1.5.8.7 Love can be Warped

Version 1.0 October 2022                             (Previous Version)

To love a person, in our definition, is to avoid causing harm and to promote the other’s happiness and well-being.  Sometimes what may be expressed verbally as love morphs into a desperate attachment, an unwillingness to let go, possessiveness or controlling behaviour.  These behaviours cause harm and reduce the other’s happiness or well-being.  Love can also lead to excessive permissiveness, when we don't assign responsibility to someone behaving badly, impeding them learning appropriate behaviour. 

●   A desperate attachment arises when someone has lost too much of their own self-worth and needs the other at all times to make up the loss.  This may involve wanting the other to be with them all the time, to entertain or flatter or pander to their needs.  This is often excessively demanding on the other, limiting their freedom, generating guilt for not being available.  Such behaviour is a sign of personal inadequacy that should be addressed in other ways, such as counselling or psychological help, rather than filling one’s life at the expense of another.

      A desperate attachment of this sort should not be confused with being head over heels in love, especially when the feeling is reciprocated.  New lovers often want to spend as much time as possible together and do as much as possible together, and for some couples this desire lasts.

●   An unwillingness to let go can arise when a relationship sours, where one wants it to continue and the other wants to end it.  This sometimes leads to possessiveness and controlling behaviour, discussed below.  But trying to keep a relationship going when one is unwilling is almost guaranteed to result in failure over the long term, so it's better just to let go, and move on.

      That said, if the relationship soured because of a particular event, apparently involving a breach of trust, causing harm, or showing some other unexpected character flaw, it may be possible to explain that the event should not be explained that way, or to apologize and beg for forgiveness with a promise to behave better in future.  That might turn out well.  But if this situation arises again, excuses become less believable, so it may be better to cut the losses on both sides and end it.

●   An unwillingness to let go can also arise when the other person is terminally ill or brain dead.  Many people naturally don't want to lose what they had, and wish to prolong the loss as long as possible.  On the other hand, many people, some sooner, some later, come to realize that causing the other to continue is NOT minimizing harm and promoting well-being, so the loving thing to do is to let go and allow the terminally ill person to die, or the brain dead person’s heart to cease.

      Some express their unwillingness to let a terminally ill or brain dead person go as a respect for life. Excessive respect for Life can dramatically increase suffering in these cases for no benefit.  Valuing Life must be balanced by valuing Love.  Valuing Life absolutely above other core values is not justifiable, and is not even required in reasonable interpretations of religion.  Religious justifications for valuing Life absolutely, despite pain and suffering, are not strictly based on religious texts such as the Bible or the Qu’ran, and seem hypocritical if there is a belief in the afterlife, and believer eats, wears and uses animal products and tolerates animal cruelty.

●   Possessiveness or controlling behaviour arises when a person treats the other as a possession they own and have (in at least some respects) exclusive rights to.  This behaviour typically reflects an unthinking response to our primitive emotions which evolved eons ago when humans lived in small bands of hunter-gatherers. 

*    A man can say he loves his wife but control what she wears, who she talks to, and her access to other people.  This kind of behaviour is expressed in many popular love songs [eg You can't do that, by the Beatles in the 1960s]. 

*    An adult daughter might say she loves her parents but make decisions for them without their consent, or contrary to their wishes, even though they are competent to make such decisions themselves.  Elder abuse by adult children is common in many societies.

●   Permissive behaviour arises when a person treats the other as perfect and incapable of doing wrong.  This may cause harm to the spoilt child who may have difficulties maintaining friendships.  It will also cause harm to those the spoilt child annoys or hurts.

*    A parent may claim to love their child and at the same time think they are perfect.  This is generally a warped view because most children, like most of us, are imperfect.  Love may involve forgiveness, and that we overlook minor indiscretions, especially in young children.

      Tough love requires that offenders suffer consequences so that they learn.  We assign Responsibility when an intervention potentially changes behaviour.  We must intervene to encourage appropriate behaviour in children, which may involve distracting the child from the bad behaviour, counselling them, leading by example, or perhaps withdrawing privileges.

      Excessive permissiveness results in treating people unequally.  We need to value Equality so we appreciate the adverse effects on those affected by the spoilt child, and we don't unduly value our child more than others in a social situation.  Love must be mediated by Equality.

Unfortunately, in common usage, the word love is often taken to include aberrations such as those listed above.  But we should be clearer in our language: not ‘he loved her so much he tried to own her’ but ‘he said he loved her, but he tried to possess her, which love doesn’t allow’.