VALENTINE'S DAY--- WHAT IS LOVE?

Victor Bloom MD

On Valentine's Day we celebrate Love, but what is Love? It is one word, but it means so many different things. There is mother-love, father-love and God's love, filial love and brotherly love and 'Love-Thy-Neighbor'. There is Romantic Love and Platonic love. And we say "I love ice-cream" (or chocolate or music or travelling or golf), but what are we really talking about when we use that word?

The greeting card store contains hundreds of choices to pick from to express our sentiments to grandparents, nephews and neices, to husbands and wives and, well, sweethearts. The stores are full of red hearts and chocolate candies and the flower shops are busy. Also busy are the jewelry stores, as gold and diamonds are symbols of our deep and everlasting love for someone special. Candy stores are full of little sugar-candy hearts with messages of "I love you".

When a person is in doubt and feeling insecure, the question is, "Do you love me?" How does one truly answer such a question? What does it really mean? Sometimes it means, "Will you love me forever?", which means, "Do you love me, unconditionally?"

There are only two sources of unconditional love--- the love of God, and mother-love. When the person is an infant, totally helpless and vulnerable, needing the utmost of care, unconditional love is the only thing that will help that infant grow http://www.ukwatches.cn/ into a mature, loving adult. That means that the child is cared for adequately and consistently, that its needs will be understood and gratified. The infant needs to be fed and changed, played with and made comfortable, allowed to be alone and sleep undisturbed and protected, and not scolded or punished for behavior that is not within its control.

As the child grows and matures, it internalizes this love and becomes confident and secure. This internalization of the "good-mother" becomes the core of the personality and the reservoir of "basic-trust", which is the pre-requisite of a loving, caring, sensitive, empathic person. What interferes with this ideal is excess of frustration, trauma, neglect. A happy baby is smiling and outgoing; an unhappy one is largely fussy and whiny or downcast and withdrawn. The latter situation is the basis for later depression and low self-esteem.

The well cared for baby is the prerequisite for mature love later on in life. Mature love includes characteristics of unconditional love, such as conjugal love which may last for a lifetime. It is the basis of commitment, responsibility and devotion, for having the capacity to endure the pain and struggle and complex problems of adult life. It is the basis for the solid, enduring marriages we admire and respect.

On the other hand there are the "broken homes" of divorce. Psychiatric experience shows that patients with emotional problems come from families of divorce, but also from dysfunctional families that stay together. Children are damaged by living with parents who do not get along, who have stopped loving each other, but are committed to stay together through hell and high water. Children learn that these marriages are 'normal' because it is what they grow up with. Without introspection and insight, these children tend to enter into incompatible marriages which are full of pain and negativity. When a married couple stay together for convenience or security, or for fear of loneliness or scandal, the children will not learn about love. They will learn to build psychological walls and develop mechanisms of distancing.

Mature conjugal love is the most exalted of human relationships. It is a love that grows with time, as two people grow and adapt to each other. Their highest priority is considering the feelings of the life-partner, and that consideration is extended, naturally, to their offspring. Feelings are expressed and the people are 'in touch' with themselves and each other. Only by being open and vulnerable is it possible to be sensitive and empathic. People who have been traumatized or neglected during their childhood develop a defensive wall and keep their emotional distance. They are afraid of being hurt and so avoid being intimately involved.

Mature sexual love requires this openness and sensivity, a comfort in being close and affectionate. Otherwise sex is callous and indifferent, casual and irresponsible. When there is a need to be distant and invulnerable, sex is not fulfilling or gratifying. When there is a lack of affection and intimacy, the person tends to be tense and depressed, because basic needs are not being met.

Love is a basic need. Sometimes professional help will resolve unconscious emotional conflicts that stand in the way of the happiness that comes from mutual love with a compatible partner.

Romantic love does not emanate from Hollywood or the movies. Poets, philosophers and dramatists have extolled its virtues and merits throughout recorded history. T'is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Dr. Bloom is Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Wayne State University School of Medicine and in private practice in Grosse Pointe Park. His email address is hyperlink. URL- victorbloom.com