– Learning We Can’t Have Love Without Hate in Individual Counseling in Nashville, TN

Last Updated on June 5, 2016 by Chris Roberts

IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE LOVE WITHOUT HATE?

Without knowing it, most of us want security more than we want love. Or put a different way: We are seeking the warm comforts of love without all the trials of a relationship. Relationship means struggle; both the struggle of feeling connected and the struggle of feeling free. We all swing back and forth. There is no escaping this.

In a wonderful book about sex and long-term relationships, Esther Perel writes, “As adults, we seek control in part as a defense against the vulnerabilities inherent in love. When we put our hopes on one person, our dependence soars. So do our frustrations and disappointments. The greater our helplessness, the more dangerous the threat of humiliation. The more we need, the angrier we are when we don’t get. Kids know this; lovers do, too. No one can bring us to the boiling point as quickly as our partner (except maybe our parents, the original locus of dependent rage). Love is always accompanied by hate. While we fear the depth our dependence, many of us are more frightened by the depth of our rage.”

WHY LONG-LASTING LOVE BRINGS OUT HATE

As Esther Perel is so prone to do, she eloquently states the inherent dilemma in wanting one thing, but being faced with another. We can’t have dependence without some semblance of helplessness. But helplessness scares the living daylights out of us, because it means a loss of power and control. In love, we are constantly faced with a barrage of both. Hate and anger are power grabs (and are sometimes quite necessary!). They are typically a strong emotional reaction to a feeling of vulnerability or weakness. The hope of love is that we are learning more and more when and where to choose to be vulnerable. But, when we don’t believe we are choosing vulnerability, we feel overexposed and scared.

THE POWER OF CHOOSING TO BE VULNERABLE THROUGH INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE

Individual counseling in Nashville can be an extremely helpful place to learn the distinction between overexposure and surrender. Love can’t exist without surrender. Surrender entails a form of exposure that leaves the outcome in another person’s hands. This is always scary! However, as we learn that we can’t have love without surrender, we can become more empowered to “let down our guard” with the hopes that our partner will care for us deeply in these surrendered areas. When we choose to surrender and are met with care and compassion we feel known and cherished. The power is in the choosing, not in the defense or the stance.

If we continue to unwittingly open ourselves to people or partners who do not care well for our souls, we begin to believe that vulnerability is not helpful or progressive. And yet, because we intuitively know that life can’t be lived alone, we will always seek to give vulnerability in the hopes for deeper connection.

WE HAVE ALL BEEN HURT DEEPLY

Individual counseling in Nashville can help us unpack the places where we have been betrayed and deeply harmed by our vulnerability. When we can locate these places in the past then we can more adeptly learn where opening up in the future might return better rewards. Most of us don’t take the time to separate the past from the present. It takes not only time, but work and pain. We have a good rage inside us that screams we are more valuable than we have been treated.   But we can’t live out of the victimhood that our rage is appropriate for every occasion.

If you are experiencing the difficulty of living in a long-term relationship and want the freedom of being more deeply engaged, then individual counseling in Nashville may be helpful for you. Chris Roberts at Two Trees Counseling Nashville has worked with many people in the area of love and hate. Chris can be reached at (615) 800-9260 or chris@nashvillecounselor.net.