Stephen Arterburn - Cant Live with Em, Cant Live without Em: Dealing with the Love/Hate Relationships in Your Life

CANT LIVE
WITH EM,
CANT LIVE
WITHOUT EM

STEPHEN F. ARTERBURN, MEd

DAVID A. STOOP, PhD

Copyright 1988 by Stephen F. Arterburn and David A. Stoop
Previously published under the title When Someone You Love Is SomeoneYou Hate
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Arterburn, Stephen, 1953

[When someone you love is someone you hate]
Cant live with em, cant live without em / Stephen F. Arterburn &David A. Stoop.

p. cm.

Originally published: When someone you love is someone you hate.

Word, c1988.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Love-hate relationshipsReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Stoop, David A. II. Title.

BV4597.53.C58A78 2006
158.2dc22

2006008878

Printed in the United States of America

06 07 08 09 10 RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This work is dedicated to our wonderful parents.

They taught us to love unconditionally, without
expectation.

More important, however, they taught us how to
forgive and to forgive again.

Contents

LOVING THE ONE YOU HATE;
HATING THE ONE YOU LOVE

ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONEA PERSON YOU deeply love and care about while at the same time you deeply resent and hate. The June 9, 1988, Issue of USA Today featured a cover story with the headline, He Loves Her, He Loves Her Not. It is a story about the marriage of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. The article states that hed stomped on her foot so hard it left a boot mark. Hes hit her, bruising her badly enough to send her to University Hospital. When she tried to escape, hed grabbed a pistol and shot at their white Lincoln. Thats what his wife told the police. But they still live together.

When he was interviewed, Brown said, I love her. Shes my sugar-wuger. The next minute, he says hes going ahead with a divorce. When his wife was interviewed later, she said, Were fine. Were not going to get a divorce. We are still one soul. We are still in love.

Most love-hate relationships dont make the newspaper. They are more insidious than that. They dont seem that dramatic most of the time; but the end result is the samelove and hate.

SARAH: BUCKS, BOOZE,
AND A BROKEN HEART

For Sarah, her love-hate relationship was with her father. Dad had always been able to make a lot of money, and his love for that money was surpassed only by his love for alcohol. As an adult child of an alcoholic, Sarah has struggled with the expression of her own emotions for a long time. She feels totally confused within. So she has tried to learn not to feel emotions at all. The more her dad continues to drink, the more Sarah cant stand to be around him. But she cant stay away from him either. At the core of her dilemma is a father who will not provide Sarah with what she wants mostthe emotional closeness that has been denied her.

Growing up, Sarahs family life was like walking on eggshells. Mother was there, but she was preoccupied with Dad, trying to keep his drinking under control. Any problems that arose could usually be solved with money. As a result, Sarah got everything she wanted materially. And when, as an adolescent, she created trouble, money put out the fire.

It was during this time that Sarah starting looking for emotional closeness elsewhere. Most of the guys she went out with were older, and it didnt take long for her to end up in their bedrooms. But these relationships didnt last very long, for as soon as Sarah did begin to get close to someone, she would just as quickly walk away.

Sarah is only twenty-six, but she feels as though she has lived a lot more years than that. Several times, the feelings of isolation have become so intense that she has made a serious attempt at suicide; but those attempts only led to big emotional battles with her dad in the hospital. After feeling his anger and rejection, shed grit her teeth and swear she would never see her dad again, only to find herself several weeks later bringing a new boyfriend over to meet her parents.

Sarahs friends can see the torture she is putting herself through, but they have given up trying to make her see the pattern. Sarah is blind to the dynamic of what she is doing. Shes caught in the double bind of loving and searching for something she cannot haveat least not from the person she insists on having it from. She hates the one she loves and idolizes.

All of her relationships suffer. She limits herself, partly out of the fear that she will be rejected and hurt by others, and partly out of the feeling that she is not really good enough for anyone to really care about her. Sarah knows a lot of people; but down inside she is convinced that everyone knows what a worthless person she is. When others compliment her on anything, she is quick to point out her flaws. As a result, she feels so misunderstood and unacceptable that no one is able to make her feel okayno one, that is, except Dad. And he wont.

People like Sarah often feel they are so needy inside that it is impossible for all of these needs ever to be satisfied. This leads them into a vicious cycle of depreciating love and caring from others because its just not enough. Almost every relationship Sarah has been in has eventually felt empty; it wasnt enough.

One doesnt have to have an alcoholic parent to feel like Sarah. Children who are raised in abusive family situations often find themselves in the same trap of seeking love and approval from a hated parent. To those not raised in that kind of family environment, it seems incredulous that anyone would seek love and approval from an abusive parent; but we do. It seems that the less love we experience, the more we seek it from the person who cantor wontgive it.

Mary, a friend of Sarah, understands what Sarah is struggling with. She has many of the same feelings. While Marys mother was pregnant with her, her father left; he literally abandoned both his wife and daughter. It wasnt until Mary was an adult that she was able to look for her dad. Her mother had remarried, and Mary was fortunate to have had a wonderful stepfather. But there was still a hole inside Mary that only her real dad could fill. She was filled with rage at this unknown father for abandoning her; but she also longed deeply for his love and approval. And while she both hated and loved her absent father, Mary also searched for assurance that her mothers devotion to her was genuine.