I am a fourteen year-old and I have a question for you. Why do people fall in love?

My older sister is crying all the time because her boyfriend died a couple of months ago in Iraq. My parents often have really big arguments that end with my mother crying and my father storming out of the house. As far as I can see nothing causes more pain in life than loving someone, so why do people do it?

Sick of Love

Dear Sick,

You’ve asked a great and wise question. We advise you to take our answer with skepticism. Others would give you very different answers.

On one level there is evidence that we are genetically designed to fall in love. We are certainly designed to be able to love, whether we love our parents or pets or siblings or our land. Humans have this bundle of feelings like fear, anger, sorrow, joy, and love, which we have the capacity to experience. Some neurologists consider that people first sense and feel events before they actually think about them. And, since we are social animals, yes, one of our primary emotions is love. This emotion is the glue that holds relationships together. Most people find falling in love one of the most pleasant of all feelings.

You are correct in your observation that one of the most painful experiences most people ever experience is the loss of the person loved, or the gradual erosion of the love once felt so strongly. As psychotherapists we sometimes meet people who have decided (consciously or unconsciously) to never allow themselves to fall in love, a decision which seems to follow experiencing or witnessing great pain.

Allowing oneself to fall in love always leaves one open to the sharp pain of loss. However, it is also true that not allowing yourself to fall in love guarantees that you will feel the continuous dull ache of an unfulfilled and lonely life.

Sometimes you answer questions that seem almost unimportant to everyone except the writer, and I’m afraid that my question falls in that category. My wife becomes lost in her head when she is shopping. Anyway, that’s what I call it. She will look back and forth between two packages of meat for several minutes, leave and come back and do it again. “Getting lost” is much more severe when she shops for clothing, whether for herself or the children. The only way I can go with her and keep my temper is to bring along a good book.

My wife is intelligent, uncommonly wise and has a great sense of humor. Can you shed any light on this (to me) bewildering trait?

Waiting

Dear Waiting,

We’ll try. The trait is called ambivalence by shrinks, and it refers to having difficulty choosing. It is probably clear to you that everybody experiences ambivalence at times. For some people it becomes a serious problem, and for some it can flare into one of the most painful of human conditions. One could feel ambivalence about career choices or whether or not to marry. We don’t think that your question and this answer will appeal only to you.

No one knows for sure what causes ambivalence. In our field that means there are a variety of theories. Consider that many aspects of life do have both beneficial and dangerous or negative sides to them. For example, sunlight can be beneficial in moderation and dangerous in high doses. Burt believes it starts during an intense period in a child’s crib life when she/he realizes that being physically touched and held will only happen if the child stops crying. And the child feels that to stop crying will make it feel humiliated. It needs the contact and it needs to not feel humiliated and to choose seems like a life or death decision. Alice doesn’t have one particular situation that she believes could cause this condition. She thinks that someone troubled by ambivalence is replaying a pattern that started in an early relationship. For example, pulling away from a parent meant feeling no support and pain, and being close meant feeling smothering and also pain. A lose, lose situation. Better to sit on the fence and just feel uncomfortable.

You did not ask for advice, but as usual we have some anyway. It is in the nature of things that people who have a lot of ambivalence get teased a lot. They tend to be a little embarrassed by the ambivalence, so they usually just accept the teasing. And they almost never get any sympathy for the pain they experience whenever they have to make a choice. So our advice is to use this letter to open a discussion with your wise wife about how she feels about how you handle her ambivalence.