Bull Wrestling, Bull Dancing and Love Quarrels

Synopsis: How to tell if you are acting more like a bull dancer, a bull wrestler or the bull when you have conflicts with loved ones, and what to do about it – with love.

When you have a dispute, quarrel, argument or fight with a loved one do you go at it more like a bull wrestler, or a bull dancer or the bull?  In ancient Rome they used to select the biggest, strongest guy they could find and put him in the arena with a bull made angry for the occasion.  The bull would charge, if the bull wrestler survived his job was to grab the bull by the horns and wrestle the bull to the ground and then break its neck.  They lost a lot of bull wrestlers that way.  On the island of Crete and later on the Iberian Peninsula they developed entirely different ways of dealing with the angry bull.  Those ways became known as bull dancing.

Today those approaches survive in what we call bull fighting, but it is not fighting at all.  It is an elegant form of dancing in which the charging bull almost always loses.  Notice how this works.  A big, powerful, scary thing tries to attack the Matador.  The Matador does not wrestle the bull, does not run away, but instead he (or she) stands his or her ground, usually doesn’t get hit, and artfully dances the big, dark, horrible, powerful, charging horned thing right by.  In the Portuguese form they do this until the bull is exhausted and gives up and, thus, the bull gets to live as well as the Matador.


So, I ask, do you go about your conflicts with loved ones more like a Roman bull wrestlers or more like an artful bull dancer, or do you behave like the charging bull?   Bull wrestlers meet their charging opponent head on, get impacted, use up their power wrestling with their opponent’s every little move, and usually get wounded if not destroyed in the process.  Remember, only spectators go home uninjured.  Those who act like the bull start roaring and charge ahead full force trying to run over, stomp and gore their opponent any way they can.  Both the bull and the bull wrestler may have a lot of recovery to do if they survive their conflict.  Also if they have any future relationship with each other it is unlikely to be a positive one.

The bull dancer lets the bull charge and expend its energy while artfully stepping aside.  In ancient Crete bull dancers evolved their art into an amusement where they gymnastically somersaulted over the charging bull, bouncing off it and expertly played with it, thereby, finessing it into harmlessness, usually ending with the bull running around in circles until it got tired.  Bull dancers and the bull consequently developed an ongoing relationship with each other in which no one was likely to get hurt and they got to have fun with each other over and over again.

You are likely to be approaching things like the bull if you see ‘red flags’ often, quickly take offense, roar (scream, yell, etc.), get yourself angrily worked up, and go on the furious attack attempting to show your loved one how they are wrong, mistaken, stupid, bad, or worse.  You are likely to be acting like the bull wrestler if you just stand there getting hit, stomped and gored as you might fight back effectively or ineffectively while becoming defensive and ending up emotionally scarred and wounded in the process.  But there are a couple of other options.  You could act like a sacrificial victim and get slaughtered, or you might attempt to run away.

You are probably acting like a finessing, artful bull dancer when you remind yourself that the anger and upsetness of the bull tells you much more about the bull and what it gets itself upset about than about you or your qualities.  You’re a good finessing bull dancer when the bull attempts to gore you with blame, stomp you with accusations, or run over you with its rapid-fire logic and you let all that just go charging past, not take it to heart or let it get you in the gut.

Good listening skills are a lot like a Matador who first uses the Cape, helping the bull get all of its negative energy out.  It’s good to remind yourself with silent, self affirming statements that while the bull is roaring at you with complaint and dissatisfaction it is sort of like the Matador standing his or her ground and doing good, mental footwork to hold on to your position and to your okayness.

You probably know that all analogies break down if you extend them too far.  Being artfully able to deal with conflict coming at you, so you can get to a place where love and reason prevails is the real goal.  Being able to get to where you and those loved ones who seem to be in conflict with you can ‘work together against the problem’ instead of against each other is the best outcome.  You may feel like destroying the bull from time to time but to do so would kill the relationship.

So, the next time a conflict with a loved one starts to happen let me suggest you consider visualizing yourself doing the artful, elegant matador’s dance whereby the horns don’t get you and the bull has a chance to calm down.  You can, with love and cleverness, learn to finesse the charging bulls in your life right past you.  Then you can demonstrate your love and perhaps both of you can get to be OK with each other.  After that, if all goes well, together you can go against whatever the real problem seems to be.  That is sort of like getting to ride the bull out of the arena.

As always, Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Are you tending to deal with difficulties with a loved one better, the same, or worse than the people you grew up around?

Related posts:

1. False Forms of Love: Unresolved Conflict Attraction Syndrome 

Immunity Boosting With and For Love

Mini-Love-Lesson   #271

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson discusses the connection between healthy, real love and its psychobiological effect on our immunity systems; then gives 10 rather different, memorably named things to do for boosting one’s own immunity functioning which relate to both self-love and other love.

Healthy Love and A Healthy You

Did you know that love is extremely helpful to your immunity system, healing wounds and fending off diseases?  Yes, being in love relationships and experiencing healthy, real love works to improve maintain and strengthen your mechanisms for disease resistance and recovery.  The more you give, receive and do healthy, functional love the healthier you tend to get.  That is the conclusion to be drawn from literally hundreds of love and health related, scientific explorations into what makes immunity mechanisms work and improve.   

Note, that in many of these studies, the word “love” is not used but rather some other euphemistic term.  Sometimes researchers shy away from using the word love and instead use terms like “affectional bonding, emotionally intimate relationships, ongoing mated relating and, a favorite of mine, “stabilized biosocially & affectively interactive”.  I find it odd that quite a few scientifically oriented researchers seem to be uncomfortable with the word love except for comparative experimental psychologists and primatologists  Therefore, finding and collecting research reports on love is a bit complicated.

People in emotionally close, mutually rewarding relationships are constantly found to have better immunity functioning and disease resistance compared with those who do not have such relationships.  Also, as people enter into healthy, real, love bonded relationships their immunity mechanisms work better and they have significantly fewer infections, especially respiratory infections like colds and the flu.

Healthy Self-Love and Improved Immunity

For reasons of healthy self-love you can do quite a lot to help your own immunity system function better.  Also, for reasons of loving others, it is good to keep yourself healthy for their benefit as well as yours.  Both you and those others who love you want to keep you around so, learning to do what you can to help your protective systems operate optimally is loving, wise and reasonable.  To assist you with that, here are 10 actions you can take.  First, note that we will be using some odd, not (yet) real words because in their odd form they may assist you to think and remember these things about immunity boosting.  Finding easier lay terms to communicate about immunity issues may just be beginning.

10 IMMUNITY BOOSTING SELF-LOVE ACTIONS

All the following are suggestions and not medical directives.  Know your own physical condition in order to choose and use them wisely.

1. Love Connect.  As often as possible make loving contact with others psychologically, physically and safely.  This includes pets, especially dogs.  Face-to-face talk is great but also can be pretty significant if done on Skype or Zoom, etc.  Auditory phone talk allows you to experience your loved ones’ voices and the effect of their tones of voice on your reduction of stress hormone production can be significant, no matter what is being said if it said lovingly.

2. Sleep.  When we are sleep-deprived, our bodies get more susceptible to infections.  During sleep, our immunity mechanisms regenerate and repair our bodies as well as work to rejuvenate themselves.  Too little sleep and too destructive a sleep pattern works to de-power our immunity systems.  So, work to get enough, good sleep.

3. Sweat.  When we sweat we rid our bodies of toxic substances that lower our body’s ability to fight off disease, counter toxicity and maintain our biological balances.  Using really hot water (not to the point of injury) to sweat works well.  Hot tubs, spas, hot baths and hot showers, along with vigorous workouts, saunas, hard and fast action sports and anything else that gets perspiration flowing are also fine.  The relaxation effect of hot water increases stress reduction and endorphin production, both of which are very good for our immunity systems.

4. Vitaminize.  Our bodies will not and cannot fight viruses and bacteria effectively if we are vitamin deficient.  A One-A-Day multivitamin/multimineral is simple, quick and probably minimally sufficient.  If you are stressed more vitamin C, B complex and zinc often are recommended.  Check with the appropriate medical specialist for what is best for you individually.

5. Zincanate.  If we get zinc deficient our chances of getting sick, with a respiratory infection especially or other breathing complications, seem to go way up.  When we put zinc in our diet by eating legumes, seeds, nuts, mushrooms, some meats, oysters, crab, lobsters and/or taking a zinc supplement we are acting in a healthy self-love way.  See a healthy diet specialist to get it just right for you.

6. Fiberize.  Generally, the more fiber foods we eat the more beneficial bacteria we have helping our metabolism make our bodies more disease resistant.  Bananas, broccoli, avocado, sweet potatoes and almonds all can be helpful, along with many other vegetables and fruits.

7. Mediterraneanize.  More than 70% of our immunity functioning is heavily influenced by our diet.  Our digestive tract handles most of the pathogens and toxic chemicals that can harm us.  But it can not do that if we do not eat right.  Generally, what is called a Mediterranean Diet works well for lots of people, over time.  That diet includes lots of vegetables, fruits, nuts, some lean meats, many types of seafood, whole-grain breads, olive oil and small portions of many other things, but not too many carbs if your life is rather sedentary.  It usually is best to avoid or limit heavily processed foods, white flour products, refined oils ,refined sugar and sugar-added-foods and especially large amounts of fatty meats.

8. Move.  Our bodies are built to move.  Without enough movement every waking hour, or so, we start to physically weaken and wane.  This, in turn, negatively affects our immunity system functioning.  Sufficient exercise enhances our in vivo responses to viral and destructive antigens and seems to delay immunological aging.  20 + minutes of fairly rigorous exercise, 3+ times a week seems to be the most common recommendation among health professionals. But even brisk walking can help if you are in the couch potato category.  You can find out what might be best for you individually from physical therapists, movement analysts, nurses, physicians and a wide variety of other health specialists.

9. Nasalate. Nasal passage health is also rather important so, give your nose and breathing some helpful attention.  Viruses get lodged in our noses, along with toxic particulate matter and other things you do not want residing there.  The longer they remain there, the more they can attack us, give our immunity systems problems and do us harm.  There are three main ways you might go about helping yourself here.  The first has to do with deep breathing exercises.  To sit straight and do deep and slow breathing for 1 minute, or more, twice or more a day makes a good start.  By the way, do not stand, we do not want you to faint if this is a new exercise to you or you have a troublesome breathing condition.

Learning yoga breathing exercises or other similar systems that get a lot of oxygen into our lungs and, thereby, boost blood circulation which helps our immunity mechanisms function better by quite a bit.  Another way has to do with aromatherapy.  That involves breathing various scents, aerosols, incense and mists recognized as having certain medicinal, generally therapeutic and anti-infection effects.  A third way has to do with using a nasal rinse to flush your nasal cavity of unwanted matter.  Sometimes that is coupled with the use of an antiseptically treated thread gently run through one’s nasal passage.  That makes for a bit of a delicate and moderately unpleasant experience, probably best first accomplished by someone well trained and acquainted with teaching the process.

10. Meditate.  Especially are health-oriented, self-love mindfulness meditation exercises associated with improved immune system functioning.  Research suggests such exercises can assist in the circulating of immune proteins which are good for fighting inflammations.  Meditation also is quite useful in stress reduction and the reduction of destructive, stressor hormone production.  Overall, healthfulness and vitality improvements also are indicated.

All 10 of the above, suggested ways are to be considered general guidelines to be checked-out by your primary health providers for their appropriateness to your individual situation and needs.

Relationship Well-Being and Its Effect on Immunity

Well functioning, love relationships can have a very positive effect on how well our immunity systems protect us.  Likewise, a poor functioning, love relationship frequently is highly stressful and, therefore, neurochemically bad for our biological, self-protection systems.  Also involved is our healthy, self-love functioning.  If it is good, probably so is our immunity system functioning more likely to be good.

One more thing.  We suggest you talk all this over with someone well trained in the healing arts, professions or sciences.  If you do that, please mention this site and all its health-related, mini-love lessons.  Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Love Success Question: Have you meditated on the fact that you are a truly awesome, huge bundle of miraculous, interwoven systems and, therefore, you are not to be taken for granted or undervalued?  If you haven’t, please do!

Love Centering Yourself

Angie realized that she and her husband, Harlan, were getting into the same, old, familiar fight they had had a hundred times before.  They both were blaming each other for what was wrong and both were defending themselves in very offensive ways – like they always did.

The subject matter changed but the pattern of the fights remained the same, except the fights were getting worse and worse.  It took days to recover and their marriage was damaged a little bit more each time.

But wait.  Angie remembered a new ‘technique’ she had recently learned at a Healthy Love Workshop that she might be able to use instead of fighting.  She told Harlan she had to go to the bathroom and abruptly left the scene of their often repeated, old, marital battle.  In the bathroom she worked at remembering and reminding herself of the major aspects of what the workshop leader had called The Love Centering Technique.  Then silently she  practiced the breathing, movement and meditation behaviors she had learned at the workshop.  She did this for just three minutes.  She noticed she felt calmer and more powerful, and she was thinking differently – perhaps more clearly and far less defensively.

She then went back to Harlan who was even more angry than when she left.  She heard somehow differently what he was furiously saying.  She, herself, said far less than before and she spoke in much kinder yet firm tones of voice.  She also noticed her face was more relaxed and thought probably her facial expressions were less severe than before, perhaps occasionally she even looked softer.  When evaluating this she managed a brief, small smile.  The smile seemed to confuse Harlan and slow him down.  Then Angie became aware that, while she still felt quite firm, she was no longer angry and, even better, she was no longer feeling so hurt and vulnerable with what Harlan had been derogatorily screaming at her.  She was thinking more clearly and wanted to come up with ideas that might help to go in a positive direction.

Angie subtly continued to do the breathing, movement and calm thinking she had learned and she realized she was seeing and hearing the frustration and hurt behind her husband’s angry words, and it dawned on Angie that she was starting to feel a distinct sense of love for her husband.  Feeling sorry for him came next.  She could see he was caught up in an agonizing pattern of their terrible fight habits.  However, this time she was not.  Angie began to speak to Harlan in very kind tones of voice saying she understood he was hurting and she cared.  Harlan became befuddled and he could not quite maintain the intensity of his accusations and blaming statements, though he continued to try.  

After a while Harlan was expressing only his hurt and Angie, while accepting no blame, showed that she truly was sad that they both were often deeply hurt by this way of dealing with each other.  She reached out and softly touched Harlan and he looked even more bewildered, but then he began to be less awful and just a bit more kind.  Slowly their ‘argument’ turned into a ‘talk’ and finally in silence they held hands not knowing what else to do.  Soon they hugged and went about doing regular things, both in a much better place.

Nothing was verbally resolved, no decisions made, and no apologies delivered yet Angie and Harlan had started treating each other in a cautiously, yet distinctly, more loving way. This change happened right in the midst of Angie and Harlan’s marital difficulties and that had never happened before.  Could this be the start of something new and better, and could Angie be the catalyst for repeat performances of this new way of dealing with each other?

According to Angie’s description, by love centering herself before re-engaging her husband she had triggered both of them into a new way of responding to each another.  She repeated this love centering technique each time she and Harlan began to have difficulties with each other.  It didn’t always work perfectly but it worked far better than the old habit patterns that were destroying them as a couple.  Angie’s understanding is that sometimes one person, intelligently and purposefully, can use the power of love to change a couple’s destructive dynamics and do something constructive instead.  It is even better and faster when both people are working to make that change but, yes, one person can make a difference.

Angie and Harlan have since both learned ‘love centering’ and used it in a number of other situations.  Angie used it before having “the sex education talk” with her daughter.  Harlan used it before going into a contentious, dispute resolution conference at work.  You see, love centering is an act of self love too; it physiologically, psychologically and emotionally helps one to center in a calmer, stronger, healthier place in order to act more positively and beneficially in most situations.  Angie and Harlan together used love centering as part of a drug intervention experience with a family member.

Angie found it extremely useful before going to comfort a friend who had just lost a spouse to cancer.  Harlan and Angie say that each time they have used love centering it has helped them do a hard thing better.  Angie knows that love centering probably is a technique that will not work for everyone and that some people would find it far harder to learn and practice than others.  Nevertheless, she, and now Harlan too, are strong advocates of the love centering technique and they urge everyone to give it at least some study and consideration.

If you are interested in this technique and if you work at it you may be able to teach yourself love centering.  This technique seems to be most easily learned by those who are good with affirmations, meditation and introspection practices, and those trained in certain Eastern philosophies and disciplines.  However, a wide spectrum of people have learned and found love centering well worth their while.

The love centering technique itself is a quick, simple procedure that may make you healthier, happier and more generally effective in your interactions with others.  Love centering also may make all your love relationships go better and may make your dealings with difficult people go smoother.  And love centering has been known to be profoundly effective in helping people improve their relationship with themselves.  Even if you lose an altercation if you go into it love centered, and maintain that attitude, you are likely to lose less and come out much better.

Essentially love centering is a brief, meditation affirmation technique.  It also can be done prayerfully as a simple, short spiritual practice.  Love centering counters being ‘centered’ in self-defeating, negative emotions.  If you let yourself become centered in fear, anger, money lust, status, etc. you are likely to be sabotaging your own psychological health even when you are outwardly victorious in regard to the subject.  Love centering also has been a great help to a number of individuals seeking to bring forth their best and most able selves.

If you wish to maximize your competency, release your constructive and creative powers, and generally do life better, love centering may provide you with a very useful tool.  Love centering is suspected of being physically healthful especially when facing difficult, high pressure situations.  It appears to help deal with stressors, counters stress reactions and helps the brain produce healthful neurochemistry.  It also may influence longevity.

There are several approaches to love centering.  One works like this.  To do a full, class ‘A’, love centering exercise it is best to start by getting off to yourself so you can remain isolated from others for six minutes at the very least.  Once you are alone sit down in a straight and symmetrical posture with your arms hanging down at your sides or placed comfortably in your lap, with both feet on the ground, with your head up and looking straight forward.  Putting a sense of energy or intensity into it, slowly think silently to yourself, “I am now going to center myself in love”, then pause and take in and exhale a deep, slow breath.  Then think, “I am centering myself in love.”  Pause and take another deep, slow breath.  Now think, “I am centered in love”.

Take a third deep, slow breath and exhale it slowly.  You can repeat this three times or more to help you get into a feeling of being centered in love if needed.  If you prefer you also can say these words out loud, but remember, do everything quite slowly.  As you do this, imagine that love and its awesome, universal strength is flowing all over and through your body, from the universe toward your heart.

Imagine your heart filling up with amazingly powerful, wondrous and serene love.  As you do this continue to breathe deeply and slowly, relax your arms, open your hands and slowly raise your arms over your head.  At this point you might think, “I raise my arms to the universe to symbolically connect with a great love force in the universe.  I open myself to that love and let it flow into me.”  Then symbolically you might scoop a big handful of that love and slowly bring your hands to the center of your chest while you think, “I bring that love into my heart” as you gently press the palms of your hands to the center of your chest.

Continue to breathe deeply and slowly and imagine your heart filling with exquisite, powerful love.  Then you can think, “I center myself in love and only love”.  Repeat this three times.  Let your arms relax and go back to hanging at your sides or placed in your lap.  Repeat this entire sequence of movements and thoughts three times or more while remembering to breathe slowly and deeply.
An important next step is to bring your hands to your heart center and meditatively and purposefully say to yourself, “I center myself in love, not in fear, or anger, or worry or anything else besides love. 

I fill my heart with love and its awesome power.  I will let love radiate out from my heart to my whole being and to everyone I am soon to encounter”.  Repeat this two to five times.  Then with hands remaining at your heart, and remembering to breathe slowly, resolutely say to yourself, “I center myself in love and I will powerfully and effectively come from love for the people (or person) I am about to deal with and toward myself.  I will let love empower and inform all that I’m about to do.”  Slowly repeat that two to five times.

After doing this meditative affirmational exercise take one last deep breath and notice how you feel.  If you feel love empowered, loving and lovable, calm and confident then go forward toward what you have set yourself to do.  If you do not feel sufficiently empowered repeat the exercise again.  After that if you still do not feel sufficiently love filled and love centered to be able to act with and from love you might do one of two things.

You can admit you are not now making this exercise work for you and so it may be best to go on to something else and maybe try again later, or you could blame the exercise and say it doesn’t work and never try it again.  Do remember that nothing works for everyone and nothing works every time.  If it’s not working for you, or at least not working yet, don’t be negative to yourself about that, don’t ‘beat up’ on yourself because that would be de-powering, poor self-love, inaccurate and inappropriate.

After love centering yourself and doing whatever you have set out to do you may wish to evaluate how loving and how successful you were in your post-love centering endeavor.  In my experience a good number of people find the more they do love centering the better it works for them.  However, that is not everyone’s experience.  As we have noted before it is not expected that this sort of technique will work for everybody.  Meditative, affirmational and inner, self oriented approaches are highly useful for some, but not for all.

Becoming good at love centering usually decreases the amount of time it takes to get there and the more powerful it becomes.  It’s like exercising a muscle, use your ‘love muscle’ often and it will be there quickly and strongly when you need it.

There are many possible alterations, adaptations and differing applications to love centered approaches.  For instance Luke uses love centering in his work as a labor relations contract negotiator.  He says it helps him keep the parties involved from getting angry at each other which sabotages the negotiations.  Laura uses it as a hospice nurse dealing with grieving relatives.  Riley has found it helpful in certain difficult situations he faces as a policeman.  Suzanne and Sheila say it was love centering that got them past their decade’s old, sibling rivalry problem.

Lots of people alter the words used and that’s good because when you are saying your own words it’s often more effective.  After practicing this technique often the words can be shortened.  Jesse said all he needs to say to himself is, “I center myself in love and its great strength, and with love I will remain calm, compassionate, carrying and able to reason” before he goes in to preside over the next family court session as a judge.

Some people minimize the motions and behaviors involved in love centering.  In the midst of an argumentative difficulty Tonya takes a slightly deeper breath, and discreetly raises one hand to the middle of her heart area silently saying to herself, “I am centering myself in love now” and then carries on with her work at a complaints desk in a large corporation.

To see if love centering can work for you I suggest you ‘try it on for size’ about five times in its full form.  It usually takes that to get a sufficient feel for it.  If it’s not working by then it’s likely not a practice that fits you sufficiently.  Of course it has to be tried sincerely and with some energy.  If you think your skeptical, doubtful mind will be a difficulty as you try to do this you may be in a sort of resistant or self defeat mode and not able to experiment with this technique at this time.  That’s okay, there are lots of other things to do.

However, your skeptical mind need not fully believe in this kind of technique because it is accomplished by ‘doing’ rather than ‘believing’.  Of course, deciding it won’t work for you before you have really tried it probably will result in it not working for you because of the dynamics of self-fulfilling prophecies.  It is my suggestion that you consider it, experiment with it, and discover if you can make your life a more love empower life by using this tool called The Love Centering Technique.

As always, Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Do you have people in your life who often seem to be coming from love toward you and toward almost everyone else?  If you do are you studying and to some degree copying them?

Related posts:

1. Difficult Topics: A Love-Centered Way to Approach and Broach Them All
2. Ready or Not for Love?
3. Kissing with Love
4. Returning to a Bad Lover? – A Blocking Technique
5. Listening with Love 

Checking It Out - As a Love Skill

Synopsis: The cheating lover; conclusions are your enemy; is your reality real?; self-fulfilling prophecies; learning to know you cannot know; what’s the loving way?; assumption mistakes; loving checkouts use love; how to receive check out questions.

The Cheating Lover

The love skill of ‘checking it out’ is super-important.  Here’s an example.  She suspected her lover of cheating and secretly followed him to the train station.  She saw him greet with a hug and kiss a very pretty, young female that she did not know.  Her suspicion was mounting.  Unnoticed she followed them to a small, romantic looking, Italian restaurant and through the window she saw how they laughed together, held hands across the table and acted in little ways that could only be called personal.  She could feel her anger mounting.  Then she followed them to his house where she hid all night furiously imagining what they were doing.

The young woman and her lover did not emerge until late the next morning.  They came out smiling with his arm around her.  In an overwhelming, jealous rage she pulled out a small pistol from her purse and shot her cheating lover dead.  Then she shot but only wounded the female.  She was confused to see other people run out from his house, and with others on the street they captured her.  Soon she was in custody.  It was only then she learned a terrible truth.  The attractive, young girl was her lover’s niece just returned from college in Europe, and the people who emerged from her lover’s house were the niece’s parents who had arrived at the house earlier the day before.

This is the worst example I know of a person not checking out their conclusions and as a result causing agony and tragedy.  Most other bad outcomes are not nearly that serious but, nevertheless, they are important and often hurtful.  This lack of ‘checking it out’ causes countless mini-tragedies, not to mention ever so many hours spent on clearing up misinterpretations, misunderstandings, misperceptions, miscommunications and relationship misses of all types.

Conclusions Are Your Enemy

“I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking I’m not good enough for you; I know that because I can tell it by the look on your face.  Don’t deny it”.  The reply was “No, honestly I was wondering how we can get past this problem with my parents and worrying that I’m going to be late for work.”.  The retort to that reply was “You’re a liar.  I’m through with you.  I can’t trust you to tell me the truth so I don’t ever want to see you again.  I can’t stand liars and this just proves you are a damn liar!”.  This sort of dialogue is all too common in the lives of many couples, and families and even some friendships.  It makes relationships deteriorate and sometimes even die.  When I give this kind of example at workshops and seminars I often hear the question, “Dr. Cookerly, what makes this sort of interaction happen and what can be done about it?”

Is Your Reality Real?

So much of so many people’s ‘reality’ is created by their fears or their desires. Let’s look at an example.  She perceived he was leering at her, day after day at work, until finally she felt so uncomfortable she officially complained that he was sexually harassing her.  Then she learned he was so nearsighted he was nearly legally blind.  It turned out he also had a gay lover.  Later in counseling, she confessed to herself that she both feared and secretly wanted him to lust for her.  Both her desire and her fear combined together to give her an interpretation of her perceptions that was totally mistaken.  Repeating her mistaken interpretation day after day made it seem absolutely, without a doubt, true because it happened over and over everyday.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

He noticed that every time his wife came into the bedroom she seemed to have a frown on her face.  He interpreted this as meaning ‘no sex tonight’.  He silently got increasingly bitter and subtly hostile.  She noticed that every time she came into their dark, shadow-filled bedroom he seemed to act irritated and looked stoney.  This she silently interpreted as him rejecting and not wanting her sexually or any other way.  She concluded that he was no longer attracted to her, and suspected he no longer loved her, and with that she became depressed.

Finally with a counselor’s help to stop the rapidly deteriorating relationship situation they had accidentally created, they found out the truth.  It turned out she came into the bedroom frowning trying to see what was happening in its darkness especially trying to see his facial expression revealing his emotions.  He secretly feared he was becoming sexually inadequate and she didn’t want to make love with him anymore.  He saw his fear as his reality.  He did not check it out.

She feared she was unlovable, unattractive, unwanted and that became her reality.  She did not check it out.  Thus, in a sort of ‘accidental teamwork’ they prophesied what they feared and almost made it come true.  Had they not sought help through couples counseling they might never have discovered the truth which saved their relationship.

Learning to Know That You Can’t Know

Have you ever said or heard someone say “don’t tell me what I think”.  More elaborately some people have heard “don’t tell me what I feel, don’t tell me what you’re sure  I did, and absolutely don’t tell me what you’re sure I’m going to do.  You can suspect it, propose it, hypothesize it, recommend it, or warn me about its possibility, but don’t be arrogantly sure and act like you know it, or like you totally know me”.  The truth is all perceptions are misperceptions, at least a little.

Consider this lover’s statement.  “If you tell me the thoughts you know I’m having, or the emotions you’re positive I’m experiencing, you dishonor me as an independent-equal-other.  I have the democratic, human freedom to change, surprise and live in many different ways.  None of us knows the future, and the best any of us can do is make educated and lucky guesses.  People are infinitely variable.  Know that you cannot fully know who I am today, and know that our knowledge of each other is constantly going out of date.  Therefore, our knowledge of one another is repeatedly in need of refreshment.  That’s part of what makes a good love relationship loving.

We always must be checking to see what the new variations are, always be alert to the surprises both large and small, positive and negative.  Let us always be exploring each other, and always checking out what we think the other one is doing, thinking, feeling, hoping for, fearing, dreaming and everything else.  In that way we can be forever new to one another.  So, my lover, never ‘know for sure’ that you know who I am today, and please always be interested to find that out, just as I am curious to discover you.”

“You’re mad at me” is better said “Are you mad at me” or “What are you feeling right now”.  “You’re depressed” might better be said “Maybe you’re depressed”.  “You’re horny” might better be expressed  “I think I’m seeing signs of you being horny, and I  sure want to be right about that” or just “ I hope what I’m seeing means you’re horny”.

Learning to talk with checkout statements instead of pronouncements and declarations is a love skill that many people have to work at because they didn’t grow up around people talking that way.  Talking from conclusions, that never get checked out, often is heard as rude, as an attempt at being controlling and quite disrespectful, although it only may be a speech habit someone grew up with.  We all can learn how to say things better with love.

What’s the Loving Way?

Basically the more loving way goes like this.  You perceive that a person you love is feeling , thinking or doing something.  Do not conclude that you perceive accurately.  As almost any perceptual psychologist will tell you, no two people looking at the same thing, hearing the same thing, or in any other way perceiving the same thing will have the exact same interpretation of what they have perceived.  It’s amazing how different it is ‘over there’ in the minds of other people, even those you know well and love well.

When the loving way is used well it helps relationships be ever more interesting.  Once you have your perception, understand it is best conceived of like a scientist with the hypothesis, yet to be proved, or disproved and replaced with a better hypothesis.  So, what you say to a loved one is a checkout statement.  Checkout statements can go something like this:  “Whatcha feeling, Honey?  Your looks suggest that you’re feeling something.  What is it?, I am getting the impression that you’d like something but I’m not quite sure what it is.  Could you tell me, Sweetheart, so I don’t have to guess and maybe get it wrong.  Would it be okay if you tell me what’s going on with you?”, “I’m suspecting that you’re depressed, or maybe angry, or something.  What are you feeling right now; I want to help if I can”.

Assumption Mistakes

I trust you know the old adage that says “to assume makes an ass out of you and me.  So often assumptions set us up for relationship chaos, or worse. Here’s such an example.  He assumed that the cake on the table was for him and the rest of the family so he ate some of it, and oh did he get screeched at for not checking it out because that cake was for her club’s party that night.  However, she soon figured out she had assumed everyone would know that, and would leave the cake alone. Another example: he assumed all women like love making soft and tender.  She assumed real he-men like it rough and tough, just the way she does.  Both were very disappointed until they were able to check out their assumptions and find out the real truth.  After that, things got better.

Sometimes it’s hard to know that your operating on an assumption because they’re sort of automatic.  People who love each other can help each other discover their own, and each other’s assumptions; that can be part of the loving ways to check each other out.

Loving Checkouts Use Love

As an act of love, it’s good to check out just about everything that might be important.  As an act of love, bear in mind that what you remember is always different than what another remembers.  It’s sad that so many arguments are about whose memory is the correct one.  It would take a time machine or somebody video and audio recording an event for us to really know.

Memory research tell us ‘all memories are distorted and slowly undergoing change’.  So, regarding memories, check out what your loved one remembers and don’t fight about it if it is different than what you remember.  You might want to say something like “Darling, it’s my memory that X, Y, Z happened.  Is that your memory?”  If it’s not very similar to yours see if you can operate from both.  It’s surprising how often that can be lovingly  accomplished.  When you are checking things out the basic idea is to sound and look loving, and maybe use terms of endearment, and also some loving touch.  This gives a checkout a good chance of being a love-filled experience for both of you.

How to Receive Checkout Questions

It’s important to be lovingly nice when a loved one asks you checkout questions.  Sometimes that’s hard to do because sometimes the request comes at an interrupting time.  Angrily replying “Can’t you see your interrupting me”, or huffing and puffing to nonverbally send the same message, likely will sabotage the next hour or more of your precious time.  Almost always, love is more important than whatever else you’re doing, so be loving.  Remember, all things can be said with love and in a love relationship that’s a goal to aim at.

Sometimes checkout questions come across pretty awful.  Here’s an example.  In fear and anger she said, “I know you’re just going to the gym so you can ogle those sexy sluts that go there.  I’m sure you’d rather take one of them to bed than me.  I know I’m right, so don’t deny it.  It’s true isn’t it?”

Well, in a very poor way, that at least is an effort to check something out, but it’s not exactly love-filled, however, his reply was.  He responded with, “Sweetie,  I suspect you’re feeling pretty insecure and could use some reassurance right now.  I really love you and would never get involved with anyone else because you and I are so very bonded in love together, and those girls are just part of the passing parade”.  She sort of whimpered and moved closer to him as he held out his arms to embrace her.  She more softly said, “You do like looking at those girls though don’t you?”

He replied, “Yes I do and probably always will, but looking is the extent of it.  You are the only one I’m ever going to put my time and love-energy into.  The rest is just eye candy, and I’m already well fed.  None of them can hold a candle to you in anything that really counts, so be reassured”  They hugged and things were good between them.

It is important to see that when someone negatively suspects something of you, and it’s true, you best agree and share it truthfully, but with lots of love.  That too is part of the love skills involved here.
So, check it out – often and with love.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
How would you rate yourself on “checking it out” instead of making concrete conclusions about what your loved ones are thinking, feeling or otherwise doing?  Are you superior, rather good, fairly okay, poor, or inferior? (Whatever you are, you can improve if you want to and work at it).

Loving Others "As" You Love Yourself ???

Love others as you love yourself is considered by many to be one of the world’s greatest teachings.  There are several good reasons for this.

One reason has been hidden from common awareness and understanding.  In fact, in some places and times this reason even has been banned from being taught or even discussed.
This reason is that the teaching, love others as you love yourself, can be seen as speaking of a democratic (anti-authoritarian) system where everybody gets to be a winner and no one need be a loser.  It works this way.  If I love others and not myself I am the loser.  If I love myself and not others, others go unloved and are the likely losers.  If I love neither myself nor others we are all the less for that.  Only if I love you and also myself do we have an ‘I win, you win, nobody loses’ outcome.

Let’s look at the word ‘AS’.  In English it is a very small, short word.  In many languages ‘AS’ is a larger word and commands more attention.  Here the word ‘AS’ can be seen relating to several things.  ‘I love you as I love me’ can mean I love you at the same time I love me.  It also can mean I love you and me to the same degree.  It may mean I love you in the same manner or ways I love myself; in this understanding of the great teaching we both get to do healthfully well.  This understanding also suggests a system by which we both can grow stronger and become better for the world we live in.  The word ‘AS’, therefore, points to a lot of important meaning in the teaching to loving others as you love yourself.

What about sacrificial love you may ask?  Let me suggest sacrifice is good in emergencies but not so much otherwise.  If we have enough time it’s best to figure out how to love self as we love another so no one need be the loser.  Think of it this way.  If I cut off my right arm for you it makes our next hug poor.  Better that I keep both of my arms, exercise them and then for both you and me hugs, and a lot more, will be far better.  Unfortunately there is a fair amount of needless self-sacrifice in the world.  This is partly because self-sacrifice has been taught as a ‘high holy virtue’.

It’s true that sometimes it is, and that kind of sacrifice sometimes represents great loving and important, helpful action but not always.  Some people tend to be self-sacrificing about almost everything and much of that is just not healthy nor is it needed.  Then there are those who pretend to be self-sacrificing martyrs so as to obtain ‘higher holiness kudos’ and/or guilt leverage for manipulating others.

It is a bit complicated to love others while at the same time loving yourself. Consider these ramifications.  If you are loving others approximately to the same degree you are loving yourself, and in more or less the same manner, you are keeping things balanced and probably indicating to others you are deserving of good treatment.   Know that if you treat yourself sacrificially or in other ways treat yourself poorly you may be teaching others that it’s OK to sacrifice you and treat you poorly.  Not only that, you may be unknowingly influencing them to treat nearly everybody that way.  You also could be an influence for others learning to needlessly and harmfully sacrifice themselves. 

When we love others as we love ourselves we model for others an ‘I win, you win’, approach to human interaction and love relationships.  Acting to love others while modeling healthy self-love can help others, especially children, learn self-care, self-esteem and self-confidence while influencing them to act in ways that are good for others.  It also helps children learn to respect their parents because the parents are modeling self-respect which is a part of healthy self-love.  Thus, it is that this seemingly simple teaching has a great many components to contemplate.

It may help to know a little history of this teaching or concept.  Around 3000 years ago, or so, a Hebrew wisdom-master taught the revolutionary idea “love your neighbor as you love yourself”.  The question was asked who is my neighbor?  The answer evolved to be –  Everyone!  It is now understood that anyone you have anything to do with and anyone you may have some effect upon, no matter how remote or small, is your neighbor.  This understanding leads to the concept ‘our village is our planet, and our neighbors are the life forms that live with us on it’.  In the future, who knows, it may even reach out to include our solar system and far beyond.

About 2000 years ago the man called Jesus (in English) took this teaching and made it one of only two Commandments he ever pronounced.  These two commandments, according to many theologians, are what Christianity is founded upon.  In effect ‘love others as you love yourself’ is one half of the constitutional law of Christianity.

Sadly the ‘as you love yourself’ part mostly either has been ignored, purposefully avoided, downplayed, or given a de-powering interpretation.  It often also has been replaced by teachings like ‘put yourself last’ and ‘all self-love is selfish and evil’.  From a psychotherapist’s point of view these anti-self-love teachings have been disastrous for the mental health of many.  Put yourself last and see self-love as evil promotes the development of low self esteem, low self-confidence, taking poor or bad care of yourself and becoming in character weak, subservient, submissive, and vulnerable to users and abusers.  Furthermore, these anti-self-love teachings influence us toward feeling guilty for honest and accurate pride in doing things well and in our own intrinsic worth; they actually are counter teachings to “as you love yourself”.

You may ask how did this come to be?  Some think that authoritarian religionists under the influence of monarchists and royalists promoted the de-emphasizing of the ‘as you love yourself’ part of this second great Commandment.  Probably because it was seen that the ‘love yourself’ concept points to self strengthening and, thus, to dangerous, independent, self-directed living which, when carried far enough, can result in anti-monarchy democracy.  That could threatened the social advantages and control of both the religious and royal masters of pre-democratic times.

With these corruptions the teaching became something like ‘be good to others but not to yourself’ because that is the devil’s way which is sinful, selfish, uppity and against God’ unless, of course, you are high born or called to high religious orders.  Still today among some who have and want authoritarian power the ‘as you love yourself’ idea is seen as a threat to be de-emphasized or ignored.  On a personal level today many still suffer from the concept that their okayness is granted by others (parents, a man, a woman, what others think of them, etc.) instead of by their own evaluation of their intrinsic value, accomplishments, character, etc.

With that background in mind some questions are in order.  How will you deal with the idea of loving others while at the same time, and to the same degree, and in the same manner you work to love yourself ?  Are you willing to do some work to healthfully love yourself so that you can healthfully love others better?  If you have strong anti love of yourself programs in your head what will you do about those?  If when acting to healthfully love yourself and be good to yourself you feel conflict, guilt, shame or any other bad feeling who might you go to for help?  What can you actually do to balance loving others better and more as you also healthfully love yourself better and more?  How might you go about studying new, different and better ways to love others and new, different and better ways to love yourself?

As always – grow and go with love
 
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly


♥ Love Success Question If soon you were going to do an act of healthy self-love and a very similar act to show love to a chosen, special ‘other’ what exactly would you do, and when would you do it?

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Image credits: “Group Hug” image by Flickr user ms.Tea (Tracy Ducasse).

Elder Love

Synopsis: This love success lesson focuses on – plan ahead questions; love for health and spirited living; mindset issues; elder self-love; don’t retire instead encore; age segregation; with love older better sex.

Plan Ahead Questions

As you grow older what are you going to do about love?  As you grow older what are you going to do about getting loved and giving love?  All kinds of love are to be considered here.  So, as you grow older, and then even more old what do you know about elder romantic love, sexual love, family love, friendship love, spiritual love, love of life, healthy self-love and all the other possible ‘loves’?

Whatever your age, what are you doing about loving those around you who are or may soon be classified as ‘seniors’?  What do you want others to do about you and love?  The sooner you have well-informed answers for these types of questions the better you can build toward a love rich, elder years life.

Here is another important question.  Is there something inside you that has sort of been telling you that as you become ‘elder’ you have to give up on love?  That is a sort of subtle, societal, subconscious programming that gets into the heads of a lot of people as they grow older.  A variation of that programming tells us we have to give up on certain kinds of love.  Many have been taught that it is not socially proper for elders to be interested or active in certain kinds of love or love with certain people.  Especially is that true if anything sexual might be involved.  Gerontology research mostly says – WRONG!  It is not healthy to think this way or abide by this type of thinking.

Love For Health and Spirited Living

The more healthy, real love older people get and give the longer they live and the healthier they stay; also the more spirited is their life.  One recent study showed that lonely, less loved, older adults were 45% more likely to die in any given year than were seniors who felt meaningfully connected in love relationships with others.

Being older with one or more meaningful love relationships and having an active social involvement is related to biological processes that increase health, improve and keep our physiological systems functioning, decrease inflammatory difficulties and help people avoid stress-related, unhealthy hormone development with its resulting physiological damage.  That summarizes the findings to date of an extensive, on-going, major English research project being conducted in epidemiology.

In the US it has been found that well loved, meaningful relationships significantly assist elders to normalize blood pressure and avoid all the difficulties that go with it.  Furthermore, meaningful, positive love relationships reduce the development of destructive chemical compounds in the human body that seem to occur more commonly in the lonely and less loved.  Other findings show that more spirited, zestful, energetic living occurs with more loving.  The ‘loveless’ live much more dispirited and the well loved and loving live much more ‘inspirited’ and ‘inspired’.

So, the message is clear.  If – or – when you’re an elder and you want to live healthy and lively keep putting lots of loving into your life.  To do that you will probably have to examine closely what your mindset is about age and aging.

Mindset Issues

You may have grown up in a family, or a neighborhood or a town in which it was common to think certain ways about older people.  In some parts of the world this is very positive and older people are honored for their wisdom, maturity and the good things they have offer those younger than themselves.  In other areas the general attitude is disdainful, disparaging, demeaning or even denigrating toward elders.  Possibly you grew up around people who were just neutral, vague, unconcerned, disinterested and dispassionate about older folks.  Whatever the case, what you grew up around may have given you a mindset toward your own aging that is not of your own choosing.

Especially important is examining to see if you were programmed to have negative images and stereotypes about being older because that can have a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ effect on your own life as an elder.  It also can greatly affect how you treat older people and how you may block yourself from receiving their enrichments.  Your mindset can have powerful negative or positive effects on your health and lifestyle.  If your mindset is positive it can assist you to an old-age that is lively, strong, agile, spirited, healthy and well loved.  Especially important are the following mindset areas.

Elder Self-Love

Coming out of his United Presbyterian Church Etheridge greeted and in a quite chipper mood conversed with a surprisingly large number of people.  He bragged unabashedly about a painting he had completed and he unashamedly flirted with females.  To the close friend who had driven him to church that day he said he was going to walk home because it was such a beautiful day.  He declined a dinner invitation because he had a speech to prepare and because he had a ‘hot date’ to get ready for that night.  Then he zestfully set off walking home which was about half a mile away.  Etheridge was 101 years old.

There is an almost endemic problem with elders living in overly youth-oriented cultures.  It is that in such cultures elderly people begin to lose healthy, self-love and with it self esteem, self-confidence, self-respect and a sense of self-worth.  In societies that revere and do well at loving, the older one gets the prouder and more healthfully self loving one may become.  When self-love diminishes there often is a diminishment of self-care, acceptance of assistance, increased social isolation, increased sense of inadequacy and increasing feelings of not being lovable or worthy of love.  As noted, when this happens biological health is negatively affected and illness and accident proneness also tend to increase.

Those elderly people who ‘own’ a healthy self-love tend not to experience negative biological effects nearly as strongly as do others.  Their psychological state tends to continue growing, remain strong, and be what some call healthfully ‘youthful’.  So, if you grow older rejecting any and all societal negative interpretations of your aging self you probably are doing yourself a big, biological and psychological flavor.

Don’t Retire – Encore

Another big mindset issue has to do with work and more exactly retirement.  It’s a sad fact that many people after retirement rapidly deteriorate and die much earlier than they might have.  Retirement seems to trigger a subconscious process in which people’s thinking about who they are triggers their biological functioning into dysfunction.  Retirement for all too many means starting to think things like “I’m no longer productive, contributing, proficient, influential, helpful, important or significant”.  Many try a lot of recreational activities and superficial socializing, and that helps for a while, but because it’s not seen as of substantial worth its helpful effect often diminishes after a while.

What to do about this?  Start an encore career or involvement.  Those who move on to encore actions tend not to deteriorate, tend to live longer, and tend to feel really good about their lives, perhaps even better than ever.  Those who have a purpose, donate themselves to a worthy endeavor, get intrigued with new learning or working on a challenge, a major pet project, or a cause do far better than the rest.  Many do this as volunteers giving time and energy to worthy endeavors.  Some do it to bring to life and nurture their long, dormant talents in the arts.  Some join writer’s workshops and begin writing ‘their book’, articles or blogs.

Still others get into consulting, advising and teaching in an area they already know.  Another group keep their careers going and never retire because they really love what they’ve been doing for many years.  They may cut down on the amount of work time or specialize in the most fun part of whatever their career was and leave the rest alone.  All this can be seen as an aspect of healthy, self-love but it also can involve a person’s love of life.

So, what is your encore involvement going to be?  It’s never too late to start an encore involvement, and probably it’s never too early to start thinking and planning what it will be.

Age Segregation

When older people allow or cause themselves to be age segregated they may live too limited and not in ways that are good for them.  There is a teaching in the East that translates something like “to become mature and wise, associate with your elders.  To retain youthfulness, associate with youth.  But to live best, associate with people of all ages”.

Some social scientists and certain public health theoreticians suggest being segregated by age groups is anti-natural, quite artificial and probably a big societal mistake.  Learning to be comfortable around and be enriched by people of all ages is a problem for those who mostly have been age segregated most of their lives.  Those who went to the type of school that practiced having no age grouped classes, and move ahead at your own speed education are thought to do better with age integration.  Do you agree that love can flow to and from people of any age and to live that way is a highly desirable blessing?  Do you agree that to live too age segregated may seem comfortable but it actually may be too life limiting?  Are you going to be sure not to live too age segregated?

With Love – Older Sex, Better Sex

Lots of older men and women think they have to give up on sexuality, so they do.  Certainly changes often are in order as one gets older but giving up on sex is totally uncalled for and decidedly not the healthiest way to go.  You see, sex is really good for you and maybe even better for you as you get older if you go about it in an age workable way.  What do you consider to be sexually normal and desirable for people of an older age?  Are you using standards that are too much the norms of youth or even middle age?  If what you consider to be sexually normal or desirable actually is more appropriate only for youth, you’re likely not to do so well.

Men in particular who have been societally programmed to believe sex is all about ‘penis in vagina’ intercourse and about climaxing have a particularly hard time adjusting to the rather different, best sexuality possible for elders.  When males learn ‘whole body sex’ and ‘love centered sex’ they do far better. (See category: Sex and Love )  Both men and women who think their body has become too unattractive or too ‘ugly’ could best start doing their sexuality in darker places or with more sexy clothing.

Women who think they can not lubricate sufficiently don’t need to believe their sexuality or femininity is lost but rather is usually just in need of more and longer erotic actions, plus the use of lubricants.  Erotic fantasy sharing, movie watching, reading, learning to think and act in ‘no pressure to perform or succeed’ ways, and to have an ‘everything can be enjoyably and okay’ mindset, plus the mindset of ‘there’s lots to enjoy in addition to, along with, and besides intercourse and orgasm’ – all or some of these often help people learn new and better ways of how older people can go about sexuality.

There are cultures in which older people seem to have great sex lives and very few sex problems.  Both men and women who engage in the sacred sex practices of two of the Hindu religion’s major divisions, the Tantric and the Shakta, tend to keep their bodies mostly healthy and their sexually functioning quite well every year of life, no matter how long they live.  You might want to investigate those.

Here’s another aspect of elder love with sex which shocks some, angers quite a few and delights others.  I know a small group of mostly females mostly in their 20s, 30s and 40s who especially like and seek sexual experiences with considerably older men and women.  People in that group say things like “older sex partners are more total and complete, and know a lot more about being loving”, “the mature know what they’re doing and the rest are just kids – cute but awkward, clumsy, unsophisticated, ignorant, sometimes stupid and sometimes dismally arrogant.  Who needs that”!  A 23-year-old I know bragged about spending weekends with a couple in their 70s saying it was the best sexuality and the most loving experience of her life.  She also told that the next week she was traveling with a professor of philosophy in his 80s and she can’t wait to get him in bed and then to talk and talk and talk.

For older participants who are ‘mixing it up’ with younger adults, the evidence seems to show outstanding results can occur.  Older men and women having sex with people 20 or more years their junior seem to get younger physically as well as mentally. (See Does "Cougar" Love Work?)  The younger participants often get more maturity and wisdom, and often some finer life experiences, so everyone usually benefits.

Sex and love go together and sometimes bring about what is called a May/ December romance and even enduring, healthy marriages.  Historically for hundreds of years this used to be the norm.  He was anywhere from 30 to 85 and his bride was anywhere from 13 to 27.  Less of an age difference was seen as shockingly unseemly.

Nowadays, in certain circles, couples who have much of an age difference are disapproved of or even rejected.  However, the evidence shows in many relationships, of the romantic type, where healthy, real love is a major component, age similarity is not needed.  The more democratic approach of letting people choose their own love-mates, irrespective of prejudicial categories of all types, seems to be more in alignment with nature and what is healthful.

Still another elder love/sex practice not talked about in many circles is the ancient, even biblical custom of what is sometimes called partner sharing.  Martha makes love, not just has sex, with both her retired husband and his also retired widower brother.  Sometimes all three go on vacations together.  They’re thinking about sharing a house and expenses together too.  Sarah was so thankful to be taken in by her elder sister and sister’s husband after her own husband passed away from a long illness.  At first they all just cuddled into the night, but that lead to other things which have been working out quite well for all of them for quite a few years.

It is to be noted that ‘partner sharing’ among older people mostly is done very quietly and secretly.  It seems to be much more common among social liberals, often ex-hippies, than among conservatives and traditionalists.  As mentioned, partner sharing is an old custom with early biblical references.  It was for ages a primary way to take care of the problem of widows and widowers, those who had been abandoned, the disabled, the infirm and also destitute relatives.

In patriarchal cultures it was recommended as virtuous for keeping alive family bloodlines because every female taken in was expected to bear the prime males of the house at least one child if possible.  In today’s world the practice of partner sharing, especially including romantic love and sex, seems to benefit a certain number of energetic, lively elder people who have lost their spouses.  Some social scientists think this partner sharing among lively, older people is likely to slowly keep growing in popularity because with the help of the health sciences there are more and more lively elders.

To wrap up then, the importance of lots of love in your life, all types with lots of different people is vital, healthy and enriching – no matter how old you are!

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Is your picture of your own life as an elder full of ‘vim and vigor’, zest, joy, sexiness, productivity and delight – or more the opposite?

Validation Love Stamp Giveaways

Synopsis: Your stamp explained; who controlled your validation; who owns it; okayness elections; self love stamping; your giveaways and get backs; owning and self validating as an adult.

It’s like there is this stamp that validates you as OK, as loved, as good enough or maybe even as better.

When you were growing up your parents, or whoever was raising you day by day, either ‘stamped you’ as OK or not OK.  According to how you got stamped you were either lovable or not lovable, wanted or not wanted, accepted or rejected, worthy or unworthy, good or bad, etc.  Then maybe when you got to be a teenager Mother Nature influenced you to turn the stamp over to your peers, age mates, or to older teens, etc.

It could be that somewhere along the way you thought you ‘fell in love’ and you turned your okayness and love-ability validation stamp over to your boyfriend or girlfriend, along with the stamp pad and all the ink.  In a new, huge way your lover was your validator of whether you were lovable and OK, or not.  You might have been taking the beginning steps on the road to getting good at self validation – until you felt you fell in love, and then that special other person’s validation trumped your own and everybody else’s.

Then again, maybe you were one of those people who only could get okayness from those with some kind of higher or special status.  Consequently, you might have done everything you could to conform to their ‘popularity standards’ no matter whether or not those reference points were full of pressure, peculiarity or even perversity.  Maybe like so many you got stuck at one of these levels where the opinions of others count way more than your independent, self derived opinion of yourself counts.  If so, that makes you what is called outer-dependent and other-dependent instead of inner-dependent and self-dependent.  The problem with outer-dependency is that it counters healthy self-love development.  Arrested development of healthy self-love gets in the way of healthy love relationship development which is enriched by co-equality, mutuality and democratic partnership –  in other words, development of the best kind, according to many specialists in this field.

I like to go back to the great, ancient, marvelously encompassing, superbly enlightening, incredibly comprehensive, three or more thousand-year-old admonition which simply instructs us to “Love Others as You Love Yourself”.  No wonder the one we call Jesus chose that and proclaimed it to be one of his only two great commandments.  It covers and explains so very much.  I suggest loving others as you love yourself is the secret key (hidden in plain sight) to the success of love relationships in general.

This admonition strongly relates to the idea of ‘validation love stamps’.  You see, if as an adult you give away your validation stamp to others for them to certify you as OK or not OK, as lovable or not, etc. you probably are not doing a very good job of the “As You Love Yourself” part of that extremely important and applicable, wisdom teaching.

Let’s look at one way of understanding the validation stamp process.  In childhood your okayness and love-ability validation comes from your parents and those who raise you.  For your survival you are dependent on them and their validation.  As adolescence is approached your okayness and love-ability, along with acceptability for inclusion, validation begins to come from your peers.  This inclusion desire sometimes seems to become of supreme importance.  However, when achieving true adulthood your primary validation comes from yourself.  Another way to say this is to say that as a true adult you get 51% (or more) of the vote on your own okayness.  If all the world votes you as OK, and you do not, you win.  Likewise, if all the world votes you as not OK, but you vote the opposite, you win the vote but not okayness.  This is only true if you have become primarily self validating.  If you stamp yourself as OK, you are, and you feel it and you act that way.  This does not mean that you ignore the rest of the world.  A wise person takes in counsel, viewpoints, etc. of others but doesn’t give them a personal stamp of primary approval.

The history of the great contributors to the world is a history of those who retained their stamp of self approval even when it seemed like most of the world was trying to take it away from them.  Certainly your most beloved and dear family members, and your closest, trusted friends, and maybe occasionally even your enemies should get votes in your okayness election which, by the way, happens everyday.  However, in most situations it’s best if your own, independent vote on yourself out-votes everybody else’s.

This means, in regard to validation, it not only is okay for you to get back what you perhaps gave away but it’s essential to your health and well-being to be the keeper of your own validation stamp.  Every validation ‘giveaway’ can become a ‘get back’.  Those who really love you want you to have the ability to validate yourself.  Their praises and compliments, etc. often help but your self-validation will count more.  That doesn’t make you egotistical, stuck up or a snob.  It just will make you self-accurate and able to more freely do your love from a self-dependent, co-equal stance.

A few words of caution are in order.  Sometimes it is ‘the internal voter who was programmed into our head’ from our past who we give our validation stamp away to.  If we’re thinking “what would they think, or say” and none of them are in our life anymore, it’s time for an ‘inner election system redistricting’.  Concern about peer approval subconsciously may relate back to the in-group of kids from your seventh grade.  By-the-way, we still can honor and value our parents, grandparents and everybody else in family and friendship networks without giving them too many votes in our okayness and love-ability elections.

In olden times if the king, or some other ‘royal’, stamped you okay, you were.  If a royal stamped you not OK, you weren’t; and there wasn’t much you could do about it.  That sort of thing is what motivated a lot of people to come to the New World and get with this idea we call democracy.  Today you may give away your validation stamp of approval, okayness and love-ability to all sorts of groups who will be glad to take it in order to control you, get money, sex or other valuables from you, and even make you one of their minions.  This can happen in business, religion, politics, status seeking, money, the arts, sports, fashion, the professions and in just about any group you can think of.

Remember, you don’t have to let them possess your stamp or control your sense of inner self-validation.  Until quite recently, and still in many circles, being married was a validating stamp for women.  For men validation was, and still is, mostly about power and status symbols of some kind or another.  Classifications and symbols can be nice but they may not tell you much about substance.

So now, the challenge is to think this over and examine yourself as to whether or not you are unnecessarily and unhealthfully giving away your validating love stamp to others to make you OK or not OK.  Perhaps you are doing a good job of internal self-validation, in which case, what you just read will be a good reinforcement for that.  If not, I suggest you start asking yourself who you give away your stamp to, and what are you going to do about that?

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
With those you love are you influencing them to ‘own’ and ‘practice’ their own self-validating?

Connection Matching - A Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson teaches you about love matchers at work; ‘head’ matching; ‘gut’ matching; ‘genital’ matching; ‘heart’ matching; and jointly growing your connection matching.

Love Matchers At Work

Imagine that you are at a college sponsored weekend workshop for people who want to learn how to improve their love connection matching.  You’re in a small group discussion and you hear the following things:

‘Head’ Matching

Sophia says, “I thought he was just right for me. He was super sexy, oh so sweet and kind, and amaze!, amaze! he showed his emotions very easily and well for a guy.  The problem emerged later.  I hate to say it but he just wasn’t smart enough, and the love that I thought would follow the infatuation just didn’t show up.  We couldn’t really talk except in very simple ways.  I discovered that a love-mate I might spend the rest of my life with has to be bright and relish the exuberance of intelligent discourse, or at least be interested in learning to do that . I need that kind of stimulation; it’s just who I am.”

Learn from Sophia.  Are you in need of a good intellectual or mental match for making a good, lasting love connection?  For a mate, a good friend, or a good close family member you really ‘click’ with, will you do best with a good ‘head’ match to go along with a good ‘heart’ match?  If your mental matching isn’t right or compatible enough what will that mean for your relationship?

‘Gut’ Matching

Jacob remarked, “Regretfully, I broke it off with Ava although in many ways, at least on the surface, she seemed perfect.  Ava was bright, and wonderfully educated and we could intellectually talk for hours.  Also Ava was super-sexual, even more than me.  Besides those attributes she was fairly affectionate, rather thoughtful, forgiving and understanding, and I guess you could say kind of loving.  Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?

“Well, unfortunately Ava had no guts.  She was a coward about everything, except maybe sex.  Also her range of emotions seemed kind of narrow.  Besides getting scared about all sorts of things, and being sort of sweet or sexy, she was emotionally mostly flat.  She just didn’t get passionate or emotionally involved about much of anything, and wasn’t willing to ‘step out of her comfort zone’.  That’s the reverse of me.  I get excited about all sorts of things.  So our time together got to be rather boring.  Ava helped me realize I need my love-mate to have and show lots of strong feelings and get emotional about all the big, important things in life.  Otherwise, life just passes you by, and I refuse to live that way.”

Learn from Jacob.  Are you in need of a love-mate who, at the psychological ‘gut’ level, shows lots of spirit, knows and shows their emotions well, is somebody who can feel deeply and maybe also quite bravely explore life?  Or maybe you need a person with a milder ‘gut’ makeup.  Being well matched at the ‘gut’ or emotions level as well as at the ‘heart’ love level can be ever so important.

‘Genital’ Matching

Olivia commented, “I broke it off with Mason because, truth be told, sex is a lot more important to me than is was to him.  Until I admitted that to myself, I thought I was going to marry Mason.  I kept thinking sex would get better and become more essential in his life too.  We talked it over and I let him know I wanted more powerful intimacy, lots of variety, and big sexual adventures.

“He said all the right things but his actions didn’t change much.  It was like our parts just didn’t match.  I think my heart knew all along, because I never felt like we really connected at the core heart level either but I kept thinking we would. . I guess I was fooling myself because so many outside parts did seem to match up pretty well.  We were from the same background and both my mother and my friends liked him.  But this big, important, very personal side of me just didn’t fit with that  part of him.”

Learn from Olivia.  How well matched can you and your love-mate get to be erotically?  Poor matching at the psychological, ‘genital’ level can and often does lead later to ‘cheating’, affairs, bringing home an STD, and a growing vulnerability to other seductions.  It also can lead to repeated fights or passive/aggressive friction, and abrasive draining ways of relating.

‘Heart’ Matching

Noah smiled and said, “You all are really helping me think Isabella and I may be really right for each other.  We connect well at all four levels.  Head-wise we talk about all sorts of things and seem to be a really good, intellectual match for each other.  Gut-wise, we cry and laugh and really share our feelings – pretty much all the time.  She’s better at it than I am, but I’m opening up more and more.  And what you’re calling the genital level, well, we are a little naïve there but were excited about exploring all sorts of erotica together.

Best of all is how we are at the heart level.  I’ve never felt so much connection and deep respect for anyone like I do with Isabella.  I see how wonderful she is and I’ve never felt so many good emotions as when we’re together.  We’re so much more alive than we were before we met.  We even differ with each other well.  We both want to learn how to love each other in the best ways, and we’re working at that like by being at this workshop.”

Learn from Noah.  Are you working at and getting good at connecting at the heart level?  It’s important to connect at all four of the levels talked about here, but most important of all is connecting really well at the heart level.

Growing Your Connection Matching

Hear what Emma had to say.  “When William and I first met he was all about what you are calling ‘head’ stuff.  He was Mr. High IQ.  But he did it in a fun and interesting way. He got me into reading all sorts things I’d never even heard of, and got me excited about ‘the world’.  Then I discovered he had another well-developed part.  He opened me up to wild, crazy sex and what a scary, wonderful universe that turned out to be.  Then it was my turn.

“Sort of by using sexuality, I led him into getting into his emotions and sharing all our intimate feelings together.  Then intellectually and emotionally we started studying love because we knew we were ‘falling into it’ with each other.  So, I guess you could say William got me into the head and genital stuff and I got him into the heart and gut stuff.  I think it often works that way with men and women”.

Learn from Emma.  Are you good at opening yourself up to what a love-mate, or for that matter a friend might be able to introduce you to, and can you recognize what your own inner, psychological ‘head’, ‘heart’, ‘gut’ or ‘genital’ levels have to offer?  In a love relationship are you willing to work at connecting with another at all four levels?  One of the many, beautiful benefits of becoming a loving couple is how both people can open up new worlds to one another.

Know that most couples don’t match exactly, but rather have high, medium or low connection matching in the four areas we are exploring here. What predicates the development of a really good, healthy, love relationship is the willingness and ability to develop and expand areas that might need some improvement for better connection matching.   In choosing a love-mate it usually is so helpful to consider how good your connection matching is or what the distance between you might be in all of the four areas.

Know that there are many lasting, excellent, love unions where people only connect at the heart level and possibly the genital level too.  In those situations other connection matches can be made with deep, good friendships which satisfy needs at other levels.  Know also that when two people in a love relationship decide to work at exploring and developing their connection matching at all levels they can do it.  And in doing so they can greatly expand the world they get to live in together.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
When thinking about psychological connecting in a relationship at the ‘head’, ‘heart’, ‘gut’ and ‘genital’ levels, which do you think you’re best at and which might you most need to develop further?

Related posts:

1. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
2. Checking It Out – As a Love Skill
3. Intercourse Absent Lovemaking – a Love Skill 

Yourself As a Great Source of Love Gifts

Mini-Love-Lesson  #261

Synopsis: You may be your own best source of behavioral love gifting; what the idea of love gifting yourself to others is all about; and how your love gifts are important to love relating are aptly dealt with here.

Your Most Personal Gift of Love?

Do you agree that the more personal the gift the better is the gift’s love effect?  Do you know that among the most personal of gifts can be the gifts of yourself?  Are you aware that especially this can be true for growing healthy, real, love relationships?

Your finest love gift can be yourself, along with your real self, your growing and improving self and your best self.  Those things can be true because the more you give of yourself to someone who loves you, in a sense, the more they have of you, know about you and the more they can experience love with you.  Also, the more you give of the personal, real you the greater the growth of closeness and heart-felt bonding can occur with you.  Conversely, the more you do not give of yourself the more likely there will be an emotional distancing and disconnection.  So with that in mind, let’s ask two questions.  Do you know much about giving of yourself and do you know what the real you has to offer?

The Real You and Your Many Fine Gifts

Those who would do love with you want to know the real you and experience the real you so they can do real love relating with the real you.  Therefore, if you love someone, the challenge is twofold.  First, is to  be real and not fake.  Second, is to work to become your best self and, as you do that, keep giving of yourself to whomever you would love.

So long as you are truthful and sincere, your words and actions reveal and consequently give of yourself.  Conversely, if you are untruthful and insincere, your words and actions likely will manifest only fake love and make real love less likely.  If this effort to hide the real you is discovered, only a phony you will be revealed.

The many fine gifts you have to offer are accomplished by doing behaviors.  They are done through the behaviors of truthful talking and sincere and/or experimental action-taking.  You are capable of making a lot of different love-giving, truthful statements plus doing a great variety of sincere and experimental loving actions.  This enables you to do a lot of different kinds of love gifting.  So, let’s take a brief look at just five of the less thought about gifts of love you have to offer (see “Love Active Enough?”).

The Gift of Affirmation

You give this gift by first looking for what you can honestly see as worthy, of value and/or positive in another.  Then spend a little time appreciating what you have observed and time to find the words you can use to speak of it.  Then with those words you can give honest praise, compliments and perhaps thankful statements to the person you are gifting with your affirmational love.  This can be done privately, or in front of others or in the form of a possible keepsake type note.

Affirmation is one of the most important ways to love a great many people especially if they could use some increase in self-valuing.  By the way, whatever you find to appreciate in another reveals a certain amount of your own, inner workings and so that is a gift of yourself (see the “Affirmation Love” chapter in Recovering Love).

The Gift of Listening with Love

Have you heard the old saying that proclaims we were given two ears and only one mouth because listening is twice as important as talking?  This especially has relevance when a loved one seems to need or want to tell us something, share their emotions or just know by experiencing it that they are being heard.

It is very important to know loving listening can not be done just mentally.  It must have heart in it.  This heart-full quality must be well and often expressed via quiet but very active expressional love behaviors, via facial expressions, gestures posture changes, voice tones, etc.  Passive, inactive, blank and stone face listening can be quite anti-loving.  Link “Listening with Love”  Link “Listening With Love and IN and OUT Brain Functions”

The Gift of Loving Touch

Whether it is a gentle, soft caressing or a good solid, full-body hug, a simple comforting hand holding, a one arm buddy hug or a loving full body massage – love via touch is known to change our body and brain chemistry for the better.  Loving touch brings closeness, relational love bonding and is very assistive in both physical and emotional healing processes.  When loving touch is done well and often, the research shows it to be quite assistive in life lengthening (see “50 Varieties of Love Touch” and “Touching With and For Love – A Super Important Love Skill”).

The Gift of Receiving Love Well

It is a gift to receive a gift of love well.  This means focusing on it, appreciating it and what went into it to come into your life, as well as the thoughts and feelings behind it.  Gifts come in several categories.  Object gifts basically are things, experience gifts are like a surprise birthday party, favors and assistance gifts are like someone paying off your student debt, and gifts of yourself are like what we are focusing on here.  It is important for the health of love relationships to notice, sincerely appreciate and actively receive them all.  This is the gift of good reception (“How Receiving Love Well Gives Love Better”, “Removing Your Hidden Blocks to Receiving Love Fully” and the “Receptional Love” chapter in Recovering Love ).

The Gift of Self Disclosure

Letting someone you love know you in personal, intimate ways is one of the finest of love gifts.  It is essential for growing closeness and for creating some of the deepest of love experiences, plus it often comes with a very sweet joyfulness.  Letting someone know your private, personal, not usually shared thoughts, feelings, behaviors, know the positives and negatives of your past, present and possible future and every other little and large thing about you is some of what is giving the gift of self-disclosure for love.  Of course, it is important that you receive with love the self-disclosures of those you would do love with.

If you have been taught to think poorly of yourself and what you have to offer, or you just have not discovered what a bundle of miracles you are, you may not realize how much you have to offer and how much it is needed and wanted.  Perhaps the want and need for what you have to offer is in other circles than the ones you are traveling in now (see “Intimate Love”, “Intimate Love, What Everyone Needs to Know”, “Growing Closeness – A Love Skill” and the “Self-Disclosure Love” chapter in Recovering Love).

Manifesting Yourself Where and With Whom?

If those you focus on now do not seem to care much about you or what you have to offer, you have some choices to consider.  You can try to get through to them in new, bigger, more powerful ways.  You can go looking for others who will want to see and relate to you in deeper ways, value you, and grow to love you as you do love with them better.  You can learn to love yourself better and in more self-dependent ways if needed.  You also can do all three of these, or any two.  It is also important that you self-disclose to yourself the many miracles that make you up and the many ways you can experience the good of yourself, along with the many fine ways you can come to be.  The better you do this the better you can do well with others and the better they are likely to do with you.

One More Little Thing

You might want to go looking for compatible others to talk over what you have just read.  That may take some searching in new and different places, or perhaps not.  In any case, if you do talk this over with others please mention this site and its many mini-love-lessons.  We are grateful and thank you for that.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly


Quotable Question: If you don’t give of yourself to others you love, how much are they likely to give of themselves to you?