My relationship with my dad may be like one you have in your life. It was a messy, combustible mix of adoration and frustration. We were extremely alike yet had almost nothing in common. Sometimes we understood each other; more often, we were mutually mystified – vexed by our differences. Still, underneath all the ensuing hurt feelings, resentments, and even times of estrangement, there pulsed a constant vein of love.
For close to six decades, he and I had each developed a story of how the other should behave, and we were therefore regularly disappointed. These stories, these manuals were never said out loud. Even if inferred, they were impossible to follow. Growing up in the seventies, my fantasy dad was Phil Donahue: a gentle, emotionally intelligent man who actually enjoyed talking about feelings. Meanwhile, my actual dad was the quintessential “strong silent type.” He’d grown up in an era and a culture where women were put on a pedestal, relegated to a different world than his own. For his part, he seemed to feel most comforted and most loved by me via my physical proximity: within reach, but at arm’s length. He wanted me nearby, but I left home early in life. Even when we were together, he had no idea how to connect with me in the way that I longed for. I think we each translated these shortcomings – our inability to meet the mark in each other’s manuals – as a kind of rejection from the other.
Since my dad’s passing this summer, I’ve been pondering this: our human tendency to pollute our relationships with so many expectations, so much judgment, so much meaning-making in our own heads. Especially in our closest relationships, we waste time and energy needing things to be different: with our parents, our kids, our partners. Meanwhile, the river of days we have together rushes on at head-spinning speed. (By the way, how is it almost November?)
It is no wonder that we humans are constantly looking for evidence of, and trying to solve for, our own lovability. As a species, we are born more prematurely than other mammals, completely dependent on our parents well into our early years. Throughout our evolution our survival depended on being part of a group. To be worthy of love and belonging is paramount to our very existence. And so, very early on, our immature brains begin creating narratives about how we can secure the love of others. The conditions of our lovability become our very conditioning.
My quest for lovability is typical of many women: I started early, believing if I could just be “good” enough (“good” being a catchall word for many things: nice, kind, modest, selfless, giving, caring, perfect, etc.) my lovability would eventually be ensured, airtight. Achieving in school seemed to make people happy, so I added that to the mix. As a young girl, I learned from our culture that for women, beauty is synonymous with virtue, so I got to work on that as well. This was a high wire act of course, as it was all predicated on what I perceived other people thought of me. Hustling to prove my lovability became a lifelong project. Even now, when the going gets tough, this tendency goes into a kind of overdrive, propelling me into burnout. To this day, it’s a reflex I must contend with.
It was my teacher Brooke Castillo who taught me to flip the script on this reflex, to unwind from my need to prove my own lovability in every situation, and instead cultivate my love ability: my ability to feel love for others, just as they are, without a need for anything to be proven or fixed. This work has been life-changing for me; and in turn, it’s been so helpful in my work with my clients. Despite their impressive resumes and vast achievements, they are human, and therefore often trapped in their own lovability conditioning, too.
Love ability is worthy of its own post, so I’ll save that for part two, coming soon. Today I want to tell you a story about my dad.
There is nothing like a terminal cancer diagnosis to give you a crash course in love ability. Because my dad had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, what had been true all along finally became real for me: that our time together was finite. Soon, the road would fork, and we would have to part.
What remained were moments — strung together like pearls on a necklace — into hours, days, maybe months. We live inside time. Our thoughts, so often judging the past or worrying about the future, hijack this time we have available to live, robbing us of the present moment.
I found myself inside one such pearl on a visit with him last fall. We were alone together in his den, which he called his “office,” after dinner one evening. The illness had slowed him down, and we found ourselves in a place of uncharacteristic stillness for both of us. He rifled through his beloved collection of Frank Sinatra CD’s and slipped Only the Lonely into the CD player.
In the new reality of this diagnosis, I no longer had the luxury of my decades-long argument with our relationship. It was what it was, and that was not only enough – it was everything. Suddenly I found endearing all the things that drove me crazy in the past: the Tony Soprano-meets-Archie Bunker crustiness, the uninformed ranting about politics, the salty string of political incorrectness in a mix of English and Italian. I was in love with all of it, delighted even…because all of it was simply part of his beautiful, finite essence.
“Just one more song,” he said, as he lit up another cigar. Normally, I’d feel a wave of nauseated annoyance at his indoor cigar smoking. But now, in this stark relief pearl of time, it smelled sweet, mixed with the motor-oil smell of his tools in the adjacent garage. There was nothing to do but love him, as he was. He was my dad.
We lingered there in his office that evening, through the entire playlist of Only the Lonely, and onto September of My Years. There were more cigars, and not much talking. And because I had dropped the need for my dad to be anything other than who he was, there was so much connection.
It dawned on me: the man I’d long derided for being emotionally unavailable loved these heartbreaking, melancholy songs. His emotions had been hiding in plain sight all along: in his devotion to Frank Sinatra, his obsession with fixing up old cars — for what is the restoration of something discarded but an act of love? Even his brusque exterior itself was evidence of protecting something tender inside.
“Just one more song,” he kept saying, after the notes died out. Then the pause, and another melody would begin.
There was nothing to prove. There was just the time we had, and inside of that time, all I wanted was to be there and love him, in that moment.
Had there ever been anything to prove? That is the question I’m left with.
Wherever and whenever you find yourself reading this: there’s “just one more song” available — this very morning, this afternoon. At the dimming of this day. My wish for you, and for me, is that we can listen for it — above the noise of our inner stories — and love what is, just as it is: right here, right now.
More on Love Ability in my next post. I hope I’ll see you there.
