Results for “emotional ambivalence”

Songs

Bill Withers

A wounded plea for a fresh start with a partner whose affection is unreliable, built almost entirely around one conditional…

conditional love emotional ambivalence denial as coping

The Supremes

A woman demands her own release from a dead relationship, addressing an ex who refuses to fully let go even though he no longer…

emotional limbo asymmetry of feeling demand for autonomy

Gillian Welch

A short, circling ballad about a young woman fleeing domestic expectation for a taste of freedom before she settles into the…

deferred responsibility female autonomy vs. convention escape and fantasy

Marvin Gaye

A slow-burning soul lament in which the narrator addresses an absent lover across an unspecified distance, moving from tender…

romantic longing separation and absence memory and nostalgia

Roberta Flack

A slow, hymn-like ballad that traces one relationship's progress through three ascending intimacies: first sight, first kiss,…

awakening love cosmic/natural imagery as emotional scale vulnerability and surrender

Sly & Robbie

This is a cover/reinterpretation of Sly Stone's meditation on family bonds, performed here by the Jamaican rhythm duo Sly and…

family loyalty versus individual difference the contradictions of intimacy emotional paralysis

Richard Thompson

A wry, uptempo account of a breakup told from the battered-but-wisecracking side, where physical comedy stands in for emotional…

romantic aftermath toxic love masculine bravado as deflection

Laura Marling

This is a cover of a mid-1960s folk standard, sung here in Laura Marling's plainspoken, weary register, about the impossibility…

itinerancy and escape addiction as self-medication romantic longing and loss

Leonard Cohen

A three-part meditation in waltz time that moves from a woman by a river, to Christ walking on water, and back to the woman…

erotic love as spiritual apprehension faith and doubt surrender to a guide