Tw: painful truths, toxic relationship
Excerpt from The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, 44-45:
“I knew, for instance, that I had often become angry when “unconditional love” was discussed in the group meetings. I was apparently supposed to perceive and appreciate that all the members were giving me unconditional love. I was supposed to learn to trust them, and I felt guilty if I couldn’t. It was explained to me that I could not trust and believe that love existed at all because I hadn’t received love in my dysfunctional family of origin. I took these explanations for granted because I was longing so much for love and wanted to believe that I actually was loved. I was unable to question what I was told, because hypocrisy had been the food I was fed daily by my mother – it was so familiar to me, though never questionable. But today I do question things that do not make sense to me.
Today I would say: Only a child needs (and absolutely needs) unconditional love. We must give it to the children who are entrusted to us. We must be able to love and accept them whatever they do, not only when they smile charmingly but also when they cry and scream. But to pretend to love an adult unconditionally — that is, independently of his or her deeds — would mean that we should love even a cold serial murderer or notorious liar if only he joins our group. Can we do that? should we even try? Why? For whose sake? If we say that we love an adult unconditionally, we only prove our blindness and/or dishonesty. Nothing else.
This is the only one of many glimpses through the fog of religious heritage I tolerated in those meetings for much too long. I owe these insights to my lonely work. This ability to reason developed in me as I talked to my parents in my inner dialogue. It never occurred to me to have any conscious doubts when I was sitting in the meetings. I so desperately wanted to be loved — and that meant, of course, to comply, to be obedient. It was actually a very, very conditional “love” that was being offered there.”
Vera is right. As adults we don’t need unconditional love, not even from our therapists. This is a childhood need, one that can never be fulfilled later in life, and we are playing with illusions if we never have mourned this lost opportunity. But there are other things we can get from good therapists: reliability, honesty, respect, trust, empathy, understanding, and an ability to clarify their emotions so that they need not bother us with them. If a therapist promises unconditional love, we must protect ourselves from him, from his hypocrisy and lack of awareness.
This was the most difficult lesson that I ever had to learn; unconditional love is one of many things that is only meant to be received during childhood yet is essential for proper development. However, not everyone was fortunate enough to have received it as a child, and not everyone has had the chance to grieve that lost opportunity. Instead, they will try to seek it as adults – this leads them both vulnerable to abuse and at risk of becoming abusive themselves, using the âexcuseâ that they grew up with a bad childhood. Once I crossed the other side of the fence, I had to face some harsh truths that no romantic partner ever owes it to me to fulfill what my family-of-origin could not give me. I had to work on this myself with the help of professionals. It continues to be challenging, but I have made significant progress.
Seeing others experience unconditional love while I never did, brought out the worst in me. I had no idea how much resentment was brewing when I felt uncomfortable around a former partnerâs family, especially his sister. It felt so taboo to talk about, I couldnât even admit to myself that I was jealous – feeling as though he will always love his blood relatives more than heâll ever love me. And that something was wrong with me if I didnât also love my own blood relatives more than I love him. At the time, I never realized that my family of origin abused me, or that the ways they treated each other was never actually normal or okay. I assumed his family didnât treat him much better, because most of them were neurotypical and he was autistic, and there were bound to be lots of misunderstandings.
One could say my former partner just felt a âdifferent kind of loveâ for his relatives. But the bonds he had for them were much stronger and harder to break. After all, theyâve all known each other since he was a baby, while I only knew him for a few years. Naturally, he wanted me to love his family too, because they meant the world to him. But it was so hard for me to even get to know them when I only saw them all at once in large family gatherings (which were not introvert-friendly). He wouldnât stop telling me how much his family adored me, even though I rarely talked to them. I (irrationally) wanted them to hate me. Until one day, I lashed out at him in front of his mother and sister, for “allowing” them all to attend dinner without me while I was stuck in long traffic from my other event. His sister was so livid that she unfriended me on FB and never spoke to me again. There were no words to describe how devastated I was, and how much I regret staying with him for any time after that. Letting him go was the only way to show him that I was truly sorry for how I treated him.
It went both ways. He made me feel as though I was required to love his family unconditionally despite not sharing his bonds with them. That was a tall order on his part. I never felt I had the space for any critical thoughts about them, and that was why my anger bottled up for so long. It is never reasonable to ask someone to love adults unconditionally, no matter what one’s family values are. I had every right to see them more objectively than he did. His sister was never very warm towards me, despite being as extroverted as she is. She said things that triggered me, including off-color remarks about an autistic woman at her internship. He never called her out, even though he admitted it bothered him, too. His mother was overbearing and overprotective. Her intentions may have been good, but she did a poor teaching him how to become an independent adult. He had a difficult time standing up to her when she asked him to do things he did not want to. It was fully reasonable of me to be disappointed in him for that. He put his blood relatives up on a pedestal. He made sure I knew that he will always have different standards for them than he did for me. He was never as securely attached as he presented himself to be.
If anyone else ever felt similarly, they deserve to know that they are not alone, and to express their thoughts without judgment. Just because they never had unconditional love as children, doesnât mean there arenât other things that can restore secure attachment in adulthood. The Drama of The Gifted Child put it in words so beautifully – âreliability, honesty, respect, trust, empathy, understanding, and an ability to clarify their emotions so that they need not bother us with them.â (45) My current partner has also given me all of these. I have also told him about my past early on in our relationship, and he never thought less of me for it. That is pretty close to unconditional love, and I couldnât be more grateful for it.
Autistic Flapper 