In Love vs. True Loving: Annie Payson Call on the Power of Selfless Love
There is a real distinction between being “in love” and true loving; the former being a selfish and restrictive emotion, the latter a feeling of freedom that prioritizes the well-being and happiness of others. Author Annie Payson Call, a favorite of this site, recounts the story of a mother who was "in love" with her domineering husband, whose strict and self-centered parenting suppressed their children's natural development. Her fear of displeasing him led her to neglect her maternal instincts, resulting in a strained and repressive family environment. The children's suffering from fear and suppression carried long-term consequences, while the mother's inner conflict between loyalty to her husband and love for her children ultimately led to severe emotional strain, culminating in a nervous illness. The story calls attention to the damaging effects of selfish love and the importance of genuine, selfless love in nurturing healthy relationships.
The excerpt that we’re describing comes from Call’s Every Day Living, published in 1906.
A native of Arlington, Massachusetts, Call was born in 1853 as the eldest of three children to Henry Edwin and Emily Payson Call. She shared many reflections on family life in her books, and was certainly inspired by her own experiences and relationships. Here is what she had to say about what it means “to love”:
Being “in love” is very different from loving, and may be only a selfish emotion which is the direct opposite of loving. Being in love without loving is bondage, –sometimes pleasant and sometimes painful, but always bondage. True loving means freedom, –freedom both for ourselves and, as far as it is in our power to give it, for all whom we love; for, when we truly love another human being, we love him for the sake of his best strength, his best use, and his best happiness, and not at all for the sake of ourselves.
There was once a mother of a family who was very much “in love” with her husband, –and he–the father of the family–was in love with himself. He prided himself upon being a good disciplinarian, and upon bringing up his family in the way that they should go, which meant in reality that he wilfully dominated them, and did not allow them to develop in accordance with their best possibilities. He worked persistently to mould his children according to his own ideas, ignoring traits of character and peculiarities of temperament which did not appeal to him. Thus he unconsciously encouraged the development of certain forms of evil while severely restraining others. The mother was so afraid of displeasing her husband that, although her nature was delicate, and she therefore might have been of real service to her children, she sacrificed her better judgment for the sake of keeping his approval. The result was a life of constant strain for all the members of the family. The suffering of the children from fear and suppression was intense, for they had no natural outlet for their pain, and all the strain was stored up in their little brains to appear later, when they were grown men and women, either in the form of more suffering, or of self-indulgence, which was the natural reaction from the restraint and bondage of their childhood.
Not only were the children of this family in the strain of continual bondage, but the mother suffered intensely from the conflict between her bondage to her husband and her natural motherly love for her children. She understood the children better than their father did, and seemed to have a subconscious sense that she was sacrificing them to their father's willfulness and to her own selfish desire to please her husband. The eventual effect upon the mother was a severe nervous illness.