Saturday, December 02, 2006

I Can Love You AND Be Mad At You

I currently am working on the first draft of my third contemporary romance novel, If Ever Again… It’ll be for Love. My first novel was My Sweetpea: Seven Years and Seven Days (amazon.com), and my second one is soon to be published, Fear of Feeling Loved.

In Chapter 17 of If Ever Again... It'll be for Love, the heroine, Diane, is telling her mother about her concern with her boyfriend, Michael. Her mother, in recovery (alcohol; two years abstinent), offers Diane some sage wisdom:

“To some extent, I’m upset with the way things are right now with Michael.”
“In what way?”
“I’d been thinking that he loved me. But I screwed up a few weeks ago. And when I talked with him the other night he said he’s still a little mad at me about it.”
“Why do you think of those two things as mutually exclusive and independent?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why does he have to love you or be mad at you? When we’re young, immature or still recovering from dysfunctional family stuff, we easily can think that if someone is mad at us they don’t love us. Not true. Healthy people are capable of both feelings at the same time – I can be mad at you and love you.”

Sometimes it’s easy to wonder if someone still loves us when we know they are mad at us. Ever happen to you?

Bill

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being mad is a sign that the person cares. I think sometimes the degree to which a person is mad at you may ultimately be a sign as to how much the person actually cares about you. If the person did not care there would be apathy, not anger.

Dr. Bill Emener said...

Hello Macanole,

Thank you for sharing your insightful Comment -- I couldn't agree with you more. To wit, interestingly, in my November 5, 2006 Post, "The Opposite of Love is Not Hate," I argued that, "the opposite of love is indifference."

Thanks again, I appreciate your thougts!

Bill