What tells you that someone really cares about you?

Their ability to accept the little things, and forgive the big ones.

When she locks the deadbolt when she leaves.

People have very different languages for the expression of caring. Some of the problems that couples have spring directly from the fact that their languages are different, maybe even so different as to be unrecognizable to each other. (This can be true in other relationships, of course, but normally not with such high stakes.)

I remember talking with one woman who was complaining that her husband never says he loves her. “He’s great otherwise,” she said. “Why, last weekend, he washed my car for me, and I didn’t even ask him to.” That’s a couple that use incompatible languages. He’s telling her “I love you,” and she isn’t getting the message.

Here’s something it took me a long while to learn, @Daloon: just about any way you can complete the sentence “If you loved me, you’d…” is going to be wrong. It represents an expectation on the part of one person that may have no relation at all to the feelings of the other.

I happen to believe that there’s no such thing as genuine proof of love, and there’s no behavior that love rules out. When it comes to love, the scientific method doesn’t help. Ultimately it comes down to instinct, intuition, belief, and trust. A person who is certain he is unlovable will not believe someone loves him, no matter how truly someone does.

So a person who is unlovable could never know if anyone is trustworthy, or if they cared about him or her? How the hell could they get along in the world? How could they ever trust their own judgement?

The notion that he is unlovable might be the thing he has to work on.

And you must differentiate between a professional whom you are paying for his/her experience, training and skills and a friend or lover. The professional who tells you that you may be “depressed” is doing his/her job. (You mentioned this in your companion question. I hope that you told your therapist that you felt worse). A Psychiatrist or Clinical Psychologist would be crossing a huge line if he acted like or led you to believe that he/she is your friend.

If you broke your leg, wouldn’t you like your Orthopod to notice and then put a cast on it. Mental issues are exactly the same…diagnosis and then treatment.

1) Unconditional love
2) Lots of patience
3) Doing the “little things” that count so much
4) Hearing me and not just listening
5) Knowing me despite the large wall and disguise I put around me

That’s all as far as relationships go. Romantic and not. Now for professional…
1) Hearing and not just listening
2) Doing what is best for me
3) Trying their hardest to help me

When they bail me out of jail.

To me, it seems that they care if they want to spend time with me and make me happy.

When he holds my hand, looks into my eyes, smiles at me from across the room, lets me lay my head on his lap and doze…a thousand little things show me he loves me.

Edit: I stupidly answered this Q before I read the other…In a professional relationship, I’m not really paying them to care I’m paying them to treat me. I do have to trust that the professional knows what they are doing, and if I didn’t I’d hire a different professional.

No language problems there, August.

What I believe Jeruba is referencing is the main concept in the book, The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. I just wanted to give credit (assuming I’m tracking you right, Jeruba), and reference the book, if anyone’s interested in this topic. It’s a powerful, relationship-changing concept.

If you are paying someone to a do a job, you must trust that they will do the job well because they care about themselves and their own integrity more than you need to worry if they care about you. When someone cares about you…as a person…it’s not their job it’s their choice. You must learn to trust that when somebody is showing you attention in a caring and affectionate way; it’s because they want to, again…not because it’s their job. I couldn’t begin to tackle your trust issues, but I think it’s safe to say that even the people who love us the most let us down sometimes. We are all only human.
daloon, you know when someone cares – you just know. Don’t deny yourself the joy of knowing that affection and of giving the other person the joy of caring for you. As controlling as we may like to be, sometimes we need to suspend our disbelief and just go with the feeling. Finally I must add, that if you constantly give people the impression you are ‘testing’ them, or that you don’t believe they are capable, that will become very irksome for them. Their agitation may cause you to misinterpret their intentions and actions. Open up daloon and let the sun in, you are strong, intelligent and insightful. If you get burnt a little in the process, it might make your skin a little thicker. Something we could all use around here!! :)

True love and genuine caring were described to me once as caring more about someone else’s happiness than your own.

@bythebay: ”you are strong, intelligent and insightful.”

Maybe this is the problem? I can not help but question everything, especially myself. Although, while I want to be liked, I want to be liked for me, not because I pay someone to like me.

”If you get burnt a little in the process, it might make your skin a little thicker.”

This is complicated. Sometimes I think my skin is too thick. Sometimes it’s too thin. I’ve never let pain stop me from doing som…... Ah, maybe that’s a lie. I haven’t let pain in love stop me from looking for it again.

But this pain about my life makes me cry. I makes me fucking cry while I’m driving down the street, and it’s a good thing the traffic is very slow, because if I tried to drive any faster, I’d drive into one of the cars parked to the side.

My therapist thinks I’m more comfortable with pain than lack of pain. It’s safer. At least I can’t go any further down. I’m convinced I will fail at whatever it is I really want to do, and that hurts too much, but the hurt is better than the not-knowing.

I know, intellectually, that all kinds of people fail at all kinds of things, and that doesn’t stop them. No one holds it much against them (except they do against Hillary). I always figured failure was the best teacher.

When I fail, or even think about failing, I am mortified. I can’t look at the person or talk to them again. I am convinced they are spreading it all around, and everyone knows what a schmuck I am. I’ll get fired (from job, family, friends, life). To prevent this, I do it preemptively.

Well, I know this is not logical. It is self-defeating. But logic does not seem to help me. It’s like there are two parts of me, battling it out. One wants to end up in the gutter, homeless, sick, and dying a slow death. The other fights that, and knows I have potential to do some of the things I want, but is afraid of asking, and afraid of not being liked.

Relationships, in my mind, are always conditional. Perhaps that’s a legacy of how I grew up. So I can’t trust other people, really, because they are all like my parents. I trust people some. Hell, I even think I’m a good judge of character. But down deep, at some existential level, I doubt, and that doubt creeps up, and grows, and eventually casts a shadow across my world that never seems to move.

As a result, I’m always thinking about what other people might be thinking. So, for example, right now I’m thinking about how people will criticize this. Some people might find it whiny and self-indulgent, despite my efforts to try to be responsible for myself. So I’m tempted to write something that acknowledges, or criticizes myself before anyone else can, so as to diminish the power of the criticism. You find me whiny? Hah! I know that! Tell me something new!

So there. What did you think of that? I spoke of whining without actually saying I was whining, but in a hypothetical way that I hope will be charming enough that people will forgive me what really is a bunch of self-indulgent bullshit.

And that sentence is designed to get people too say that I’m not self-indulgent, and to sympathize with me. But I don’t think people should sympathize, because, as I say, I’m being self-indulgent. And in the end, I don’t believe I really deserve any emotional support, because I ought to be able to handle this myself.

And round in circles. The one thing, is that this is a public site, so I can write what I want, and people can ignore it. If they choose to read it, and then get angry with me, at least they chose to read it. But I don’t want anyone to feel manipulated, so, insofar as I can, I explain what I believe to be my tricks.

Maybe, if you see how duplicitous and lazy I am at my core, and you still like me, then maybe I’ll believe it. But I’m not counting on it.

“I ought to be able to handle this myself.” That sentiment alone is probably the biggest obstacle for many in seeking help and getting better. We use it as a bludgeon, beating ourselves farther and farther down. Remove it from your vocabulary at once! Ought and should are just bullshit. What is? That is what needs to be addressed.

@TrustingLife, actually I’ve never heard of the book or the author. I am speaking strictly from my own experience and observation, offering a concept I formulated decades ago (and yet I felt like a slow learner for taking so long to get it). If someone has published a book on this subject, well, I guess I missed my chance. But it sounds as if my testimony validates the author’s premise.

I assure you that if I had been referring to a book, I would have given full credit (and a link). Failing to do so is not my style.

@Jeruba, when I first read your post, I thought you were saying that a verbal statement to someone, “if you love me, you’d do___” was going to always be wrong. I thought that it didn’t apply to be beacause I have never said that to anyone out loud.

But after seeing the stuff between you and Trustinglife, I went back to reread that post, and I realized that I probably say that in my mind. In some relationships, it’s not there. I have no expectations of being loved, and it’s amazing that I am loved at all. Actually I get mad at people for loving me when I am clearly (to me) so undeserving of it.

But there are situations where I do say it in my mind. And everytime I look for the thing that tells me I’m loved, I don’t get it. Again, if I could give up my expectations, I’d probably be doing so much better. Unfortunately, I can’t do that, and I don’t seem to be able to do much that is helpful to myself. I hate feeling this way. I hate it!

@daloon your response makes me want to cry because I can relate to what you are saying. I don’t know exactly what it is you are feeling obviously, but I can most certainly relate. You are your own worse critic and it just doesn’t make sense. I do the same thing and I don’t know why. You seem to know exactly the way things are churning in your head so that is a good first step. I think seeking out therapy is the best thing to do. I am no professional here so I don’t really want to give any pearls of wisdom. I just wanted to say you are not alone. I wish I could do something to help, and I guess this post is rather pointless… I wish you the best of luck in finding what you are looking for.

Daloon; I am sad that you seem to be going around in circles. I wish that we could think of some way to get you on a straight path. To repeat, friends, lovers and professionals are all different. I pay someone to diagnose inner ear problems and are grateful when he comes up with a solution. Intimate emotional relationships have nothing to do with my ENT.

I wish you could find your way out of the maze you seem to be lost in.

@Daloon, you are getting it. Good for you. Keep pondering that. Expectations are a killer. You must learn to separate expectation from hope.

“If you loved me, you’d…” is much broader than “do.” Here are some excellent ways of setting traps for yourself and other people (and none of them ever has to be spoken aloud; in fact, they make the best traps when they aren’t):

—If you loved me, you’d know what I need without being told.
—If you loved me, you’d understand when I need to be left alone.
—If you loved me, you’d pay me a compliment now and then.
—If you loved me, you’d want to <whatever> and not just be willing to.
—If you loved me, you wouldn’t [leave the lights on | leave the toilet seat {up|down} | do <whatever> after I’ve asked you not to a thousand times, when you know how much it bothers me].

Even bigger ones:

—If you loved me, you wouldn’t say those cruel things.
—If you loved me, you wouldn’t hurt me so.
—If you loved me, you wouldn’t be unfaithful.
—If you loved me, you wouldn’t abandon me.

It is perfectly possible to do all those things and still love someone. That’s what I mean by saying there’s no behavior that love rules out. Nothing is incompatible with love. (I am offering my personal belief here, remember.) So you can’t use presence or absence of these behaviors as proof of love. Forget about proof of love.

One ought not to settle for a relationship that includes cruel, abusive, or neglectful treatment, assuming the treatment is real (note that perception does come into this, and perception can be wrong), but that is an entirely different question. Love is not the issue there.

I have obligations of time and can’t go further now, @Daloon, but I can relate to a lot of things you say and may have learned some things that will help you a little. I’ll be back. You might want to consider these cycles: If I am unlovable and yet x loves me, x must be a stupid or worthless person, because only a loser would love me, and so I can’t attach any value to x’s love. Or, if I am unlovable and x says x loves me, x must be lying, and therefore I can’t trust x. Or, if I am unlovable and yet x loves me anyway, I have to do something to kill x’s love because otherwise I will be proved wrong and my whole system of thought will crumble and/or I won’t know who I am. Note the same premise at the root of each one.

(DISCLAIMER: Please be aware that I am not a trained clinical professional but only a person with a little knowledge, a lot of history, and some conclusions based on experience.)

I believe Jeruba to be very, very insightful. Yup – what she just said, above.

By the way, Jeruba, I am blown away that you came to the insights you shared at the top of the question without the Love Languages book. That book has really influenced how I love people in my life – I try to love them “in their own language.” (The 5 languages are touch, words of praise, acts of service, gifts, and quality time/attention.) My primary love language is quality attention. So I have shared with the people who I’m closest with, if you want to express your love for me, ask me how I’m doing, and pay attention.

@Daloon, I don’t really know much about depression, and next to nothing about bipolar. So I’ll trust you to filter out what doesn’t work for you. As I’ve written to you privately, I have really benefitted from voice dialogue. The basis of that is that all of the parts within us serve the whole. That even includes the inner critic, which can be nasty as hell. I find when I really hear through its bitterness and anger, it wants me to be the best I can be.

One last thing. Inspired by @bythebay’s comments… something that might assist you, Daloon, in opening to and receiving people’s love – wait, are you interested in that, by the way? I don’t want to assume. If you do want to open to receiving love, you might want to practice getting out of your head, and focusing on your physical body, and your emotional body. (Is that too woo-woo?) By dropping down into the place where we have feelings, it might help you get out of the self-destructive loop you describe. I tend to be very cerebral, and doing what I’m describing is quite foreign for me. And when I do it, it’s very effective in changing my state, changing my energy, changing what I’m focusing on.

This could be a stretch, I understand, but you could even try feeling it now, feeling the care that I feel for you, and I would guess many of the other posters here and other community members feel for you. You can drop into your heart and feel it.

Much of your writing seems to return to this idea:
I want to be liked for me, not because I pay someone to like me.

You’re not paying for someone to like you, Daloon.
You’re paying someone to help you work through your insightful, but tangled thoughts.
To be a good therapist, there needs to be a certain amount of empathy.
But you need to distinguish between the two.

…What a wise and compassionate group.

Thank you, @TL. To tell you the truth, I don’t consider it that remarkable that people’s life experiences should lead them to some similar conclusions. Your author probably has some training and credentials that I don’t have, but he still has to be going on his own observation and understanding. It is nice to know that these experiences bear each other out.

I never thought of counting the ways and creating classifications, which is one of the things that sell books of that sort. Instinctively, though, I have to say there seem to be more than five categories, unless some of those are very broad. Sometimes the language of love is to leave someone alone or to let someone go, including letting him make his own mistakes and fall down. Shielding someone from the consequences of his actions teaches the wrong lesson, and letting him feel them (even when it hurts you) can be an act of great love. And I am not just talking about children.

But the fact that you learned a valuable truth from the book and have been able to incorporate it into your life speaks well both for the book and for you. @Daloon, maybe it’s one you’d want to put on your reading list.

What did the most for me in breaking out of the cerebral prison, with its Moebius loops of logic, its gleefully self-defeating layers of doubts and contradictions (“I was lying when I said that. I was lying when I said that.”), and its web-tangled perversions of Indra’s net, was Zen meditation. It taught me to distinguish between a thing in itself and the meaning I attached to it and to stop turning to a single tool—the intellect—to deal with all situations. It also taught me to quit congratulating myself on making things as difficult as possible, as though that proved how deep and complex I was and hence somehow intellectually superior. (Ouch, it still smarts to say that.) You don’t have to commit to a lifetime of monastic practice in order to learn something from meditation. One minute of sitting, one minute of being a Buddha.

Wow, I completely relate to daloon’s feelings about herself and how she interracts with the world. I just chased away a GREAT man because of all my fears and doubts roaming around in my head. I’m trying to find ways to win him back… I’ve learned that leaving him alone is probably the only way, I just don’t want him to think I’ll never be better to him and move on… I guess I need to learn his language, or at least learn the language of everyone else in my life… and learn the lesson my mistake has taught me.

God, it makes me so sad to come back here and read what I wrote above. Only a month ago, and I was still ripping myself to shreds, and, as TL pointed out, being terribly unkind. What has changed? Well, my meds certainly have. I take this diamond shaped pill that tastes terrible (the only pill I have that leaves a taste), but it has made such a difference!

I am still, tempted by what I said, to go back there, and to start digging through my entrails again, but really, it is so much nicer, as hard as it is for me to say, to reread that, and think that it was so expressive, and you could feel the feelings so strongly. This guy knows whereof he speaks.

The funny thing is that as I feel better, I forget what it was like. I know I really wanted to be dead or at least as badly off as anyone in America can be. I still have those uncertainties about myself. It is really an accomplishment for me to even be able to say something nice about myself, much less when talking about something that is such an important part of me, and that I feel so vulnerable about.

I so want respect for my writing. That’s why I come back to fluther again and again. It provides a way for me to write. I think I get just enough. Enough that I hunger for more, but not so much that I start fighting it.

It means so much to me when someone like Jeruba urges me to write—outside of fluther. Still, I feel like one of those reluctant wallflowers, so afraid that if I step out on the dance floor, I will make an absolute fool of myself, perhaps not because I dance poorly (I don’t), but because people will see that I am in love with my partner, even though I just met her. I am in love with writing, and I haven’t just met her, but we’ve been dancing together for so long that it seems stupid for me to be shy, and yet, I still am. I still don’t believe she likes me enough to put up with my shortcomings.

I don’t even know if I want to deal with my writing shortcomings. I wish there weren’t any. I’ve been in writing groups in the past, and I got used to the way they work, and I don’t take criticism personally—at least, not publicly. For days, since Jeruba put up her support group question, I’ve been feeling on the verge of starting something, and yet, I still don’t have enough oomph to get myself over that wall that bars the entrance to writerland.

I know writing is a terribly difficult thing. Writerland is filled with boobytraps and criticism, and jeers. Intellectuals are so much like sharks, ripping into you over an over. They pretend to be kind, but you can tell they are jealous, and small problems get blown up into reasons to toss it all away. But I might. I might start.

I feel braver than I’ve been in years. I feel like my wife loves me. My kids have taken to a mantra “Hi there, best daddy in the world!” They are such good kids. We all, in this family, need that praise, no matter how silly it is. It helps us believe that we are more than shit.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. I have no idea what journey I’m on, but I know I’ve take a lot of steps already, and I shouldn’t be disheartened by the number of steps yet to take. I won’t let that happen. I won’t.

@daloon I’m moved by your progress, and your kindness toward yourself. May you summon courage you didn’t know what was there, on behalf of something that calls you forth.

@Trustinglife, a hearty second to your beautifully expressed remarks.

@daloon I am thrilled to hear it! Whatever the journey is, you will make it…I know you will!

Thanks, guys! ;-)

For me, it is the willingness to help me lug mountains of recycleables and trash to the transfer station in sub-zero weather, and carry wood inside in the same weather.

Milo is so thoughtful!

…and strong, too!

@Ladies; He just made an unusual amount of vocalization from inside my basement glass door. I leave the outside light on for his amusement. When I checked, he had spotted an opossum slinking across the outside gravel and insinuating himself into a dry retaining wall.

I assume that if they met head-to-head, the ‘possum would win. Milo is practically opening the door himself, and the meowing is sounding very aggressive. A first for us.

@gailcalled: He want’s to protect you; you’re his gal!

But I shouldn’t let him outside, right? The possum looked quite large in comparison to 12 lbs. HRH.

Oh no, you have to protect him…possums are mean. Don’t worry, a little tummy scratching and he’ll forgive you for not letting him defend your honor.

Not this time. I briefly opened the door 1/4” and Milo desperately tried to open it further with his paws. He is still sitting in his lion king posture and making more noise than I have ever heard. I still have lots to learn.

He’ll love you again in the morning, when you feed him!

I saw an animal slinking across the sidewalk around six in the evening. At first, I thought it was a cat, but when I got closer, it turned out to be a possum. Probably the one eating my garbage cans!

even when you show the worst and best of you, they still love you and stick by you.

What ever may happen between you two, you always make up in the end.

If they support you, and you can support them.

The person walks their talk.