Iris Murdoch once said that ‘love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.’ She’s right – we achieve love by overcoming our narcissism. When, as teens, we begin having relationships, we tend to do so from within our own point of view; we experience our own feelings as authentic, while the feelings of the beloved have little reality. The capacity to love – the opposite of narcissism – is the capacity to see other people, their lives and feelings, as real; the capacity to love is the ability to separate this more objective picture of the beloved from the picture that is produced by our fears and desires.

Recently, a patient of mine described to me how, in the middle of an argument with his wife, he had the thought: good Lord, she’s awful! But this thought was followed by the idea: wait a minute, I’m pretty awful too – I’m being horrid to her. She really has to put up with a lot from me. This moment of realization was an instance of him tolerating his ambivalence – and accepting her ambivalent feelings towards him – seeing her point of view. We have to hear, see, feel the beloved’s reality. I think if we can endure these moments of ambivalence, hear what matters to the other person, we can begin to move towards a more loving relationship.