Each adult juggles mature and infantile motives, adjudicates between “rebellious emotions” and appropriate feelings.

To the degree that we are faulted, we are motivated by our fear of deficiency rather than our trust in sufficiency. Our love proceeds more from trying to fill the hole than by allowing the whole to fill us. We become obsessed with what is missing rather than what is given, with the past rather that the present, with the wound rather than the gift. What we call “love” becomes searching (in vain) for what (we imagine) we lack—a father or mother who would love us enough. The vacuum forms the icon of our desire. The more we force a lover, a wife, a husband, a child, a job, a cause, a thing, or a drug to try to fill the void, the more that “loved” one becomes a misplaced focus for eros, and idol that will inevitably disappoint us, and which we will come to hate. (The Passionate Life by Sam Keen, P. 49)