Love’s closest counterfeit sounds like love but acts like selfish need

By David McElroy · October 15, 2018

Counterfeit love feels just like the real thing — at first.

As you start getting close to someone, you suddenly feel your heart swell in size. Your thoughts center on him or her. Everything the person does or says seems just right for you. You feel irrational exuberance and the feeling that you’ve finally found the love you’ve been waiting for.

Most of all, though, you bask in the golden glow of feeling that this wonderful person adores you.

And then something happens. His or her mask slips. You see things you hadn’t seen at first. The person’s words of love and devotion start to change. And the words you needed so much — ”Never forget that I want you!” — start to disappear. And then the memory of those promises feels hollow.

Maybe he didn’t really love you. Maybe she didn’t adore you and want a life with you. Maybe it was just counterfeit love — a selfish thing which crumbles into dust when it faces the light of reality.

It was my father who first taught me that love could be selfish. It took me many years to consciously realize it, but the lesson was very clear. He was fond of saying, “I love you,” but what he really meant was, “Please love me.”

My father didn’t offer real love. He didn’t know how to love. He was only a beggar holding out a shiny counterfeit in hopes of getting what he so desperately needed. (When I wrote about this two years ago, I knew that I’d learned the lesson from him, but I couldn’t say so, since he was still alive and reading my words here. Go back and read what I said there for context.)

Selfish love actually attracts us. A recent psychology study showed that a person becomes more romantically interested in another person, on average, if he or she discovered that the other person was attracted to him or her. So if another person falls for you — gives you attention and appreciates what you seem to be — you’re far more likely to return the affection than you otherwise would be.

When I first read this, it seemed counterintuitive. After all, don’t we often seem to want something we can’t have? Maybe. But after reading the study and then thinking about my own history, I realized there was truth to it. When I’ve known that a woman was interested in me, that made her more attractive and more desirable to me.

Why is this?

I think it’s simply that we are all desperate to feel wanted, needed and loved. If someone else will love us — will give us the attention and adoration we want — that person automatically becomes more attractive to us.

That doesn’t mean we’re going to fall for whoever falls for us, of course. We all have certain minimum standards a potential partner has to meet. We sometimes feel selfish admitting these standards, but we all have them. I want a woman who’s beautiful and smart and impressive, at least by my standards. I want someone who can be a partner in the true sense of the word. I want someone who will be the sort of mother I want for children. I have my mental list. You have yours.

But if someone meets those basic criteria, we quickly respond when that person offers what appears to be love.

It’s at this point that it’s obvious why the counterfeit is so dangerous. Counterfeit love engages in the heady stage of “falling in love.” Counterfeit love says all the right things, but it’s just a fantasy. There’s no willingness to follow through.

Counterfeit love just wants the attention and the affection. Counterfeit love is selfish. Counterfeit love isn’t about the other person. It’s about what the counterfeiter can get from the other person — until the other person grows tired of giving love without receiving follow-through.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately for an odd reason. I’m craving all the things which a love counterfeiter craves. I’m craving attention and affection from a woman who meets my standards. I’m craving for such a woman to adore me — to want me — for her to want me to love her in return.

This stage is the same for real love and counterfeit love. In fact, you never know which you have until you make it through this stage and get to the point when action is required. Then you find out whether the person is offering real love — or if the person (consciously or unconsciously) is just sucking attention from you, but has no intention or willingness to give you real love in return.

Almost everybody likes the way love feels like when it’s starting. Almost everybody is intoxicated by the thrill of being adored, by the excitement of being wanted and needed and understood. But love counterfeiters suck what they can from you and then quit when it’s time to give in return.

Only a much smaller percentage can honestly say, “I’m willing to sacrifice for you, because my love for you is real — and I’m willing to do the hard work of building a future with you.”

I can think of one time in my life — more than a decade ago — when I was the love counterfeiter. I didn’t mean to be. I didn’t mean to hurt her. But she adored me and was willing to give me anything. I got caught up in being adored instead of ending something quickly which couldn’t work. It was my worst relationship mistake.

I’m not sure it’s possible to know for sure whether a new relationship is real love or counterfeit love until that moment comes when it’s time to make a sacrifice or to put into practical effect all the things you’ve been fantasizing about together concerning a future.

But there comes a moment when it’s clear whether what you’ve experienced is real love or if it was just frivolous play — like a 16-year-old with a crush.

When that moment comes, you will either feel more loved than you’ve ever felt — to know someone was telling the truth when she said she wanted you — or you will feel more hurt and betrayed than you’ve ever felt — to find out the words meant nothing.

The heady feeling of falling in love is amazing. There are few things like it. But you can’t know that love is genuine until just past that point — and that’s when you find out whether you’ve experienced real love or just an ugly counterfeit which has no lasting meaning.

Share on Social Networks

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

Related Posts