Love's Dilemma: The Paradox of Love

The double bind is an awful dilemma especially for children.  While it is commonplace in an imperfect world among imperfect people, the psychological and emotional control of others through the double bind is dramatically disturbing and destructive when it is the primary dynamic of a relationship.

Notes: From another blog site:

1. When the victim is involved in an intense relationship; that is, a relationship in which he feels it is vitally important that he discriminate accurately what sort of message is being communicated so that he may respond appropriately;
2. And, the victim is caught in a situation in which the other person in the relationship is expressing two orders of message and each denies the other;
3. And, the victim is unable to comment on the messages being expressed to correct his discrimination of what order of message to respond to, i.e., he cannot make a metacommunicative statement.

There are two injunctions imposed upon on the victim by the other person basically. Also, it is a repeated experience. 

“The double bind is a recurrent theme in the experience of the victim and as such cannot be resolved as a single traumatic experience.”

The dilemma cannot be escaped in any way. The double bind experience is well summed up in the phrase “I must do it but I cannot do it.”

In addition, none of this is really clear to the victim. It is not a simple contradiction. The nature of the contradiction is really complex, and ends with the victim really WANTING to satisfy both contradictory injunctions and trying to, but not being able to. An inexpressible internal conflict is generated within the psyche.

He gives an example of such a dilemma in real life:

To Talk or not to Talk–to Somehow do Both?

I must talk to him or else all hope is lost. He will forget me, the love will vanish completely. He will have to move on.
But I cannot talk to him because he will not rediscover love for me during that process. He will gain satisfaction that he is getting some of me, and he will not be incited to analyze anything or make any decisions, and the casual talk will probably make the relationship really numb, dumb and unnecessary. Also, I cannot talk to him because I can’t keep talking to him and at the same time have to deal with thinking/obsessing about the possibility of getting back together. And those raised hopes will only result in disappointment, because, as I said, this option doesn’t lead to any renewal of love.

So I can’t talk, and I can’t not talk for two main reasons: nothing said will help us get better, and emotionally I cannot handle either.

To make the dilemma worse, I don’t know what I want, he doesn’t know what he wants; we’re both caught in the middle of wanting to go to the past and wanting to go to the future. How can I try to move on at the same time as thinking about getting back together?

But to make the dilemma better: luckily I trust God. God will lead us where he wants us to be. 

 In the psychosocial and emotional problems of the wounded:

But for some whose family/emotional/psychological dynamic worked out in constant dilemma, the double bind leads to an endless void of mazes to maneuver through with just about everyone.  Contact with others can be a torturous path to be avoided. 

Too, We learn that we cannot say things to people. When we were younger we had a fancy that we would seek and find relationships in which we could fully express ourselves. FULLY express ourselves. And then, experience after experience, and cultivated intuition tells us to draw boundaries often. There are some things we should not say. Telling the truth sometimes is the morally wrong thing to do....

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I have thought a lot about what he said...lately.