Another one of my favourite paradoxes is that of: "If you loved me, you'd buy me flowers!" Which of course puts the recipient into an uneasy position whereby no matter what he does, he loses. Of course, he may go out and immediately buy some flowers, only to be told, "You don't really love me, you only bought those because I told you to!" Variations on this theme seem to permeate married and family life and is a game that both players lose. Most commonly I observe the variation of: "If you don't know, then I am not going to tell you!" whereby each player will not tell his/her partner what he/she can do to make them happy, because then the intention of the action may be lost. The action should be spontaneous.

Being on the receiving end of these sort of paradoxes and double binds requires some sizeable manoeuvres on order to extricate oneself. The "If you loved me..." paradox and bind produces a recursive loop. It is a belief based on experience and it is a belief that shapes the experience; effectively a primary and secondary delusion rolled into one. The extrication process requires the following processing:

There are the complex equivalence of: [Loving me]=[Buying me Flowers] and: [Not buying me flowers]=[not loving me]

So, [not buying flowers] excludes any other behaviour that the partner may do/have done. These are excluded from the frame. If he haplessly says, "But I bought you perfume]" or the equally hapless "But, I do love you!" he will still lose. She can say, "That's not the same" or "Well, you don't show it!" respectively and her negative will anchor to the perfume or whatever. Therefore, every action that is [not buying me flowers] becomes equal to [not loving me], and, here, the scope is HXJGE.

Behind the "If you loved me, you would buy me flowers" sentence we can conclude 4 presuppositions:

1. "You" haven't bought any flowers. An obvious, but important point.
2. "Me" was expecting some flowers. Again, an obvious, but important point.
3. "Me" is feeling unloved.
4. "You" is not doing the activity of loving "me".

Now, in order to successfully manoeuvre the situation to his advantage, "you" has to address all these levels and presuppositions in a single swoop, not an easy task.

A direct attack on logic may work by chunking up: - "My love for you can in no way be expressed by mere flowers!" is certainly superior to the crass, "What the hell as buying flowers got to do with love?" But bad tonality may leave the sentence hanging in the air smelling a bit like a matured French cheese.

A clearly stupid response could be to chunk down: - "Which flowers, specifically, my sweet?" would probably result in a swift slap around the head. There are already too many people trained in the meta-model in the world, and quite frankly they are generally a pain in the ass.

Reflective questioning can produce variable responses, such as, "Flowers are important to you, aren't they?" where the answer may either be, "Yes!" or "My God! Don't you understand anything?

Changing frame is probably the best, especially if this 'backs up' through time, such as, "When did you first begin to feel this way?" This will shift the direction nicely and back it up to before the dastardly deed of not buying flowers.

Recursive logic and binds are commonly encountered with schizophrenics. I have met many that blatantly refuse to admit that there is anything wrong with their behaviour or thinking and yet will freely collect their welfare cheques and prescriptions without a second thought.