Excerpt from my new book; “The unconscious rules of love”

In a recent TIME article entitled “Love Doesn’t Have to Be Unconditional”, Myisha Battle, writes about the conditions under which marriages last or don’t. She tends to define those conditions as they reflect life circumstances and the manner in which they may change over time. To my mind, that is a rather limited and somewhat naïve formulation. She says that:” we don’t say ‘I love you’ lightly because behind it is the implication that we love the other person entirely, flaws and all.” I think otherwise. I believe we don’t say: “I love you “ often enough not because of an assessment of our loved one’s flaws; but rather because we fear making ourselves too vulnerable. It may seem like a subtle distinction but it’s not. That is because it places the limitation on our own fears

rather than on the shortcomings of the other. Ms. Battle also says that the notion of unconditional love doesn’t exist and the belief that it does is unrealistic. I would agree but with some modification. That is to say, there is a time in a person’s life when unconditional love is not only acceptable but I daresay, imperative for our emotional and physical well-being. The time, between birth and about the age of 6-8 months, is a time when an infant can do no wrong. Infants cannot self-regulate their emotions. At that very early life stage, we are all impulse driven. If a baby doesn’t get unconditional love at that age, then they missed their chance forever. For the record, that’s not just my notion. The well-known psychologist Margaret Mahler writes about attachment theory and its stages. According to Mahler, the first stage of infant development is the symbiotic stage. It is the stage between mother and infant where the good mother intuitively knows what the baby needs. Some experts believe that the intuition is partly bio-chemical and partly psychological in origin. Hormones released during pregnancy, and for some time after the infant’s birth, foster the exquisite attunement of mother to the infant’s needs. The mother can distinguish (and sometimes the father) the different infant cries like hunger, fear, cold and so on. Some have asserted that the wailing of an infant is a biological imperative for the child’s survival. The wailing is difficult, if not impossible to ignore, and the promptness of the parent’s response is the closest any of us will ever get to immediate gratification and unconditional love. After around 6 months, maybe a bit longer, those hormones dissipate as simultaneously the world, ie; the parents begin to set certain conditions for acceptance into a civilized world. After that stage, according to D.W. Winnicott, begins the stage that he calls that of the ‘the good enough mother’. According to Winnicott, it is impossible for any mother to sustain that symbiotic kind of attunement to the infant. In fact, it wouldn’t be a healthy thing if anyone could. Part of the human development is a tolerance for some degree of frustration with need satisfaction. The need for self-regulation of emotions is essential for a healthy attitude toward life. One can only imagine the kind of monster that might develop if every need were immediately met. The good enough mother is responsive to the child’s needs but not necessarily responsive to immediate gratification and so ends the appropriate stage for unconditional love. Such behaviors as frustration tolerance, toilet training and the like are learned and the stage of conditional acceptance and love begins.

But wait– don’t despair. I’m about to contradict myself here. A person does have another shot at unconditional love but it’s probably not the way you might think. It’s not about romantic love. Unconditional love can come in two other, very different, forms. First, it can come for a child in the form of adoring grandparents, and a loving and caring grandmother in particular. During a screening interview with a new group member, I always ask: “As a child, who loved you?” Sometimes the most immediate and spontaneous response is: “My grandmother.” Second, it can come for an adult man in the form of his young daughter’s love. Until a girl reaches early teen years and must separate for her own personal growth, her adoration of him can give the kind of love he cannot get anywhere else. No where else in his adult life will he be loved in that kind of unconditional way. The only requirement is for him to show up and be a supportive and adoring person in her life and on a steady basis.