or express fear excessively, or even express joy excessively however odd that sounds. More often, homes fail to allow their children a relatively free expression of emotions where they learn the value and the dangers of expressing emotions. Such homes are more than stoic. They are repressive, and the repression of emotions can leave a lifelong mark on an individual. I currently see a man who is in his 70’s and cannot think of a single time he has made a mistake despite the fact that he has grossly low self-esteem and is consequently afraid of doing anything that could be determined to be “wrong” by someone else, and for the most part can’t even say something that might seem to someone to be untoward.

The largest damage that is done by restriction comes with people who have not been given many opportunities to express a breadth of emotions, but some children are restricted from thinking in some ways or doing certain things. Many homes are so restrictive of what one says that it seems impossible to even think in a way that might be different from what the parents believe. The more visible restriction, however, is in what children are allowed to do. I was raised in a distinctively evangelical Christian home, but I did not receive the restrictions that other kids at our church had, namely no alcohol, smoking and swearing that might seem reasonable, but also no movies, dancing, playing cards, “mixed” (heterosexual) bathing, and in some cases no TV or radio.

Many of these restrictions are valuable and necessary but many are potentially damaging to people in their formative years. But most people have had at least a modicum of freedom in childhood, and yet everyone has had some experience of “not being loved right” that occurs from the best of people with the best of intentions. This failure of adequate loving comes largely from how different people love.

Limitations in loving due to temperament

A quick review of the way that people of different temperaments love in my previous blog might be in order. Roughly,

  • Lovers love by establishing and maintaining connection
  • Caretakers love by providing safety in their care of property
  • Analysts love by providing understanding and meaning
  • Players love by providing experience

All of these ways of loving are good and godly but none of them is perfect. Furthermore, people who love primarily, or perhaps even singularly in one of these ways of loving may, indeed, fail to love their children “right.” Let me give you some examples:

  • I know of many parents who have a lover temperament that are unable to understand why their player children, analyst children, or caretaker children seem not to want the kind of love that they offer. In fact, of all four of these temperaments I have the hardest time explaining to lovers that not all people want connection, and in some cases they might actively not want it. This comes as patently wrong to people whose primary goal in life is to connect and in so doing offer personal sacrifice to the people they love. In fact, children of lover parents who are, themselves, not lovers, can feel smothered by a lover parent who wants more physical and emotional contact than the child wants. How odd is it to say that many lover parents fail to love their children right.
  • Caretakers, like me are equally at fault for failing to love right. It’s easier for me see how caretaker love can lead to people around him/her not being loved right. We caretakers, remember, have a primary orientation to the care of property. I could even say that we love property the way lovers love people, but this would not be entirely true because our love of people is intrinsic in the taking care of property. Than having been said, it is easy for caretakers to get lost in the care of property and lose sight of the use of property for humankind, which includes family and friends. I made mistakes with both of my girls with my caretaking-based love: for Krissie, the older and the player, I gave her too much freedom and not enough keeping her nose to the grindstone. For Jenny, the younger, introverted and lover by nature often got left because of her extraverted more demanding sister. More importantly, however, I took advantage of her accepting, loving ways but undoubtedly didn’t love her the way lovers need to be loved.
  • Analysts also fail to love people right not out of some pernicious nature but rather due to their tendency to make the world a better place by looking for problems to solve and prevent. Analysts tend to speak much more about what is not right than what is right, not because they are intrinsically mean-spirited and critical, but because they always see how something…or someone…could be better. As I noted in my temperamental loving blog I noted how analysts tend to be the least liked of the four temperaments because of this tendency to comment on what is wrong, not right.
  • Players are so interested in experience and excitement that they can get lost in these two realms. Players are at their best in the matter of loving when they can help people play, experience, and find joy in life. That having been said, they can be the worst, or even dangerous, when they play because they tend to throw caution to the wind. I have seen players drag people into some activity that their friends had no interest in just because the player thought it would be fun. So, while players bring the most joy to people when they are at their best, they are often fail to love people right.

It should be implicit in how temperamental differences can lead people to love in the wrong ways, love to a fault, or even resist loving at all because they have been misunderstood in the past or hurt someone in the past. The key is to “know thyself,” namely to know who you are, how you love, and then add to that knowledge of knowing other people. A failure to love right is not a failure to love.

Some examples of not having been loved right include:

  • The caretaker raised by a lover who wanted his daughter to just sit and cuddle more than just do something
  • The man who never heard that his father loved him because his father had never heard such things from his father
  • The child who was raised in a restrictive environment and never learned how to value and express her feelings
  • The man who was so good at loving his wife that he gave in too much to her and ended up in bankruptcy at their senior years
  • The man who was not loved much at all because his mother was a drug addict
  • The woman who was loved so much that she never learned how to deal with people who didn’t love her
  • The lesbian woman who was raised in a “loving” and evangelical Christian family and couldn’t “come out” until she was 45 only to be rejected by this same family.
  • The man who learned to push all his feelings into alcohol just like his father did
  • The extraverted man who was raised in such a good accepting family that it never occurred to him that someone might actually not lake him
  • The analyst man who was raised by a caretaker father who couldn’t understand why his son would rather read than mow the lawn
  • The brilliant professional introverted analyst man who has never felt loved by his lover wife because neither understood their profound differences
  • The woman who ended up promiscuous because she didn’t have a meaningful relationship with her mother.
  • The child who was loved right by father but not by mother

All of these people, all of their spouses, and all of their parents were good people, not abusive, not indulgent, and not neglectful. All of them are real people although the particulars have been adjusted to protect their identities.

Live right. That is first rule. Love right. That is the second rule. Consider how you were loved but not loved right. We will tackle that next:

Next up: Love IV: I See You (being open to being loved)

 

Love II: Temperamental Love

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, love, Personality, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Three quarters of a century ago C.S. Lewis wrote The Four Loves, a book that has been quite popular in Christian circles over many decades of the 20th century. Lewis suggested that there are four different kinds of love, three of them decidedly biblical and the fourth implicitly biblical. He suggested that there is empathy, friendship, romance, and godly love. Lewis identified the (biblical) Greek words for each of these (although eros, romance, is not strictly used in the Bible). Lewis suggested that we need all of these loves, and centered on godly love (the Greek word is agape), which we might consider to be sacrificial love.

More recently, Gary Chapman wrote The Five Love Languages that has been quite popular in the current century. Chapman suggests that these five “long languages” are words (of affection), (quality) time, physical (touch), (acts of) service, and (receiving) gifts. This understanding of love has been a valuable addition to the understanding of love.

I presently want to suggest yet another way of looking at different kinds of love, namely the kinds of love associated with what we call “temperament.” Deb and I are fast finishing our latest book, tentatively entitled, A Family of Temperaments that we briefly summarized in I Want to Tell You How I Feel. We suggest that among many other valuable ways of understanding differences of personality, we can roughly suggest that people fall into one of four temperaments: caretaker, lover, analyst, and player. Hence:

  • Caretakers take care of property and hence bring safety to the world.
  • Lovers seek connections with people and hence bring sacrifice to the world.
  • Analysts seek meaning and hence bring understanding to the world.
  • Players seek experience and hence bring joy to the world.

It is important to note that no two people are alike, that no one falls purely and completely into one of these four temperaments, most people have a combination of one primary temperament augmented by elements of another temperament, and that all people have at least some elements of all four temperaments. Now, let’s examine how people who have a particular temperament display love and want to be loved.

Basic characteristics of temperament-based love

Caretakers’ love

Caretakers’ orientation is towards property, namely the care of property, the protection of property, the effective use of property, and the improvement of property. As a result, they love property more than anything else. This is a hard thing to say, to hear, or to believe. And it is even harder to respect by people who do not have this kind of love.

Think of it this way: caretakers see the need to take care of the world, namely the physical world. C.S. Lewis suggested four biblical loved, but we might also look at Genesis, Chapter 1 where Adam and Eve were charged with “caring for the world,” perhaps as an act of love. This physical part of the world could be manmade or natural. Some caretakers are very interested in the environment and enjoy taking care of the environment. My neighbor, Luke, works directly in the field of environmental protection and enhancement, and it seems that he is at his very best when he is taking care of the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin. My other neighbor, Lonnie, is a tradesman by nature and takes care of manmade property. His work on the roof of our house, the roof of Deb’s greenhouse, the chimney of our house, and many windows of our house is just one way he has loved.  But what has he loved? He has loved the careful use of property. Interestingly, we might say that both Lonnie and Luke are loving humanity, but the way they love humanity is to take care of physical property, one with manmade property, the other with the property of nature.

Note that many people engage in this kind of love, namely the care and effective use of property. We have many other forms of this caretaking nature. I know of someone who really enjoys restoring old cars, another man who really enjoys laying flooring, another who enjoys laying cement, and yet another who really enjoys helping people develop their bodies. I think all of these people would not easily say that they love property more than people, but in a sense, this is true, and in the larger sense, when they are loving property, they are loving people in their own way.

Lovers’ love

Love is a great part of all religions and certainly part of Christianity. Many churchgoers and those who have attended church weddings have heard the Apostle Paul’s statement of love in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13: “love is patient and kind” among other things. Paul also says that love is a “gift,” in fact the “greatest of gifts” among many others.

Lovers seek connections with people. I sometimes suggest that lovers have an orientation that is “us first, you second, and I last.” This means that lovers are always looking for some kind of “connection” with people, which might be said to be spiritual, but also emotional and very often physical. Lovers are at their best when they can simply love someone. They also tend to be “animal people,” namely loving and caring for animals, but I think the deepest of lovers who love animals then to love dogs. Consider the love that you cold pour out on a dog compared to the cat who might want not much more than a lap-sit for a moment.

It is important to note that we normally think of love as something that is towards people, or perhaps that the love of people is the best kind of love, but I think not. Indeed, all forms of love ultimately involve people, but the actual direction of love is not necessarily people as it is with lovers. Lovers are the very best when it comes to personal sacrifice. They are the most forgiving of all temperaments. They are often the most generous. Their generosity and personal sacrifice ingratiate themselves to people, but their desire is not ingratiation but the very act of loving people in the ways they do it: connecting. The connection they bring to people can enhance others’ lives as well as being restorative and healing.

Analysts’ love

Analysts love by being analytical. What does that mean? It means that they seek to understand the world so as to bring meaning to themselves as well as to the world. Many professions are intrinsically analytical, like science, math, philosophy, stock broking, psychology, and theology, but analysts come in all professions. When they are at their loving best, they look too understand how things work, these “things” being money, property, or people. Even ideas. Some analysts enjoy the understanding and ultimate meaning surrounding ideas themselves, like philosophers, theologians, and many analytical psychologists.

A good part of how analysts love the world (and people) is to identify possible problems in order to prevent them, and identify real problems and solve them. Hence, analysts are problem-oriented always looking to make the world a better place. And the world really needs analysts because these folks protect us from harm or damage.

There is another aspect of analysts’ love nature, which is simple love for information. While they seek to understand and find meaning, their actual operation is more in gathering enough information so that a real understanding cam come about, often by preventing or solving problems, but sometimes just for the fun of understanding how something works. They might ask someone who is a very different political or religious persuasion what that person to explain a philosophy or theology that is completely different from the analyst’s own theory just for the purposes of understanding how someone thinks.

Players’ love

Players’ love is experiential. They love to jump right into something and experience it, whatever the “it” is. This experiential is usually physical, but it can be intellectual or emotional, as these two elements of human interaction always erupt from experience. Players are at their best when they can love the world by being fully in it. This almost always means being physically involved in something. Originally, I conceived as players as excitement-oriented, but the more I have studied and thought about the phenomenon the more I have come to see that, while excitement is often a key ingredient and an addition to experience with players, they are not seeking excitement so much as they are experience.

Players naturally evolve into many trades or professions that are intrinsically physical, like the trades of plumbing and carpentry although most tradesmen are primarily caretakers, like my neighbor, Lonnie. More often, players seek experience in sports, music, other art forms, or some kind of physical involvement that is more experiential than productive. There is a lot more experience in a basketball than production. If we look at players who gravitate towards sports, we can see the joy that sports bring to them. Likewise, the same can be said of musicians and other artists. Sometimes this “play” is very serious as with the musician works diligently to find the exact means of performance, or perhaps construction of music.  And there are players who are simply those who appreciate music so much that they can get lost in it.

Players’ experience-based nature is not limited to the trades, sports, and art. Players also love the experience of human interaction. Players play with people, not so much connect them as loves do or analyze them as analysts do.  In all of these ways players love experience, whether with people or with things. They are enlivened by times when they can be fully engaged with something, someone, or some idea and allow these things to be a part of their various essence.

The challenges of temperament-based love

As you have read these lines, it is likely that you have seen some kind of danger in all these forms of love. Indeed, every temperament has a tendency to love the way they love to a fault, which means they love genuinely enough but their love causes problems. Let’s look at some.

Caretaker’s challenges in love

Note what caretakers see: they see things. Note what caretakers do: they do things. Note what they see: things. There is nothing wrong with what they see, what they do, and what they love. As with all temperaments, and all people, it is the seeing, doing, and loving to a fault that gets caretakers in trouble. This expression, “to a fault,” is one that we have used in our feelings book and in other publications. It means that someone does a basically good thing so much that it no longer is a good thing. Caretakers tend to get lost in their love of things and doings.

Caretakers love for property keeps them busy because there is always property to care for. Look around you and you will see all kinds of property. As I look out my office window, I see the parking lot, our house, a car, gardens, trees, and sidewalks, to say nothing of the things that I see beyond our property. A caretaker like me can see so much that he gets lost in the seeing. In my case everything I just mentioned needs some kind of work or it might need some kind of work. Furthermore, the very blog I am working on is a kind of “thing” that needs work. If I don’t watch out, I can get lost taking care of all these things. Then, I can be in trouble. First, I could be exhausted after I changed the oil in the car, cut the lawn, and all the rest of the things that are staring me in the face. Secondly, I could very easily…because of my love for the care of property…fail to love my wife, my family, my friends, and other people the way lovers do, to say nothing of loving ideas the way analysts do, or actually experience this beautiful day that God has provided for me. But enough about me. The caretakers I know tend to work too much, get tired frequently, become irritable (because of all the work they’re doing), and fail to take care of their bodies.

One final comment about caretakers: they can fall into taking care to a fault of people, get drained and get lost in the caretaking. Often they caretaking of people is the result of their doing too much work, but they can also “work” by listening too much, fixing too much, and hence failing to take care of their own needs.

Lovers’ challenges in love

So, how do lovers love to a fault? How is it possible for someone like a lover to love people too much? It is not the loving too much that lovers do, it is the things that they do that are not good for them. As I have said, lovers love people and tend to be generous, accepting, and sacrificial. Lovers slide from genuine giving to giving in. Giving in is not loving. I often say to the lovers who are in my office: give all you have; give your money, your time, your property; give your left arm if it seems right; give your life if it is right. But don’t give in. It is a slippery slope from giving to giving in, and lovers tend to slip too easily.

You can know when lovers give in: they get resentful and otherwise angry. It is a tragic sight to see lovers move from the beauty of sacrificial and beneficial love to the artificial love of giving in. They give in because they see that a friend needs something, often comfort, a listening ear, or an opportunity to stay overnight because the friend’s spouse is allegedly abusive. They want to love and they want to heal. Unfortunately, lovers can fall into, say, allowing the friend to overstay her welcome, like three nights instead of one, or three months or three years. I often see lover parents allowing their adult children to stay with them for months or years because their children have ruined their lives in some way and seemingly need someone to rescue them. More importantly, lovers tend to stay in relationships that are not good, not good for them, and ultimately not good for their partners because they have such a hard time setting limits and recognizing their own needs. When you see an unhappy lover, you are probably seeing someone who has given in so much and so often that he or she “can’t” get out of the relationship. Lovers tend to get lost in loving other people: this is the essence of having such a value on “us” that the “I” part of life has nearly disappeared.

Analysts’ challenges in love

Analysts love to a fault in two ways: gathering information and processing information. What does this mean? Analysts simply love information. They love learning and they love thinking about what they have learned. The problem that sometimes can be a challenge for lovers is that they mistakenly think that they can have all the information in the universe so that they are fully prepared for whatever action is necessary. Analysts often put things off, like decisions, because they are always gathering information. It is as if they believe that they can’t make a mistake if they only know everything. This is admirable and to some degree true, but it is not entirely true because you can never have all the information about anything. So analysts can become lost in the gathering of information, whether searching the internet, reading, asking authorities, or just observing the world around them. Caretakers see everything and want to preserve it or fix it. Analysts everything and are fascinated by what they see. Their love for information sometimes causes them to be impotent at actually using the information.

The second difficulty analysts have in loving ideas, information, and truth lies in their tendency to see what is wrong, or what could be wrong, and then speak about it. This tendency makes analysts look “critical.” While they take a critical look at things and people, they are not by nature critical as we normally use the term, much less mean-spirited. But because they always are on the lookout for what is wrong, they can appear critical. No one likes to be criticized, so when they speak of what is wrong with a friend’s toilet, that person might be offended more than informed of the problem. Furthermore, they tend to be quite open with their challenges, almost never meaning to be demeaning, but their comments about someone’s hair style, car, idea, or profession can easily be construed as mean-spirited. If you hear from your love one that you “are always critical and negative,” consider that you are not “critical and negative” but you appear that way to your loved one.

In addition to failing to decide in a reasonable amount of time and their tendency to appear to be critical, analysts are not the best at receiving criticism themselves. While it is difficult for anyone to receive correction and correction as noted above, it is quite hard for analysts to hear that they have made a mistake because they try so hard to do the right thing only after they have thought it over 100 times.

Players’ challenges in love

Players are perhaps the least self-reflective of the four temperaments. This is not a reflection on some kind of flaw they have in their character. Rather, they simply engage and experience so easily and so much that they don’t have a lot of time leftover to see what they have done that could have been untoward. Think of players often playing with everything. So, money is play money, property is a potential toy, people are playmates, and the world is a playground. Nothing wrong with all this experiencing, excitement, and playing because it is the way a player gives life to things and to people. The difficulty is that players tend to ignore the consequences of what they say or do because of the focus they have on the actual action itself.

Having raised a player myself, having had many player friends, many more player children in my practice, and having a good part of player in me, I can say that I am quite familiar with the joys and the sorrows of playing. I see many times how I hurt or harmed people out of my desire to experience life in some way. I have said things and done things with the best of intention but the effects have been harmful. In the best of times players love experience and want everyone else to love experience. They, like people of all temperaments, think that everyone else should be playing and experiencing life as a primary way of loving not giving credence to how others love.  Have you frequently said, “I didn’t mean to do it,” “I didn’t know that would hurt you,” “I was just playing” and other such statements when something goes array? You may be a player. You have loved the experience to a fault without realizing the effect of the experience on others or on yourself.

Stay tuned. Next up:

  • Love problems (emotions associated with love)
  • Being lovable
  • Love heals
  • Not loved right

 

Why Did She Leave Me?

Ron Johnson Development, Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness

My wife left me…again. Yesterday. Bummer? Not exactly. She has a tendency to leave me every now and then. She loves to go to “her canyons” in UT and hike. Sometimes she has dragged me along or allowed me to travel and hike with her. Once she left me and went to Portugal to hike. She called me up and said, “I am so glad you’re not with me.” After a pause she then said, “I miss you terribly. I wish you were here.” I use this as an illustration of the centrality of paradox, and particularly of paradoxical feelings. See? She was certainly glad that I wasn’t with her, mostly so she could go at her own pace, do her own thing, and be alone. As an introvert she really enjoys her time alone. She particularly enjoys the two days of the week that she doesn’t see me except for early AM and late PM when I go to our Madison office. She is usually seeing clients on those days, but also enjoys puttering around in her garden or green house…again without my intrusion.

This time when she has left me, her destination is not so clear. When she left yesterday morning, she said that she “thought” that she would go to St. Croix, WI, about 4 hours away at the beginning of the Ice Age Trail that goes 1000 miles across Wisconsin. I doubt that she will walk/hike 1000 miles, because she would have to walk back another 1000 miles to get her car. I expect that she will walk or hike for a while and then God knows what she might do. Go north? Go west…maybe to the canyons? Decide to come home? I’m sure she’ll be OK with whatever she does because she is a person who trusts her feelings. Note that her “feelings” are not just an emotional experience but a deeper personal experience that we call “spiritual”. When I tell people about our tendency to “trust our feelings” and “just go west” or something, most people are envious, while others are appalled that we don’t have a plan. Planners are people we call “high boundary” people, who like boundaries, rules, and plans. Low boundary people like spontaneity and freedom. Both are good ways of life. The difficulty comes when a high boundary person is trying to plan what s/he might do with a low boundary person, who would really rather “just go.”

Enough about Deb and me. This blog is about several men I have known who have been “left” in one way or another. You might resonate with one or them.

The woman seeking a divorce after a long marriage

Jane left Jim after 34 years of marriage. She struggled with leaving him for at least two years that I know of (she saw Deb for s while she was trying to figure out what to do about being largely unhappy in her marriage. Jane did what many women do (and perhaps some men as well…but that’s another story): she stayed married far longer than she should have stayed married. In Jane’s case there were several factors, all of which amounted to what other people would think if she got a divorce from Jim. There was the “Christian” disapproval of divorce. (Actually, this was evangelical Christian disapproval. Many mainline Christian churches, as well as Christian denominations have a place for divorce, find it valuable and godly, but not so with many evangelicals despite the fact that there are nearly the same number of evangelicals who get divorced as there are non-evangelicals.) Many evangelicals seek to justify a divorce on so-called biblical grounds, namely a singular statement Jesus seemed to have made that divorce is justified in circumstances of adultery. I knew one woman who got a divorce justifying it on these “grounds” because her husband had been using pornography. She asked a “Baptist” (read, conservative, evangelical) pastor if pornography was, indeed “adultery” and was glad to see that she could divorce “justifiably.” In Jane’s case, she did not seek this artificial reason for divorcing Jim. She is quite introverted by nature and introverts have a distinct tendency to keep most or all of their feelings to themselves.

I think the more important thing about the situation with Jane is that she has never really been happy with her marriage to Jim. They shared a house, raised children, both worked professionally, and went to church faithfully. But from what I learned from Jane, albeit with intuition and conjecture, is that she should have married Jim. Or if she married him, she should have been honest with herself and with Jim that she had made a mistake marrying him. It is possible that 34 years ago the marriage could have ended quickly and found way to survive and thrive. But Jane stayed married, and I think she was never happy with him. Indeed, the two of them are quite different in personality but there seem to have been some deeper issues that Jane was not able to see. Sadly, now her perspective is that the marriage was wrong because Jim did this or that, didn’t do this or that. Indeed, Jim has made some significant mistakes in life as well as with Jane, but these divorce-related, attorney-aggravated attacks on Jim are a rouse. I think…and must say that I “think” Jane has never liked Jim and could never bright herself to admit to it. In a nutshell, Jane has not been honest with Jim about this, and probably has not been honest with herself. The theme of some women (and again, possibly many men, I suppose) not knowing how they feel (unhappy), or unable to express it, or unwilling to act on it.

The woman who “couldn’t do it anymore” and left

Mary and Matt were in a second marriage for both, each have suffered in previous marriages and each having children. They had been married for 15 years when Deb and I began to see them. From what I understand, Mary almost immediately talked about how Mike did this or that, or didn’t do this or that. But Deb is no therapist who allows any client to complain for long, so after the first sessions of complaints, she set the stage for Mary, namely to talk about herself, mature in her self-understanding and emotional awareness, and then to do something. Mike came to see me with the notorious “female hand in the back” syndrome, meaning, “You need to see the therapist.” Indeed, Mike was figuratively pushed into my office but we made a bit of progress, particularly on his tendency towards expressing anger easily, an almost universal phenomenon with the men that I see. I say that men have “A” problems, namely anger, avoidance, addiction, and accommodation. They usually don’t know how to express their deeper feelings, much hear feelings from anyone else. Mike cane for a while, and then Deb insisted that Mary and Mike come to see me together. I did my best, but I couldn’t get Mary beyond doing what so many people do, talk about the other person. I hear something like, “I’ll tell you how I feel. Mike….”
Wait a minute; I thought you were going to tell me how YOU felt, but all you did was talk about Mike and his alleged problems. I didn’t make much progress because it was quite obvious that Mary’s position was that Mike should somehow “change” in some unknown way. It seemed like she was saying, “I married you the way you are; now change.” After a particularly difficult session where Mary came after me with a vengeance because I was attempting to give Mike some hope in the marriage. I talked to Deb about the incident and said to Deb that I was either going to make a direct challenge to Mary or quit marital therapy altogether. Deb pleaded with me to do neither, and then she saw Mary the next day. Deb reminded Mary that therapy was not about the other person but about oneself, and furthermore Deb insisted that Mary “do something.” But Mary said that she didn’t know what to do. Neither did Deb.

That night Mary met Mike at the doorway and said, “I can’t do this anymore” and the proceeded to leave the house and go to their cabin for the night, perhaps permanently. Mary soon called Deb frantically two or three times, sobbing and overwhelmed that she had “fucked up” and didn’t know what to do .A few hours later Mary texted Mike without his response, and then again and again, and then called him. Mike apparently did not think he could talk to Mary expecting that it would be more of the same, namely he was “the problem.” But such was not the case. Somehow, in what we consider to be a “spiritual engagement,” she had found a way to see Mike for who he was, and then saw that she not only loved him, but also liked him. She came home after a sobbing-filled phone call, they talked for hours, and came to see me the next day.

I don’t really know what happened with Mary but her “doing something” turned out to be the right thing, namely doing something. Sometimes you have to move forward so that you can do a 180 and move backward or perhaps to the right or left.

The woman who left the perfect man

I’ve been seeing a 30-something man who has been very successful in business. He is honest, hard—working, expressive although introverted by nature, and generally kind to the people in his life. He has, unfortunately, not been very successful with women including the most recent female relationship, which lasted about nine months. Previously, he has had relationships that lasted a couple of years but never has been able to sustain anything with a woman long enough to establish a real bond and eventually a commitment to a life together. It appears that he has suffered from a phenomenon that I will next discuss, but more importantly, he is a good “catch” for any woman because of the ingredients just noted, like independent success in work, honesty, commitment, and genuine kindness. Guys like this often fail to sustain long-term relationships because they are so attractive to women, often women who are impressed with the guy’s physical appearance, vocational status, or general kindness. Who would leave such a man? This is the question Jack asked me when he came to see me because he was just at the end of this 9-month long relationship with Sidney that she ended, but for reasons that were not clear to him. She spoke of his being great in all areas but then said that “she was not ready to commit” and “needed to find herself.”

What happened to Jack has happened to many men who are good in many ways and “look good” to women. Women are initially attracted to the stability that such men offer, but eventually find the man “not good enough,” probably not exciting enough. Men like Jack are self-made, confident, and usually pretty successful in work but may not be all that some women want. They tend to attract women who they try to “fix”. This “fixing” comes after a few months in the relationship with the woman starts to be true to herself and displays the “deep hole” that I will describe next. I think that Jack couldn’t fix Sidney. More importantly, because of many women’s tendency to overly emotionalize, Jack was less emotional himself. More importantly, Jack is not emotionally mature himself, which means knowing what you feel, valuing what you feel, communicating what you feel, and governing what you feel. This, of course, leads to the man being able to hear and adjust to a woman’s feelings. Jack was good at listening but his tendency to fix Sidney didn’t work. It never does.

The women caused the man to leave

Many men become involved with women who have a “deep hole” in their soul. My previous blog was about deep hole people, whether male or female. Such people tend to be very attractive, often very sexually active, often outgoing, fun-loving, and very engaging. They are, in a nutshell, the bombshell woman that many men are attracted to…unfortunately. I don’t know how they develop this bombshell manner, but I suspect they have learned to “be attractive” to men, whether consciously or unconsciously. So they “get” men, but then they began to display the deep hole phenomenon that starts to deteriorate the relationship with the man. Like Jack, men usually try to “fix” these women, but there can be no successful fixing of the deep hole. It needs to be healed. Deep hole people, whether male or female, tend to be in relationships quickly but not successfully, sometimes going from person to person, often being promiscuous, and usually having some kind of addiction, whether behavioral or chemical. I’ve recently seen two such men and one gay man who was “left” by the deep hole man he was with for a few months.

In one case, the man was somewhat sophisticated in psychological matters and concluded that the proper diagnosis for his former partner was a “personality disorder.” That was probably right, but I don’t like the diagnosis as it speaks of what is wrong with someone rather than what is right, much what can be done about it. The other “left” man simply gave up on his deep hole woman after trying to fix her for years. Both of these men were exhausted, one still exhausted from the end of his relationship a year after it ended. What happened is that these men got so drained by the deep hole women in their lives, that they finally got a grip and ended the relationship. In both cases the woman protested loudly that she loved the guy in her life and promised to be “better,” but it was too late. They had drained the life out of the guy who was trying to fill the empty hole. The gay guy had a similarly deep hole person whom he left because he couldn’t tolerate his lover’s promiscuity anymore. He was driven to leave his lover just as the deep hole women had driven the guys to leave them.

The woman who left because the man couldn’t

Now I get personal. This is me. I am not alone in this category partly because many men really want to leave the women in their lives but can’t seem to do it. I was married for the wrong reason: I wanted to have sex, and at that stage of my life, I couldn’t have sex while unmarried. Perhaps, more importantly, I couldn’t deal with the sadness and hurt my wife displayed when I suggested that we break up…even “for a while.” I caved. My wife was a lovely woman, but I was the one who propped her up in many ways, encouraged her, and helped her make a life. Eventually, I got tired of all the work and began to drift away. I drifted into another woman’s arms, also a good woman, but perhaps also a woman with needs that I couldn’t manage. However wrong it was for me to have an affair, it was the only way I could see of getting out of a marriage to a “good woman,” but someone who was not good for me. You understand, hopefully, that I delete much of the rest of the story for reasons of propriety and privacy of all concerned. So my wife left me because I didn’t leave her. I most certainly shouldn’t have married her, and most certainly should have trusted my feelings in the very first year of our 14-year marriage when I suspected that I shouldn’t have married her. I didn’t trust those feelings and paid an enormous price, the price exacted by the scorned woman. I won’t give the details, but this is now 40 years in the past and no longer are important to me. There are many men who somehow get into a relationship or marriage on shaky grounds, stay in it too long, and end up being left by the women that they don’t really want to be with in the first place. You can’t blame the woman here.

 

My encouragement to men is always to trust their feelings, however murky these feelings are. This is the core of the work I do with men and it is the core of work Deb does with women. It is hard work, but it is valuable work. Many marriages wouldn’t happen, would end quickly, or would be healed with good therapy if the man could be honest with his feelings. We can’t blame the women for our lack of courage, wisdom, and emotional maturity. It’s not up to the woman to do something. And when it happens, it is up to the man to see what he has not seen, not been willing to see, or otherwise ignores. The men that I see in the “left man” syndrome need to look at themselves, not the woman. It’s not her fault.