A man of 50 talked of the futility of "my so-called love relationship." He had just come through a bout of dealing with addictive issues that had kept him preoccupied and self absorbed to the point that he sometimes forgot to go to the scheduled sporting events of his kids. He still had a marriage of almost 20 years -- but why, he wondered.
His wife wanted to take a February vacation but here, too, with the lust just about near enough to dead to make it seem nonexistent, what was the point? And what do you know, Feb. 14, the famous nectar and seduction and pressure of combinations of yearnings, Hallmark and a whole industry based on just this one day, was just around the corner.
I realized the amazing power of the valences of Valentine's Day when I did my five-year stint as a psychotherapist and team leader at a residential treatment center years ago. The population consisted of children and adolescents with combinations of behavior and thought patterns out of control enough to earn them a stay in a controlled and gated institutional setting. I was prepared for the Christmas blues, so touted was this in the larger culture for being the source of a depression that came from not living up to the hype of belonging in the most gorgeous of ways for the "holidays." It was Valentine's Day that took me for a loop. I was completely unprepared.
Most of the kids with whom I worked and came to know, could not seem to write the one required word of this holiday for which cards seem to be a mandatory expectation. Writing "I love you" or even "love," for kids so wounded by those who couldn't take them or keep them or take their feelings hardly at all, seemed a brutal and even impossible task. Cards were left unfinished, and cards finished were often ripped apart in a tantrum filled with pain.
At that time, a piece of therapeutic input was offered in telling those children feeling desperate, that it was all right to have mixed feelings, and that it was all right for it to be hard to say the word "love": It was a very big word that can be harder than it seems to say. For staff and patients, this concept wasn't all that easy. It doesn't come easy to many of us who feel we should feel according to set standards, and that we shouldn't have feelings that are torn on days accorded with fanfare and, ultimately, with obligation.
Ambivalence in general isn't something we as a culture have such an easy time with. Even on political levels, we are expected and expect ourselves to be in favor of or opposed, to be for someone or against. And this makes it all the harder for many of us to be honest about our mixed feelings, our ambivalence and how torn we are about many important people and issues in our lives.
Ambivalence actually is often a sign of life rather than one of no feelings at all. For, sure, it is hard to sustain acute ambivalence constantly with a modicum of sanity and direction. At the same time, the surprise directions our emotions can take, are part of life's possibilities only when we do own up to what is torn in our feelings, and perhaps in our important relationships. The man at the beginning of this piece was very attached to his wife and two children, but was scared of allowing in any positive feelings; he knew that his affection towards his family would distance him from his attachment to his addictions, and also he wasn't sure he felt worthy enough to be cared about for real. He was used to the starry gazes of fantasy but when he was tempted by being cared about by someone who knew his darker sides (as his wife did), he wasn't sure at all.
The man in question tried to make it simple but it wasn't. He had mixed feelings and he was torn, as he put it. In extending his so-called logic, if he was torn, then his relationships with his wife and kids was torn, and certainly there was no valentine to be had or offered. It had to be cancelled as so many times it was for those kids in the treatment center, who felt their "love" had to be something perfect and instead was something that existed in tatters for them, if at all.
A woman I know has often mentioned that her own mother seemed more like a fan than someone who knew her. It was that absence of being known that formed an emptiness, an absence and ultimately a feeling of never having been really loved. With time, mother and daughter would talk this out and settle for the pieces they could rescue. It became a love of sorts, one in which they came to accept their limitations, and for sure it was better than nothing.
Let's face it, celebration is, well -- a celebration. Chocolate is divine for those of us for whom it is. And feeling and saying all kinds of stuff about romance and associated benefits can be rather splendid. Feeling any measure of love can be splendid, for that matter. On the other hand, I remain torn about Valentine's Day, since it too often is a measure -- a false measure of whether we possess lovability.
I have to wonder if it wouldn't be more cozy in general if we could admit our torn feelings about this chocolate, heart-filled and too often twisted holiday, and feel a sense of belonging on the day just because we are -- just the way we are.
For more by Carol Smaldino, click here.
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