Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. It's not
negotiable. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both
physically and emotionally. The less connected you are, the more you are
at risk.
It is also true that the less love you have, the more depression
you are likely to experience in your life. Love is probably the best
antidepressant there is because one of the most common sources of
depression is feeling unloved. Most depressed people don't love
themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also are very
self-focused, making them less attractive to others and depriving them of
opportunities to learn the skills of love.
There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a
result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to
love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep love you
have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific
skills.
Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to
believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the
pop-culture ideal of love consists of unrealistic images created for
entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be
depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk
food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think
it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation.
One consequence is that when we hit real love we become upset and
disappointed because there are many things that do not fit the cultural
ideal. Some of us get demanding and controlling, wanting someone else to
do what we think our ideal of romance should be, without realizing our
ideal is misplaced