Tough love

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Tough love is the act of treating a person sternly or harshly with the intent to help them in the long run. People exhibit and act upon tough love when attempting to address someone else's undesirable behaviour. Tough love can be used in many scenarios such as when parenting, teaching, rehabilitating, self-improving or simply when making a decision. Tough love is usually seen as positive due to its encouragement of growth, boundaries, resilience and independence. The phrase "tough love" itself is believed to have originated with Bill Milliken's book of the same title in 1968. Milliken described tough love through the expression, "I don't care how this makes you feel toward me. You may hate my guts, but I love you, and I am doing this because I love you." Milliken aimed to teach parents how to support and guide problematic teens. The American Psychological Association describes tough love as "the fostering of individuals' well-being by requiring them to act responsibly and to seek professional assistance for their behaviors." Others such as Tim Hawkes has described tough love as putting "principles before popularity" and allowing loved ones to learn through failure. Milliken strongly emphasizes that a relationship of care and love is a prerequisite of tough love, and that it requires that caregivers communicate clearly their love to the subject. In relation to addiction, Maia Szalavitz believes, based on her own experience, that this may be difficult, since some people experiencing addiction consider themselves unworthy of love and find it difficult to believe others love them. In most uses, there must be some actual love or feeling of affection behind the harsh or stern treatment to be defined as tough love. For example, genuinely concerned parents refusing to support their drug-addicted child financially until they enter drug rehabilitation would be...