Projecting Ourselves onto Others

Large numbers of American soldier had idyllic marriages to German, Italian or Japanese “war brides” (after World War II) with whom they could not verbally communicate. But when their brides learned English, the marriages began to fall apart. The servicemen could then no longer project upon their wives their own thoughts, feelings, desires and goals and feel the same sense of closeness one feels with a pet. Instead, as their wives learned English, the men began to realize that these women had ideas, opinions and aims different from their own. As this happened, love began to grow for some; for most, perhaps, it ceased.

The liberated woman is right to beware of the man who affectionately calls her his “pet.” He many indeed be an individual whose affection is dependent upon her being a pet, who lacks the capacity to respect her strength, independence and individuality.

Probably the most saddening example of this phenomenon is the very large number of women who are capable of “loving” their children only as infants.

As soon as a child begins to assert its own will- to disobey, to whine, to refuse to play, to occasionally reject being cuddled, to attach itself to other people, to move out into the world a little bit on its own – the mother’s love cease… At the same time, she will often feel an almost overpowering need to be pregnant again, to have another infant, another pet. Usually she will succeed, and the cycle is repeated.

The point is that nurturing can be and usually should be much more than simple feeding, and that nurturing spiritual growth is an infinitely more complicated process than can be directed by any instinct.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Love Begets Love

The more children know that you value them, that you consider them extraordinary people, the more willing they will be to listen to you and afford you the more willing they will be to listen to you and afford you the same esteem. And the more appropriate your teaching, based on your knowledge of them, the more eager your children will be to learn from you. And the more they learn, the more extraordinary the will become, If the reader senses the cyclical character of this process, he or she is quite correct and is appreciating the truth of the reciprocity of love. Instead of a vicious downward cycle, it is a creative upward cycle of evolution and growth. Value creates value. Love begets love.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The Aim of Genuine Love

Parents who say to their children, “You should be grateful for all that we have done for you” are invariably parents who are lacking in love to a significant degree. Anyone who genuinely loves knows the pleasure of loving. When we genuinely love we do so because we want to love. We have children because we want to have children, and if we are loving parents, it is because we want to be loving parents. It is true that love involves a change in the self, but this is an extension of the self rather than a sacrifice of the self. As will be discussed again later, genuine love is a self-replenishing activity. Indeed, it is even more; it enlarges rather than diminishes the self; it fills the self rather than depleting it. In a real sense love is as selfish as nonlove.

Here again there is a paradox in that love is both selfish and unselfish at the same time. It is not the selfishness or unselfishness that distinguishes love from nonlove; it is the aim of the action. In the case of genuine love the aim is always spiritual growth. In the case of nonlove the aim is always something else.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Two Lies

We lie, of course, not only to others but also to ourselves. Of the myriad lies people often tell themselves, two of the most common, potent and destructive are “We really love our children” and “Our parents really loved us.” If may be that our parents did love us and we do love our children, but when it is not the case, people often go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the realization.

I frequently refer to psychotherapy as the “truth game” or the “honest game” because its business is among other things to help patients confront such lies. One of the roots of mental illness is invariably an interlocking system of lies we have been told and lies we have told ourselves. These roots can be uncovered and excised only in an atmosphere of utter honesty.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The Individual Journey

As an adolescent I used to thrill to the words of love the early American poet Ann Bradstreet spoke to her husband: 'If ever two were one, then we.'

As I have grown, however, I have come to realize that it is the separateness of the partners that enriches the union. Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals who are terrified by their basic aloneness, as so commonly is the case, and seek a merging in marriage. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually seeks to cultivate it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.

Significant journeys cannot be accomplished without the nurture provided by a successful marriage or a successful society. Marriage and society exist for the basic purpose of nurturing such individual journeys.

But, as is the case with all genuine love, “sacrifices” on behalf of the growth of the other result in equal or greater growth of the self. It is the return of the individual to the nurturing marriage or society from the peaks he or she has traveled alone which serves to elevate that marriage or that society to new heights.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Separate Identities

Although the act of nurturing another’s spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one’s own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved. The genuine lover always perceives the beloved as someone who has a totally separate identity. Moreover, the genuine lover always respects and even encourages this separateness and the unique individuality of the beloved. Failure to perceive and respect this separateness is extremely common, however, and the cause of much mental illness and unnecessary suffering.

Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The Tonic

Unselfish love for others is a tonic to the soul. At this very moment, someone needs you to care for him. Without you, his life may be incomplete. It could be a member of your family; possibly it is your neighbor or the person with whom you work. You see, you really do not have time to indulge in self-pity because of your past failures; already too many are stuck in the mud of self-pity, and they need you to lift them out of despair.  

Larry Kennedy, Down With Anxiety

Please Understand Me

We want desperately to be understood. But if we put the power to decide whether we are understood into the hands of strangers, strangers who may or may not care about us, strangers who may or may not have our best interest at heart, we may waste our time and resources trying to please them.    

Why give people who don’t know us an outsized influence over our lives? Why provide them with control they haven’t earned by getting to know us by respecting us? How much better to find solace in those who truly care! Those people we can trust! People who will stand by us as they are invested in who we are becoming.

Stephen Goforth

Lasting Love

Lasting love is a passion that grows. The more we know the person, the more deeply we love him. There are a few who are struck like lightning. The minute they see someone they hear violins. This usually happens only in the movies. As one writer has suggested, it has to be “love at first sight” in a show that only has two hours to run.

Surveys continuously support love by growth. The overwhelming majority say they did not “fall in love” all at once. They met a person and found him attractive or interesting. Whatever caught their attention made them want to learn more. Possibly they met the person again or went on a date. At any rate, something started to grow. The person became more interesting.

Some people are frustrated because falling in love wasn’t like a divine revelation or a heart seizure. Consequently they even wonder if it is real. Such “falling” is a romantic dream that most of use have never experienced. But love which takes time can be the most enduring kind.

It is a question of expectation. Those who expect love to be automatic and instantaneous are often disappointed. It is more realistic to expect love to grow into full bloom as you live together in marriage. Then, rather than looking for an ideal experience, both lovers expect to change and grow.

William Coleman from his book Engaged

Why should I love my neighbor?

If anyone asks me why he should love his neighbor, I would not know how to answer him, and I could only ask in my turn why he should pose such a question...It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. 

Alfred Adler

My Life with One Arm

Two months to the day after my accident, I went to see a therapist for the first time in my life. I didn’t know where to begin. We discussed loss and resilience and the will to live and adapt. But when I started talking about the outpouring of love and support that I had received since my accident, I began weeping uncontrollably. I realized that for the first time in my life, I was truly letting love into my heart. Losing an arm has connected me to others in a way I have never felt. Yes, I have suffered a tremendous loss, but in a way, I feel as if I have gained much more.

Miles O’Brian, Writing in New York Magazine

Loneliness and Giving

Most of us, driven by our own aching needs and voids, address life and other people in the stance of seekers. We become what CS Lewis, in his book, The Four Loves, calls “..those pathetic people who simply want friends and can never make any. The very condition of having friends is that we should want something else besides friends.”

Most of us know our need to be loved and try to seek the love that we need from others. But the paradox remains uncompromised; if we seek the love which we need, we will never find it. We are lost.

Love can effect the solution of our problems but we must face the fact that to be loved, we must become loveable. When a person orients his life towards the satisfaction of his own needs, when he goes out of seek the love which he needs, no matter how we try to soften our judgments of him, he is self-centered. He is not lovable, even if he does deserve our compassion, He is concentrating on himself, and as long as he continues to concentrate on himself, his ability to love will always remain stunted and he will himself remain a perennial infant.

If, however, a person seeks not to receive love, but rather to give it, he will become lovable and he will most certainly be loved in the end. This is the immutable law under which we live: concern for ourselves and convergence upon self can only isolate self and induce an even deeper and more torturous loneliness. It is a vicious and terrible cycle that closes in on us when loneliness, seeking to be relieved through the love of others, only increases. The only way we can break this cycle formed by our lusting egos is to stop being concerned with ourselves and to being to be concerned with others.

John Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Love?

The Gift of Belonging

We all need a place we can call home – not just brick and mortar and four walls, but an atmosphere that is secure, where we feel completely comfortable with each other in the sureness that we belong, and that our happiness and well-being are of utmost importance to our partner. John Powell has captured the essence of this love in one sentence: “We need the heart of another as a home for our hearts.”

You are accustomed to spending time together without quarrels and recriminations, so that you feel safe with each other. At the same time, familiarity should never bred discourtesy. The courteous kindness we show our partners should be even greater than courtesy shown to anyone else.

Although warm affection seems as simple and uncomplicated as the comfort of an old shoe, it takes a measure of time and consistent behavior to build this love in your (relationship) – time spent in proving to each other that you can be depended on to be loyal, supportive and kind. In short, that you can be depended on.

It is possible to begin developing this love now, even if you have failed in the past. It will require forgiving and forgetting past mistakes. It will necessitate a practical decision to be one against the world. It must include consistent kindness in your daily behavior, for this is fundamental to the continuance of love.

Ed Wheat, Love-Life for Every Married Couple

The Myth of Romantic Love

To serve as effectively as it does to trap us into marriage, the experience of falling in love probably must have as one of its characteristics the illusion that the experience will last forever.  

This illusion is fostered in our culture by the commonly held myth of romantic love, which has its origins in our favorite childhood fairy tales, wherein the prince and princess, once united, live happily forever after. They myth of romantic love tell us, in effect, that for every young may in the world there is a young woman who was “meant for him” and vise versa.

Should it come to pass, however, that we do not satisfy or meet all of each other’s needs and friction arises and we fall out of love, then it is clear that a dreadful mistake was make, we misread the stars, we did not hook up with our one and only perfect match, what we thought was love was not real or “true” love, and nothing can be done about the situation except to live unhappily ever after or get divorced. 

The myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie.  

Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth. 

Ultimately, if they stay in therapy, all couples learn that a true acceptance of their own and each other’s individuality and separateness is the only foundation upon which a mature marriage can be based and real love can grow.  

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled