Love & Hate

The loving, critical mom. The fun, undependable friend. The supportive, cantankerous boss. Relationships that evoke conflicting feelings may cause more stress than those characterized by outright dislike...

Mature love, some insist, is a broadening, deepening experience. But the claim that love promotes maturity is unpersuasive without some indication that the individual would not have matured just as readily in the absence of love. Indeed, to the extent that love fosters dependency, it may be viewed as a deterrent to maturity.I am not asserting that the effects of love always border on the pathological. I am saying that the person who seeks love in order to obtain security will become, like the alcoholic, increasingly dependent on this source of illusory well-being. The secure person who seeks love would probably not trap himself in this way.

But would the secure person seek love at all?