My New Year's Resolution

Fate drew me to pick up bell hook’s book All About Love. My Nana came to spend this past Thanksgiving with us in Nashville and took us to a wonderful bookstore in Green Hills. I had recently studied bell hooks and her work in a course in my fourth year of college. I have only read chapters or sections of her writing before, but I made it a goal to one day read one of her novels. And All About Love seemed like the perfect place to start.

Fun fact about bell hooks is that she purposely does not capitalize her name because she wants to de-center from her work! How cool is that?

My New Years’ resolution is to re-frame how I think, receive, and give love. I recently endured a hurtful friendship ending that really forced to change how I give in my relationships. As much as I love this person, the way I was being treated started to stop reflecting a loving friendship. I want to re-frame the concept of love, not as a feeling but as a verb.

To love.

To love is to practice love. To practice love, there must be crucial dimensions: trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility. Without just a single one of these dimensions, that is no longer a loving relationship.

The problem with this is that we cathect with others. We feel deeply drawn; we invest feelings or emotion in them. This is, by definition, cathexis.

We all know how often individuals feel connected to someone through the process of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting or neglecting them. There is no single doubt in my mind that my friend truly believed he was providing love. I believe that this is the type of love that he has been shown and chose to replicate. And as I have seen, learning faulty definitions of love when we are young makes it difficult to be loving as we grow older.

This is probably where the phrase ‘love is blind’ comes from, because although we may be given five out of six of the dimensions of love, we are still missing one. And whatever that dimension may be, it does not complete the full action of providing love. For example, care is a dimension. Although, just providing care cannot be fully loving. And in my personal experience, the dimension that started to deplete to zilch was trust.  

To clarify, trust was something we were actively working on from the very beginning of our friendship. I always knew that believing in trust, and in the inherent goodness of others was especially difficult for him. Still, I believed that I was different. I believed that he trusted me in a way he did not trust others, even as he continued to lie compulsively. These were not grand or malicious lies, but small, seemingly insignificant ones. Yet they mattered. They were his way of protecting himself and, in a deeply misguided way, protecting me from hurt.

And in my experience, I begin to sacrifice trust for being in this friendship. I would allow myself to trust that, after a conversation and consideration, the relationship would evolve to allow this trust to return. I allowed myself to believe this was still a loving relationship. It is because of this feeling of cathexis that I insisted that what I felt was someone loving. And for him as well, I believe he felt that even though the occasional lie would appear, he believed he was fully loving.

To me, trust is the foundation of love. To know love, we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. When lies erode trust, a genuine connection does not take place. This is where our friendship began to feel like I had lost that facet of love. Because of his inability to trust himself and others, which led to unnecessary, excessive, and uncontrollable lying, I began to distrust him. It is heart-wrenching to not trust that your friend will change for the better. It is disheartening to know that someone chooses and continues to deceive, lie, and distrust.

Six months ago, I finally drew a line and asked for space. I forgave him, and I still hold that forgiveness, but forgetting is harder when disrespect takes the form of deception. Because of the love I held for him, I stayed in the friendship longer than I possibly should have. The cathexis, the attachment, led me to excuse the behavior again and again. I allowed him to return with apologies and promises, believing change would follow, because I knew I deserved better. But there is only so long one can wait for intention to turn into action.

bell hooks provides an interesting insight as to why, specifically, men lie. And I would not say with certainty that this is the theory that applies to my friend, but it is an insightful view of the patriarchy. She notes that “Patriarchal masculinity requires of boys not only that they see themselves as more powerful and superior to women but that they do whatever it takes to maintain their controlling position.” She believes that this is one of the reasons men, more so than women, use lying as a means of gaining power in relationships. Is the purpose of lying to gain control of situations? Arguably, yes, I would agree with that. Part of me asks if this is in our nature to lie? And more specifically, is it in men’s nature to lie? Or is it really a patriarchal reason? Clearly, that is a large generalization, but in terms of patriarchal structures, there does seem to be an obvious connection.

Letting go of the power, would be mean trusting that you can be hurt. Letting go of the power means that you may be vulnerable. And for some, being unable to protect oneself from potential emotional harm inflicted by others is a source of shame.

Although hooks does mention as well that “while men who dominate others can and do experience ongoing care, they place a barrier between themselves and the experience of love.”  And for that, I will always find it in my heart to find sympathy for him. Because of the love he learned, he will find it continuously hard to trust and not resort to deception. I believe he learned that lying is a way to avoid being hurt and hurting others. I had always hoped that I could break that barrier for him and allow himself to be full comfortable in a trusting friendship.

And there were so many wonderful things about our relationship that I found love in. There are so many beautiful things I have learned, found perspective, and made many memories in the friendship. In more ways than one, my life and the way I look at life has changed by developing the friendship. And all of those moments, feelings, traits I have learned and experienced through us will remain with me because those are the things I want to remember. I want to remember all the good and the moments I felt I was in a loving friendship.

Our first example of love is through our family, and for me it was through my parents. I have always admired the way my parents love each other and me and my sister, and for this I did not need a definition to show me what it truly means to love one another. For those who did not grow up with an example of a loving relationship within their families, however, the broader community can also become a teacher of love. Bell hooks mentioned that “practically every adult who experienced unnecessary suffering in childhood has a story to tell about someone whose kindness, tenderness, and concern restored their sense of hope.” I hope that, in some way, I was that person for him. I hope that I was able to show him what it means to be loved through trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility. And through loving him, I learned something too. I learned what it means to truly love, and in doing so, I learned what I deserve. I was able to learn that trust and all other individual dimensions are non-negotiable dimensions of love.

To love must be intentional. And in this life, that is a choice, and we choose who we love. I will always hold love for my friend, but I will not sacrifice my own promise of love for someone who cannot offer a full love. And in writing this, I am making a promise to myself, but also showing that there should be no sacrifices when it comes to relationships. The people in your life who love you should encompass all dimensions. I highly recommend All About Love for anyone looking to understand love as an intentional verb, rather than just a romantic idea and feeling.

With gratitude,

Olivia