Love & Hate
The loving, critical mom. The fun, undependable friend. The supportive, cantankerous boss. Relationships that evoke conflicting feelings may cause more stress than those characterized by outright dislike…
The
last few months have brought a high tide of letters about love. I wish
I could answer them all. Rather, this article addresses the general
subject of most of them finding and keeping love in our lives, in the
form of intimate relationships.
Mature love, some insist, is a
broadening, deepening experience. But the claim that love promotes
maturity is unpersuasive without some indication that the individual
would not have matured just as readily in the absence of love. Indeed,
to the extent that love fosters dependency, it may be viewed as a
deterrent to maturity.
I am not asserting that the effects of love
always border on the pathological. I am saying that the person who
seeks love in order to obtain security will become, like the alcoholic,
increasingly dependent on this source of illusory well-being. The
secure person who seeks love would probably not trap himself in this
way.
But would the secure person seek love at all?
