Do you know how to feel loved?

As the scapegoat children of narcissists, we know how it feels to feel unloved. We know what it feels like to want to be loved and to feel its absence from our earliest memories.

Many of us spend our lives seeking the love withheld from us by our selfish, narcissistic parent(s) using a variety of largely unsuccessful techniques…I say they are largely unsuccessful because few people who actually feel loved find themselves reading a blog like this one.

The problem with growing up feeling unloved is that when we go out seeking to be loved, we don’t know what it is we are looking for. Having felt only its absence, how will we know when we have found what we are looking for?

What does it feel like, to feel loved? Would you know it when you felt it? Or would you, like I did, mistake something that felt comfortably familiar for it? Do you have a list in your head of what it would feel like to be loved? Do you use that list to guide not only how to recognize if someone else loves you, but as a way to show love to others?

One of the problems we face is that of subjectivity. What feels like love to one person does not feel loving to another. That not only means that what feels like love to one ACoN does not feel like love to another ACoN, it also means that what feels like love to me may not feel like love to you…or to my husband or to my kids or to anyone else on the planet. And while this may well be true of “normies” as well, I suspect that they probably have a clearer, more accurate sense of what it feels like to be loved than we do.

I grew up with the sense that love hurt. Unless my heart was wrung with anxiety and even a bit of fear, whatever I was feeling was not, I believed, love. My comfort zone included a dynamic in which I had to earn the love of my partner through excellence: being the best cook, lover, housekeeper (that one was really tough for me because I hate housework), most obedient and even anticipating the desires/needs of my partner and spoiling him. It means keeping my kids quiet and out of the way unless they were on their best behaviour, and demanding nothing in return…fidelity and love would be my reward if I was good enough.

Of course, this failed. And my failure generated a lot of fights because I perceived this as my partner’s expectations, and that they were unreasonable (then I married a malignant narcissist and those actually were his expectations and they were still unreasonable.) We would fight because I was stressed by the unreasonable expectations and my partner’s failure to live up to his end of my one-way unspoken bargain: to be faithful and to love me in a way I could feel loved. Because throughout all of this, despite having set up a paradigm in which I was supposed to be able to finally earn my partner’s love and then actually feel loved, it never happened. And no wonder, since I was going about it all wrong…

It took a long time and a lot of therapy to realize that, until I loved me…flaws and all…that I could not feel love from another person. And that was key…it didn’t matter if another person loved me or not because I was in a situation in which I could not feel loved, and what I identified as what I needed in order to feel loved was way off base. I was working against myself…no matter what I tried, I did not ever make the effort to love myself as I was because it actually never occurred to me. I thought that would come when someone else loved me and I felt loved…I needed outside validation—the love of another person—before I could allow myself to love me.

One of my biggest epiphanies came when I realized that without respect there is no love. A person who does not respect you and your very humanness does not love you. Oh, s/he may be obsessed with you, but without respect, there is no love. We mistake many things for love: obsession, passion, need, even fear…but the single most important component of love is respect for it is from respect that compassion and empathy grow, and without those, love is simply not possible.

We know what it feels like to feel unloved and some of us, simplistically, believe that whatever makes us feel unloved, the opposite will make us feel loved. For the most part, this is incorrect. This is like thinking that if we do the opposite of what our narcissistic parents did, we will be good parents and loved by our children: nope…extremes don’t work whether it is the extreme of non-nurturing narcissistic parenting or its opposite number of smothering and indulging a child’s every whim. And it doesn’t work for love, either, especially when you consider that, growing up conditioned to feel “normal” in being disrespected and unloved, the opposite might feel cloying and even mocking. Why? Because, simply, we don’t know how to handle it and we aren’t very experienced at accepting true expressions of love. We may even be suspicious of someone who treats us with the respect and kindness every human being deserves because we did nothing to earn it.

We may also find simple, honest love to be “boring.” How many times do you hear men lament that they are stuck in the “friend zone” because the women they meet are attracted to the “bad boy” type, the players, the men who will inevitably break their hearts? This is a manifestation of love being perceived as a competition, something to win: a woman who wins and weds a “bad boy” perceives herself as better than the women who failed to do so, never mind that people don’t change for other people and the marriage will likely be fraught with tension as she must keep up the competition indefinitely…just because he is married doesn’t mean he is necessarily tamed. Does she feel loved? Probably not…she feels victorious but the competition never really ends…as long as there are other women out there, the competition continues.

So what is it you think you need from someone else to feel loved? Can you analyse it honestly and determine whether or not you would actually feel like you were loved if you had it? I know that in my case, it didn’t matter what another person felt about me, until I could perceive myself as being worthy of love…which meant loving myself including my flaws…nothing another person could do would make me feel loved. I would have been uncomfortable with lavish displays of affection, embarrassed, even. I would have been very suspicious, thinking I was being led along until the big reveal, in which I would be humiliated and abandoned. Because I didn’t feel I was lovable, I not only didn’t love me, I couldn’t believe anyone else could truly love me, which meant those who declared they did were just leading me on, manipulating me, or otherwise trying to take advantage of me. This went for family members as well as romantic partners. Out of desperation I had allowed myself to be fooled a few times when I was young, and the bitter lessons stuck tight.

I didn’t come to love myself during therapy, but I was able to see that loving myself first was the key to feeling loved and internally accepting it. I had mellowed a great deal, no longer perceiving insults where they did not exist, and able to shrug off those that were real. Over the next years I came to view myself realistically…I began to see and embrace truth…and to recognize that having flaws is simply part of the human condition and not a barrier to love or being loved. I let go of the idea that I had to be perfect by some other person’s definition in order to be worthy of love and I also gave up the notion that I could remodel an unsatisfactory man into the man I wanted to love. It eventually manifested into an understanding of acceptance…that I must accept a person as he is and he must accept me as I am…as a key component of love.

I found, eventually, that what I needed to feel loved was to feel respected and accepted just as I was…by me. It didn’t mean I couldn’t recognize and work on character flaws…it simply meant those flaws did not render me unworthy of love, respect and acceptance, including my own. All of the things I thought I needed…beauty, wit, accomplishment, being “the best”…none of them truly mattered because I had achieved them all, in one way or another, and they had not changed anything about my feelings about myself.

What I eventually discovered is that my mother always found me wanting and I had adopted that mindset. A report card of 4 As and 2Bs should have been all As…and when the straight A report cards came, then I was found wanting because I had not been producing them all along. My hair was too straight, my posture unacceptable, my feet flat, my shapely legs marred with eczema. If I spoke like my peers, I was exhibiting lazy speech; if I spoke correctly I was being pretentious. To not have my chores done perfectly was to be defiant and lazy; to have them done perfectly was to be angling to get something from her. I came away from my childhood feeling fat, ugly, stupid, manipulative, unworthy, and of the opinion that if I was to get anything even resembling love, I couldn’t pass up any opportunity, and to get what I wanted from another person, I was going to have to fight for it.

And yet I went into relationships expecting to be loved and respected just as I was. Of course, by picking the wrong kinds of people—often immature and/or narcissistic men like my NM—I guaranteed that I would not get what I expected and wanted, and then I would have to either fight for it or go outside of the relationship for it…and sometimes both. Years of this type of interaction ultimately wore me down until I was suicidal and leapt into therapy with both feet, a lifeline at a time I was rapidly losing the battle.

What did I need to feel loved? What did it mean to me? For me, I ultimately discovered that feeling loved by someone else was secondary: I could not accept love from another without being suspicious of it until I was able to love myself, accept myself, accept that my flaws were simply part of my human condition and not barriers to respect, love and acceptance. Eventually I found that by being able to love and accept myself as having value and worth, despite my flawed condition, I was able to believe that others could love me as well. I learned to expect respect and acceptance from others before I would believe their declarations of love—how many times had I believed a man loved me when, in fact, he merely wanted something from me or wanted to remake me into the perfect woman according to his definition. Ultimately, I discovered that when a person tries to change me, he is not respecting me or accepting me and, once you truly accept and respect yourself, you really aren’t willing to accept anything less from others.

So what is it that you need to feel like you are loved. Do you have fantasies of when you are pretty enough or accomplished enough or smart enough, then someone will love you? Or have you learned that first you must love yourself, warts and all, before you can actually feel the love of another?

It is, I have discovered, a key part of healing and feeling whole.

Loving the Imperfect

Many years ago I got very self-indulgent and bought myself a sports car. It was glorious, a little green Triumph TR-6 two-seater convertible. I loved loved loved that car! For 15 years I zipped through the highways and byways of Silicon Valley, top down whenever possible, totally loving the way the car drove, the way it felt, the way I felt driving it.

Of course, there was a down side. Being an English car, the electrical system was crap, and England is a lot cooler place than California, so the car tended to run hot. In fact, it averaged at least one trip per month to the mechanic, sometimes more…and some of those trips could be horrendously expensive. But I loved the car and in all the years I owned it, in all the years my pocket haemorrhaged money to keep it on the road, I never begrudged it a penny. It was the most fun I ever had on four wheels and it was worth every cent I spent on it.

Shortly before I finally sold the TR, I bought a registered Arabian mare. She was 12 years old and at some point in her life, she had been very well trained. But somehow she ended up as a brood mare and, after many years in pasture, she was purchased as the mount for a six-year-old child who had little riding skill. Unable to control the horse, the child was thrown and her angry mother put the animal up for sale at an auction where I got her, pedigree, papers and all, for a mere $125, the “meat price.”

Tia was a beautiful bay mare, with a soft, loving temperament…and she was afraid of everything. She had a lovely gait and was easy to ride (if you knew direct reining), but if you took her to the park, you had to avoid the picnic areas because the crowds freaked her out; bicycles on the trail freaked her out; mailboxes along the road freaked her out—and the entrance to the horse trailer really freaked her out. She hated water unless it was in a trough: a narrow, shallow stream, a rivulet of water running across the road, the horse washing station with a garden hose hanging from a pivoting beam—those freaked her out as well. She would stand passively for grooming and shoeing, never walk away from the saddle, never refuse to take the bit, and stood patiently for mounting. It took minimal direction either from my legs or hands to direct her…until something frightened her and which time she would slam it in reverse. I am telling you, that horse could back up the length of a football field! And if she didn’t back up, she bolted…and on any given ride, you could be guaranteed that something was going to scare her.

But I loved her, and I loved riding her. I got a trainer to help me learn how to get her to load up into the trailer without fuss; I learned to anticipate her antics with water and her reverse gear; I learned to bathe her with a sponge and bucket instead of the wash rack. I spent money on good shoes, I learned how to give her the quarterly worming treatment and immunization shots myself, and I drove up to the ranch to comfort her when the infrequent thunderstorm came along and the lighting and noise frightened her. And never did I think of her as a burden, but was proud to own and ride and care for such a beautiful, majestic creature.

My husband and I own a house in South Africa, an old, rambling brick dwelling with a gorgeously landscaped garden, a sparkling blue pool, and a leaky roof—and you would blanch at the list of other things we have had to fix in the last 2.5 years. The previous owner lived here seven years and did no maintenance at all, so we have inherited his deferred maintenance along with all the stuff that normally goes wrong with houses, like leaky pipes, burst hot water heaters, appliances that mysteriously stop working, and plumbing woes. Our first month in the house we spent enough for emergency repairs to cover two month’s worth of house payments and it escalated from there. And every time we think we have everything fixed, something new crops up. Fortunately we have two rental units on the property that provide enough income to make repairs without landing us up in financial hot water, but there is no denying that the house has sucked up a lot of cash resources that we would have rather put elsewhere.

One could easily hate a house that causes you say to yourself, at least weekly, “Oh, no! Now what??” From a broken suction line on the pool pump to water cascading down an inside wall from a roof leak, from a hot water heater pumping water into the attic and ruining ceiling boards to a kitchen stove that won’t get hot enough to boil water to a double oven that can’t maintain temperature, from an air conditioner that won’t cool to a motorized driveway gate that won’t function to leaking showers to five toilets that constantly run, this house has had its share of malfunctions, and not one of them cheap to fix! And yet, I love the house. It is rambling and spacious with big sliding glass doors onto a terrace and beautiful views of the garden from my bedroom and study, it has an airy, gracious sunroom and a sunken TV room that has become my husband’s lair, leaving the formal living room (lounge) a pretty and uncluttered room to entertain guests. It is brilliantly located, only 4 kms from his office and within 5 kms of virtually all of the shopping we need to do on a regular basis, the mature trees shade the house, the lush green garden cools the air and the breezes come through those sliding doors to provide natural ventilation. Yes, it has cost us time and money and aggravation, but I can’t think of a better place to live in this town and the house itself is the nicest I have ever owned.

By now, you should have picked up on the theme, the common thread that runs through all of these vignettes: things do not have to be perfect to be worthy of love. Cars, houses, horses…even people…do not have to be perfect in order to be entitled to, worthy of, love…but for some of us, this is a novel concept.

If you were raised by a narcissist, like I was, you quickly realized that just “being” was not good enough…you had to “do.” And whatever passed for love from your narcissist was given out based on your performance in whatever it was you were supposed to do. Now, before you say “she didn’t give me anything, no matter how I performed…” consider the phrase “whatever passed for love.” For some of us, that meant getting stuff—a doll, a lollipop, a quarter; for others it might have meant getting permission for something, like a trip to the beach or going to a friend’s house or calling Grandma; for others of us, it meant not getting negativity—no lectures, beatings, insults, maybe even getting blessedly ignored for a period of time. Whatever your NM did with/for/to you when she was not perturbed with you, that was what you, as a child, learned to accept as tokens of affection from her—or at least, a sign that you were not in imminent danger. Even if you didn’t get outright approval, the lack of overt disapproval was a sign in itself.

As children, right and wrong come from outside us: we learn it from others around us and we are controlled with external consequences meted out to us by those others. Goof off on a test, we fail; defy our parents, we get punished; steal from the corner store, we get the law involved. As we mature, however, normal people internalize those messages of right and wrong and we punish ourselves with guilt when we do wrong. Unfortunately, normal people who had narcissistic parents internalize the toxic message that we are imperfect, flawed, and unworthy of love unless we do something to earn it…and just as our efforts were never sufficient for the narcissistic parent, once the parent is internalized, our efforts are never good enough, not even for ourselves.

Have you ever loved something that is imperfect? I adore my Yorkies, and they are as imperfect as they come. As I sit here typing, one is barking to get my attention, another one is laying quietly on the rug by my feet…she is the one who poops on the dining room carpet when she is displeased by something. The little boy still pees on the bed, so he can’t be in the bedroom unless he is on my lap, under my direct supervision. But rather than disdain them for their faults, rather than withhold my love or approval from them because of their imperfections, I make adjustments to accommodate their flaws: I have a squirt bottle full of water for the barker when she won’t obey my command to stop; Puddin’ isn’t allowed in the dining room; Boykie can’t go into my bedroom unless he is being carried in arms. Is this more work? Is this more effort? Of course it is…but I love them and they are worth an extra effort to accommodate their little flaws.

And there you have it: I love them just as they are. I make allowances for their flaws rather than withhold my love and approval until and unless they conform to my rigid expectations. Yes, I continue to expect them to improve, but I don’t withhold positive feedback, petting, and loving until they improve because my love for them is not based on their performance: it is based on their being.

How are you doing with loving yourself? Are you waiting until you are perfect and therefore worthy of being loved before you love yourself? Are you withholding positive affirmations, kindness, patience, and love because you aren’t perfect? Who set that standard for perfection you aspire to (or despair of ever reaching)? Did you set it or did you just adopt—internalize—your NM’s expectations and standards? Has your NM set up housekeeping in your head and you continue to dance to her tune, even when you aren’t even speaking to her?

We must have expectations of ourselves. Humans do not thrive when they are directionless, and our expectations give us direction, something to live up to. But there is nothing in the book of life that says you must live up to the expectations of others if you don’t want to. In fact, you have every right—you have a true entitlement—to create your own set of expectations to live up to, and they don’t have to bear even the slightest resemblance to the expectations of your NM or FOO. They only have to work for you. And to work for you, they must be attainable.

And you know what? They don’t have to be cast in concrete, either! You can change those expectations if you want to. If they were too tall for you, or you achieved them already, or they just don’t fit you, you can fine-tune or even completely throw them out and start all over again. But there is one thing they all absolutely must contain: they must not demand perfection of you in anything. Excellence, yes…perfection, no. Perfection is unattainable and to set that as a goal is to set yourself up for failure…and a reason to keep on withholding love from yourself.

You set the stage for how others treat you by how you treat yourself. If you think of yourself as unworthy of love, others will believe you and will think of you the same way. When you love yourself unconditionally, you accept that you are flawed, human, and deserving of love for who you are, not for what you do. People who value you for what you do are not people who love you…at least no more than they love their car, dishwasher, or mobile phone: and to these people, you are just as disposable as these items when you stop functioning the way they want you to.

You don’t need to be perfect to deserve love, yours or anyone else’s. You don’t need to be perfect to deserve appreciation or approval or to feel good about yourself. You are entitled to it, no matter how flawed you may think you are. All you really need is permission—your own.

Isn’t it time you gave it?