Couples therapist clarifies
In love or dependent: where exactly is the limit?
© Dean Drobot / Shutterstock
Is love the answer to all questions? Not quite. It also provides quite a few. Psychologist and couples therapist Oskar Holzberg answers them all.
When is it only fear and dependence instead of love? When my love has become my only argument for the relationship.
Love is always addiction. Positive addiction. Another person becomes the most important person to me. And I want to be the most important person for him and no longer live without him. For our brain, the beloved is like a drug, but in our emotional life it is the harbor where we can finally anchor. We feel our longing, but we don’t feel it as an addiction. After all, we no longer want to live independently of him. This is different from fighting the line of coke and always losing it when you are addicted to the next glass of vodka. Our love is pure feeling. It is unclouded by economic, moral or religious constraints. The sociologist Anthony Giddens therefore called it “pure love”.
Is it worth holding on to love?
But the relationships into which it leads us can sometimes get very dirty after a while. We are lied to, deceived, not treated equally. Our arguments do not apply, we remain misunderstood, we are neither seen nor heard. We feel devalued, despised. There is no closeness. We suffer. Love? We don’t feel loved anymore. But we, we still love! We love him!
Sometimes it’s good to hold on to your love even when it crumbles. Sometimes it pays to endure and fight for the relationship. But only if both do.
As soon as I am the only one fighting for mutual love, that can be the first warning sign. Because in love relationships, love cannot be one-sided. When the thoughts dominate me that everything would be fine again, if only I was different myself, when I start to think that the terrible state of our partnership is solely due to me – then I threaten to believe in a love that no longer exists. If I hold on to the fact that my partner is actually completely different and I apologize endlessly for her lack of love towards myself: Then I’m kidding myself.
Love or fear?
Oskar Holzberg, 67, has been advising couples in his Hamburg practice for over 20 years and has been married for over 30 years. His current book is called “Neue Schlüsselsätze der Liebe” (240 pages, 11 euros, DuMont).
© Ilona Habben
I do everything for the relationship. But is my partner really still trying to help me? Do I only find THAT I love him, but no longer WHAT I love him FOR, nothing more that is now good for me in the relationship? And can I just say “But I love him” when my friends advise me to break up? Then my fear of loss drives me into dependent behavior. Then I fear loneliness because I feel worthless on my own. It is even more dangerous when I no longer talk to anyone about my relationship woes. Then I’m like the alcoholic who hides his empty wine bottles behind the sofa.
When we doubt whether it is love or whether it is fear that keeps us in our relationship, then we can also look at our bonding pattern. Can’t a relationship be close enough to us? Do we always find too little and never too much closeness, and is it never us who end a relationship? If this is our pattern, we are at risk of pretending that it is still love, when in truth fear makes us dependent.
“Couple adox” is the podcast with Oskar Holzberg and his wife Claudia. You speak openly about topics that keep challenging relationships. Funny, exciting and insightful! I.a. on Audio Now.
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