Self-Awareness

Loving and Liking II: The Importance of Not Liking your Spouse

Ron Johnson Connection, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, happiness, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Uncategorized

In our first blog on the loving/not liking phenomenon we discussed how important it is to distinguish liking and loving. Both of these phenomena are of central importance in having successful relationships as well as have an emotionally satisfying life. Simply stated:

  • Loving is natural and often immediate. Loving is most immediate and natural with family members.
  • Liking is the result of something shared: this can be an idea or belief, an experience, or something else that is held in common.
  • Liking comes more slowly and is most common among friends.
  • It is possible to like someone whom you may not love.
  • It is possible to love someone whom you really don’t like. This is the real challenge in relationships, particularly when the person you love but don’t necessarily like is a family member.

A few more things about this business of liking:

  • “Not liking” is not the same as disliking. You can actively dislike someone for various reasons, usually having to do with someone’s character. Disliking someone tends to be complete: you really don’t like the person. This tends to be fairly rare.
  • More often, there are elements of the person you don’t like. You may actually like the person as a whole but not certain aspects of her life. These could be minor things like her table manners, the grammatical errors she routinely makes. Or the dislike could be her political position or how she behaves in a group.
  • Both liking and loving are feelings. We discussed the centrality of feelings in the Feelings I, II, III, and IV blogs. Feelings are a murky combination of emotions, thought, and intuition. They are central to life. They are close to our souls.

One of the things we do with our clients/patients is to help them distinguish the liking and loving phenomena and how they often overlap. Understanding the similarities, differences, and overlap of liking and loving is particularly helpful in spousal and other partner relationships. We have often said to couples, “You got married for the wrong reason: you loved each other.” We make this statement somewhat tongue-in-cheek knowing that it wonderful to love one’s partner and that most people do, indeed, get married because they are in love, at least in America. Yet, getting married primarily, often singularly, because you love someone, does not necessarily make for a satisfying marriage. Very often, sometimes within days after a marriage, people begin to feel a “not like” or even the “dislike” for the person they just married. Then you have a huge dilemma. But why do people discover that they don’t like each other even though they may deeply love each other? The reason, as sages throughout time have told us: “love is blind”.

Yes, love is blind, and it is wonderful in its blindness. When you come to love someone, you are not necessarily interested in everything about this person. You don’t care what s/he does for a living, whether they like baseball, or know how to cook. You certainly don’t think about whether they have ever done the dishes. You just love the person. Wonderful. But also, blind. Love is certainly blind when you immediately love your child when s/he is born. The blindness of loving such a wonderful creation of God is nothing but beautiful, soulful, and perfectly honest. You don’t think about changing diapers for three years or being awakened at 4 AM for the fourth time in the night. You just love your child. Wonderful. But also, blind.

Love can be “blind” when we don’t attend to the whole picture, or better stated, the eventual picture. Blind love is more about a soul-filled moment of perfection. You can really love those Grizzly cubs before they grow up and threaten your life, or love puppies and kittens before they poop on your new carpet. When we love things, especially young living things, we are loving the purity of what is in the moment. We can easily love the stars on a clear night, spring flowers in a mountain meadow, or the call of a loon on a quiet lake because they are representations of some level of perfection. Loving your newborn child is a kind of “perfect love” that is pure and immediate and does not take into account for any potential danger or disappointment. Falling in love with another person can equally be “perfect love” but fail to take into account inevitable disappointments.

We all have things, experiences, and people we “just love” without rational reason. My wife and I “love” the moment we hear Pacobel’s cannon. It is a representation of our “perfect love” experienced on our wedding day. We all “just love” experiences, memories, and people in different ways and times, but all love “blindly,” as we should.  We would never want to give up this glorious experience of such random loving. But when it comes to spousal like relationships, this grand experience of loving can get us in deep trouble.

Here’s what happens. In the blindness of love we see the immediate physical, sexual or otherwise ethereal qualities of another person. And in that immediate attraction we automatically disregard the plethora of differences that might otherwise be caution signs. This blindness does not help us see the things that might be substantially different between us, some of them quite profound, some less significant. The blindness of love convinces us that nothing else matters and whatever “else” there might be, it will be as easy to dismiss as it is easy to love. Most of the things we don’t like or dislike in someone else have to do with honest differences, not flaws. And in the initial embrace of blind love, these differences seem inconsequential.

When we see couples in our office for a marital assessment we always do what we call a “friendly diagnosis”. Our friendly diagnosis identifies each individual’s positive characteristics. This includes gender, personality, cultural, spiritual and intellectual strengths. Once we have identified each person’s strengths, we frame them as “preferences.” In this framework we can then compare these preferences between the partners. What have felt like “problems” to the couple can then be seen as differences. These problems when viewed through the lens of preferences help each partner to see how despite how much they love one another, there are things that they dislike about each other. Then we can talk about the “not liking” phenomenon because we have some content to the discussion rather than a wholesale not liking or disliking.

When couples learn that they actually dislike their partners for some reason, the dislike becomes more palatable, and even useful in how they see each other, hear each other, and love each other. Furthermore, when they accept that there are aspects of their partners that they don’t like, this dislike diminishes in content and in fury, sometimes to the place where they can tease one another about something not liked without hostility or resentment. They also come to realize that some of the things they don’t like not only are foundational to their partners, but that they are good things…that they just happen to not like.

A few suggestions:

  • Note that you love your partner.
  • Note immediately that you want to say things you don’t like about him or her.
  • Identify something very specific that you don’t like. This will usually be something they say, don’t say, do, or don’t do.
  • Don’t tell your partner this thing that you don’t like. Just sit on it for a day or two.
  • Notice how you “don’t like” diminishes over time…but you still don’t like when they…
  • You might find yourself identifying things you like about your partner. Make note of them.
  • You might notice that some of the things you don’t like seem to be intrinsically related to what you do like about your partner.
  • Then it might be time to talk to your partner: about loving him/her, about liking some things, and about not liking some things.

Further Reading

Our book, The Positive Power of Sadness

Previous blogs on Feelings and Loving and Liking I: Not the Same

Forthcoming Loving and Liking on Children and The Spectrum of liking/Not liking

Loving and Liking I: Not the Same

Ron Johnson Connection, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, relationships, Self-Awareness

Loving and Liking I: Not the Same

Some people are just easy to love. They attract your love for many reasons, but it isn’t necessary what they say or do: they’re just lovable. They’re like little kittens or puppies. I’m reminded of being with our grandson a couple years ago at Bear Country while the three of us were on a national parks’ journey out west. First we drove through the real bear country, like the Black Hills and Yellowstone, but we didn’t find any. Besides, you get a little worried when you’re looking for Grizzlies in some back country. Better to pay your way to Bear Country in South Dakota where you drive through this park with all kinds of dangerous bears just hanging out doing their thing. Then you come to the “nursery” where the baby cubs are romping around with one another, and you are compelled to jump over the fence and romp with them. We didn’t. But these not-yet-dangerous animals were lovable.

 Lovability

Some people are just like that: lovable. You know the kind. There’s something about these lovable people that is some kind of special gift they have. They’re not trying to be lovable; they just are. You can’t help it. For the most part babies are just lovable, and a lot of young kids are the same way. But these adults who are lovable are a special breed. We call these folks “lovers” in temperament, which we want to discuss in a later blog, but for now let’s just say that they’re just lovable.

Aside from the lovable baby bear cubs, kittens and puppies, and human babies, there is another phenomenon that occurs, mostly in families. We love our relatives. Especially our children. It just happens. How did I love my daughters the first second they were delivered? I was astounded with my feelings of love for my daughters when there were just delivered. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. And the love I had for each of them has remained solid now for 44 and 40 years and counting.

 Liability

Why do we like someone? There are many reasons but largest among them is some facet of life that is shared. This could be a shared political, religious, or philosophical belief, or it could be a shared passion for some activity like sports, music, working on cars, or hiking. We may also like someone because that person makes me laugh…or even cry. Liking is actually harder to develop or find that love because it means we have to find that piece of life that we share. People who like the Packers, for instance, might actually come from very different philosophical perspectives, but when they are watching a Packer game and drinking beer, it is only what they like that really matters. Sometimes liking simply has come from familiarity. You just know someone for a long time, say a spouse, and you like that you can predict when your friend will do something.

Liking is the essence of friendship. Furthermore, you can stop liking someone and you certainly can end a relationship with someone with whom you now have less in common. It can be problematic if you yet love the person you have ended a relationship with, especially if that person is a family member.

Loving and liking family members

We tend to love the rest of our family members, like parents, siblings, grandparents, and other extended family members. I have one favorite cousin out of the 22 I have. Just love him. Don’t know why. Perhaps because of the shared outgoing nature we have or the fun we had as kids. Just love him. Can’t help it. The same can be true with other relatives, and usually is true for those in our families of origin: parents and siblings, and perhaps an uncle, aunt, or grandparent who lived with us. Gotta love your family right? Right.

But you may not like ‘em. That’s the problem. You may love them but you may not like them. This is a huge problem, at least for many people. I talked with someone yesterday who hasn’t talked to his brother for years…but still loves him. I heard from a friend that his adult son doesn’t talk with his mother for some reason. And I talk with many people who have great problems with one or more of their family members. In summary, they don’t like someone that they love. My blog on “The Other F word” dealt a bit with the loving/not liking phenomenon. It’s a challenge. You can’t get rid of family as hard as you might try. You don’t have to. But you need to deal with your feelings…all of them.

Dealing with the loving/not liking phenomenon

Here are a couple suggestions for this love him/don’t like him dilemma:

  • Identify the people you love who in your life. Be courageous because you might be surprised how small or how large this group might be
  • Identify the people you like who are in your life. This could be family or friends. They might even be someone you see at the grocery store now and then, or a gal you see across the street.
  • Consider the people who might fall into the love her/don’t like her category. This will usually be family members.
  • Allow yourself the freedom to do the loving and the liking even they don’t seem to fit together.
  • Don’t run off and tell you drug addicted son that you love him but don’t like him, or your brother who is just a loudmouth. Just acknowledge that you don’t like someone whom you feel compelled to love, and perhaps really love.
  • Note the feeling you have with this love/don’t like thing. The feeling will be sadness. The only reason you feel sad is because you love someone and have, for some reason, lost that person, or lost trust in that person, or feel betrayed by that person, or something else. But you still love her. Let it be.

Further reading

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2017). The positive power of sadness. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger

Johnson, R. (2018). Feelings I-IV blogs

Johnson, R. (2018, forthcoming). Loving and Liking II: Spouse; Loving and liking III: Children.

Who’s in Control

Ron Johnson Connection, emotional maturity, Feelings, marital, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, Uncategorized

I’ve heard a lot about “control,” most of it negative. Like, “He’s a control freak,” or “She just has to control everybody in her life.” And then there is the other side, which seems to affirm that you can’t control anything and shouldn’t try like, “What’s going to happen is just going to happen” or “Just let go and everything will work out.” I don’t think there is a good concept of what control is, what it isn’t, how it can be good, and how it can be bad. There are also a number of psychological diagnoses, like OCD, that suggest that there is some basic pathological tendencies in control. My interest in this treatise is largely about how people feel in control or controlled. Let me share my thoughts.

Locus of control

One of the very valuable tests we use in our office is something created by psychologist Julian Rotter in 1954 called the “Internal-External Scale”, usually referred to as the IE test. There are only 29 questions on this test which attempts to determine whether a person has an “internal locus of control” or an “external locus of control.” Rotter defined people with an internal locus of control as having control of their lives, compared to people with an external locus of control as having little or no control over their lives. Rotter found that people with an internal locus of control fared better in life, a finding that proved true in research. Many research studies, including my wife’s doctoral dissertation, included the IE to study people’s view of control. An important finding of the IE research showed that people with an external locus of control were more depressed and felt helpless in life. Helplessness, together with hopeless, and a number of other symptoms are symptoms of depression.

I have generally found that people with an internal locus of control do succeed in life, feel better about themselves and other people, and find ways to cope with life’s difficulties. The feel motivated to do something about their lives, both facing difficult challenges, and enhancing their strengths and utilizing passions. Another symptom of depressions is “anhedonia,” or the lack of motivation and interest. You can see how the arrow could go both ways if you have an external locus of control: (1) you feel helpless to do anything to make a life for yourself, and (2) not doing anything in life can cause you to feel helpless. I have seen both, and it tends to be a downward spiral: feeling helpless; acting helpless. But there is much more about this locus of control business.

Beliefs associated with an external locus of control

Bad luck, for one. People who feel controlled by the world often use this phrase when they fail at something. They even use it to prevent them trying to do something because they “are not lucky like some people.”

Other people. More often it is not bad luck, it is other people who seem to control one’s life. In other words people with an external locus of control feel “controlled” by the people in their lives. This felt external control can be with spouses, parents, children, friends, employers, employees, or government officials. So they feel, “They won’t let me…,” sometimes not even knowing who the “they” are.

Blaming. An adjunct to the “they” problem that these folks have is tendency to blame others in some way like, “the dog ate the homework,” “the teacher didn’t tell me how she wanted me to do the homework,” or simply, “It wasn’t my fault” statements we sometimes hear from children. Adults will blame their spouses, bosses, friends, children, or parents because these people “controlled” them in some way.

Accidents. A patient I saw for maybe seven years (quite unsuccessfully, I must add), told me several times that she (yes, one of the very few women I have seen as a patient in the last 30 years or so) felt that “if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong with me.” This same woman, by the way smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, slept 14 hours a day, watched TV the rest of the day, and now having gained back 100 pounds of the 300 she had lost in bariatric surgery some years beforehand. As I said, the arrow goes both ways: feeling helpless and acting helpless. Freud wrote about what he called parapraxes, which included accident proneness, which he theorized was caused by unconscious factors.

Body ailments. This is a big one. People with a myriad of physical and medical problems almost always have an external locus of control. They speak of their bodies as if these bodies were somehow external to themselves. I hear “my heart this…,” “my arms that…,” my legs that…,” “my eyes this…” and many other physical symptoms. This kind of external locus of control is the most insidious because while the so-called problem is actually within one’s body, the person feels that his or her body is somehow controlled by external factors beyond their control.

Beliefs associated with an internal locus of control

Self. This is the key ingredient with these people. They have a sense of what we psychologists call “self”. This is understandably a vague term without an exact definition but one that is very central to the heart of depth psychology. In its simplest form “self” is the feeling that I exist. Believe it or not, many people operate as if they don’t exist. They just go through life doing what is expected of them but not knowing why, and perhaps not even caring why. This sense of self, that I exist, breeds some other ingredients that lend to an internal locus of control.

Self-confidence. This is not to be confused with arrogance, which is the feeling that I am better than other people. Symptoms of self-confidence include the ability to make mistakes, feel sad for a moment or two and recover from this mistake. The root of the word confidence, by the way could be translated (from the Latin) as “with truth.” So self-confident people tend to be truthful.

Self-reliant. Simply put, they rely primarily on themselves. They share their thoughts, feelings, and doings with others but always at a bit of a distance because they tend to think that they can survive without anyone. This is tantamount to independence.

Disinclination to complain. They tend to take responsibility for their actions, sometimes to a fault or sometimes when it wasn’t actually their fault. But this tendency away from complaining makes them more likable. Do you know of someone who is always talking about what he/she/they/it did to them? You tend to stay away from such people.

A balanced life

No one is in complete control of his or her life. Externally controlled people may have a sense of how we all need each other, but they tend to lose that very important sense of self that is so central in life. We are all dependent on circumstances, other people, and perhaps that random good or bad luck from time to time. The task is to find that internal sense of control that helps you face the challenges and enhance the opportunities.

Further Reading
Brock, D. (2004). Comparisons of personality type, psychopathology, and church denomination in women. Available on Dissertation Abstracts
Johnson, R. (2018). The Other N Word blog and the Feelings blogs
Rotter, J (1954). Monologue on locus of control. Available on the Internet.