Love hurts for a number of obvious reasons, the sudden prospect of loss through mere parting, through to real abandonment or betrayal. Worst of all, perhaps, the ardent striving of till-death-do-us-part which really does end at the mouth of an open grave.
But there is a hurt to Love we are generally more reluctant to admit, one that makes us ambivalent in our quest. Failing to address this knotty undermining of our own efforts to love and be loved makes it seem as though all these impediments to happiness come from outside,
from unfair stuff happening…
and wicked others.
Fessing up to the fact that you subvert your own goals and aspirations is a perplexing and deflating experience. There is something in the mix that the rational mind has failed to take into consideration..
And it is this…
” the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed.” C G Jung
Conversing converts.
Intercourse interrupts.
Love hurts because who you think you are dies with the experience, along with stuff you thought was important but isnt. Being bent into a new shape, having your sense of self deconstructed by Cupids arrow, is as much a crisis of identity as it is expansive liberation precisely because your borders are suddenly stretching over different parts of the map.
“Each becomes an object of knowledge and perception by the other, which has a wounding or violating effect.” E Edinger.
This deters us from reaching out with all the instinctual urgency of self-preservation. Reaching in…. to previously unknown aspects of Self, is just as dubious a prospect since such Unknowns have a way of rewriting our scripts and job descriptions. Its far more tempting to convince yourself that the Other is whatever you already know of it and that you are the captain of your ship.
Love also requires that we keep our mouths shut. I was impressed by a line in a case history by analyst and author Nina Coltart where her client thanked her for all the things she didnt say.
Hate is a lot easier. It requires little regulation of oneself and sports the dual benefits of both eradicating anxiety and cementing identity.
Purveyors of Hate are selling something very attractive, the kind of knowing-who-you-are and certainty of purpose denied to Love who is fretful, perplexed, bewildered.
Though Hate is most often..
“the wish to destroy that which cannot be controlled or dominated.” Otto Kernberg.
a balanced veiw has to include the possibility that Hate is not entirely destructive. The Greek story of Hephaestus, thrown from Olympus by a hating Hera, tells of a Being betrayed on all sides and physically disabled by the violence of his youth, yet he becomes the greatest of all craftsmen, his smithing arts and jewellery known throughout the world.
So Hate can be transformed. It can be forged and hammered into something else. Why? Because it generally started out being part of a legitimate situation that only latterly gets expressed inappropriately and out of context.
The problem with the way Malignant Narcissism hates, is its need to do so. Hate is used as the glue to hold oneself together and to adhere oneself to others without having to be changed in the process. You can have your corndog and eat it….though the fine print in such a generous offer involves you being eternally driven from within.
Analyst Guntrip quotes from a patient, “I can only keep myself going by hating, I cant stop fighting, I wont give it up. I cant give in. I feel I will lose everything if I do”.
It becomes imperative not to experience the worth of others. In fact, the worth of others humiliates me, casts me down. You cannot be smart without me being stupid. You cant be beautiful without saying I am ugly. Your brightness besmirches me..
and so Im gonna get you back.
The Narcissistic character must destroy outwardly in order to co-here inwardly because his Ontological security is rooted in antagonism..
and because I like to be offensive.
What he refuses to entertain, the delights of affrontery notwithstanding, is that he does so in order not to be a separate and autonomous person with his own ledger, with his own life to live and death to die. He affronts to remain little. Babies say anything. He does this by attributing all the goodness, youth and aliveness of others to himself. He sucks the life out of the world so that he can remain omnipotntly identified with the Good, which means that others must be actively turned into things, deprived of the qualites that comprise personhood, deprived even of legality and citizenship.
You cannot belong..
why should you, if even with my Billions I feel that I do not?
