You Can't Love Without Liking
Shattering the table of delusion where love exist in self-sufficiency
Ever since I published “Do You Like Me, Daddy?", I've been pondering a certain question: “Can you love someone without liking them?"
I find that when the question is being asked, it's almost always in the context of a romantic partnership or marriage. I couldn't find anything that linked it to other forms of relationships like friendship and family. I probably didn't look long enough.
But nonetheless, my diagnosis of this seemingly non-problem is that there is an assumed “likeability” you should already have or gradually develop for someone, when in a friendship or any familiar relations. The assertion is that you are friends with those who like you and you shouldn't be friends with those who don't like you. Love in friendships is by default, accompanied by a form of likeness.
When it comes to family, this is slightly complicated. In “Do You Like Me, Daddy?" I slightly touched on the subject and how it manifests among parents and their offspring. I argued that many parents do their duties, they “care” for their children, but they don't actually like their children. They love them but don't like their children. I used the movies Fences and Lady Bird as examples in media that address what I described.
Many times we find it difficult to imagine that there are parents who don't love their children in any way. But I think more so, we find it implausible to say a parent loves their child and doesn't “like" them. Even more so unthinkable, what we describe as love is not love if you don't like the person.
When the issue of likeability is being addressed in the context of marriage, the absence of it is always regarded as a temporary thing. To this effect, you'll find a lot of articles with titles such as “Is it possible to love someone and not like them?" Or advice columns telling you “You won't always like who you love". While this is true, the issue for me is they treat the absence of “being liked" as something temporary and almost always, restorable.
They will acknowledge that if left to continue, it might become a source of irritation, frustration and maybe even disdain. This disdain might progress further and even damage your love for that person beyond repair. Yet, despite this admission, the matter is constantly addressed as an element less important to the relationship than love. How is “likeability" less important than “love" to a relationship?
According to Psychology Today:
The naked truth is this: Loving someone is more a reflection of how you feel internally about a person, whereas liking them is an appreciation for who they are. In this way, you can love someone you really don’t like, or like someone you really don’t love.
Reading this I became more confused as I tried to find an answer to my question. A fog of confusion descended upon me yet I stood my ground against the unknowables within the fog.
If loving someone is based on how we feel about them internally, can we then love someone who - internally - we feel negatively about/towards? If liking someone is an appreciation for who they are, isn't that because we feel positively - internally - about them?
When people talk about loving someone during moments when they don't like them, the dislike at the moment is usually a result of a disagreement or fight. Rarely is it ever as a result of love in absentia, but rather a part of the conflict resolution process. At that moment, they don’t like you NOT because of you as a person or being, but rather as a result of the role you play in that conflict.
I'm not trying to downplay conflicts in marriages and co, but there just seems to be an oversimplification of the topic of conversation. Trust me to ensure the restoration of the “complicated".
Growing up in church, I learnt that love is both an emotion (a noun) and also an action (a verb). I was also taught that the Godly definition of love is action - things we might call acts of love. Hence, by that definition, it is possible to love without liking, for love itself is divulged from its emotional form.
In this framework, the focus on actions diminishes the role of emotion in the formulation of love and hence its necessity (or might I say it's “denecessitization”). But to me, this devolution of love away from its emotional nature makes “acts of love" just a result of duty and not goodwill. Like Troy's father in Fences, we can simply say:
"I don't provide for you because I like you, I do it because it's my job”.
Hence we can then permit expressions of disgust and disdain expressed towards us and others. We can permit utterances of maliciousness said in words of care; and when we’re called out on it we simply say “I did that because I love you, I didn't mean any harm". The act of love is no longer so due to an assurance of goodwill but rather the goodwill itself. It’s like looking at a man's hand, reaching out in charity thinking “He’s such a generous and great man”. Only to look up and see nothing but disdain, condescension or disgust on his visage. Tell me, how loved are you in that moment?
By Christian thinking, God is holy. His separateness from us is the very foundation of his holiness and its first expression. Then from that holiness, we deem God as incorruptible and uninfluenced by the forces of our world for he is out of bounds. Hence we say “God is a good god". Nay, “God is good itself". He is the very standard and anchor of goodness. So God is holy, and from that holiness is supposed to be his affirmed goodness and as a feature of that; his love. This love is seen through God's actions:
Covering up the debaucherous nakedness of man, excavating the Israelites from slavery, provision of manna and water in the desert, blessing Solomon with so much wisdom (that he barely ever uses), throwing Jesus Christ to the whips for our sins etc.
Given how invested in this you are - reading this far, you might have guessed the connection between God and the understanding of love as primarily, action. A major justification for this particular understanding of love is that it is the “God type of love”. God is beyond and above humans. Unlike us, he is not controlled by or prone to being influenced by, hence not made inferior by, emotions. Hence when God acts, it's beyond emotion; when God loves, it's beyond just emotion.
So in a bid to be closer in being and attitude to Christ - and hence God - we were taught to love and receive love based on the action, having less consideration for the emotion behind it. In my unsolicited opinion, this makes it easier to be abused than loved. Regardless of whatever form of shaming, and emotional and physical abuse we endure as children in the name of discipline, we must recognize that we are being corrected. We must recognize their labour of love over us, disregarding the obvious insidiousness.
When the Pastor and his wife make a point to berate the youths in church, preaching on how their generation is full of debauchery, disrespectful, insipid, disdainful and weak. We have to see how they definitely won’t be that pained if they didn’t love us. So we must bear with it, after all, it can be hard to “take correction”. When our partners don’t defend us from their friends and family who insult us away from our presence, yet buy stuff, carry stuff and do stuff; we must be blind to not see how much they love us cos if they don’t, why will they do good stuff for us.
We are taught to accept the bare minimum of niceness as love, and that’s not cool.
One might argue about intent but how can intent be good without the emotion of goodwill behind it? About the earlier example of the generous dem- sorry, man; is it possible to truly be generous without any sense of goodwill towards those being shown generosity? Is an act of generosity even automatically an act of love? Isn’t it possible to do something perceived as good without loving the recipients? Is every act that results in some good automatically an act of love?
I personally don’t believe acts that result in some form of goodness to inherently be a result of love. We can be generous and philanthropic for the sake of fame or a “good name” and yet, not particularly be philanthropic in personality. The generosity is simply a transaction. I do you some good, and you credit it to my name, thereby enhancing the perceived goodness of myself; and my image. Love need not be involved.
I can even do this without liking you. I need not see you as human enough or as possessing adequate status for me to want to establish any form of personal relations with you. Friendliness can be faked, but likeness can’t. We know of philanthropic people who do generous acts of goodness on massive scales, yet they show no particular care or interest in the actual people they bless. This is nothing but duty at best or just good P.R.
A friend who doesn’t like you but professes love will never rise above the bare minimum because they have no motivation to. To be deemed worth the effort is to be liked and loved. That friend will grant you favours and “help out”, but will never commit themselves to anything that concerns you. They are the type to never care for anything specific about you until they’re asked to. They are the type who constantly speak of your friendship as transactions.
A lover or partner who doesn’t like you will simply perform acts of love but will not live by them. They will listen to forget and see your desire for their attention not as a show of love, but as your inability to simply dwell alone - you’re just too clingy. They are unable to understand what hurting you means and are unable to feel guilty when they do. They don’t like you and hence are unable to love you - only being able to offer up a performance of love.
A parent who doesn’t like you will provide for you - clothe, feed, bathe, and educate you - but will never see your childish exuberance as endearing, nor your pain moments as anything but character development. Like Troy in Fences, whenever you express displeasure at their treatment of you or any form of displeasure, they will give you a speech about how much they sacrifice for you. They will never fail to point out - in less than subtle tones - how much of a burden you are as a child, and how much they have to go through simply because they chose to have you exist. And like the fat lady’s voice, loud enough to shatter glass, so will their disapproval of you and who you are, echo into your adulthood.
Someone who doesn’t like you never sees your achievements but only how you could have done better. Someone who doesn’t like you cannot be bothered to understand your choices and reasoning because they already don’t like it - after all, they don’t like who’s making them. Someone who doesn’t like you will defend you, but never out of love, simply out of duty. The bare minimum is what you get and you must be grateful for it.
I for one, am unable to accept the divulgence of love from its co-operative companion of likeness. For I know what it’s like to have love constantly professed to you and yet know you are not desired or preferred. I strongly believe to love someone is to also like them, and to continue to love them is to constantly have reasons to like them. You can’t love who you don’t like, no matter how good or loving your actions are. These are merely actions of duty. The fickleness of likeability is what allows them to evolve to mean more.