"Unconditional Love" is Not the Answer
Discipline & Respect are masculine forms of love that we need too.
Discipline is a form of love.
We're coming out of generations of patriarchy,
power-over, control, and obedience:
“Do as I say."
“Children should be seen, not heard."
Suppress your feelings.
Show no weakness.
That's not discipline.
That's domination.
So the pendulum swung.
We overcorrected.
We rebelled all the way to over-accommodation, fragility, and hyper-sensitivity...
Now we're terrified of offending somebody all the time.
Now teachers are getting screamed at and disrespected by students,
while principals are saying:
“We need to empathize with their trauma.”
AKA
"Put up with what's not okay."
"Love them, but don't love yourself."
"Let your boundaries be violated in the name of compassion."
"Sacrifice yourself in order to love them."
But it’s not Either/Or.
It’s Both/And.
Yes, empathizing with trauma is a form of love.
But respect is also a form of love,
and discipline is how we teach respect.
Respect requires us to "love with boundaries".
Alright, so let's unpack the cycle we're caught in and a way out:
Hard times create strong people.
Strong people create good times.
Good times create weak people.
And weak people create hard times.
(adapted from G. Michael Hopf)
Today we’ve got kids who crumble under pressure.
Who’ve been so “accepted and loved” that they were never shaped.
So coddled that now they’re anxious, depressed, and unprepared.
Good times (lots of love without respect),
have created weak people.
Parents who had it hard, now overcompensate:
They give their children everything,
shield them from the world, overprotect,
don't let their kids fail,
rescue them from every consequence,
and in so doing, hinder their development.
Lot's of love, but little discipline = weak people.
Good intentions, but the pendulum swung too far.
Children need containment (boundaries and discipline) just as much as unconditional love.
We've swung:
From control to collapse.
From rigid boundaries to none at all.
From power-over, to pandering to victimhood.
From emotional suppression to emotional fragility.
From obedience without love, to love without limits.
And neither extreme works.
So let's look at Love/Acceptance and Discipline/Respect
as two sides of the same coin.
We need a healthy integration both.
What if...
Love/Acceptance is the feminine side:
-> Eternally enduring, directionless, unconditional acceptance.
Respect/Discipline is the masculine side:
-> Boundary-setting, leadership, directional, disciplined guidance.
Love stretches.
Love tolerates.
Love endures for the sake of connection.
And that's beautiful.
It gives us the capacity to not bail when things get hard.
But love without respect becomes self-erasure.
We stay in relationships while enduring what's not okay,
to the point where we disappear,
like the teacher being abused in the name of compassion for their student's trauma.
That's one extreme.
Love's dark side:
We've conflated love with self-sacrifice,
we've put self-sacrifice on a pedestal,
to the extent that we "love" others,
by unconditionally tolerating what's not okay.....
while disrespecting ourselves.
Apparently "Unconditional Love" means tolerating what's not okay.
Love without the other side of the coin - Discipline/Respect - is self-sacrifice disguised as devotion:
"I love you so much, I'll put up with anything to be with you".
Some people believe:
"A Good Partner or Good Society = Unconditional Love/Acceptance."
That's one important part of the whole picture.
But love without Discipline/Respect is enabling.
That's what drives toxic relational dynamics.
When love isn’t balanced by the masculine qualities of:
discipline, respect, boundaries, challenge, truth-telling, or accountability, relationships stays soft and sweet… but stagnant;
There's no attraction or fire.
Or worse, they turn toxic,
because without structure, respect, discipline and boundaries,
resentment builds.
No one can tolerate what they're not okay with forever,
so eventually every "lovingly tolerant" person explodes
AKA becomes unloving and disrespectful.
Oh the irony!
In our attempt to be loving,
we put up with what we're not okay with
and become unloving (disrespectful) as a result.
See the cycle?
That's why every couple who comes to me says the same thing:
“I don’t feel valued or respected.”
“If they really loved me, they wouldn’t treat me like this.”
The love is there…
and yet they treat each other like crap sometimes.
They genuinely love each other,
but treat each other disrespectfully.
That's because they're missing the other side of the Love Coin:
We need to work on "Respect and Discipline as Love".
Love draws us in,
but respect is how we rise to meet each other as equals.
Discipline and Respect how we demonstrate our love in action,
by aligning our actions with our values
by practicing integrity.
Respect is the practice of integrity.
Respect is love.
Integrity is love.
Discipline is love.
But yes, Discipline/Respect have a dark side too:
Without love, they become:
Domination. Rigid. Cold. Oppressive, Controlling. Power Over.
Neither extreme works.
We need integration.
Parenting, politics and partnership could learn a lesson on this healthy integration of Love/Acceptance and Discipline/Respect.
Discipline is love.
Boundaries are love.
Accountability is love.
Consequences are love.
Respect is love.
Integrity is love.
Relationships do not fail for a lack of love...
They fail because of a lack of integrity, respect and discipline.
The pendulum has swung,
but we can bring our relationships back into balance.
Hopefully this helps!