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)