Jul 05 2008

Love, Pseudo-Love, parents must know for benefit of Children

Published by dodo at 3:38 am under Boys, Children, Family, Girls, Mommy, Parenting

Varieties of Love

There are at least half a dozen quite different varieties of love, all of which go by the same label. In infancy and early childhood love is principally dependent : the small child is tied tightly to his mother, turns to her for all his wants, feels anxious if she is away for long, is elated when she returns. Though dependent love decreases throughout childhood, there is, of course, still an attachment to parents in adulthood. Even married love has a dependent element in it. Love of God is, in part, like the dependent love of parents, though it usually has other spiritual and mystical qualities as well.

By about the age of three, a child begins to be able to love other children companionably and generously, loves his parent of the same sex with intense admiration and develops a romantic and sexual and possessive love for the other parent. These all come under the heading of spontaneous, outgoing love.

KidsYou love a good friend because of easy, frank communication, a similar sense of humour, interests in common, his loyalty to you, his need of you, his approval of you.

In adulthood a mature sexual—romantic love is a fusion of two very dissimilar emotions. One is physical, crude, relatively undiscriminating. The other is generous, tender, idealistic. An amazing combination.

We all love ourselves to one degree or another in the sense of thinking of ourselves a lot, wanting others to admire us, being eager to talk about ourselves to a good listener. But some of us can disguise our self-love more successfully and therefore are less boring about it. One of the biggest differences in human beings is between those who love only themselves and those who love others more.

 

Emotions Masquerading as Love

Many feelings aside from the conventional ones go to make up love relationships. I’ll mention some cases I’ve seen personally.

A younger sister becomes engaged and marries. Her older sister suddenly discovers that she does love the boy who has been hanging around for a couple of years and who, she always said before, was just a nuisance. Rivalry with her sister may have made her exaggerate her love for the person who was available. On the other hand, it’s also possible that in her deeper feelings she has been in love with the boy for some time, but that for complicated psychological reasons she wasn’t ready to recognise these feelings. She covered them up by telling everyone, including herself, that she disliked him; then suddenly the awareness of love broke through the denial, with full force. This is actually a fairly common pattern for falling in love, in boys as well as girls.

An attractive but selfish man who is popular with girls and presumably could have his pick appears to fall in love with and marries a rather plain, uncharming girl who is wealthy. Whether or not it had an influence in this case, wealth is one charm in a person which does not become boring with time or wither with age.

A man marries a colourless girl who finds him fascinating. Devotion and admiration from a spouse can make up for the absence of many other virtues.

A girl who has always felt that her family was socially inferior when compared with the neighbours falls in love with a dull young man whose family is top drawer. This does not imply cynicism or materialism on her part. His position is truly lovable to her.

A good-looking young hussy resolves to snare a sixty-yearold widower with a large fortune. Her charms of body and manner infatuate him utterly and he marries her. He tells his friends that he loves her for her warmth, her sincerity and her devotion to him, but his friends are quite sceptical about these virtues. Still, if she continues to give him sufficient attention, his wishful thinking, his sexuality and his pride will do the rest.

Boys and men like to imagine that the female who has the most revealing clothes or seductive manner is the one with the highest sexual responsiveness. Usually this is far from the truth. The dramatically seductive female is sometimes quite hostile towards men and is dangling her charms with the unconscious aim of snaring men rather than pleasing them or loving them.

An attractive, sought-after girl who has been antagonistic to her very conventional parents for a long time falls in love with and marries a man from a minority group against which her parents have a violent prejudice. This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love him for truly attractive qualities; but still one of the most appealing and exciting things about him may be her parents‘ wish to forbid the match. While we are on this topic I’d like to add some unsolicited advice. I think it is wonderful that so many young people now are unprejudiced and are helping to fight prejudice. I hope that some day race, religion and ethnic background can be ignored by lovers (as well as by employers and landlords and neighbours).

But where prejudices are strong, I think young people should be extra-cautious in marrying across such barriers. Marriage is a difficult adjustment for most couples even when all the conditions seem favourable. Barriers of prejudice often add intolerable strains. They may come from families and friends on both sides. To use marriage to show lack of prejudice or to fight prejudice is like trying to pry a huge boulder with a thin stick. The boulder doesn’t get moved, but the stick does get broken. I’m not saying that marriage across barriers can’t succeed, but that it takes superhuman love and maturity to make it succeed. If you are considering it, have a long engagement, to make sure.

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5 Responses to “Love, Pseudo-Love, parents must know for benefit of Children”

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  3. # Girlfriends Actingon 09 Jul 2008 at 2:01 pm

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