Love in Adulthood

Love takes three forms in adulthood: the love we give to another, the love we give to ourselves, and the love we get when love is given to us. Let’s talk about each one of these separately. First there is the love we give to another. This is basically a “self-less” love meant to build up or enrich the life of another person. One’s own needs are not a consideration. This form of love is fundamentally the most difficult form for adult human beings to practice. Giving love without the expectation of receiving love requires that the individual put aside their own need for love. For many adults, an experience of putting aside their own need for love never happens in the course of adulthood. The hurts of absent love in childhood are just too strong without a needed opportunity to heal at some point during adulthood. This is tragic to say the least. The sad reality is, we can mature physically without  an accompanying maturation of our capacity to love selflessly in adulthood.

Then there is self-love. Self-love in adulthood involves the ability to love oneself as if you are loving another. The importance of one’s relationship to oneself is highlighted in this form of adult loving. Loving oneself can take many different forms, from the care one takes in one’s physical health and welfare, to the way one feeds oneself, and the compassion with which a person relates to their own thoughts, feelings or behavior regardless of their meaning. Self-love is also on a trajectory of maturation over time. For most people, it involves a practice in adulthood. With a recognition that experiences in early life can interfere with the capacity to love oneself if one was taught to treat oneself in a negative manner. Unfortunately, it is too easy to internalize (learn from) these negative experiences and treat oneself with loathing, hate, anger, heightened frustration, or neglect.

The third form of love in adulthood is the experience of being loved. This occurs when love is not being coerced or manipulated or in any way forced. I’m talking about the simple experience of being loved by another without the expectation of return. For many adults, consciously acknowledged or not, moments of being loved touch them in ways that make unresolved needs for love emerge. This complicates the experience, to say the least. As mentioned earlier, unresolved needs for love can too often remain unhealed in adulthood for a lifetime. Some people even avoid adulthood experiences of being loved by relying on love life defensive behaviors. For example, staying at a distance from intimate interaction because reminders of lost love are just too painful to endure. Developing a tolerance for the vulnerability that being loved requires is another practice worth developing in adulthood.

How about the relationship between all the ways of love in adulthood? Let’s consider them in reverse. We start off in life needing love and relying on  adults to fulfill their obligation. Unpredictable experiences in life and the limitations in the personalities of those who are supposed to provide self-less loving, too often interfere with the fulfillment of this childhood need. At this point in my observations of loving in adulthood, I belief that most if not all of us human beings make it to adulthood having had some kind of experience of “disappointment.” Disappointment in the sense that whomever we “appointed” with the task of loving us selflessly, “disappointed” us for whatever reasons existed at the time.

To overcome early disappointment in getting the selfless love needed, the other two forms of love in adulthood become importance avenues to healing. In my observation, what usually happens is the disappointment enters the realm of unconscious experience and the practice of self-love begins. The challenge here, is to love oneself better than how one was loved. Never easy but most rewarding to say the least.  Getting a chance to correct the disappointments in love received by taking over the job of loving oneself. I think of it as a failsafe installed in our psychologies to offer a protection from lifelong early love life disappointments in adulthood. Stated simply, loving oneself is one way to heal the hurts from love not given.

Lastly, how does giving love selflessly in adulthood figure into the opportunity to heal the childhood absence of love? One of the great mysteries of love is how it comes back, on its own, when we give it without the expectation of return. And I mean really without the expectation of return. No secret wish that the recipient of our love gives it back at some point after receiving it. True selfless loving when you are hurt from the absence of love is truly one of the most noble of human experiences. It is also one of the most potent healing experiences as well. As a clinical psychologist, I have had the great pleasure of meeting many people over the years who were able to give the love to others that they had never received themselves.

Comments welcome. Share your love life experiences.

Dr. Thomas Jordan, clinical psychologist, interpersonal psychoanalyst, author of Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life.  Contact: 212-875-0154 or drtomjordan@lovelifelearningcenter.com for inquiries. Love Life Telehealth Consultations available by request.