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Psychologist Inna Kovalenko explained what neurotic love is
12.03.2023 20:42
Updated: 14.04.2023 15:09
"A neurotic person may experience a sense of terror when he approaches the realization that real love is being offered to him," Karen Horney.
Psychologist Inna Kovalenko explained what neurotic love is.
Love is a healthy and natural foundation for close relationships, which is based on mutual care, attention, constancy, stability, responsibility and respect for each other.
The ability to love is a person’s main resource, given to him from birth.
A neurotic is an anxious person, characterized by emotional instability with frequent mood swings, low stress tolerance, unstable self-esteem, striving for perfection, shyness, anxiety, desire to please and lack of self-confidence.
Such a person is tiresome for others. His needs are excessive. He constantly feels offended, when he fails he falls into a sense of guilt, becomes aggressive and is quite inflexible in relationships.
The love of a neurotic is built on the desire not so much to give as to take, which, in general, is not called love.
Neurotic love
Outwardly, neurotics often look like quite prosperous people. However, they tend to have difficulty adapting to the surrounding reality.
Let me make it clear right away that being neurotic is normal. This type of personality has both positive and negative traits. Neuroticism is not a disease, but a personality trait. We are all neurotics to one degree or another. This article is about destructive neurotic relationships.
Neurotics have an increased need for love and affection for others. "I love and I hate" is the motto of neurotic relationships. "I gave birth to him, I didn't sleep at night, I worked with all my might, so that he wouldn't need anything, I gave him everything, I tried, but he is rude to me, doesn't listen and doesn't consider me a person" - neurotic mothers complain.
An unmarried neurotic woman is obsessed with the desire to get married, to find someone who would be infinitely devoted to her, who would love and care for her.
A neurotic man obsessively clings to his wife, idealizes her, admires her, gives her gifts, is jealous and controls her. All these relationships are built on the basis of hypercompensation.
This is when strong attachment and great love hide distrust of people, self-doubt, a “sad” outlook on life, pessimism, fatigue, fear and hatred.
Neurotic love is the desire to receive absolute and unconditional love. For this, the neurotic is ready to make sacrifices, get sick and suffer, which subsequently gives him the right to make exorbitant demands on others.
He obsessively helps others in the expectation that he will get everything he wants, because he does for others what he would like to receive from them.
And when “gratitude” does not come, the neurotic experiences severe disappointment, calls for pity, threats, threatens suicide, becomes seriously ill and suffers, thus forcing others to take care of him.
Making sacrifices, being a victim is a pattern of neurotic relationship building through management, control and manipulation.
In neurotic love, passions always boil based on quarrels, silence, reconciliation and ignoring. According to research by some domestic psychologists, 90% of relationships in our country develop according to the neurotic type and have a similar scenario.
Differences between healthy and neurotic love
Normal healthy love is an emotion, feeling and action of pleasure that does not aim at consuming possession, domination and control over other people.
In a healthy relationship, everything is built on the principle of balance, where people are happy together, but can also live fully without each other, where everyone accepts the other as they are, with their strengths and weaknesses, without the desire to fix or adjust anything to suit themselves.
"To love means to recognize a person's right to remain himself, to preserve his uniqueness," wrote the American psychologist A. Maslow. The basic principles of healthy love are calmness, spontaneity, trust, absence of anxiety, happiness and harmony.
And if healthy love is a way of self-expression, then neurotic love is a means of self-affirmation. In contrast to healthy love, neurotic love is built on the search for the guilty, hostility, insults, humiliation, resentment and fear.
The main features of neurotic love are dependence, fusion and self-sacrifice. The neurotic perceives attempts at self-development and the interests of the partner as a personal insult and disdain for himself, criticism is perceived by him as humiliation and betrayal.
The main difference between healthy and neurotic love is that for a neurotic, love is about satisfying his own needs. For a healthy relationship, the exceptional value and uniqueness of each partner in relation to each other is important.
In healthy relationships, love is a partnership; in neurotic relationships, it is codependency.
In mature healthy relationships, partners feel highly motivated and have resources for development, both personal and joint. Such a union is built on trust, respect and brings ease.
In codependent neurotic relationships, one of the partners deliberately hinders the other in development, both personally and as a couple, health deteriorates, emotional mood decreases. Partners do not trust each other, control and jealousy prevail, the risk of cheating increases. Living together is bad, and apart is boring.
Neurotics cannot stand loneliness and constantly need close relationships. But even with significant people they do not experience the full spectrum of love and happiness.
Fearing to lose a partner, neurotics are ready to endure, please, humble themselves, sacrifice their time and interests, just to cling to a phantom state of calm, confidence and security. The neurotic understands that he is not free, but cannot get out of this vicious circle, because he is afraid of being abandoned.
He gets angry at his partner, but becomes even more dependent on him. In a healthy relationship, there is no place for dominance, control, pressure and violence.
Partners respect each other's personal boundaries, have time for their own hobbies and interests, can have their own friends, and have time and space for personal growth and development.
Neurotic parent-child love
Neurotic love can be not only between a man and a woman, but also between parents and children.
Under the pretext of love and care, parents often manipulate their children: “I love you, so I’m doing this solely for your benefit,” “I’m depriving you of money until you get a good grade,” “You can’t go for a walk because you didn’t clean your room yesterday,” “I know better when and what you should eat,” “Don’t pretend you’re hot, it’s very cold outside,” etc.
As a rule, parents love their children. However, they often do not know how to show it correctly.
At first glance, ideal mothers try to realize their unfulfilled dreams in their children, forcing them to do what they themselves dreamed of, or, on the contrary, they are overprotective of their children, taking on part of their responsibility.
Over time, such relationships develop into codependent ones and can last a lifetime. Lack of love, as well as its excess, is a problem for children and adults.
According to psychologist K. Horney, neurotic love arises in connection with the child’s unmet need for security, when the mother overtly or covertly ignores the needs of her baby.
Without learning to love herself, she transmits distorted love to her children. The child invents another reality for himself, in which he justifies his parents and where he is loved: "Mom punished me so that I would understand", "I was put in the corner because I was naughty", "I was not picked up from kindergarten because my mother had no time", "I was hit because I broke a cup".
There are no perfect parents. Sometimes they make mistakes, they can hurt, yell or ignore.
Such isolated cases do not make parents bad, because most children can tolerate it without any problems, as long as they receive more unconditional love, acceptance and understanding in return.
But if such behavior by parents is practiced on a regular basis and they believe that in this way they are expressing their love and “hardening the character” of the child, then for children this becomes a source of destructive example and influence on their life as a whole.
Neurotic parents are afraid of being abandoned, so they consciously or unconsciously try to maintain leverage over the child and make him dependent.
And the child firmly believes that the parents’ behavior is a manifestation of love, protection and care for him, because they do not know any other examples of relationships.
These are the role models of behavior that are learned by the child and become part of their identity. Subsequently, such children build their adult relationships according to the scenario given to them since childhood and attract others like them.
Getting Out of Neurotic Love Relationships
"A considerable number of people are able to protect themselves from the development of serious neurotic phenomena only through intensive work," Karl Abraham
It is possible to get out of a neurotic love relationship. Moreover, it is quite possible to build healthy and harmonious relationships after that.
To do this, you need to understand that internal restructuring is a big job that cannot turn 360 degrees in an instant. The first thing you need to do is to understand and realize that you are in a neurotic relationship.
In the subsequent stages, you will have to work with your fears and doubts, find resources and work on yourself.
It is important to increase your self-esteem, accept and love yourself, know your strengths and weaknesses, not do more for others than for yourself, form new positive attitudes, learn to manage your emotions, strengthen personal boundaries and believe that you deserve more.
The most valuable thing you have is yourself! It all starts with self-love!
