It was always a lot easier to tell my mother what she wanted to hear. I learnt that with love there is an expectation of gratitude. I should feel grateful she didn't leave me. Love required credit.
In 1968, when I was born, my parents had been married for four years. Eager to have a child, they moved from Hong Kong back to New York with this in mind. They divorced two years after I was born. I lived with my mother in New York and spent summers with my father, who had returned to southeast Asia.
When I was eight, I was told I needed glasses. My mother was hysterical, thinking I was going blind. Her fear took over. And this was normal. It was my role to reassure her. I was more worried about how she would handle things than I was about whatever was happening. So what if she had nervous breakdowns? There are worse things. I had no right to be angry — it showed I was ungrateful. At least, as she pointed out, she gave me a home. Isn't loving a child about proximity?
Not necessarily. My mother had been sent away as a six-year-old to boarding school — rejected, unwanted, as she put it, a "throwaway child". Not letting me go would prove that she loved me in a way that she'd always wished for and never experienced.
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But she never transcended feeling deprived, and she passed it on; not deliberately but by osmosis. Her narcissism left her unable to experience empathy. Did that pass to me too? My father moved away, far away, yet I never felt abandoned by him emotionally: he made sure that the distance was only geographical. My mother gave me a home, but her needs were paramount. Not giving me up became the cornerstone of her love. I grew up with a duty to feel grateful that I wasn't abandoned; that in itself made me feel if not abandoned, then loved without substance.
I'm not sure if I felt loved. Needed? Yes. Wanted? Yes. Cared for and cherished and adored? Yes. But loved? Love felt like a responsibility I didn't want.
I didn't feel loved? How can I say that when my mother always said how brilliant I was, how I played piano better than Mozart? She was so proud of me, and still is. Genius, she felt, was in the genes. Huge emphasis was placed on being special, which has defined and blighted my relationships with others. Feeling special: a setup for a lifetime of disappointment.
The other day, there was a TV show about morbidly obese children. A mother was bringing cake to her son, even though the doctor had forbidden him to have sugar. But she couldn't bear to see him unhappy. She loved him, she said, and cake made him happy. Her gesture, intended to show love, was a little bit cruel.
Being canonised by your mother creates feelings of emptiness when others fail to see you the same way. You need affirmation from outside sources to feel loved, and when that validation goes away you feel hollow. People are valued by how much they can provide comfort, and this is not really the basis for a healthy and loving relationship.
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A lot of sentences began with: "If you loved me . . ." Nobody wants to hear that. For instance, I was never allowed to spend the night at a friend's, as my mother didn't like to be alone. She loved me and didn't want to be without me. Then I discovered that if I arranged for her boyfriend to stay, it wasn't a problem. So it wasn't really about love, it was about need. I absorbed that pattern of behaviour. I recognise it in myself. I've had loving relationships and I understand that love involves giving and letting go. But it is intellectual understanding.
When I was living with my ex-boyfriend, I remember him calling his mother to say he wouldn't be home for Thanksgiving. And she said: "Okay." No argument, no manipulation, no pleading or cajoling or promise of payback. Maybe she was relieved not to have him around. That's what I thought it had to be. Why else would it have been so easy? But she recognised that he wanted to be with me and she put him first.
Considering other people's needs and putting them first doesn't come naturally to me. So, to love in a less self-centred way? In a giving way? I know to love is to give freedom to those you love, to want their comfort, security and happiness, and to accept not getting what you want — not view it as a sacrifice.
When narcissism is a clinical condition, it's governed by deep psychological trauma. A narcissist isn't able to love in a selfless way. It's not that they love themselves too much; they can't love themselves — they need others to do it for them, but it can never be enough. The needs of those they love can only be seen through the prism of what those needs deprive the narcissist of. Saying "I love you" gives the right to demand it back.
It wasn't until I was older that I realised what was familiar wasn't the norm. When you miss out on the basics it feels unfair. You go through life angry, trying to get others to make up for what your parents didn't provide. But it's a void that can't be filled, and the demands push people away. I am prepared to love but unequipped. The love I received was chaotic and fractured, and sustaining it meant becoming immune to the lows — and the highs. "I hate you" meant nothing; "I love you" meant nothing.
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Feeling deeply is different from loving. Being an emotional and insightful person, it's easy to believe you're a loving person. As an observer of love, you can touch it but never feel it.
What does it mean to be damaged? To be unable to let love in or to pervert it until it feels normal? Everyone is damaged — it's a matter of degree. People say you can't understand what love is until you experience loving a child. But when I think of having children, I wonder if I have the ability to break the pattern. How could I properly love a child? I am the child.
Yet having children just might mean I'm capable of something I never expected. Because in spite of her limitations, my mother has been able to let go, at times, for me. And to put someone first — to consider them when it doesn't feel natural — perhaps that is real love.
THE 20-YEAR ITCH
Scott and Mimi have been happily married for 20 years. Then she falls in love with someone else. He proves his love by letting her go, saying that he would rather her be happy with another man than unhappy with him. Did Scott ever really love Mimi in the first place?
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Dr Glenn Wilson says: It depends on how hurt he feels. If it's "okay, fine," then the early stages of love have clearly burnt out. Or maybe he is hurting but knows he will still see her as a friend, as they have children together, and is blindly hoping that by adopting this mature approach there is a chance she might come back.
PLAYING THE FIELD
Timothy, 55, is a dominant male who, in his twenties, seduced and married a successful woman, Rose (now 53); they had two children. He withdrew all affection, denying her sex while 'playing away'. Rose became the wife and mother he wanted, but she'd now like to reclaim her identity.
Dr Glenn Wilson says: Selfish Timothy wants to have his cake and eat it: he wants a secure family with some sex on the side. Rose shouldn't necessarily leave him, but should try to build a life for herself that isn't dependent on him: pursue her interests and friendships with women, and maybe even take a lover — serves him right.
(Dr Glenn Wilson is a reader in personality at King's College, London, adjunct professor at the University of Nevada and author of over 30 books on love, sex and compatibility.)
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'Nobody ever tells you the most magnificent thing about love. In fact, they imply in sinister fashion the very opposite of the truth. Love, they suggest, is an elusive, ephemeral, limited-edition, imminent-expiry-date kind of thing. Rather like a dazzling bargain at Harrods' sale, you should count yourself lucky to find it. It's as if we are perpetual evacuees, and love a ravaged ration book. Actually, love is so abundant we're vulgarly awash with it. Have a baby and you love it with every eyelash, follicle and incisor in your head. Have another and extra supplies of love of exactly the same quality effortlessly erupt'
VANESSA FELTZ,
presenter
'It's easier to say what love isn't. It isn't sudden romantic attachment or sexual desire — though they may be part of it. It isn't the urge to be with someone who magnetises you — though that, too, may be part of it. Love has to do with an enduring sense of responsibility, of attachment, and concern for another's wellbeing. Love for one's children is protective. Mothers say, "I'd kill to protect my children" — that sense of them belonging to you so closely, you'd send off any attacker. You feel that also about your parents as they get older. You can love your friends in this way, too — if a friend is being messed about by her husband, or a lover, I often feel like beating the person up. Loving humanity as a whole is more of a deep concern. It isn't the way that you love your nearest and dearest'
JULIA NEUBERGER,
rabbi
'Love is a little like a good book. It delivers us from loneliness. A feeling of connection lies at the root of our attraction to both love and literature. There are books that speak to us with the intimacy a lover might employ. They prevent the morose suspicion that we lie beyond comprehension. Our embarrassments, our sulks, our feelings of guilt can be conveyed in a way that affords us lightning bolts of self-recognition. For a few moments, we are like lovers who thrill at the discovery of how much they share'
ALAIN DE BOTTON,
author
'Lasting love is a hybrid — a cross between admiration, enjoyment of physical proximity, respect, tolerance, compromise, calmness and fun. It is "liking" times 10. Being "in love" is the pedigree version but, like all pedigree livestock, it's much less robust than the hybrid and its life can be short'
ALAN TITCHMARSH,
writer and presenter