This is a continuation of the conversation that was begun on page 2 of Hopeless42's post in Wayward side, to avoid thread jacking.
DRSOOLERS,
I could spend all day disagreeing with the sentiment of your post, but not to thread-jack, it is fair to say that the argument that love can be separated into a "noun" and a "verb" may be a convenient philosophical exercise, but it collapses under the weight of real-world impact
On the contrary. The separation into the two parts (technically three) I described is based on my real-world experiences and observations.
To suggest that one can "love someone to death" while systematically betraying them is to strip the word love of its most essential component: integrity.
Betrayal is a complicated thing, especially when you know it is wrong and undeserved, and one is also betraying themselves in addition to their loved ones. If one holds integrity as a value, infidelity is a betrayal of that value, and a betrayal of the version of the self one holds in high esteem and wishes to actually embody. As I described in my previous post, humans often behave in ways that are unexpected and self-destructive. You would not expect people to betray their loved ones and themselves because of the horrible consequences and pain it causes... And yet they do.
Love is not merely a warm internal sentiment or a passive feeling of attachment; it is a sacred duty of protection
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We agree on this matter. This is why I described love as having two (technically three) parts: the feeling [noun] and actions [verb]. When you feel love for someone, you value them for their inherent traits, you love being in their presence and spending time with them, you appreciate what they do for you and the ways they express their love to you, their thoughts, feelings, goals, dreams, happiness and well-being are of utmost importance to you... When you love[verb] someone, you praise them, tell them how you feel about them, you spend quality time with them, you express gratitude for what they do for you and do things in return for them, you actively listen to them... and yes, it's your "sacred duty" to protect their happiness and well-being.
These lists are obviously not complete, but they are several examples of how many people experience love[noun] and behave when they love[verb] someone. Infidelity runs contrary to loving behavior, but it does not inherently mean an unfaithful person does not feel love[noun] for their partners in similar ways to what I have listed. Again, infidelity is not only a betrayal of a loved one, but it is a betrayal of oneself, and it is both destructive to that loved one and self-destructive. Why do waywards harm their loved ones and destroy their own relationships, families, lives...? There are many reasons, and the journey to recovery and becoming a whole and morally-behaving person after infidelity begins with discovering those reasons. Then we work on correcting them, so that we can love[verb] properly.
If you claim to value someone while actively making choices that you know will shatter their psychological safety and reality, you are not experiencing love.
That is the exact myth that I described in my previous post.
Two of my closest friends are social workers, and I often think of the countless times they’ve worked with abused women trying to help them separate from a partner. These women often feel their partner loves them, to which the common response is: they don't love you if they beat you, isolate you, pour boiling water over you, or degrade you.
Herein lies the third part: how we want to be loved, and what kind of love[verb] we expect-- and accept-- from a partner. We should set our standards high for such a thing. Certainly abuse should not fit into those standards, and thus should not be tolerated. Whether the abusive partner feels love[noun] for the abused partner is irrelevant in such situations. The fact of the matter is that the abused partner is not safe, and therefore should end or even escape the relationship, not accept the behaviors of the abuser... I also wrote about this in my last post.
Tangentially related: people define infidelity as abuse, with which I do not disagree. However, ending a relationship with someone you love[noun and verb] and may or may not have invested in and built your life with, is generally very painful. Since there is chance for reform for a truly remorseful WS, many BS choose to remain in the relationship with their WS, on the condition that the abuse/infidelity does not continue. In instances of successful recoveries and reconciliations, it is generally because a WS feels love[noun] for their BS that they are willing to face up to the horrible things they did and put in the work to become better, both as a person and as a partner. They become better at loving[verb] their BS.
If we were to talk to these abusers, they could use all the same arguments you made—that the "noun" was there even if the "verb" failed. Maybe you are right and it’s wrong for social workers to assume the feelings of these abusers, but I’d wager not. I believe there is a point where the behavior is so incongruent with the sentiment that the sentiment itself is invalidated.
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They could say that, and very often they do. Many abusers love[noun] their partners, and will experience immense shame for their actions and/or crushing grief if the relationship ends. But they did, in fact, fail to love[verb] their partners, failed to protect them and uphold their happiness and well-being, and therefore they are still not safe partners regardless of what they feel. Their internal feelings are still their internal feelings... Again we do not have to accept behavior that does not meet our standards for how we want to be loved. A social worker could more accurately say that the abuse is not loving behavior, and that their victims deserve better treatment.
I would like to pause here to remind you the circumstances under which I brought up this two (technically three) part distinction. I would assume Hopeless42 isn't abusing her BS in the ways you have mentioned, except for her prior unfaithful behavior. If we are here to try to support her while she works through her feelings, assuming or telling her what those feelings are-- that she supposedly doesn't love[noun] her BS if her behavior has not been loving[verb]-- is not helpful. Especially when she has had such an explosive reaction to potentially losing her husband, and may be navigating a great deal of shame and grief. Why would you grieve the loss of them if you didn't love[noun] your spouse? As I wrote in the other post, I recall believing that my marriage was fundamentally un-fixable and that my husband didn't actually love[noun] me anymore, and I grieved that so heavily that I contemplated suicide, even as I carried out my affair with someone else. That's the pain of loving someone when you've lost them, whether you actually have or not. This is why I say "You don't love your partner if you cheat on them" is a myth.
All of this is to say, while I accept your viewpoint, it is entirely valid for someone to feel it’s impossible to love someone and betray them at the same time. We will never have a universally accepted definition of love, and getting into arguments about definitions can be futile—but for many of us, love without the "verb" isn't love at all
This falls under the third part: how you define your standards of behavior for being loved[passive verb.] This is a separate thing from how other people feel internally about you or their partners, just as much as it is separate from another's behavior towards you or their partners... When you squash the three parts together, I think it forms a picture of a general "love" as a whole-- like the romance we see in movies, or what we mean when we say things like "Ah, young love..." or "Love is in the air!" So I think if you say, "Love[general] is not one person cheating on the other," that makes sense. Maybe that's closer to what you actually mean? Rather than literally, "you cannot feel love[noun] for a person if you are unfaithful to them."
[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 11:17 PM, Monday, May 11th]
