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The definition of love

My favorite definition of love comes from John Steinbeck (yes, “Of Mice and Men” John Steinbeck) from a letter to his son:

‘[Love] is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable.’

Iris Murdoch says, “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.”

And St. Thomas Aquinas defines love as “willing the good for the other”.

THE ELEMENTS OF LOVE REQUIRE

Two separate individuals

• full awareness of someone else as a separate human being (meaning each person has ‘theory of mind’ and doesn’t see other people as basically NPCs)
• belief that this person is a valuable human being, as they are

who respect each other

• respect for this person (treating them like they matter) and respect for them as their own person (autonomy)

who have good intentions toward each other

• empathy for this person (“empathy” – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another – is, by proxy, a measurement of someone’s ability to perspective-take for another person when that person has good intentions towards the other)
• being able to perspective-take for this person and see the world at least nominally from their perspective (versus main character syndrome)
• have the ability to recognize and discern the good intentions (or not) of the other person

and who pour out their goodness on each other

• mutual relationship, not one way
• you are your best self in the relationship, and even inspired to be better

so that you can pour more of your goodness out into the world

• you and your partner want each other to be more of who you are, so that there is more of ‘you’ in the world

Ultimately, your partner sees you as precious and unique, and strives to preserve that and encourage it.

Therefore someone who loves you will not try to erase you or who you are.

Someone who loves you respects your autonomy; your voice, your beliefs, your approach to life, your feelings and your opinions.

You are not only a gift in the eyes of this person but your beingness – your you-ness – is a gift to the world.

The Bible has a concept that ‘you know a tree by its fruit’, and therefore you know a person or relationship by the things that are produced by that person or in that relationship. There’s even a checklist in 1st Corinthians!

When I was trying to figure out what healthy love looked like, I found myself often going to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

…a passage a lot of victims of abuse use to talk themselves into staying in abuse dynamics because they are too focused on whether they, the victim, are being loving enough…instead of applying the rubric to their partner.

Are they patient?
Are they kind?
Do they envy?
Do they boast?
Are they proud?
Do they dishonor others?
Are they self-seeking?
Easily angered?
Keeps a record of wrongs?
Do they rejoice with the truth?
Do they protect, trust, hope, persevere?

The very reason this works is because all of these attributes are the outward evidence of a person who is hoping for the good for you

…who includes your well-being with their own, and who is not in competition with you for happiness or success or resources but is coming from a construct of sharing. Sharing is often a result of caring because it means the other person is perspective-taking for us to the best of their ability.

So you can define love as that which occurs when two separate people – who respect each other and have good intentions toward each other, and who can recognize their partner’s good intentions toward themselves – mutually live in relation to each other in a way where they pour out their goodness on each other, and the world.

And you can back-check whether someone actually loves you (or is even capable of love) by using 1st Corinthians diagnostically. (Seeing the ‘fruit’ of their inner being.)

It’s important to recognize that someone who is selfish cannot love you.

It’s important to recognize that someone abusive cannot love you.
It’s important to recognize that someone with low or no self-awareness cannot love you.
It’s important to recognize that someone who enjoys hurting others (a sadist or troll) cannot love you.

You can absolutely use a similar framework for friendships.

The love-feeling we associate with “love” is actually connection which we do need in healthy relationships, but which becomes attachment in unhealthy relationships.

We know that this feeling itself is not love because you cannot have actual love in an unhealthy relationship but you can have romantic connection/attachment.

“Love is not binding, it’s linking; there’s a difference.” – Hans Wilhem

I have been a support to some of the homeless in my area, and one woman I had been helping showed up on my doorstep sobbing after her boyfriend attacked her the night before. She had to tell him she was going to the bathroom so she could get away and get to help.

One thing that jumped out at me, especially since she was covered in bruises, was that she said she ‘can’t keep doing this’ because ‘her body can’t take it anymore’. Experiencing abuse when you’re older means you don’t bounce back as fast (especially if you’re drinking or using drugs).

We experience the opposite as children – as our bodies heal so quickly, the ‘evidence’ of physical abuse almost seems to evaporate – the nail marks my infant son had on the back of his neck from a ‘carer’ who was trying to force him to eat disappeared in 3 hours.

Or if you are a person of color, your bruises may not show as starkly; or medical professionals/law enforcement may not recognize them for what they are.

When people think they need to endure physical abuse because they ‘love’ the abuser, I don’t think they realize that this ‘endurance’ is often based on having a younger body that can heal and recover.

…or a mind that isn’t struggling to remember, and connect with the world.

• From a domestic violence advocate, here are the most common ‘excuses’ abusers give their victims for strangulation (choking)
• Choking is the highest predictor of murder
• “Strangulation is an ultimate form of power and control, where the batterer can demonstrate control over the victim’s next breath…” – Victim Fact Sheet for Documenting Strangulation
• When a victim is strangled, they’re on the edge of homicide <—– “most abusers do not strangle to kill, they strangle to show they CAN kill”
• Strangulation in Intimate Partner Violence
• Non-fatal strangulation is an important risk factor for homicide of women (abstract)
• The dangers of strangulation/choking
• There is no risk-free way to engage in choking or strangulation
• At some point your body physically cannot handle abuse

To them, you just might be a specific character in their personal movie.

As far as they are concerned, they are I-am-the-main-character and everyone else is just supporting cast. Or you’re an NPC whose job is to give them something specific and they’ll get angry if you don’t. (Patricia Evans uses the analogy of a child with a teddy bear to describe how controlling people create ‘pretend’ relationships.)

Alternately, you might be more than a side character, you might be the antagonist.

You are the villain. They’ll simultaneously demonize and dehumanize you: you are a monster.

Or you could be both if you are interacting on the internet!

(I always laugh when people have arguments online because of how wildly inaccurate their models of each other are, especially if those models are based on what they see online or in ‘the news’.)

One of the more disturbing parts about becoming Christian was learning about worship.

Not because spiritual worship is bad, but because I realized that I recognized it.

When you worship something, you want to get close to it, and anything or anyone related to it. You want to talk about it all the time, you center your life around it. You praise it unreservedly, you acknowledge it in every part of your life, you are intensely focused on the object of your worship. What you worship directs your life course, is the most important thing to you, you would do anything to sustain your connection to what you worship.

Honestly, it’s exactly like an intense fandom.

People still go to church, but that ‘church’ is a convention or a game or concert. People high in the fandom are ‘priests’, interceding for those who want to get closer to the object of their worship, and who facilitate that worship for others: fan club presidents; discord community mods; people who put together conventions and run panels with actors; fandom artists; fan fiction writers; YouTubers who make endless content relating to the fandom; talk shows or podcasts talking about the fandom with people who used to participate in the show or sport.

(On a side note, this is why creators run into issues with fan service. Because when they start to take fans seriously about what they ‘want’, instead of focusing on their own intrinsic creative voice, creators start making worse art. Because the fandom is like a toddler that wants to watch the same movie over and over again; experience the same original exultant feeling over and over again; and their demands are relentless and unceasing, and not coming from a place of creative gestalt, but a place of chasing their original high.)

In Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) the person with BPD worships their ‘favorite person’.

Until they don’t.

People who are post-relationship from someone who has untreated BPD often report feeling a sense of emptiness. That normal relationships don’t have the same ‘intensity’. And what they don’t realize is that they were essentially on the other end of someone’s worship.

The lovebombing that occurs in that relationship dynamic is essentially something that no human being should ever really experience: it’s like the human relationship version of heroin.

Which makes it all the more devastating when the person with untreated BPD ‘splits’ on them, because they went from being worship to being reviled. From adoration, to desecration: (n.) “actively showing disrespect or contempt toward something considered sacred; actively damaging and destroying something holy”. To being elevated above all others – but for a moment – to being vilified.

Justin Bieber described once what it was like to be on stage.

He said something to the effect of that it was like the most incredible high. To have thousands of people intensely focused on you, emotionally connecting with you, singing along with and to you, your own words echoed back to you in fervent adoration. (…to be worshiped.) And he made a comment about how it made it so much harder to live the rest of his life, with that as his baseline.

And that’s ultimately want abusers want: to be treated as god.

But they’re a child god. A capricious god.

A god who demands sacrifice, but sacrifice that never ends.

Because if it ends, the illusion that they are all powerful breaks, and they have to live in a reality where they are not in fact a god. Where the only control they have is what they have stolen from another person or tricked them into giving. If it ends, they no longer receive all the benefits they were receiving.

They no longer get to live in a world where they are always right.

They no longer get to demand someone destroy themselves and call it love. Demand sacrifice as their due.

The reason the sacrifices can’t end is because the sacrifices are what is propping up their delusion

…their power. Without the sacrifices of the victim, they are nothing.

A real god actually has power, whereas a false god has to steal it.

The person an abuser steals it from is the victim.

A real god needs nothing from others, whereas a false god lives as a parasite off those who worship it.

A real god doesn’t want slaves, a real god sets people free. In Christian theology, a real god values individuality and identity so much, as so precious, that he goes out of his way to make sure that people – as inferior beings over whom he has ultimate power – have a real choice.

Because you can’t actually have love if you don’t have a real choice.

And what do abusers do? They steal our choice. They force and coerce and punish us into being who they decide we should be. They don’t respect our free will. They believe they are entitled to sacrifice us for their own benefit, at our devastating expense.

An abuser wants a slave who pretends they are not a slave

…someone who worships and also grovels at their feet, someone who endlessly sacrifices, and who supports the abuser’s false reality while believing it is the truth.

A real god wants us to be more of who we truly are, not erase who we truly are.

In the past, I’ve compared abuse dynamics to a mini-cult. But I’ve since realized that they are both modeled on the same thing: making another person their god.

Of course, these dynamics don’t start off this way, otherwise no one would ever agree to it.

This is the end-form God-tier Pokemon…whereas the stage 1 Pokemon are cuter and less powerful than their final forms.

A victim’s worship, a victim’s sacrifices, a victim’s devotion are what ‘levels up’ the Pokemon.

And the abuser tricks the victim into each step by calling it love or calling it respect, by insisting that this is what ‘real love’ is. Or claiming you’re a bad partner, a bad child, a bad friend, a bad employee.

The abuser defines everything: what’s good and bad, what’s right and wrong, and who you are.

They paint this picture and demand you see it as real. And step-by-step, the victim eventually comes to believe it. (Unless they were raised by this abuser and never knew reality to begin with.)

“I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.”

That love is no love at all.

–

Content note: slight Christian theology.

Final quote credit to “Labryinth”, which so succintly demonstrates the uno reverse abusers are actually pulling.

See also:

• Abuse as ‘black witchcraft’
• Abuse is theft
• Abusers hate your soul
• Abuse as a horror movie

People have a belief that you have to ‘opt out’ of dating someone versus ‘opting in’

…as in, you have to have a good reason to not date someone versus you having to have a good reason to date someone.

But we are not available to date anyone who decides they want to date us

…and we do not have to qualify our decisions or choices to anyone. People acting like you do believe they are above you in a hierarchy, and that you should not only do what they say but accept what they say as reality.

They have made themselves judge and jury over you and your decisions, and they often believe that you have to disqualify someone instead of qualifying them.

But it’s healthier and safer to opt people IN versus everyone being ‘in’ by default.

You don’t have to justify your preferences or decisions at all.

Being in a position of choosing to opt someone IN to being a dating prospect means that you are in a position to establish compatibility before making yourself vulnerable.

These friends or parents may attack your character by calling you “high maintenance’…which is them telling on themselves.

Even if it were true – which it isn’t – you’re entitled to be whatever level of maintenance you want. You’re an adult, you choose for you, and they are not entitled to an explanation.

Anyone who extends a ‘potential datee’ more benefit of the doubt than you, the person they actually know, is either being judgmental of you or doesn’t trust you.

You are not obligated to date someone unless you can come up with a good reason not to.

Not dating anyone unless there is a good a reason to do so makes infinitely more sense.

They either drag you down to their level or leave you, or pretend like you’re also a bad person somehow and that they believe it.

…but the abuser often convinces the victim that this is ‘to’ the abuser.

A victim will want an abuser to stop treating them badly: stop calling them names, stop hitting them, stop destroying their things, stop trying to control them. An abuser will want a victim to ‘dress respectfully’ or do a specific sex act ‘because you do things for the people you love’ or ‘not trigger them’ or to sit and listen to them for hours into the dead of night ‘because you shouldn’t go to bed angry’ or many, many other examples.

One action is done to a person, and the other is an action done by someone for another person.

There’s a reason I advocate for people being ‘wrong’…and it isn’t because they’re actually wrong.

Many unintentional abusers have rigid beliefs about the world, about what someone’s role is, what they ‘should’ do.

So many of the hours-long mental/moral assaults that abusers engage in at a victim is about ‘making them understand’ that they’re ‘wrong’.

And there are abusers in victim’s spaces ‘learning’ about abuse, and then weaponizing it against the victim. (Horrifyingly, it’s because many of them don’t realize they’re abusive.) And you can tell the difference between a victim and an abuser, because the abuser is trying to ‘make’ the victim do a thing while the victim is trying to justify being a person who gets to make decisions for themselves, or wanting the abuser to stop harming them.

You end up not only arguing reality with an abuser, but also moral frameworks and to whom they apply.

(There is a strong, caveat, however. If you have children with someone you are married to and live with, those children do not have the ability to consent or say “no” about the situation or how the abusive parent is treating them. In that situation – once carefully considered – it is not unreasonable to power-over the other parent, just be extremely careful about how you do so and over what. This framework does NOT support a spouse/co-parent who is abandoning their children with the other parent and never engaging in parenting or home duties: both are legally and morally responsible for and to the children and the home in which they live, and quite frankly it is dangerous to put it all on one person.)

So if you don’t like something the other person is doing, and you are trying to ‘make’ them be different because you are certain you’re ‘right’, tread carefully.

I’ve seen this over and over, not just in my own life but in the abuse dynamics of others. Abusers fixated on how the victim is ‘wrong’, and lecture them for hours and hours and hours, as if this isn’t a fully adult person who gets to make their own decisions.

A conversation is one thing.

And it might take an hour or two.

But it does not go on ALL NIGHT.

And both people are heard. Both people get to talk. Both people have opinions.

And everyone is respected as a human being who gets to decide shit for themselves.

ONE person is not the judge, jury, and arbiter.

If you are arguing about reality, if you’re arguing about moral frameworks, then you aren’t compatible, period.

It’s only safe to compromise in relationships if you have already vetted each other for core compatibilities. If you rush the dating stage to be in a relationship, then ‘compromising’ becomes a power issue, because you have to ‘compromise’ on reality and morality.

And only ONE person is really doing any ‘compromising’

…which is really that person submitting to the other.

I was adjacent to one of these situations this weekend.

The homeless woman I was with was berating the homeless man she is in a relationship with. About how he doesn’t meet her needs, about how she already told him that what he is doing is harming her, and how he needs to stop doing that and change. (The issue is that he will leave the tent when things escalate and he is overwhelmed – which frankly, considering it’s two people trapped in a tent, in stressful conditions, I think is actually an excellent choice.)

I think she thought I was going to be ‘on her side’.

Except, he’s a grown man. If he wants to leave the tent, he can leave the tent. And if she doesn’t like it, and she’s communicated that to him, and he is still doing it, then he is making the choice to do that. She wanted to therapize him, and convince him that he was wrong, and she wanted me to help her do it.

Meanwhile, I was having deja vu because it was almost exactly the kind of thing my abusive ex would do.

He wanted to argue me into submission about how I parent my child, how I handle my assets, how I dress, etc.

He was always convinced he was right, and that I needed to ‘accept’ that and change.

He was incapable of understanding my position, which is asinine, because you can understand someone’s position without agreeing with it. But it was almost as if ‘understanding’ where I was coming from meant that my position was reasonable…which he could not abide in any way, shape, or form.

And I would tell him, ‘if we’re not compatible, that’s okay, we don’t have to date’, which would upset him since I wasn’t ‘fighting for the relationship’.

To him, he decided to be in the relationship versus letting the relationship evolve organically.

I think this is what happens when people stop recognizing how important marriage is, they start treating being in a regular relationship the same as the choice to marry.

And, friends, they are NOT the same. Not only because of the legal aspect, but because you generally don’t get married until you have dated, then been in a relationship, then been engaged.

So my abusive ex, and this particular homeless woman, are treating being in a relationship the same as being married…and therefore you NEVER GET TO VET THEM.

Marriage is a commitment, a declaration of intention, and it is chosen: at a specific place, at a specific time, each party decides whether they want to commit to that level of bonding. And it isn’t binding, we can still unchoose marriage and get divorced!

So the fact that abusers prosecute another person over ‘commitment’ when the victim was never able to actually choose that is yet another way they use relationship concepts to bind the victim.

They trap you by calling it love, and then tell you all the ways you’re ‘wrong’ and should change.

And this is different than a victim being trapped in an abuse dynamic by an abuser who engaged in a switch-up.

The abuser who didn’t start being controlling until after marriage or having a baby. Maybe they hid it, maybe it was an entitlement shift, maybe they feel they can ‘relax’ and then take the mask off.

A victim in this situation is NOT being abusive even if they’re ‘telling the abuser to change’.

I’ve written about this here:

A victim wants the abuser to stop doing something TO them whereas an abuser wants the victim themselves to do or not do something FOR the abuser

…but the abuser often convinces the victim that this is ‘to’ the abuser.

A victim will want an abuser to stop treating them badly: stop calling them names, stop hitting them, stop destroying their things, stop trying to control them. An abuser will want a victim to ‘dress respectfully’ or do a specific sex act ‘because you do things for the people you love’ or ‘not trigger them’ or to sit and listen to them for hours into the dead of night ‘because you shouldn’t go to bed angry’ or many, many other examples.

One action is done to a person, and the other is an action done by someone for another person.

So the action – taking space – becomes this pivot point of argument, of reality, of morality.

To one person it is an emotional regulation mechanism while to the other it is emotionally abusive. (And there are absolutely cases, depending on context, where it is one or the other!)

The question is – who is using this idea to control the other person?

Because a healthy person? Healthy people are not interested in controlling others. Healthy people understand that not everyone is compatible, and that’s okay. Healthy people aren’t trying to ‘make’ another person anything. Healthy people aren’t trying to enforce a relationship like a contract.

Healthy people find it exhausting.

I’m trying to find the article I wrote on this, but basically what a lot of abusive, unhealthy, and toxic people do is that they look at the components of a healthy relationship and try to enforce this on another person.

Whereas those components are organic to the healthy relationship: they are descriptive, not prescriptive.

They are trying to do what healthy people do, but because they’re unhealthy, they do it in an unhealthy way.

So an unintentionally controlling person may not realize they’re being controlling, because they ‘right’.

And the victim gets caught up in feeling like they have to explain and justify and defend (JADE) that they aren’t wrong, when in reality, the issue is that Person A feels entitled to control another person in the first place.

This is why I tell victims, ‘you get to be wrong’

…even though they often aren’t.

Because it’s not about who’s right, it’s about who is controlling.

If there is a fundamental mismatch in values and reality, the answer is to leave not attempt to bind a person tighter.

Respecting someone’s autonomy over themselves is core to being a safe person.

–

At this point, it really is a red flag when someone feels perfectly comfortable to lecture another adult for hours or try to argue them into submission. Because that is an indicator of who has power in the relationship dynamic, especially if the other person can’t end it or walk away.

hat if we just explain enough and show up enough and care enough and try enough, that the other person will understand and then therefore shift their behavior.

But the learning process is actually based on modeling.

It’s why it’s so important to surround yourself with the people who are living and embodying what you want to incorporate into your own life. It isn’t that they are ‘mentoring’ you or explaining things, it’s that the way they live their life – that itself – is impactful.

So it is important to understand that it is kind to set boundaries.

A lot of victims of abuse hate doing this – and I’ve been there, I’m speaking from experience! – victims of abuse can feel ‘mean’ if they create consequences for non-optimal behavior.

Abusers thrive in conditions where they are prevented from experiencing the consequences of their own actions.

The are also robbed of the possibility of change when that happens. That’s why people who don’t rock the boat end up “walking on eggshells” and perpetuating abuse dynamics.

Becoming a shock absorber doesn’t eliminate the shocks.

–

…because communication is founded on the idea that someone can perspective-take for us. And then at least respect our perspective even if they disagree with it.

Unsafe and toxic people really struggle with both of these concepts.