Love vs. Care

What is the difference?

L and I are going to talk about how she feels about me next session. I want to be prepared for that conversation.

What is the difference between love and care?
What does love from a T look like?
Do you think Ts love their clients?

Any other thoughts or opinions about love or care in therapy.

I know L cares about me. She said so. But love? I don't even know if it's possible for someone like her to love me. I'm scared to find out. I'm expecting the worst. I expected the same with T, and it turned out right. T doesn't love me. I need to figure out definitions for myself before walking into the conversation.

Just for me, love is a word I use for family and friends, usually people I’ve known for a while. It implies a unique relationship with that person.

Care to me is a lot broader than love, and it needn’t be a unique relationship. Like I care about my students, whoever they are, even if I never interact with them personally (I have 250-400 students a semester).

But, and I think this might apply to therapists too, if I do get to know a student personally, I can feel affection for them. Affection isn’t love, but kind of a deeper care to me.

I hope the conversation goes okay. But remember, even if she doesn’t love you, that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you. It’s more likely her and how she uses the term.

So I looked up love, care, and affection:

Dictionary:
Love - an intense feeling of deep affection.
Care - the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something.
Affection - a gentle feeling of fondness or liking; the act or process of affecting or being affected

Thesaurus:
Love - fondness, tenderness, warmth, intimacy, attachment, endearment, devotion, adoration, doting, idolization, worship, passion, ardor, desire, lust, yearning, infatuation
Care - concern, consideration, attention, attentiveness, thought, regard, mind, notice, heed, solicitude, interest, caringness, sympathy, respect
Affection - fondness, love, liking, endearment, feeling, sentiment, tenderness, warmth, warmness, devotion, care, caring, attentiveness, closeness, attachment, affinity, friendliness, friendship, intimacy, familiarity, amity, favor, regard, respect, admiration, warm feelings

Care's definition makes it sound so clinical. Like it applies to teachers and students, doctors and patients, etc. Personally, I thought care was more like affection. I like affection's definition and synonyms I like a lot. I hope L feels affection towards me. I absolutely disagree and hate the synonyms of love. It sounds so possessive and controlling. I do not think of love like that.

I still need to come up with my own definition.

Easier said than done. I understand that it might have nothing to do with me. But at the same time, if she doesn't have a "deeper care" about me, then why can't any healthy person actually love me?

As a therapist I love my clients. As a client I love my therapist too. Those types of love are very different. The client loving the therapist needs to feel accepted and cared for despite having shared the things that she hates most about herself. It's a deep trust that the therapist won't hurt her intentionally. The therapist who loves a client has to be very careful not to abuse that client's trust. She cannot need the client's love for her own self-esteem. She can't allow herself to rely on the client for support. She has to put the client's needs in front of her own. That said it is really hard to have a client share deep personal things with you and not love them. I was not able to manage it, and I'm not sure I would have been much good to them if I had. But I only told one of them and it was only because she asked. Some therapists will not say it ever because they believe it is unethical. Personally I think if they are decent therapists they feel it, but the word "love" can be misunderstood and scary to some people.

I know that you want to be loved by your therapist and believe me I understand why. But she might be the kind of therapist who doesn't say that word to clients and if so I bet she doesn't say it to any of them. But even if she doesn't say it, she may very well still feel it. Try to think about other things that she says and the way that she acts toward you.

Thanks Maybeblue. I like your perspective from both sides. I don't know why (I'm going to think on this some more), but the word love is important to me. However, after reading all the definitions and synonyms I realize that "love" is too vague.

I'm thinking of taking a list of feeling words, and presenting them to her. So maybe if she doesn't want to or can't say "love", maybe she can say these other words.

I was talking to my dad tonight. He was telling me that I shouldn't just listen to the words, but to notice her body language, facial expressions, tone and volume. He said that the person might be able to lie, but the body or maybe unconscious can't. (He tells a lot of stories, so sometimes the meaning gets lost).

Not sure it's as simple as love v care.
As long as the person is genuine in their time with you I think they covers all areas.

Thinking about Mouse's post...

Humanistic therapy, which is popular in the UK, use the term 'unconditional positive regard' as one of the main factors seen as essential in a therapeutic relationship. This is a less controversial description of what it means to either love or care for the client. Some therapists, including mine, see therapy as about love when alls said and done, but as already said here, love can be a very difficult and confusing word for many people, and as such many therapists won't use the word at all.

Love is such a tricky term to define, or even understand, in everyday context, this is further complicated within the therapeutic framework. Not to mention how each one of us attaches our own personal definition to what love means. We may also love various people yet the love we feel is different for each of these different people.

I think Ts mostly care about their clients - i.e. concern about their well-being and wanting to help them 'heal'. Love? Not so sure. For me, love entails a closer, deeper, more... personal or intimate element. It might happen but if so, it would be a different, 'boundaried' love.

A therapist will never love you (general you) as a mother loves her child. A therapist will never love you as they love their sibling or their best friend. Maybe they could have some sort of agape love?

My therapist recently told me that she loves me and it has had a damaging effect on the therapy and it has unsettled me greatly. I would be happy with her care.

I like the idea of the list of feeling words. I also think that you should tell her why it's important to you--because you want to believe that you are loveable. And I agree with your dad that you should pay attention to the body language, just being aware that sometimes people can misinterpret that too.

I think about when I told my client that I loved her, I was probably a little hesitant. My gut said that it was the right thing to say to her right then, but some of my training was more hesitant. I'm a student therapist and to be honest, I don't think my supervisor would have thought it was OK. At the same time this was a client who really needed to feel lovable and I do love her, so I said it. Therapeutic relationships as helpful as they can be are still weird and complicated.

How could anybody not love comrademoomoo?!

The problem with the word "love" is that the range on connotations goes from "I love ice cream" to "I love my spouse" and everything in between.

How helpful, really, are words without correlation to action? The evidence of love or care or feeling lies in the consistent actions of the person saying the words. AND, it is entirely possible for a person to love or care WITHOUT ever saying those words.

Look for the evidence. Don't get hung up on the words.

Evidence?: My therapist treats me respectfully. He/she is consistent in his/her support of me. He/she validates my experience and emotions. He/she acts with professionalism in order maintain a healthy and productive therapy relationship so that I can achieve what I am there to achieve. My therapist truly hears me and understands what I am communicating. My therapist communicates my own value and lifts that part of me up, even when I can't see it.

I could go on.

If I saw these types of things, that would translate to me as a therapist that does care, probably in his/her core, about me and my well-being.

I don't need the words. Words can be empty.

I need the evidence.

I suppose she is only human.

The word love said by a therapist is meaningless to me. Clients are just clients. Sure, I think decent therapists care about their clients in a general sense. I think it would be hard for anybody to spend hours talking to somebody and not care at all about them. But I don't think it's love 99% of the time. Clients come and go. A therapist will have hundreds of clients in their career. Am I supposed to believe they loved them all? If so, they must remember all their stories in intimate detail, and I very much doubt that. They must have mourned when each client left - so probably a perpetual state of mourning since clients leave all the time.

I just don't find it believable that therapists love their clients the vast majority of the time. People say that there is always enough love to go around, as if people have some sort of bottomless reservoir of love inside them. I don't subscribe to this idea. Love is not without its burdens, and it would be particularly burdensome to be a therapist who loves a client because of the boundaries of the relationship.

Love for ice cream never fades. Spouse? Eh!

So you think if a therapist only cares about their clients, but doesn't love them, they aren't a decent therapist? Why?

What do you mean about the word love being misunderstood? Maybe I am misinterpreting you, but it sounds like you're saying that all decent therapists love their clients, even the ones who say they don't or who would define it as caring, not love. Is that right?

Words are important to me.

Ex-T told me that she'd never say sorry to me. That her actions should show that she was sorry. That really irked me.

Ugh, that would irk me, too. What kind of person tells somebody else they'll never say they're sorry...

So, actions are more powerful than words. Actions speak truth.

Look to actions.