Love Is A Mythological Creature

[Deleted member 1860]

Am I numb?

Let's see...

I can feel emotional pain, anger, anxiety, joy, despair, so on and so forth.

But I can't feel love!

It's to the point where I don't feel love for anyone or anything, nor do I have the ability to feel love from others. Then again, maybe I dont feel love because nobody loves me?

Either way, I can't imagine living the next 50 years in this emotional limbo.

Perhaps a DUMB question, but HOW do you feel love?

Honestly, I don't think there is an answer, and I just want to throw in the towel and give up!

Desperate and loveless,
SOL

 

[The Albatross]

Trade ya, I feel love but not joy. Makes me feel like a poser.

 

[Tinyflame]

I feel love but not hope, peace but not strength.

 

[KP the nut]

I have been married to my H for almost 32 years. I have always loved him, I am secure in the knowledge that he loves me (goodness knows why) we are a good team.

Then PTSD, I felt nothing, where had the love gone. Gone, is the wrong word, it was still there but it had gone into hiding, I was just numb, I shut down and shut him out. I wasn't aware of this happening.

I can't imagine how hard that must be, to watch someone you love just leave you. OK, not physically leave, my body was present but my mind was, well, I don't know where, just staring into space.

I didn't initiate a conversation, he would need to ask me something a few times before it would sink into my mind that I was being spoken to. I was a shell.

Then as the meds and therapy kicked in I slowly started to return to my body. I was aware of my H, I would be the one who would reach for him, to hold him and to talk to him. It was only at that stage that I realised how far I had gone from him.

I am so grateful that he stuck by me and helped me to recover. Most days I am OK, some days I am more distant but it has been a long time since I left him with the shell that I was.

IMHO, as progress is made in managing PTSD it is possible to feel love again.

((HUGS))
KP

 

[TLight]

I've never felt love. Just hormones a long while back, but never love. Except for my abusers (family). I loved them and others who abused me shortly afterward.

Now, at 46, can't even grasp the concept of love.

 

[Helliepig]

I can see that people seem to like me and i know, for instance, that my son loves me. But I don't really feel it inside, don't trust it, struggle to keep hold of it when they're not there. Find it hard to comprehend and feel like it is proportional to what i do for them. I can't get my head round being loved just cos I'm me.

Someone said to me today the old line of "you have to love yourself before others can love you". I understand what that means now. It doesn't mean that noone will love you until you love yourself - just that you can't feel it or accept it. The answer is not out there, as with everything to do with PTSD, it is in yourself.

 

[Tinyflame]

I guess that's 'good news', in a sense Helliepig, have often wondered if I have 'given' genuine love or it's been 'love' even that I have given, if I am not able to conceptualize 'loving myself'.

 

[KP the nut]

My therapist told me I had 3 rules to follow and had to put them in action.

1. Be kind to yourself
2. Be kind to yourself
3. Be kind to yourself

He was right. I began to make recovery once I eased up on myself. I allowed my self time for me, to not be at the beck and call of others, that it was OK to say no and most of all to realise I would never be perfect. One day I was being so tough on myself, he looked at me and asked 'if one of your daughters said those things of herself, would you treat her the same way as you are talking about yourself?' It did make me think, I would hold her, hug her, comfort her and tell her it was OK. I told him and he then asked, 'then why are you different, you deserve the same'.

 

[maddog]

Not even sure why I'm responding to this thread really, I normally avoid any discussion of one of my least-favourite 4-letter words...

I have never been loved by anyone, I am all but 100% certain of that. And so I certainly have no concept of how it feels to receive the love of another, or even how to begin to recognize or label it, or to find space for it in my conscious perception of myself and my world.

Have I ever loved anyone? I honestly don't know how to answer that question. Is it a case of "I'd know it if I saw/experienced it?" Does the fact that I don't know indicate that I probably haven't?

I've certainly experienced "hormones" - that was a very frank, very true, distinction to draw by the way, between that chemical attraction thing and the actual genuine emotion/state of being of love.

Being pedantic, I suppose we can differentiate between love as a noun and love as a verb - a state of being versus a doing word.

I could definitely say, for example, that I have "done" love, though probably only to animals in my life, and perhaps... arguably... to my siblings as a child. "Doing" love is about demonstrating kindness, tenderness, caring, empathy, care, consideration, all on a scale that exceeds the normal level of human relations... that list sounds horribly clinical and inadequate to describe the complexity that I believe love entails, but at a basic level I believe those to be the acts of "doing" love.

But love as a noun? That state of being that exists in you?

No, I don't think I know what that is, and I think there are too many solid, long-constructed defensive barriers of competing and incompatible emotional states standing between me and any place where love could be built. There are too many layers of anxiety, insecurity, mistrust, inexplicable longing, dread, pain, guilt, fear and confusion to be burrowed through, and I can't imagine ever being able to find the way through all of them, much less why anyone would want to try to make the effort.

As to whether or not I'd know if it I got there?

Who knows.
I wonder if I ever will.

Maddog

 

[Helliepig]

Well, I guess love is as love does. Real love is work, it's thinking of someone's feelings and needs and being mindful of that and extending yourself for them. It's being tolerant and still acting in a loving way not to invalidate or harm your loved one, even when cross, upset etc.

Feeling love can just be a selfish infatuation or thrill, or something that makes you feel warm and fuzzy. Often your own feelings of "this" type of love, if threatened, can cause you to act in a very unloving way towards your loved one... like a child being thwarted by the object of it's need or security. Many confuse "but I need you, I love you" with love.

Scott Peck has written some good books, The Road Less Travelled and others, and he talks about this.

 

[Tinyflame]

Kp, your advice is difficult - so likely correct!

I think love is putting someone else first, accepting and encoraging them to be who they are, valuing them more or at least equally as yourself. Am not really sure of the 'words', either. Except that it's giving- as in a 'verb', and a noun, as in 'presence'/ value/ 'existence', etc. Wanting the best for them- 'God's' definition (of that), not my own.
(JMHO, of course). :confused:

 

[Meadowsweet]

I can feel emotional pain, anger, anxiety, joy, despair, so on and so forth.

If you feel all these things, then you're not numb. I think love does exist, and that you're probably already feeling it. But all the images of film, tv, magazines etc, love is a thing that is entirely conditional. It's sold as the elixir of life, the happy ever after that we all must believe in and will only be happy when we find it. That image of love is a mythology. You only have to look at valentines day to see how the image of love works. Its not that anyones feeling love more on that day than any other day, but they spend a lot more money on the idea of it (oh I am an old cynic).

But I think love is word that can describe a feeling that you feel. You don't have to use the word in association with all the conditions and expectations it's associated with. You can use it to describe something that feels right to you.