Love is Blind—And Rare?

Post date: 2017-12-13 21:38:18

In therapy I realized I have a core assumption that love and positive attention are very scarce resources. Love and attention aren't exactly analogous to money or market goods, but they are a finite resource in some sense. Reflecting on my past choices, I see social-emotional equivalents of investing in get rich quick schemes, taking a lousy job because it was better than unemployment, and being so stingy that I missed opportunities for growth—all stemming from the assumption of scarcity. How does one learn to identify and build relationships and environments where love and support are more abundant?

(It's pretty clear to me why I came to have that assumption but I don't think the details are that interesting for this discussion.)

As children, we don't get a choice about starting in a rich or poor environment. We also see from behavioral economics that resource scarcity affects perception and decision-making. However, much of the discourse—here and elsewhere—about recovering from emotional abuse and neglect centers almost entirely on the individual's self-regard and self-perception. I often see people advised that they should strive towards fostering a sense of being deserving of love and entitled to good treatment, and once they have achieved that, everything else will fall into place more or less automatically. This advice has never resonated with me. The idea that you have to love yourself before people can love you, that people will naturally be positive and caring towards you if you have high self-esteem, that people in abusive or dysfunctional relationships are there because they actively (if sub-consciously) seek out dysfunction and abuse... that has always seemed like ill-founded victim-blaming to me. So much is due to luck of the draw in family of origin and the community around you.

Do I believe that I deserve love and good supportive relationships? Sure. Does that mean love and positive attention will magically become abundant? Of course not—not any more than thinking you deserve a high-paying job lowers the unemployment rate in your area. Put another way, "if wishes were horses then beggars would ride". You have to change your environment, change the way you interact with your environment, or find a new environment altogether. In the context of employment and income you do things like seek further education to build skills, learn about budgeting and ways to save money, and move to a different area if the job market is bad in your locale. What are some of the equivalent behaviors in the social-emotional context?

My therapist asked me if I personally knew any "rags to riches" stories about love and social support, and I couldn't think of any. I am interested in hearing stories from people who have had that experience, or seen it. And if you have always viewed love as abundant, why is that? I'm also interested in resources and narratives that focus less on self-perception and more on skills related to identifying and executing positive changes in behavior and environment.

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