All About Love: New Visions

by bell hooks

When we are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.

Often, men who would never think of lying in the workplace lie constantly in intimate relationships. This seems to be especially the case for heterosexual men who see women as gullible. Many men confess that they lie because they can get away with it; their lies are forgiven.

From the moment little boys are taught they should not cry or express hurt, feelings of loneliness, or pain, that they must be tough, they are learning how to mask true feelings. In worst-case scenarios they are learning how to not feel anything ever. These lessons are usually taught to males by other males and sexist mothers. Even boys raised in the most progressive, loving households, where parents encourage them to express emotions, learn a different understanding about masculinity and feelings on the playground, in the classroom, playing sports, or watching television. They may end up choosing patriarchal masculinity to be accepted by other boys and affirmed by male authority figures.

“Loving justice between a man and a woman does not stand a chance when other men’s manhood matters more. When a man has decided to love manhood more than justice, there are predictable consequences in all his relationships with women. . . .

Growing up in the fifties, in the days before adequate birth control, every female was acutely conscious of the way unwanted pregnancies could alter the course of a young woman’s life.

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually “know the emotional costs of keeping a secret” until the truth is disclosed.

One reason women have traditionally gossiped more than men is because gossip has been a social interaction wherein women have felt comfortable stating what they really think and feel. Often, rather than asserting what they think at the appropriate moment, women say what they think will please the listener. Later, they gossip, stating at that moment their true thoughts.

How many times do we hear someone say “Well, if that person is not satisfying your needs you should get rid of them”? Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another. Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. And friendships or loving community cannot be valued and sustained.

We grasp and grab and never have enough. And most destructive of all, our flashy cars and sport spectaculars and backyard pools have a way of crowding out much interest in civil rights or inner city poverty or the starved masses of India.

“The difficult road is the road of conversion, the conversion from loneliness into solitude. Instead of running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into fruitful solitude. . . . Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.”

He wanted from me the unconditional love and service his mother had always given him without expecting anything in return. Constantly frustrated by his indifference to the needs of others and his smug conviction that this was the way life should be, I tried to do the emotional work for both of us.

By the time our relationship ended, I had blossomed into a fully self-actualized feminist woman but I had almost lost my faith in the transformative power of love. My heart was broken. I left the relationship fearful that our culture was not yet ready to affirm mutual love between free women and free men.

More often than not females are taught in childhood, either by parental caregivers or the mass media, how to give the basic care that is part of the practice of love. We are shown how to be empathic, how to nurture, and, most important, how to listen. Usually we are not socialized in these practices so that we can be loving or share knowledge of love with men, but rather so that we can be maternal in relation to children. Indeed, most adult females readily abandon their basic understanding of the ways one shows care and respect (important ingredients of love) to resocialize themselves so that they can unite with patriarchal partners (male or female) who know nothing about love or the basic rudiments of caregiving.

Living in a culture where we are encouraged to seek a quick release from any pain or discomfort has fostered a nation of individuals who are easily devastated by emotional pain, however relative. When we face pain in relationships, our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.

Guy Corneau suggests in Lessons in Love that many men are so fearful of feeling the emotional pain that has been locked away inside them for so long that they willingly choose a life of lovelessness: “A good number of men simply decide not to commit themselves because they cannot face dealing with the emotional pain of love and the conflict it engenders.”

We are all capable of changing our attitudes about “falling in love.” We can acknowledge the “click” we feel when we meet someone new as just that—a mysterious sense of connection that may or may not have anything to do with love. However it could or could not be the primal connection while simultaneously acknowledging that it will lead us to love. How different things might be if, rather than saying “I think I’m in love,” we were saying “I’ve connected with someone in a way that makes me think I’m on the way to knowing love.” Or if instead of saying “I am in love” we said “I am loving” or “I will love.”

All the romantic lore of our culture has told us when we find true love with a partner it will continue. Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain committed to being loving. Not everyone can bear the weight of true love. Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustain and nurture love. Many men, especially, often turn away from true love and choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like it but still receive love from someone else. Ultimately, they choose power over love. To know and keep true love we have to be willing to surrender the will to power.

Unlike love, death will touch us all at some point in our lives. We will witness the death of others or we will witness our own dying, even if it’s just in that brief instance when life is fading away. Living with lovelessness is not a problem we openly and readily complain about.

The solace of knowing I could speak my heart to God and the angels made me feel less alone. They were there with me during anguished and terrifying dark nights of the soul when no one understood. They were there with me, listening to my tears and my heartache. I could not see them but I knew they were there.

So far the only woman in his life had been his mother. As long as a man remains in a state of psychological development in which his mother is the most important woman to him, he cannot mature as a man. A man’s eros, his capacity for love and relatedness, must be freed from attachment to the mother, and able to reach out to a woman who is his contemporary; otherwise he remains a demanding, dependent, childish person.”

From childhood on, I found many of my angels in favorite authors, writers who created books that enabled me to understand life with greater complexity. These works opened my heart to compassion, forgiveness, and understanding.

“If there was nothing else, reading would—obviously—be worth living for.”