Selfless Love is not Love

Every day I hear people define their ex-partners or ex-friends as "psychopaths narcissists”. This diagnosis, seen a posteriori, only places the person who makes it in the position of a victim.

To be a victim is to be a member of a violent relationship. When said relationship is over, you have to start by thinking about what aspects of yourself said bond was sustained. to that It is called "affective responsibility". Involvement in the situations in which you are involved is the first point that enables you to make a change.

"Selfless love" linked to the role of victim

First, get out of the role of the victim. Because the place of the victim is a place "with no way out". There is no victim without victimizer. Therefore, stop being a victim disarms the victimizer. He dismisses him.

For someone to hurt us, we have to give them a place of power over us. For example, power to make us suffer. There is something about reciprocity that works outside of the ways we expect it to. The circuit would be something like this.

• I love him, he hurts me.
• I insist on loving him more, he insists on hurting more.
• I insist with my answer, he insists with his.

From this it can be concluded that what is being sustained is a “reciprocal relationship of damage”.

In both there is a benefit. Benefit that maintains the relationship beyond what its members say about it.

We must also recognize that there is a lot of “with me it will be different”, “I am going to change it” in the bet of a person who, even knowing a person who is commonly unfaithful in her life, a womanizer, for example, agrees to form a couple with him.

• Related article: "Signs that you have a 'toxic relationship' as a couple"

Every couple is made up of three: one, the illusion of him and his partner

Sometimes, that illusion blocks all vision of the other. Until it's too late. We are now in a toxic relationship. There are people specialized in maintaining "alone" relationships. Something paradoxical, in appearance, but much more common than one might think.

Bear all the vicissitudes and inconveniences on their shoulders, make all the efforts without receiving "nothing in return. In reality, confirmation of one's own omnipotence is received. Until the person bursts. Heart problems, psychosomatic illnesses, etc.

In the workplace it is very common to see self-sacrificing people who give their lives for their work activity with psychiatric folders. Whoever makes this choice may do so unconsciously. But there is a benefit. And it is the therapy that will allow us to discover what that benefit is.

You might ask me how you can talk about an “unconscious choice”. And there I have to clarify that the unconscious is determined. Desire, which commands our loving choices, is unconscious.

The rawest drive that inhabits us is often unknown to the subject. But this "ignorance" is the result of a work of repression. Ignore those aspects that we do not like about ourselves. And get angry when we see them in another person. With that other person we can cut the deal, and so we avoid recognizing ourselves.

If we stop to think about this, as I said above, the couples are three or one. Never two.

• You may be interested in: "The 5 types of couples therapy"

There are no two without three

On the other hand, there is a key point to keep in mind. The benefit that a couple sustains. Everything is sustained by some benefit or advantage. The term "advantage" is very annoying to some people.

Selflessness, in love, has a good press. But whoever does not recognize his interest does not know where he is heading and what is the affective cost of his bet. It seems that looking for a benefit in a relationship is unethical and inappropriate.

And the truth is that there is always an interest at stake. Either that of company, or that of sex, or that of a social or economic gain. When it is not about the unrecognized, unhealthy desire to repeat a life story and look for someone who continues to mistreat or abandon us.

We love as we were loved

If a person is not clear that in each link there are risks, these issues are put at stake, he walks the world blindly. And that is very common.

The precept of "doing good without looking at whom" and that of "giving everything without expecting anything in return" often justify the sickest and most pernicious ties. Therapy is the device that allows, if all goes well, to find the committed interest behind the tracks of shared pain. And make something different from suffering.