Constant Question

On the surface, it would seem that your question is identical to another question that I've chosen to answer this week.

In both cases, one of the partners keeps asking for reassurances that the other partner loves him/her. In the other question, both partners are dealing with a fear of abandonment.

In your case, I'm not certain that it's abandonment fear that is fueling your boyfriend's daily question, 'Do you love me?' When you ask him why he keeps questioning you, he says he just likes to hear you say it.

If you've been reading my columns for a while, you know that repetitive behavior is indicative of trauma. The unconscious mind will replay the trauma over and over again in the hopes of achieving a healing or resolution? What could your boyfriend's trauma be and what healing is seeking? If I had to guess I would say that he didn't feel loved as a child. I think he's unconsciously replaying a scene in which he hoped for words of love from mom or dad and never received them.

This time around, he tries to obtain his happy ending by having you say the words that you love him. But no matter how many times you tell him that you love him, he isn't healed? Why? Because he's caught in what's called an enactment. An enactment is an unconsciously motivated and futile operation in which the person tries to heal a wound or fill a void inside himself. Because the enactment isn't conscious, it never manages to produce healing.

For example, somebody who felt starved of love as a child might become a compulsive spender in an attempt to fill the void. The spending never does fill the void. But when the person gets in touch with his memories, makes them conscious, brings the feelings to the surface, and grieves, then and only then is the wound healed.

At this point, the enactment (the excessive spending) just seems to stop of its own accord. Your boyfriend is starved for love and doesn't feel lovable. His unconscious enactment is to ask you again and again if you love him. His unconscious mind hopes that your words will fill this bottomless pit of need inside himself. But because he isn't conscious of his problem, your loving words will ever succeed in healing him. He needs to get in touch with what happened to him as a child. He needs to reclaim his connection to the hurting little boy inside himself. If we're lucky, he'll cry, grieve, and even rage over the loss.

If he needs help identifying his wound, use my Personality Profile consult. Next, he will need to re-parent himself and give himself the words of love that he always needed. As his own parent, he will be available 24/7 to love himself and fill his empty love tank.

Then and only then will he stop grasping at you as his life line. He will be glad when you tell him that you love him, but he won't need yours words in a futile attempt to keep his ailing psyche afloat.