I've had some important people in my life who have had something in common- and perhaps it is more common than I first thought. It is a person, most often a son and father relationship, where the father has been more or less sadistic-usually emotionally, not physically. I've seen it in my women friends, also, but in my experience, more often with men.
The sadistic comes out in making the son feel, over and over, from infancy, that somehow he is just not making it as a man, or that there is something flawed or even evil in the son, something that has to be rooted out quickly and forcefully, so that his son can 'make it in the world'. This isn't tough love. This is fear on the part of the father, a fear that was perhaps handed down to him from his parents in some form: fear of failure, fear of oneself not being a good enough father. It is a warped love, and so ceases being love to the son.
What happens to the son? He is either berated, abandoned or critcized from his earliest years. Usually, I've thought, it isn't always all the sons in a family, but the sadistic 'discipline' (emotional abuse) may often focus on one son especially- and it seems to be the son who actually has the most masculine tendencies- perhaps the father thinks, "Ah. If I can just work on this one, he may have a chance to do something with himself: he's got potential". What actually may be happening is that the father, in his fear, feels most threatened by the stronger son. He feels that this son may get out of control and he may not be able to 'save him'.
The son then may take a couple courses: either he runs away physically; or mentally, by establishing a false self to please the father and placate him. Unfortunately, this sets off a cycle that may well end up in narcissism (the narcissist begins to put the maintenance of this false self at the center of his universe). Then the son grows into a man who cannot come out of himself to really love anyone, or to really recieve love. He has locked himself, his true self, away to protect himself from, primarily, the father-but as his father's influence recedes in reality, the son replaces 'father' with 'real world', 'commitments', or 'God'. He then relates to everything through this false self, which is actually not relating to anyone at all. He becomes essentially alone- and to be alone like that within oneself is a precursor to being in hell; we are not meant to exist like that.
The other course is that the son simply rebels. This is probably the most healthy, because it is in touch with reality. However, rebellion to any legitimate authority is a dangerous course, and can produce guilt and self-hatred, or again, narcissism. The best course would be that the son is strong enough to find other father-figures, healthy ones, who will discipline him in love and selflessness, not in fear. He can then develop in tune with the real world, the world that God made and will meet him within.
Only through right, sane, true faith in God can the son, wounded by a wounded father, begin to be himself, and to love himself as God loves him. This is the only cure: and it comes often through a very tough road of blind faith in God. Most often, as Aquinas says, the Lord uses normal means of healing- He doesn't usually zap us and we're set. Therefore, I like the term used by a great counselor I know: "Incarnational healing". This means, basically, that God uses people and relationships, incarnate realities (not abstractions or words) to heal wounds in people and relationships. The wounded person needs the grace to be able to trust God when he's been so wounded by the first father in his life, and the grace to accept love from whoever God sends to heal him. But as we know, the Lord gives everyone the grace he needs- and each person always, until death, maintains his free will to choose or to reject the love God continually sets before him. The free will part is good news because it allows even the most messed-up of us to make choices to get better and learn to love.
We are composite beings, beings whose souls are interspersed throughout a physical body-somehow! This means that, in order to receive full healing, we need to work at all these levels. When a person like the son I have been mentioning is wounded, in such a primordial way (by a sadistic father), he needs to be healed by being loved.
They say the saint is one who loves the unlovable. A narcissist, an angry (or worse, not angry) person whose spirit has been beaten up for many years, IS unlovable. This is their torment and it drives their existence. They can never find anyone perfect enough, or safe enough; they can never be satisfied because they are asking something impossible of another person. They do not truly see other people, often, until it is 'too late'. But then this is a grace: to be humble, to learn that you missed something so important- and then to be more open to the possibility that what you see as reality may be mistaken. Then there is a chink in the iron wall: and infinite hope! For the Lord always remains, waiting to insert love, usually through who He puts in our lives: friend, co-workers, religious, counselors, family members, a legitimate marriage-partner(or if that is not possible, Himself as Spouse of the soul).
So how does the saint love the unlovable? The pattern is how Christ loved. He laid down his life. In practical, daily terms, this means that the saint must have an over-abundance of God's love flowing through him, so that his heart can become a stepping stone for another, especially the unlovable. As Our Lord said to Blessed Angela: "Make yourself a capacity, and I will be a torrent of love through you." Through saints and potential saints making themselves capacities, wounded people continue to have a chance to experience true love, over and over.
True love can come in a friendship, a marriage, a family relationship. But the saint has to remain primarily in love with God. All his source of strength is the Holy Spirit. And he must be a person of prayer and commitment to the Sacraments, the Sacraments which nourish both body and soul.
Most situations are people in a relationship or family who are mixtures of potential sanctity and woundedness in different areas. With God, and right religion (how we relate to God), these mixtures of love and problems can slowly improve.
My early years of romantic thought about marriage and relationships have been blown out of the water. And good thing, too. For I'm starting to see that real, deep love has romance, but of a different color than the tinny stuff we're brought up to expect. It is the romance of Christ with a soul, the King with the scullery maid. Romance between two people is lovely and real, but it needs to be in a situation that always has potential to grow into the love of God: in the tough places of commitment, of sacrifice, in the places where we must wait on God to help us. Asking God to fill us with His love, and thus to help with problems, especially amongst the unlovable parts of us, is how it can happen.
