All About Love: New Visions

by bell hooks

Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.

Men theorize about love, but women are more often love’s practitioners. Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often feel we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it.

It is far easier to talk about loss than it is to talk about love. It is easier to articulate the pain of love’s absence than to describe its presence and meaning in our lives.

we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. Those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships.

“the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually.

To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.

When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.

Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care.

Remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving.

Usually, it requires some therapeutic intervention, whether through literature that teaches and enlightens us or therapy, before many of us can even begin to critically examine childhood experiences and acknowledge the ways in which they have had an impact on our adult behavior.

Most of us find it difficult to accept a definition of love that says we are never loved in a context where there is abuse.

Most psychologically and/or physically abused children have been taught by parenting adults that love can coexist with abuse. And in extreme ca...

I was in my mid-twenties when I first learned to understand love “as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” It still took years for me to let go of learned patterns of behavior that negated my capacity to give and receive love.

To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility.

much. If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning. When we are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust. Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination.

One of the most important social myths we must debunk if we are to become a more loving culture is the one that teaches parents that abuse and neglect can coexist with love.

Abuse and neglect negate love.

Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to ...

Yet lovelessness is not a function of poverty or material lack. In homes where material privileges abound, children suffer emotional neglect and abuse.

In order to cope with the pain of wounds inflicted in childhood, most of the men in Boyhood sought some form of therapeutic care.

To find their way back to love they...

Many men in our culture never recover from childhood unkindnesses. Studies show that males and females who are violently humiliated and abused repeatedly, with no caring intervention, are likely to be dysfunct...

In the prologue to Creating Love, John Bradshaw calls this confusion about love “mystification.” He shares: “I was brought up to believe that love is rooted in blood relationships. You naturally loved anyone in your family. Love was not a choice.

The love I learned about was bound by duty and obligation. . . . My family taught me our culture’s rules and beliefs about love . . . even with the best intentions our parents often confused love with what we would now call abuse.”

When we reveal ourselves to our partner and find that this brings healing rather than harm, we make an important discovery—that intimate relationship can provide a sanctuary from the world of facades, a sacred space where we can be ourselves, as we

are. . . . This kind of unmasking—speaking our truth, sharing our inner struggles, and revealing our raw edges—is sacred activity, which allows two souls to meet and touch more deeply. —JOHN WELWOOD

Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise, she shares the insight that when a little boy learns that his powerful mother, who controls his life, really has no power within a patriarchy, it confuses him and causes rage.

Males learn to lie as a way of obtaining power, and females not only do the same but they also lie to pretend powerlessness.

In Dory Hollander’s 101 Lies Men Tell Women,

John Stoltenberg’s book The End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience analyzes the extent to which the masculine identity offered men as the ideal in patriarchal culture is one that requires all males to invent and invest in a false self.

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 f...

Regardless of the intensity of the male masquerade, inwardly many men see themselves as the victims of lovelessness.

Like everyone, they learned as children to believe that love would be present in their lives.

Although so many boys are taught to behave as though love does not matter, in their hearts they yearn for it. That yearning does not go away simply because they become men. Lying, as one form of acting out, is a way the...

To embrace patriarchy, they must actively surrender th...

Patriarchal masculinity requires of boys and men not only that they see themselves as more powerful and superior to women but that they do whatever it ta...

This is one of the reasons men, more so than women, use lying as a means of gainin...

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung insightfully emphasized the truism that “where the will to power is paramount love will be lacking.”

Talk to any group of women about their relationships with men, no matter their race or class, and you will hear stories about the will to power, about the way men use lying, and that includes withholding information, as a way to control and subordinate.

And lying is one of the most powerful weapons in this arsenal. When men lie to women, presenting a false self, the terrible price they pay to maintain “power over” us is the loss of their capacity to give and receive love.

Trust is the foundation of intimacy.

When lies erode trust, genuine connection can...

While men who dominate others can and do experience ongoing care, they place a barrier between themselv...

When a man has decided to love manhood more than justice, there are predictable consequences in all his relationships with women. . . . Learning to live as a man of conscience means deciding that your loyalty to the people whom you love is always more important than whatever lingering loyalty you may sometimes feel to other men’s judgment on your manhood.”

When men and women are loyal to ourselves and others, when we love justice, we understand fully the myriad ways in which lying diminishes and erodes the possibility of meaningful, caring connection, that it stands in the way of love.

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection.

Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.

Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love.

It is impossible to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth when the core of one’s being and identity ...