Love is a Taught Construct
How do you know how to love? Did you sit wide-eyed in front of a large screen as colourful costumed characters hugged one another to a saccharine sound-track so this imbued you with the concept of what love was? Did those cartoon characters explain to you what it is to love? Did their exaggerated voices and crazy antics, followed by the moral of the story teach you what love is?
Perhaps you read about it in love, heard it in songs and studied the many ways in which this ultimate emotion appears and affects people. Chances are that you have been affected by those hugely affecting passages from the great works dedicated to love. Chances are you have been captured by haunting lyrics and catchy jingles which also profess to tell you what love is.
They have all played a part. You may have learned about love from the version churned out by the media, of Hollywood romance, dashing heroes, fair maidens, tarts with golden hearts, the good man who rides to the rescue, the wayward soul saved by love. Love may have been explained to you from the pulpit as a higher love, something which transcends all earthly manifestations, a love so powerful and complete that it sacrificed its only son in order to demonstrate its love for humankind.
This godly love is all around you, it touches each and all and is mighty in its effects. Love may have been learned from furtive fumbles down alleyways, sneaking into bedrooms when so young, the exploration of warm and urgent body parts accompanied by those ever so sincere protestations of love.
A haphazard journey through galloping teen years as nothing and everything makes sense all at once. Then again, love might have appeared to you in the form of something small and furry, an unconditional (so long as it was fed) love which was loyal, giving and ever so cute. So many erudite tutors, learned lecturers and wise proponents of what love is.
Love thy neighbour, love yourself, love is all you need, woman in love, it must have been love, crazy little thing called love, to know him is to love him, we found love, how deep is your love? Love is all around us, in us, between us, lifting us up and letting us down. It is everywhere and you may well have been taught by many of the above and more besides as to what love is.
However, love most likely will have been taught to you by those who created you, those two people who came together and through their own pleasure created you. Two people who decided that they would shoulder the responsibility of creating life, nurturing it and bringing a new person into the world.
Those two people accepted many, many responsibilities from such a decision and act. Chief among them was the responsibility of teaching that person what love is. Through their offices they have furnished each and every one of us with the notion of what love is. A deep-seated and visceral understanding of this is how love feels, this is what it looks like, this is what it sounds like.
This is love. From those two people more than anything else we are first grounded in the concept of what love is. This grounding lasts a considerable time and whilst there are other factors to be considered, as I have mentioned above, it is this lesson which is learnt invariably first and the one lesson which resonates beyond all others. So often we are in their hands when it comes to being taught about love. So, what is this taught love? It has so many, many facets.
Love is being told to never trust anybody.
Love is being made to re-write the entire essay because of one spelling mistake.
Love is being sent to stand outside on a cold winter’s day until all three verses of Ode to Autumn are recited correctly.
Love is knowing nothing is ever good enough.
Love is understanding that someone else knows better than you what is best for you.
Love is turning away from the reality.
Love is standing straight against a wall for several hours for speaking out of turn.
Love is for the weak.
Love is being told that when I am gone nobody else will look out for you.
Love is succeeding.
Love is building a wall as high as possible.
Love is trying until it hurts and gaining that final curt nod of approval.
Love is being seen and not heard.
Love is fulfilling your potential and securing that legacy.
Love is hurting you even though it hurts me, but someone in this household has to do it and it won’t be him will it?
Love is reading to yourself than being read to.
Love is living in the shadows and hoping not to be noticed.
Love is being the best.
Love is the preserve of the powerful.
Love is being denied a birthday party because the other children are too stupid.
Love is being undermined in order to prevent conceit.
Love is a begrudged recognition and the injunction to try harder, go further, climb higher, run faster, study longer.
Love is burning your hand but not crying.
Love is don’t tell anybody about our secret.
Love is a righteous beating.
Love is being distant and pretending things never happened.
Love is being sent away.
Love is not being told.
Love is splendid isolation.
Love was taught this way.
5 thoughts on “Love is a Taught Construct”
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I have a question HG.
I have thought it utterly bizarre, given your father was an empath, that he did not intervene with you as he did with your siblings. I cannot fathom how an empath would be the port of call for your siblings and not for you. Even if you portrayed yourself as self sufficient, not requiring his support, even then, it does not make sense to me from the empathic perspective. You were just a kid. He was an empath, wired like me, like the other readers here on this blog.
So, I thought about it. I thought, what would drive a person to step back from one child and intervene with the others? There is only one conclusion I can come to.
Matrinarc and he made a deal. It was actually discussed, like dividing household responsibilities. Matrinarc earmarked you (for obvious reasons). She would raise this boy and make him into the man. Her way. Your father was to allow her to do this. In return he would input more in the lives of your siblings. He would be their overriding influence and she yours.
I think he knew. He saw that you were best placed to deal with her. You could better withstand her methods. I think he agreed to step back from you in order to step forward with the others. I can’t wrap my head around how someone does that. But I can imagine that discussion more than any other reason. Do you think that is the case HG?
HG –
I want to whole-heartedly apologize to you, as I did to my narcissist, on behalf of all women, for the torment you received from your mother, and any other unprovoked woman who might have tormented you. It breaks my heart to know that a mother did such an unconscionable, unloving, disservice to her child. It also makes me incredibly sad that there are girls that manipulate boys and humiliate them on purpose, unprovoked. I am ashamed that there are females that behave in those ways. I think many male narcissists are created as a result of despicable treatment by females; I think that is why there are so many male narcissists. Then all those male narcissists end up abusing innocent women, because of their skewed perception of women and love and relationships, and the biological changes that took place in their brains from the abuse. People need to realize the damage that they do to others, and the proliferating repercussions that are going to stem from that. Our society is damaged as a whole because of the dysfunction and abuse. I wish parents would take a more active role in teaching their children to be good, kind people. I also wish that girls and women would not manipulate and use boys and men for money and stuff like that; that creates an animosity in males, and the belief that all females are like that; then those males take it out on the rest of the females throughout their lives. It is a sad vicious cycle that keeps expanding.
Although it obviously wasn’t me that did those things, and I never would do such things, I feel so sorry that those hateful, harmful things were done to you and others. I know that the damage has already been done, and nothing can fully undo it; but I hope that knowing that someone feels sorry about it and sad for you comforts you in some way. XOXO
There is no need for such an apology but I understand why you feel compelled to issue such an apology. I acknowledge there sentiment behind it.
This couldn’t be more accurate. It really gives you insight to why you’ve allowed this bs in your life for so many years.
My comment (copies & pasted) on: October 22, 2020
“Hmmm. Therapists should read this and take it on board. Ok, it’s not the only way a child can be “conditioned” and fked up by parents who should not have created a child, never mind ‘creating’ more than one. This article could explain, in one way – why the ‘creature’ is created. It is also – on my part – unconsciously – of my decision not to have children of my own. I didn’t understand it fully but yet I knew at the same time. Losing the one parent that loved me at very young age contributed to my own ‘darkness’. Having a narcissist as the surviving parent added to the ‘creation’ of me as a person. No fkg therapist can change that.”
Today’s addition: there is so very few that would understand what I mean when I say my own ‘darkness’. It is still present. It is still there. Yet I do not allow it to ‘overtake’ me as an individual. Simply because I am not a ‘full blown’ narcissist in the sense of the word ‘narcissist’. I think (on my part anyway) it was to understand what and why happened to me as a person. Yes, I am somebody that was, somehow, ‘shaped’ by those with narcissism in my past. Yet. I am not actually the person that the past narcissists ‘shaped’ me to be. I am not the same person as I was when I joined KTN site. I will never be “that” person again. I believe I am much stronger than that and had not realised this, until I don’t really know when, yet I am aware of what I am made of. That is in itself would ‘freak’ out some, oh, hang on a mo, the majority of narcissists (if they knew what they are and knew what I am) – fk me, I’d be avoided like the ‘plague’. Laughing.
The Greaters? Bring it on, guys….. oh (dearie me), there is so few of you….. more fun for me (sharpening claws in anticipation….. ).
Having said all of that, I learned and acknowledge now, and remembered what ‘love’ is via a dog. I know I possess the ‘understanding’ of what ‘love’ is and had forgotten what it is because it has been that long since my grandmother. I miss that ‘genuine’ and ‘unconditional’ love, what it stands for. Why does there have to be ‘conditions’? It should not have to be like that. It should not have to be “controlled” it should not have ‘boundaries’. I should be able to feel that I can be ‘me’ and also the other person should feel they can be ‘themselves’. I believe that exists. That person should be ‘themselves’ and I be ‘me’. That is a true ‘bond’. One would know if they can ‘let go’ and be themselves with each other.