Unconditional Love (One Year Later)

A few months ago I heard about a book, Will I Ever Be Good Enough?  Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, by Karyl McBride, Ph.D.  It caught my attention because of the description of emotional dysfunction that was being addressed:

• "...feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, emotional emptiness, and sadness."
• "...a fear of abandonment that leads [to] unhealthy romantic relationships, as well as a tendency to perfectionism and unrelenting self-criticism or to self-sabotage and frustration."

Although my mother is not narcissistic, my immediate family is loaded with those problems...myself included!  (We took the "fun" out of "dysfunctional".)  I see the same issues in nephews and nieces, and in my own children...although the mother of my children is not narcissistic, either.

So, I bought the book and started reading it during my trip to Mexico.

I was looking for a "common thread".  What is it about narcissistic mothers that can cause such turmoil in their daughters?  I suspected that, whatever it was, it could be found in my family...and that it could damage sons, as well as daughters.

It didn't take much reading for me to see the connection.  In fact, it was on the back cover of the book:  "Narcissistic mothers teach their daughters that love is not unconditional, that it is given only when they behave in accordance with maternal expectations and whims."

Interestingly enough, I blogged about "unconditional love" one year ago.  (Click here to read that entry.)  Among other things I wrote, "I don't know if I will ever find [unconditional love]. I hope I never settle for anything less."  And yet, since that time, I have wanted to settle for less!  For several months, in fact, I tried to please someone who told me that she will not allow herself to trust any man.

Why would I settle for that?  Maybe because I was raised as part of an organization that teaches that love is relative, conditional.  Members of that organization who do not behave in accordance with organizational "expectations and whims" are shunned.  Even family members.  Even parents are expected to shun their own unrepentant children.

Before I had finished the first chapter of Will I Ever Be Good Enough?, I clearly recognized why it is wrong to teach children that love is conditional...regardless of whether the one doing the teaching is Mom, or Dad, or any other entity.

I could take a copy of that book, replace every occurrence of "mother" with "mother organization", and have a very useful self-help book for millions of people who believe that love can never be unconditional, that it must sometimes be withheld.

Even now I continue to struggle with "emotional emptiness...a fear of abandonment...frustration".

I was thinking about that today when it suddenly occurred to me:  Why should I settle for a relationship that I have to "push" for?  Have I still not "gotten it"?  If I feel that I have to "push", shouldn't that tell me something?

Sometimes I try to "hang onto" things that were never mine to begin with.

My behavior might be the legacy of a narcissistic "mother organization".

It really needs to stop.