“Love and abuse cannot coexist.” — bell hooks
When I first encountered these words by bell hooks, they didn’t just feel like a theory; they felt like a verdict. As I look back on the complex tapestry of my life—my relationships with Painter, Beatrix, Grace, and Harley, as well as the tangled roots of my own family—I am forced to reckon with the stories we tell ourselves to survive the people we “love.” It often felt like “love” was an excuse for abuse and avoiding consequences and responsibility.
In hindsight, it was. In my family of origin, surviving the traumatic experiences, abuse, and abandonment was described as character development; a merit badge of toughness. The theme was often, “You’re too sensitive and I love you.”
As I’ve consciously focused on growth and awareness through the last decade, I found myself repeating a specific phrase to my granddaughter’s parents: “You say you love your daughter enough to take a bullet for her, but you won’t take her to therapy.”
At the time, I thought I was being clear. But hindsight has a way of sharpening the truth. I realize now that I stopped short of the most vital point. I should have said: “You say you love her enough to take a bullet, but you won’t go to therapy yourselves. You are so busy playing the hero in a hypothetical tragedy that you cannot see you are the ones holding the gun over her life today.”
The Illusion of “Feeling”
We live in a culture that treats love like a feeling—a sudden spark or an uncontrollable wave. But feelings are fickle; they are the stories we make up to explain the electricity in our veins. Secure, functional relationships understand a truth that is far more grounding: Love is not a feeling; it is an action.
If love is the “will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth,” as hooks suggests, then love is a verb of labor. It is the work of tending a garden. If you claim to love the garden but you stomp on the sprouts and withhold the water, the “feeling” of love in your heart is irrelevant. The garden is still dying at your feet.
Cathexis vs. Care
The most difficult pill to swallow is hooks’ dismantling of “Abusive Love.” It is a radical idea because it strips away the alibi of the abuser. We often stay in toxic dynamics because we sense the other person’s intensity. We tell ourselves, “They love me in their own way.”
But hooks introduces a necessary distinction: Cathexis. Cathexis is the process of investment. We can be deeply “cathected” to someone—obsessed with them, attached to them, dependent on them—without actually loving them. An abuser is often deeply cathected to their victim; they feel they cannot live without them. But that intensity isn’t love; it is a desire for possession.
Choosing the Action
When we finally accept that love and abuse cannot coexist, the world becomes much colder, but much clearer. It means that those who hurt us—and those we have hurt—were not acting out of “complicated love.” They were acting out of a lack of it.
To love Painter, Beatrix, Grace, and Harley—and to truly love my family—requires me to set down the gun. It requires the humility to go to therapy, the courage to change my behavior, and the discipline to ensure that my actions match my claims.
These actions will inevitably change and redefine those relationships. Every relationship has its season. These changes will help you separate the weed from the flower, the perennial from the annual. In the clearing created by honesty, you may even be surprised by an unseen volunteer—a beautiful growth you didn’t plant, but which finally has the space to bloom.
Learn more about bell hooks and her approach to love and loving by clicking here.
Love Letters to a Healing Heart 