Love - A Scarce Commodity

Valentine day or not, people need love.

Unfortunately, most of us have been exposed to very few parents, friends, or teachers who have the capacity to make us feel loved and valued. Much of what pass up as love nowadays is in fact something else.

Psychotherapists - whether psychiatric, psychological, pastoral etc - constantly help people who have been emotionally crippled because they have never been truly loved. At the root of most of our psychological and emotional distresses then is the inability to give and/or receive love.

Several months ago, I met a real-life "playboy."  He has a current steady girlfriend, a kept or "housed" young woman for weekly sex visits, and a string of other women for good times. Apparently, for this playboy, his kind of love does not require him to get intimately involved with women. Sex is something he does with an object. He goes through life using women as objects in search of real love.

Such self-indulgent, playboy philosophy is all part of the same tragic lie that leaves people with mental/emotional health problems. We all need to find real love. We need to know that we are deeply loved and important.

Dr. Karl Menninger, one of our most honored psychiatrists, said it right years ago, "Love is the medicine for the sickness of the world."