Keeping it real

I've been drawn toward getting back into a counseling situation many times since the last series of counseling sessions ended, but there's a key element that brings up resistance in me. 

A heart-shaped rock along the strand at Bahía de Los Angeles

There's a tendency in relationship recovery and in therapy to be skeptical about romantic love, to reject the idea that it is very important or real. It's a side effect of a few different aspects of the 12 step approach as well as how counselors are trained these days. For 12 step people, I think it's just that romantic love causes so much turmoil and relapse that there is a perhaps healthy fear and distancing around it. For counselors, I think they are trained to believe in rational narrative and client advocacy, as in, adhering to a role of being a sort of superego for the client, or wise parent, or otherwise skeptical guide. 

I have never had a counselor or therapist simply say to me, wow, this all sounds like a very powerful experience, and I can totally see why you are in so much pain and experiencing so much bewilderment. They have always gone to trying to get me to re-frame my experience along more reasonable, rational and controlled ways. I have friends who do that too. I've described my emotional experience to friends and had them immediately say things like "well, if this other person were available, you wouldn't even be interested," or whatever. I think these attacks on my experience are rooted in their own fears and hurt, as well as a desire to protect me. If someone is "causing me pain," that person is an enemy, period. This is a ridiculously juvenile perspective, but I can see where it comes from.

The problem there is that then my energy becomes directed toward *defending my experience* rather than finding ways to integrate it and heal from it. I don't want to have to *prove* to a counselor or therapist that my experience is real. Or to a friend, for that matter. 

I want to start from the ground of completely accepting that it's all exactly what I experienced. I want to talk with and work with people who take falling in love seriously and honor it and are interested in ways to make sense of it from that perspective. It seems like this is a somewhat rare thing these days. Our culture in general seems to be much more oriented toward being skeptical and cynical about limerence and the depths of that experience. I can see why, but I'm not interested in that path. 

So how would I go about shopping for such a counselor or therapist? I guess I could just ask, how do you work with clients who have suffered from romantic love and loss? I imagine the skeptics and cynics might say something like "I try to get them to see that their attachment was delusional and get them to be more grounded in reality." The right kind of counselor might say something like, "I acknowledge that these are among the most powerful and profound experiences we can have, and work with the client on grieving authentically and finding ways to integrate their suffering into a greater understanding," or something like that. 

The plain fact for me is that falling in love has provided me with, for one thing, the most direct and immediate experience of the sacred, and the experience has been among the most profound and moving of my life. So when I encounter the skepticism, cynicism and rationality of our contemporary attitudes, which sometimes even bleed over into outright mockery or ridicule, I feel wounded and become defensive, and as if my way of contacting the divine is being mocked and rejected. I have no interest in this dynamic anymore, and I simply want to start from a place of total acceptance that my falling in love is a real and true and authentic experience, and that the loss is real and true and authentic, and that I don't need to talk myself out of either, but, rather, find some way to become whole within the plain reality of it. 

A friend of mine recently wrote, in an email:

"bottomless sadness (love that you call it this)...is...evil...and maybe the answer to everything...maybe one of the most important ways of loving...maybe one of the only places from which i can see myself and others...fucking sucks...fucking sucks...fucking stupid." 

Yes, all of those things.