Those Who Resist Love

Unfortunately, not everyone is receptive to love. At least not at the time it is being offered. Some people could be called love resisters. They block or deflect love, much like resistors block or deflect electricity. Love resisters neither let love in nor pass love on. They may mimic or fake doing both; but the satisfying substance of love, like the heat and light of genuine electricity, isn’t really there. This invariably becomes clear—better sooner rather than later for those being deceived.

Some are love resisters only temporarily, others all their days. The former resist love due to having been wounded in love; hence, they do so for self-protection, and perhaps for a needed timeout from love relationships so as to get some healing. Yet, as they will hopefully come to realize, it was not so much love which wounded them as it was love's failure, love's absence.

The latter are love resisters due to never having established a strong, healthy love relationship. Therefore, they do not understand love from the inside, from the heart. They can only act as if they do, in order to get what they want from others. These are the takers, the users, the abusers of love; tragically, most of them remain so their entire lives.

There is a critical period for infants to bond with their care givers. It is similar to the instinctual "imprinting" period for animals such as ducks and sheep, when mothers must bond with their newborn, or the latter will wander motherless, and the former childless. During the first six months to a year of life, human infants seek parental love as earnestly as sustenance and safety. If they do not receive love, they will likely make certain "adjustments," becoming ever more difficult to reach.

Two early forms of anxiety indicate that love’s bonding has taken place. The first is called stranger anxiety, the second separation anxiety. Stranger anxiety appears in about half of all babies, usually around the sixth month. The infant shows fear at the approach of a stranger, indicating that there is at least one person who is familiar.

Separation anxiety appears somewhat later, usually around the tenth month or so. It evidences an established bond between care giver and child. It is sadly significant that neither kind of anxiety appear in those reared in orphanages during their early years.

The absence of these two forms of anxiety does not mean that the person will be unable to love and be loved. It simply attests to an absence of a primary bond, without which that person will have greater difficulty understanding love and succeeding in loving. One startling finding from a study of prison inmates conducted in the 1960's: convicts had in common the lack of a successful bond of love with a care giver as children. How difficult to make up as adults for what we fail to establish as children.

Most temporary love resisters eventually overcome their resistance, if for no other reason than because of their misery at resisting the growing desire, the mounting pressure to love and be loved. As guilt signals the presence of a conscience, so the misery of resisting love signals a capacity to love.

The desire to love itself helps heal the wounds of prior love. The desire to love releases the energy to love.