What is LOVE, Dr. Cookerly?

Do You Want To Say 'Love' When You Mean 'Sex'?

Did you know that using the word love when sex is meant leads to children not being sufficiently told they are loved in certain families? When parents are vaguely aware the word ‘love’ can sometimes mean ‘sex’ they are less prone to use the word love with their children according to some.

This is not just a problem with children. Sadly in family therapy I have often heard adult children say to their older parents, “You never told me you loved me”. Their parent’s reply usually includes something like ‘the word love is too intimate, or personal, or uncomfortably sort of sexual’ if they can articulate their inner prohibition.

Then there is the situation with certain couples where using the word love can lead to marital mis-communication and disharmony. This can happen when he says, “I love you” and means to convey a message of heartfelt love for her but she interprets it like “He doesn’t really love me, he is just after sex again”. Are you aware that if certain people hear or speak the word ‘love’ to each other enough they may convince themselves that having both unprotected sex and sex that lacks love is okay? That’s where the urban folk saying “to get someone to have sex with you just use the word love a lot” comes from.

Sex and love are two very different things, although they mix well. For some years now it has been popular to use the word love when sex is the real subject matter. Lots of people say “let’s make love” when “let’s have sex” is what is really meant. Many books have been published with the word love in the title when the book is really only about sex. Somewhat sex phobic people find the word love less offensive or more a polite term to use when needing to say something about sex. You may think, “Why not use the word love when talking or writing about sex”? Here are some of the main possible ‘why’s’.

Using the word love when meaning sex brings about a mental detour from clearly and precisely seeing love as a unique, extremely significant, and an entirely different subject than sex. It also has the effect of subtly diminishing our understanding of love’s extraordinary importance. Furthermore, it causes love to be less attended to in its own right, thus, subtly decreasing how much we think, act, and center on love in our lives.

Another issue is that saying the word love when meaning sex is just inaccurate. Inaccuracy causes confused thinking and leads to mistakes, some of which may be serious. Also using the word love for sex is frequently deceptive and manipulative. If when we hear the word love we are conditioned to focus on sexuality we are diverted from thinking of all the other important types, aspects and factors involved with love itself. Certainly sexual love is an important topic but it’s not the only, or the first topic one might think of when hearing the word love.

Did it ever cross your mind that the two groups that seem to use the word love the most are the promoters of religion and the promoters of pornography? Spiritual love and sexual love are strongly related in the theology of many religions but using the word love for sex only seems to blind us from seeing that relationship.

From this therapist’s point of view our world just might come to be a bit more loving and a little less love-starved if whenever we said the word love we meant the real thing and not sexuality, or anything else for that matter. So, let me suggest you consider your own use of these two words and give some thought to how you really want to deal with them in your life and in your relationships.

Always – Grow in love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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Image credits: “Hotel beds at 9am” by Flickr user .guilty.
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Can Love the Second Time Around Be Better Than the First?

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson is all about people making a second marriage (or love-mated relationship) and later attempts at couple’s love to succeed better than most people do. It introduces the concept of “team love” as crucial to second and later effort success, and presents what are NOT the right answers times seven.

Second Failures and Second Successes

Second marriages, second marriages to the same person, try again relationships, re-contacts after breakups, joining up after years apart, living together again with an ex – they all start with the danger of the past repeating itself. They also face a statistical worse chance of staying together than does a first time, committed relationship. Even so, all these second attempts are on the rise throughout the developed world.

The good news is there is a growing group of couples (maybe up to about 30+ percent ?) who are making second goes at love, marriage, etc work and, not only that, but making them work far better than their first attempts. Another good news factor is we are beginning to have some ideas, some understandings, some research and some new and apparently more helpful concepts about what makes second goes at couple’s love work and what makes them fail.

It is still true that most second, third, fourth, etc. marriages and other couple’s unions fail at greater rates than do first time marriages, etc. but it does not have to be that way. This is demonstrated by a number of second marriage couples exhibiting their second-time-around as far more successful, more healthy, more happy and more lasting than their first.

I literally have worked with hundreds of second time couples. On follow-up survey research, most of them report getting better and better at being a loving couple. I heard from one of them just yesterday. They told about how they were before and after they came to do love-centered, team oriented, couple’s counseling. Collectively they had previously made five marriage type attempts, all ending in agonizing failure. That was years ago before they got together and started learning what it really takes to make a second attempt, couple’s love have lasting success (defined as 10 or more years). Furthermore, I personally know this because I am in such a second relationship which Kathleen which we have made work better and better for over 40 years.

What Is NOT the Answer Times 7!

Before we look at what does work, let’s look at some of what we can learn from second attempt failures.

1.    Relying on doing a love relationship the same way you did it before likely will not work any better the second time than it did the first. You must do different to get different results. Those who succeed at a second go at couple’s love usually learn to do the second relationship very differently than they did their first. There are some exceptions but not many.

2.    Relying on finding the perfect mate who treats you just right, just about guarantees failure. One reason is because that puts almost all the pressure and weight of succeeding on your love-mate and little or none on yourself, or on your joint team love system which often turns out to be a crucial factor.

3.    Relying on the magic of love to make every thing work right this second time is like a farmer relying on the magic of nature alone to produce a healthy, abundant harvest. No, it is going to take a lot of new love knowledge and team work along with the magical nature of love.

For example think of acrobats and their incredible teamwork to keep each other tumbling and sailing through the air safely. Then think of any well coordinated team artfully running plays and patterns in cooperation and harmony, so as to make scores and win the game. Now think of couple’s love like a team sport; you don’t know yet how to play very well. So, it is going to take a lot of joint learning and joint practicing to get good at it together. Love’s magical nature may get you started but from there on its sheer conjoint team effort and increasing love skill that wins the day.

4.    Do NOT rely on falling in love, feeling like you are in love, or being sure you are in love now that you think you have found the single, right person for you because several forms of false love can give you pretty much the very same initial feelings.

5.    Do NOT rely on manipulation games, relating by deceptions, relational trickery, other people’s rules for romance, hiding your less pleasant truths, phoniness or any other lack of realness because while those things might get you married falsehood, likely will not keep you mated that way or get you into healthy, real love.

6.    Do NOT rely on blaming of your ex, or of yourself or anything else to help you know how to go on to second love success. And while you are thinking about past failures do not spend too much time on what went wrong because usually that will not lead you to what you must do right or what you must skillfully learn to do well. Remember, knowing 3 is not the answer to 2+2 does not tell you the answer is 4. Plus, it leaves you open to the mistakes of answering 5, 6, 7, etc. However, it usually is useful to study what and how you could have done better.

7.    Do NOT rush into your next, heavy duty relationship. Start light and don’t specialize in any one person too soon. Sample broadly, let the best emerge and grow into it slowly. Take a year and preferably two, once you think something is working really well. As Paul told us, “ love is patient”. It usually is false love that is in a hurry.

A New Understanding of Second Love Success

Second attempts at spousal love may go better, even much better than first marriages, non-marriages, unions, etc. because the couple learns to work at doing love itself better as a team. Team love, much like any teamwork, requires a coordinated interaction of sending love and receiving love more skillfully and more completely than might have occurred in first marriages and other love attempts. It appears that is because successful second marriage couples jointly tend to go looking for the how-to’s of doing love better than they did before. They may not consciously know they are doing this, then again sometimes they do. Also being aware that they can fail appears to help them be much more careful right from the start of a new relationship.

Those who succeed seem to interact in cooperative coordination using the behaviors of love much more often and much more readily than in previous relationships. In doing so, they continually develop and hone their team love skills. Such couples become increasingly better at working together in unison and jointly uniting to produce positive effects. They learn to act in much more loving concert with each other pulling together, acting side-by-side, joining their forces together and siding with each other when facing opposition or difficulty.

These couples make efforts jointly and concurrently, growing their common love connection and with it a strengthening team spirit. Their approach is exemplified by the statement “when I win you win, and when either of us loses so does the other and so does our relationship”. They assist each other to be individuals but that too they do with team harmony. Sometimes they do fall into disharmony and dissonance. When that happens it is not long before they are trying to come back together in the teamwork of healing and conjointly reconnecting. With their success, comes a joint shared joy and motivation to succeed again together even better.

More technically, successful second time couples are thought to build a much better systemic, love-active series of positive and jointly developed interaction patterns. When one makes a little bid for a love connection with a glance, a sound, a gesture or anything, the other one picks up on it and smoothly and quickly acts in kind. When one directly asks for any particular show of love, the other one also smoothly and quickly is responsive in kind. The teamwork truly is a duet of love-responsive-interaction.

Much like superb, well practiced dancers, their actions, even when very different from one another, integrate with each other to produce a synergetic, singular whole. Their support is mutual as is their respect for one another and their affirmation is solid and frequently freely evident as is a tolerance when things do not go well. They do sometimes clash, sometimes quite vehemently, but never nearly as much as they harmonize and demonstrate how much they value one another and the importance of their coupleness.

It is important to know that this systemic team love concept for many people is hard to understand and also not easily researched. It is hard enough for a lot of people to comprehend the ways of an individual let alone the interaction patterns of a couple acting in loving concert with one another.
To help you with that, here is a double example. Al stays at the office later and later because he knows that when he gets home he will be met with his angry, disappointed, complaining wife, Barb. So, Al stays later and later to avoid that. He secretly hopes that Barb will get the idea that being nice would get him home sooner. Barb waiting at home gets angrier, increasingly disappointed and prone to intense complaining the longer and longer it takes for Al to get home. She secretly hopes her demonstrable unhappiness will get her husband to start coming home sooner.

Both Al and Barb’s actions are having the opposite of the desired effect. Neither of them sees that what they are doing, trying to make it better, makes it worse; nor do they see that it is a cyclical pattern they both jointly are creating. Next-door, Carl works to get home as quickly as he can because his wife, Debbie, is so pleasant to come home to. Debbie is pleasant because Carl always arrives home greeting her with happy love. They too are creating a joint interaction, cyclical pattern but one that has a positive, team love effect instead of an anti-love, negative one. Might it be that Al and Barb are in a first marriage and Carl and Debbie in a second, having learned better from their first?

In or Going toward a Second, Big, Committed Effort at Love?

If you are already in or going toward a second, big, committed effort at couple’s love, let me suggest you get a really strong TEAM focus. As a team, together study, discuss and practice the behaviors of love “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”, the understandings of love’s workings, the things that are known to help couple’s teamwork and those that do not help. Learn how to avoid the traps of false love and the skills it takes to grow healthy, real love also can be part of your team focus. Of course, we recommend this website and its 200+ mini-love-lessons, the books mentioned here, along with everything else you can find that looks like it might be worthy of your joint attention. Classes, workshops, retreats, and being around loving people, especially loving couples, often can do wonders. There is lots more but that will have to do for now.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success question: When, where and with whom have you done your best teamwork, and can you see how to apply what you did there to growing a couple’s team love?

Spirituality And Love Great and Grand

Synopsis: This mini love lesson starts with love’s spiritual mystery; then explores central questions by surveying what the wisdom masters of old taught; the spiritual goodness of love; religion, spirituality and love; erotic spiritual love; and more.

Love’s Spiritual Mystery

On the beach a couple with arms around each other, under a full moon, looking out over the vastness of the ocean’s rolling waves feels they are awesomely, spiritually connected in love with each other and the universe.

A family surrounding the mother and the just born, new member of their family feel much the same, wondrous effect. Dear, close friends also experience this standing together at the edge of the Grand Canyon as the sun sets magnificently behind the cliffs. High atop a mountain, a lone individual looks out over a vastness of snow capped peaks and the mountain hiker feels spiritually and superbly loved by an unknown something he or she does not care or need to define. What is this mysterious, yet great and grand, sense of the ‘spiritual’ that sometimes comes with a sense that one is permeated by a high and wondrous love?

Essential Questions

Do you see love as spiritual?

Many people around the world and throughout history have described love as a spiritual phenomenon. For many love is the spiritual force in the universe. It is proclaimed that whether it be love of a newborn baby, a mate, a family, a people, love of country, or art, or music, or nature, or humanity, or life itself, or even existence, love is a mystical, grand, and glorious spiritual thing inspiring individuals and relationships to the best of what they can become. Do you see it this way?
Some say that because love is a spiritual force it, more than anything else, inspires our best and greatest actions. Especially might this be true for actions involving connection, cooperation, collaboration and unified effort.

Others suggest that the spiritual force of love is what makes it able to inspire great individual acts of risk, protection, dedication, loyalty and courage. That it is the spiritual force of love that’s behind the great acts of compassion and kindness in the universe is also a common teaching. Is that your view? Is love for you a great and grand, spiritual thing? If so, are all your love relationships spiritual? Are all love relationships in the world spiritual? Do we best deal with love by seeing it as essentially spiritual?

What The Wisdom Masters of Old Teach

There is an ancient Hindu teaching that says before there was anything there was just love. Love because of its nature had to create, so in an incredible, explosive burst love gave birth to all that exists, the heavenly spheres, time, space, everything. From that came life itself and all beings both heavenly and earth bound. From that Hindu teaching flows the concept that all that exists flows with love and we, therefore, best flow with love in all that we do.

Buddhism teaches that our life is to sing the song of compassionate love divine. Judaism, and later Jesus taught that we are to love God and love others as we love ourselves. John of the Epistles simply proclaimed “God is love”. Taoism puts forth erotic love as a supreme, spiritual love. Rumi, the great Sufi master of Islam, taught the ways of love are the ways of Allah and, therefore, are above and beyond all else. Furthermore, each and every form of true love is in fact but a manifestations of Allah’s love. Therefore, all true love is spiritual in its essential nature.

The ancient Egyptian Scriptures of Hathor and Isis, the Great Mother spiritual teachings of the Fertile Crescent and beyond, all hold love to be the greatest spiritual existence, practice and blessing. Again and again all the way back to the dawn of history love is exalted as a phenomenon of spirituality. In philosophy Plato’s great Symposium on Love speaks to love’s mysterious, mystical and metaphysical essence, as do philosophers in many ages and from many lands.

What is Spirituality?

Explaining spirituality is not the easiest thing to do. To help your understanding and my comprehension of what spirituality is, let’s look at some different and some similar ideas.

1. Spirituality is that which connects you to both your essential, innermost, core self and at the same time to the awesome ‘all’ that is beyond all of us.

2. Spirituality is a way of relating and living with that which is greater than ourselves and ultimately with the greatest of all that is.

3. Spirituality is that which enables you to have some knowledge of the unknowable.

4. Spirituality is a mysterious awareness bringing us into connection, harmony and unity with that which is both serenely awesome and intimately colossal.

5. Spirituality is that which makes us feel safe at home in a frighteningly infinite universe.
6. Spirituality is our way of connecting with divine love.

Technically spirituality has to do with that which is of the spirit, i.e. the breath of life. Originally spirituality meant something more or less like being in-spirited or inspired by the breath of life which was the spiritual force and a gift of the gods or God. To be spiritually inspired was to commune with the eternal and universal or to be filled with the active essence of Divine love. Spirituality has commonly been seen as the way to be in connection with divinity, one’s higher power, the great spirit, the Saints, the jinns or spirit world, the great Goddess or the omnipresent, omniscient, great God – depending on one’s personal theology.

Non-Religious Spiritual Love

It is important to note that philosophically one can be spiritual and at the same time agnostic or even atheist. In this case, spirituality is not seen as being dependent on religious belief but rather on having a reverential appreciation of anything more grand and greater than the one’s self, such as life, or existence, or beauty or love itself, etc. With this understanding one’s love can be seen as a highly spiritual entity or phenomenon no matter what one’s religious belief system is.

Understanding Love

To find answers to the question “What is Love?”, I want to refer you back to the Definitions and discussions, and especially the Working Definition of Love already available at this site.

What Is Spiritual Love and What Does It Do for Us?

If you haven’t already perceived or experienced it, imagine feeling loved by the cosmos, the life force, the universe, some great, transcendental, metaphysical entity, or by whatever so many people call God. That experience can be magnificently empowering, healing, motivating and for many, most of all, inspiring. It also can be enormously reassuring, comforting, caring and intimately, personally inspiring in a whole different way than anything else. Now imagine that the love connection you have with anyone and everyone you love, is linked to and saturated with a great and grand spiritual, power of love.

With a sense of that can you also then think that through love you are or you can be spiritually united with yourself and feel amazingly whole? For many people that seems to be their truth. Furthermore, through the spiritual force in love can you have a sense of being connected to all people, and creatures and spirits who genuinely love?

Spirituality and its essential love-based nature often is the lifeline that keeps people alive when nothing else would. Spirituality also is something that helps people let go of their biological life when staying physically alive is no longer tenable. Love, when recognized and sensed as a spiritual force, brings us what some call the Konos experience. That is when two or more people are gathered together in the spirit of love; they also can be united with something far greater and grander than the sum of their collected selves. This is reported to be experienced as awesome beyond imagination.

The Spiritual Goodness of Love

By seeing a spiritual dimension to love, any healthy, real, love relationship can be seen, as at least partially if not wholly, a true goodness. By identifying love as a spiritual entity or phenomenon one can associate it with goodness and distance it from the purely selfish, or the destructive mentality that promotes ideas like “all’s fair in love and war” and the unethical corrupting mindset that proclaims “winning is the only thing that counts”. By comprehending love as a great, spiritual marvel one conceptually takes love to a higher plane, removing it from the trivial, the mundane and the lesser important factors in life.

Compassionate love, as the Buddhists teach, especially works against crass commercialism, common dishonesty and deception, against the power for power’s sake mindset, money hungry forces and the “dog eat dog” approach to business practices. The spiritual nature of love is seen to inspire higher order behavior, bring out empathetic and altruistic action, inspire lifelong dedication, and move people to great cooperative action in the service of all sorts of humanitarian and democratic causes. The spiritual component in love also sometimes is given credit for helping us move toward beauty and away from spiritless ugliness, toward natural wonder and away from lifeless, impersonal mechanization.

Love lived as a spiritual blessing can help lead to soaring actualization, improved lives and saved lives, and can help lead to the defeat of anti-human and anti-natural destructive forces.

Religion, Spirituality and Love

Great numbers of people find their lessons about love and spirituality via religion and they benefit from doing so. Also unfortunately a lot of religion seems to get in the way of spirituality and, as sometimes practiced, leads away from healthy, real love. While some religions are quite healthfully love-centered and love-focused, sadly, there are others that seem to operate just the opposite.
See if you think this is true. “Spirituality without love does not exist. If this is true it proves ‘loveless religion’ to be ‘false religion’ because it is devoid of true spirituality”.

Some people’s religion primarily is guilt and shame dominated. Other people’s religion mostly is about escaping damnation (‘fire insurance religion’). For a great many people religion is just a great big “I’m okay you’re not” game (unless, of course, you are in my religion and behaving ever so correctly, as I think you should). For others it’s just a pleasant way of socializing or achieving status, or living in the safety of conformity.

I suggest none of this is spiritually love-focused. I like to recommend to people I counsel that when they are looking for a religious or spiritual involvement with others, check out the amount of love emphasis actually going on with those others. If the love emphasis is high it may be mentally healthy and if not, probably not.

Erotic Spiritual Love

A couple silently lays naked together after lovemaking and feels mystically, spiritually united with one another and with all space and time, and with all who have ever felt deep, spiritual love. Have you had this experience or something like it?

For many in the world spirituality and sex are seen as each other’s enemy. But this is not true for a great many others. For the Taoist many of the ways of being sexual are the ways of being spiritual. For Tantric practicing Buddhists, and Hindus, and certain branches of Wicca, along with particular Eastern Orthodox sects sexual ecstasy weaves together with spiritual ecstasy quite well.

It is thought that at the dawn of history, in the worship of the Great Mother, sexual feelings were considered her sacred, inspiring gift to humans and were, therefore, spiritual and sacred. This made rape and many other less than healthy forms of sexual behavior greatly chastised and to be avoided or one might be cursed by the Great Mother and have to live a life of sexless agony.

So with these thoughts in mind, might you live in a way that integrates your love, your sexuality and your spirituality?

What To Do

Perhaps you would like to worshipfully pray or meditate on these matters. A lively discussion with others may be a desirable possibility. Reading about love and spirituality can be an option. Taking classes, going to workshops and seminars, and diligently studying the issues involved might be a way of productively dealing with all this. Deciding to approach all love relationships with a certain amount of spirituality may yield good results. Letting all this germinate in your subconscious and waiting to see what may unfold or emerge is another good possibility. What do you suppose will be your way?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Is healthy self-love a spiritual practice and if you see it as such how will you practice it?

Does Jealousy Prove Love?

“A little jealousy proves she loves me, doesn’t it?” “I love it when he gets really jealous. It makes him act so dominant and sexy!” “I guess she really loves me because she went over and beat up my ex when she found out my ex and I were talking again.” And now a famous quote, “If I’m the one who killed her ….after she started seeing that other guy ….doesn’t that prove I really loved her?” After all, jealousy proves love, doesn’t it? Those are real life quotes representing the spectrum of how a large number of people think about love and jealousy in the modern world. Those quotes also show how large parts of our culture teach or subconsciously program people to mis-understand the relationship between love and jealousy.

In my counseling practice I work with a lot of people who have problems with jealousy. Frequently they are very serious problems. Sometimes I hear things like, “Dr. Cookerly, I’m jealous so doesn’t that prove I really love”… so-and-so. My answer is usually something like, “I’m sorry to say that in my understanding jealousy doesn’t prove love. It proves insecurity”. In essence jealousy is replacement fear. When you’re jealous you are afraid of being replaced by another person in the heart, mind and life of someone you find important. When you are jealous you’re usually in a state of not trusting your own attraction power, your all-over sense of self worth, your adequacy, your lovability and maybe your ability to do love.

Usually working on your own healthy self-love is a big part of curing the jealousy problem. Those good at healthy self love don’t seem to experience much jealousy. They also do a better job of generally doing love well. Of course another part of curing the jealousy problem may involve doing a better job of showing, receiving and relating with love. Let’s look into all this a little deeper.
In some circles it’s almost gospel to hear if you act ‘crazy jealous’ it proves you really have big-time love for somebody. I’m not the first counselor who has heard messages like, “I guess I will marry him. After all sometimes he get so jealous he slaps me around so I know it’s real love.” People who think like that often end up in a battered spouse program, or worse.

All the tragic outcomes of people believing ‘jealousy is evidence of love’ lead me to call this idea one of our most destructive false teachings about love. This falsity has been around a long time. Way back in the 1100s the French Courts of Love decided jealousy did prove love. This resulted in duels and death and continues to this day as a lethal myth. In some sub-cultural groups death by jealousy still goes on. In today’s world every day somebody somewhere kills somebody else because they’re jealous. Then sometimes they kill themselves. Sadly jealousy has cost a lot of people their lives and sabotaged many others from achieving happy successful lives . Therefore, I like to suggest it is never wise to take jealousy lightly. Even in small doses jealousy is worrisome because it may grow and eventually destroy a person or an otherwise potentially good love relationship.

Jealousy is based in fear, not in love. A little bit of jealousy can indicate a little sense of threat or fear is occurring. A lot of jealousy means there is a lot of fear. With great fear often comes big and horrible mistakes. Jealousy also means that in a relationship something or someone of some importance is in danger of being lost, or at least that is the underling perception. However, it may have little or nothing to do with a loss of healthy real love. More likely the fear concerns a loss of pride, ego, life role position, infantile dependency, status, security or some other non-real love factor.

Frequently jealousy works sort of like this: If I fear I can’t hold on to you because my qualities are not sufficiently attractive or lovable I may get jealous. With jealousy often comes possessiveness, suspicion, anger, controlling acts and a lot of other negative behaviors. Powerful domination or deceitful manipulations are attempts to force you to be with me, instead of attracting you by becoming more improved, becoming love focused and acting with love. With jealousy I fear someone better than me will take you away from me, and so I must keep you from them and keep them away from you.

If I fear losing you to someone else and my jealousy is not overwhelming I can attempt to manipulate you with guilt, play for sympathy as a victim, or try to get you to save me or fix me, none of which has anything to do with healthy real love. The fear basis of jealousy also often gets the one who is jealous to see threat and betrayal where none exists. Interrogation, spying, privacy invasion and paranoid ways are typical of a jealous person. None of that represents the behaviors of healthy real love.

So, you may ask, “What’s the cure?”
As we develop our healthy self-love we get in touch with our sense of self worth more and more. With this a person tends to see themselves as more lovable and love ‘able’. After that happens one usually begins to trust their own attraction power more. With that development tendencies toward jealousy are likely to reduce markedly. Sometimes these tendencies are replaced by simple insecurity without the symptoms of jealousy. Pure insecurity frequently is far less self destructive and less blinded to the facts than jealousy is.

Also simple insecurity far more commonly results in a person attempting to become more secure by rational and workable methods than is true with jealousy. Look at this example. Andy is with Betty at the dance. Betty gets asked to dance by Charles who is much better looking, richer and a far better dancer than Andy. Andy starts feeling inferior to Charles, becomes insecure and gets jealous (the usual three step process of jealousy). When Betty returns from the dance floor he criticizes her for dancing too close to Charles, suspiciously questions her about secretly wanting to have sex with Charles, and they fight. Betty breaks off the relationship with Andy and then goes over to Charles and asks him to take her home since “Andy is such a jealous jerk”.

Now let’s suppose this scenario happened after Andy had worked at becoming more mature and healthfully self loving. When Betty gets back from the dance floor Andy bravely admits, “I’m feeling insecure and I sure would like it if you would give me some reassurance that you love me and want me, and anything else that says you like me”. Betty replies, “Of course, Honey, I really respect you for having the courage to admit you’re insecure, and I’m so thankful you are not doing any of those dumb, jealous, trying to control me with dominance things. It really makes you so much more attractive to me! It was only a dance and you’re the one I love”. Well, of course, this is an oversimplification but hopefully it demonstrates how things might and often do work without jealousy.

The re-establishment of a sense of security via being wanted and loved is what both the insecure and the jealous person are after. The person who has the self-confidence to simply ask for that reassurance and receive it when it comes their way has the best chance of getting it. The tortured, often convoluted path of the jealous person is frequently self-defeating.

Be careful not to confuse jealousy with envy. Jealousy is when you don’t want someone else to have what you want or what you might want. Envy is when you want something like what someone else has. Envy can lead us to achieve improvements, acquire additions, etc. while jealousy usually leads only to trouble.

In a round about way jealousy eventually is it’s own cure. With enough jealousy you will drive off the person you are trying to keep. With that loss either you will quit trying, deteriorate and be destroyed, or you will grow yourself into better emotional shape and get over being so jealous. In any case the jealousy will be decommissioned. An unhealthy danger is if someone keeps giving in to your jealousy and rewards it by staying with you. Most often rewarded jealousy continues and increases. The more you give in to jealousy the more the jealous person uses jealousy to control you.

Also they work less on improving themselves because controlling you with jealousy is working. Being compliant and surrendering cooperatively to a jealous lover’s every whim can make a relationship last longer but usually the jealousy grows like a cancer until it destroys you both.
Mostly in the modern world jealousy doesn’t work to keep somebody around. In most modern world relationships only love will do that. In less developed parts of the world jealousy may still work somewhat because in those places it’s harder to get away from a jealous, controlling, possessive spouse, lover, etc. Wherever people are sufficiently free to safely get away from a jealous possessive lover, parent, family, friend, etc. they tend to do so. Thus, jealousy tends to loose sway wherever freedom, gender equality, and democracy are becoming the social norm.

”Dr. Cookerly, isn’t jealousy natural?” “Jealousy is hard wired into our brains, isn’t it?” Once in a while I’m asked those kind of questions. Sometimes I suspect the person asking may have a vested interest in the answer. So, I like to first ask, “What do you hope my answer will be?” Later I may answer something like this. A number of social and evolutional psychologists, along with some anthropologists, think jealousy once may have worked well enough and long enough to perhaps now be ingrained in our brain responses. However, there is some evidence to suggest the severely jealous are losing at love at such a rate that it may some day devolve out of existence in the human race.

There are cultures in the world where jealousy is much less virulent, rare or almost non-existent. Language groups lacking the possessive case exhibit very little jealousy. This also is true for groups where sharing is more valued than possession acquirement. Also there are cultures in which the things people are jealous about are quite different from what we in the modern Western world tend to get jealous about. For instance polygamy, or polyandry, or what we call ‘sleeping around’ may be perfectly acceptable but someone else having better dreams can spark intense jealousy.

Cultural anthropologists with growing evidence argue for a rather interesting understanding. According to their increasing evidence-based view men and women were considered quite equal for 200,000 years or so, and gender equal sexual sharing was probably the standard during all that time. It wasn’t until the last 5% of Homo sapiens’ existence when agriculture was invented and ownership of women, land, and cattle occurred that jealousy was thought to have grown to importance and commonality. That means jealousy may have had a chance to get hard wired into our brains only for the last 8,000 to 10,000 years. The brain scientist don’t think that’s enough time for jealousy to be much of a genetic trait, if it is at all. Thus, jealousy may not be a natural or neurologically ‘hard wired’ condition at all. Is that the answer you were hoping for? A scientific excuse for jealousy might be a hoped for answer by some. It just doesn’t seem to be supported by sufficient reliable evidence.

If you have strong or ongoing problems with either being jealousy or being the target of jealousy let me strongly suggests you seek out a good counselor or therapist who can coach you into better, more healthy self-love, and a safer more productive way of going about love relationships.

If you are one of those who think that a little jealousy is a good thing my suggestion is be very careful about that. If you know someone involved in a relationship filled with jealousy problems please consider suggesting they seek professional assistance quickly, and know you might be saving their life by doing so. All too often strong jealousy turns deadly. If you have a teenager or young adult dating a highly jealous person consider going quickly into family therapy because you may be facing the dynamics of jealousy mixed with immaturity which is often a highly dangerous combination.

I have dealt with many mildly, jealousy infected couple relationships and they turned out fine with help without much trouble. I also have dealt with just enough of the more serious kind to urge great caution. So, I like to answer the question posed at the beginning of this segment, “No, jealousy does not prove love, it proves insecurity and that can sometimes be quite dangerous”. So, love healthfully and be careful of ‘The Green Eyed Monster’.

As always – grow in love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

In Depth Affirmational Love

Mini-Love-Lesson #281

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson covers what affirmational love is and can sometimes do; how to go deeper with affirmational love; and the need for attending to both intrinsic and productive valuing of our loved ones through affirmations.

Affirmational love sends the intimate message that we have focused attention on a loved one and discovered worth and wonder. Often that propels us to share our appreciation. If well received, our affirmation can strengthen, energize and trigger happiness in those we love (see “In the Garden of Love”).

Affirmational love is expressed by words and actions that convey and affirm our high valuing and appreciation of a loved one for either, or both, their intrinsic and their productive qualities.

A sense of safety and security can be a superb consequence of first-rate, affirmational loving. When we show our valuing of a loved one with an affirmation, they are likely to feel they are cherished by us. As a consequence, their belief in the strength of our shared relationship can be elevated and they may feel more secure and safe in the relationship. When we know we are valued, our anxieties reduce and our trust increases. Well-affirmed relationships tend to be long lasting.

Affirmational love can be rendered with both words and actions. Whether it is a statement of praise or a pat on the back, both can convey loving affirmation. An elaborately planned experience gift or a subtle wink, both can send a message of affirmational love. Even the simple may have a deep effect. It is a best practice when we remember to sprinkle affirmations into our messages to friends, children, parents, family and all those we deeply love. Link “Is Your Affirmational Love Enough?”

Jane and Sue excitedly reviewed their plans for a weekend together on the coast. George, Sue’s fiancée, called asking Sue for a weekend date. Overhearing that, Jane looked despondent until she heard Sue say, “Thanks I’d really like to, but Jane and I already have made plans for a beach getaway, so let’s do it the next weekend”. George did a beautiful job of affirmation loving by saying, “I understand, I know she’s your best friend, have a wonderful time”. There are two affirmational examples in this vignette. The first is affirmation of the importance of a friendship. The second is affirmation through understanding and acceptance (see “Yourself As a Great Source of Love Gifts”).

Too many people notice mostly the negatives in others. Attending only to the negative, frequently results in destructive criticism or complaints which is neither good for individuals nor relationships. We want people to put much more effort into noticing the positives and into forming a habit of searching for the good. Especially is that important with loved ones.

Do you notice what is good, admirable, precious, unique, praiseworthy, honorable or any other positive characteristics in those you care about? If you do, do you, in words and actions, affirm these deserving traits?

It is not enough to only feel appreciation, it must be turned into affirmational statements or acts in order to benefit the one you have appreciated. To achieve deep results requires skill and intimacy. How well we deliver affirmational love and how deeply it benefits, depends on our mastery of imparting affirmational love and on our knowledge of a loved one.

Appreciation and affirmations can focus on intrinsic qualities or the more superficial. Superficial aspects spot-light things such as popularity, looks, status, wealth or incidental characteristics. They tend to be less consequential, less significant and more temporary than intrinsic attributes. If we want to have deep, meaningful love in our affirmations we need to look deeper and attend to the intrinsic nature of those we love. We use the term intrinsic here, to represent what a person is and has become at a core level. Honest, caring, loyal, courageous, kind or cooperative can speak to the intrinsic makeup of someone’s inner nature. That is not to say that the not-so-deep factors are undeserving of affirmation. It feels good to hear “you make that shirt you’re wearing look good”. It feels even better to hear “I admire your honesty”. Affirmation is an excellent way of loving. Maybe you’ll want to do some more of it with your loved ones (see “Self-Affirmation for Healthy Self-Love”).

As always – Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: Ask yourself, “Am I deeply appreciating and affirming those I love – sufficiently?”

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