Other Genders Love

Synopsis: Here we address these troubling yet intriguing questions: Are there more than two genders; What are other genders; Why does nature make more than just male and female; This mini-love-lesson ends with a list of the words and terms now used in the new understandings of gender; more.

Are There More Than Two Genders?

Yes, according to science there are more than just male and female.  Biology, physiology and especially the brain sciences, along with a good many other scientific fields show us this truth which is so troubling to many.  Nature makes humans and a host of other animals with other genders than just the standard two – those distinctly male and those distinctly female.  It is true, at least among humans, that most are easily identified as pretty much male or pretty much female.  However, though in minority, there are others.

What Are “Other” Genders?

We have known for a long time that nature occasionally produces people with the genitalia of both males and females.  More recently, the brain sciences have discovered nature makes a lot more people with the brain chemistry of both males and females.  Not only that, we now know that just about everyone has at least a little bit of both male and female neurochemistry and dual gender brain functioning.  We also have more people, than was originally thought, who are neuropsychologically one gender but their overt biology is that of the other gender.  Thus, in simple terms we have males in female bodies and females in male bodies.

We also may have people whose brain functioning and neurochemistry goes back and forth between being male and female.  Some other species do this biologically whenever there are too many females or males and gender rebalancing a population is in order.  Then of course we have those who seem pretty much male overtly except that they are naturally built to be attracted to other males and those who are pretty much overtly female who are naturally attracted to other females.  And then there are the bisexuals, many of whom can be pretty much equally naturally attracted to both.  Those varieties also occur among other species a lot.  The preponderance of scientific evidence shows all this variety to be natural and not at all unhealthy.

Why Does Nature Make More Than Just Straight Males and Straight Females?

One answer is that nature loves variety.  Variety has great survival value.  You never know when conditions are going to change and a life form variation is going to turn out to better cope with that change in conditions.  Seldom does nature make just one or two varieties of anything.  Think of leaves.  They all do pretty much the same thing yet they come in endless variations of shape.  A small minority are not even green but rather several other colors.  Other leaves are green part of the time but then change to a variety of other often vivid colors.  It seems nature is always making new variations and some of them have advantages in dealing with whatever the changing conditions are at the time.

Another answer is that there are unrecognized species survival contribution and advancement advantages brought to us by those having a not strictly male or female psychobiology.  For instance, it is thought by some that those people who are more androgynous (mentally and emotionally both male and female balanced) may be better at diplomacy, cooperation skills, democratic leadership, mentoring, mediation, counseling, personality assessment, cognition flexibility and altruistic achievement.

Previously and still in certain circles, androgynous people were/are negatively viewed as having what was seen to be the typical weaknesses of both males and females.  Consequently, they often were rejected and excluded as not being male enough or female enough depending on their overt gender identity.  Thus, the Renaissance Man was seen as a “sissy” and the Renaissance Woman as a “pushy broad”.  Both were “freaks”and “misfits” in times and places of high social conformity.

Do the People of “Other” Genders Have Different Love Problems?

Do you agree with these ideas?  Everybody needs love no matter what their difference is from the supposed norm.  Everybody who is different from the norm is in danger of rejection and worse from those who fear difference and desire continuance of the perceived and “correct” norm.  If you see it this way, then you can see how those who have “other” than the usual male and female ways may need extra love, acceptance and inclusion experiences to counter the anti-love events they may experience while they are trying to figure out and adjust to their own differences from the perceived norm.

Healthy self-love development is often an extra tough problem for those growing up or starting to live “other”.  Valuing, appreciating, accepting and honoring oneself can get really tough when faced with exclusion, rejection, criticism and demeaning messages coming from others.  Especially is that true if those anti- love messages are coming from people who are supposed to love you, like parents and family.

Romantic love often presents some very perplexing problems.  If a she loves a he and transgenders into a he, does that make them homosexual lovers and does that matter?  When a bisexual or bi-amore person is loved by both a male and a female can they all three live successfully married together?  If they do, does that mean they are illegally practicing polygamy?  Could you romantically successfully love a transgendered person who used to be the same gender you are?  ‘Is it real love or a form of false love’ is a question that is extra confounding for those who live in the various “other” categories.

Loving family and friends who may experience culture shock and/or strong religious values dissonance because someone is in an “other” category, also is a common but big love problem.  Experiencing being put down, shunned, damned, pitied, preached at or even ‘prayed for’ because you naturally are different is frequently quite tough.

Not hating but instead continuing to love the person or persons sending judgmental rejection messages, also is a love challenge and issue for those who are in some way “other”.  Sometimes in self-love, withdrawing contact from the judgmental and condemning is at first necessary for sufficient self protection.  Family counseling with a good love-oriented therapist is what helps the most, as I see it.

Strengthening oneself through therapy and healthy self-love development so that a love based re-approachment of those who condemn usually is the eventual best solution, from my experience.  Never making such a re-approachment can mean having a wound that never heals and a disturbing lack of closure.  Attempting the re-approachment too soon before your strong enough to be unaffected by the ‘arrows’ that may be fired at you can be disastrous.  So, great care is in order.

Love of children when there are gender issues presents a whole special set of challenges.  How does a parent deal with a child who is exhibiting a tendency towards some form of “other” gender orientation?  How does a parent best explain to a child that parent changing genders or not being of the standard male or female identity?  How can parental or family love best help children struggling with peer rejection because of some “other” gender factor?

Loving the Angry & Threatened

A fair number of people seem to be quite threatened, upset, in denial, and angry concerning all these new “other” ideas, discoveries and social changes concerning gender.

They want all of us to regress to the old understandings that there are only males and females.  The trouble is that science is showing those understandings to be inaccurate, inadequate and quite destructive for a considerable number of people..  Abuses of those who are “other gendered” are abundant.  Anxiety, stress, depression, family breakups, suicide and even murder are sometimes the result of the more extreme abuses enacted by the regressives.  With love must we not therefore embrace the progressive and constructively use the new knowledge concerning gender?  Those who are threatened and angry can, with careful love, decrease their fear and be brought along into a world where difference is so often a good thing.

Do You Know the New Language of Gender?

Recent research has discovered a lot in this area of gender and that has resulted in quite a few new terms.  These terms can help a lot for comprehending more fully, becoming more knowledgeable, thinking more clearly, talking productively, and interacting knowledgeably concerning gender issues.

To help you with that, here is a partial list of words and terms you may wish to familiarize yourself with and be sure you understand.  Affirmed gender, alternating gender neurochemistry, androgyny, asexual, assigned gender, bi-amore, bi-gender, bisexual, cisgender, cross-dresser, dual identity, gender dysphoria, gender expression, gender fluidity, gender identity, gender continuum, gender spectrum, gender predominance, gender web, homo-amore, hermaphodite, hrm, hir, medical gender transition, pansexual, polyAmore , social gender transition, “they” (singular), trans-amore , transgender, transsexual, transman, transwoman, ze.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: How much of yourself do you suppose is both male and female, and how okay (self loving) are you with that?

Related posts:

1. What about “Bi” Love?
2. Power or Love or Both
3. Men: Doing Well at Love !
4. What Makes Love Last?
5. Attraction or Love or What? 

Independence with Love

Ted said “I’m finally in a marriage that helps me be more independent, not less”.

Judy replied “I don’t think that’s possible.  When you love someone don’t you always become dependent on them and have to sacrifice your independence for the relationship?”  Gloria responded with, “Not in my love relationships.  Love helps me be who I really am and how I want to be me.  Without love I wouldn’t get to be the real me”.

Qi-shi remarked, “That is not my experience.  My lady friends always want to restrict me, hold me back and get me to be dependent on them, and keep me that way.  That’s why I am not with anyone right now.  I like my independence and for me love gets in the way” .  Sally with disgust commented, “You all know that’s the way it always works out for us women.  Men just don’t want to give you any independence at all”.

Jeremy came back with, “It’s not just men, you women may be more subtle but in my experience every woman wants to ‘break and tame’ her man.  That takes away every bit of every poor guy’s independence”. “I totally disagree,” said Mark.  “Before Jan and I hooked up I was so love-starved I couldn’t do anything but look for love and affection.  Once I started really loving and being loved it set me free to be more independent than I’ve ever been”.  Then Judy jumped in with, “José and I would never dare interfere with each other’s independence.

The whole basis of our relationship is allowing and helping each other live independently. That’s how we do love.  For us it wouldn’t work any other way”.  Sharon then asked, “Doesn’t independence sort of imply being separate and alone.  I never have felt comfortable with the words independent or dependent.  They both sound like things I don’t want to fully embrace.  What about interdependence and self-dependent?   Shouldn’t we consider those also”?

This energetic discussion continued on for quite some time between the participants at a Love Advancement weekend workshop.  As you can see in their discussion there are many differing viewpoints when it comes to the subject of ‘Independence and Love’.  No small number of couples, families and even friendships break up when there are clashes over independence versus dependence issues.  And to the contrary many relationships maintain their health by assisting their participants to have a high degree of independence.

When commenting on love, independence and marriage the great Middle Eastern poet/philosopher, Kahlil Gibran wrote:

“… let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond [prison] of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
… Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strains of a lute are alone though they quiver
with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

Indeed, among relational professionals it is generally thought that in healthy, real love the love relationship is carried on in a way that promotes, assists and nurtures independent individuality.  Love-based actions which help each person grow their self-dependent abilities and help them act in interpersonal, independent teamwork result in healthy, mutually beneficial love relationships.  This means shared independence and democratically chosen interdependence are a significant part of well functioning love relationships.

One of the prime ways to identify a real, healthy love from an unhealthy, false love has do with examining dependency issues.  Those relationships that promote shared independence tend to be far healthier than those relationships that suppress and restrict independence and individuality.

Relationships that are too dependent and too anti-independence promote stagnation.  Stagnation leads to deterioration, and deterioration leads to death (of the relationship and sometimes of a person in that relationship).  It is generally thought that to grow your independence means to grow your selfhood.  Dependency makes you less, not more.  Being less seldom, if ever, helps ‘the team’ that is a love relationship.  The team is strengthened by its members being ‘all they can be’ as independent individuals who share their strengths and unique abilities in interdependent teamwork.  This is one of the most important dynamics which make up ‘the teams’ we call couples, marriages, families and strong friendships.

Let’s look at what the most famous and very independent seagull of all time told us about love with freedom and independence.  Jonathan, the seagull, was reported to have said:

“If you love something set it free.  If it comes back to you, it is yours.
If it doesn’t, it never was.”
-Jonathan Livingston Seagull, according to Richard Bach

If, in the name of love, you try to possess someone, own them, capture and confine them, make them yours alone, deprive them of independent free choice, it is likely if you dare to set them free there’s a good chance they won’t return.  But if you encourage free, independent choice that is an act of real love.  Real love cannot be done as slavery.  If they choose you day after night, after day, after night and you choose them also, then together you can own and operate a growing, ongoing love.  If when giving someone the freedom of love’s partnership they leave you, then the relationship, in all probability, would never have worked out anyway.  That is because only a love operating with ongoing mutual choice and desire seems to be able to sustain itself healthfully.

Healthy, real love promotes independence and sick, anti-freedom, false love promotes dependency.  This is the contention of many who study love and its dynamics.  To investigate how all this may have influenced your life let’s look at the ways Western world society has taught people to talk and think.  The following sentences are ‘supposed to’ represent the dynamics of love, as many people understand them, but do they really?  “I need you”.  “I can’t live without you”.  “You’re mine”.  “You belong to me”.  “I’m totally yours”.  “Let me be your slave”.  “I totally surrender myself to you”.  “Do what you want with me”.  “I love you so much I will do anything you want”.  “You’re my everything”.  “I’m completely under your control just like I want to be”.  “I can’t go on without you”.  “Because I love you I will become whatever you want”.  “Use me, abuse me, dominate me, control me utterly and then I will know you love me as much as I love you”.

To the mental health professional all of these statements suggest an underlying drive to retreat into infancy where a person is totally dependent on a parent/caretaker.  A lack of wanting to become self-directed, mature, and growing, improving and becoming increasingly responsible as an adult is infantile and regressive; it’s not what real love is all about.  Healthy, real love promotes growth toward independence, freedom and being more, not less.  So why do many people confuse the desire to regress into infantile dependency with love?

There are a number of interwoven reasons.  One part is what our culture teaches us to think.  Another part involves the freedom from the stress of having to make decisions, and choices and experience the consequences of our choices.  Seemingly that can be achieved by turning your life over to another who will play the ‘parent-like, lover/mate’ role in your life.  However, that seldom turns out well.  More frequently it leads to abuse, neglect, misuse and eventually either rebellion or destruction.  Debilitating dependency on a lover is no better than debilitating dependency on a drug.

There are a fairly large number of people who fear independence because they don’t think they have what it takes to handle it.  They often are attracted to, and join with, very dictatorial, dominating types of people.  There are three big problems with this strategy.  First, dictators are usually secretly weak, fear-based people hiding under a mask of pseudo-strength.  The second problem is the weak person who wants to have the safety of being governed by the strong often slowly grows their own strength.  Then they rebel or break free from their dominator.  The third problem is the dominator may slowly grow real strength and become disenchanted with the weak person depending on them.  They then often become attracted to stronger, more dynamic, self-dependent others.

There are those who are strong, decisive leaders most of the time but want to take a break from the stress of decisiveness and let others run the show, at least for awhile.  That sometimes gets acted out in various sexual scenarios where the usually powerful leader gets to be submissive and dominated.  Then there are those that have been brought up to believe dictatorial leadership and domination are masculine and submissive masochism is feminine.  This too may occur only in sexuality but sometimes it involves a total life position.  When that happens it is very hard to arrive at a democratic, partnered, love relationship of equals.

Having someone be overtly, strongly dependent on you and on your love at first may have the strong appeal of a seemingly safe relationship.  It also has the appeal of being in control and being able to get whatever you want from the person who is dependent on you.  Later, not having an equal partner with which to share burdens, not having the input of ideas that are different from your own, not having another’s creativity and not having an equal, adult companion tends to get old, less functional and lonely.

Lots of insecure, underdeveloped men want a dependent, weak woman for their mate.  Later, as they grow in maturity and ability, they start to get bored with the weak woman at home and are attracted to highly competent, independent females out in the world.  Lots of insecure, underdeveloped females want a ‘big daddy’ to take care of them and treat them like a princess.  Later as they grow in maturity and confidence they want out from under ‘Daddy’s’ control and to associate with more challenging, stimulating and independent equals.  Of course, these are stereotypes and gender specific but they help to demonstrate the concepts here.  Human beings act in all shades of stereotypes and usually not completely like any stereotype.

Sexually lots of couples like to ‘play’ with one being a ‘sex slave’ while the other is the dominant, ‘erotic master’.  However, doing a total relationship in that format seldom gets healthy, lasting results.  Be aware that many couples who play at ‘sex slave and master’ often trade roles.

Here is a challenging thought to consider.  If you want to control, dominate, be in charge, etc. instead of being equal partners, and if you tend to think only one person can be in charge, that someone has to be the boss, have the final say, etc. then maybe you’re not strong enough or mature enough to operate in a democratic love relationship of adult equals.

Likewise, if in your love relationships you want to avoid or lose your independence, be dominated and governed, be lost in dependency and be someone else’s well-controlled puppet then healthy, real love is likely not to be in your future.  However, if a love-filled partnership of democratic equals who work to do life together is your aspiration then healthy, real love has a real chance of filling your romantic and other kinds of love life.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Questions
Do your love relationships tend to lead you to an ‘I want you’ rather than ‘I need you’, ‘I choose you’ rather than ‘I am stuck with you’ or ‘I am more free with you’ rather than ‘I am enslaved to [or with] you’ relationship dynamics?

Related posts:

1. Is “I Can’t Live without You” Real Love?
2. Validation Love Stamp Giveaways
3. Healthy Real Love -or- Toxic False Love 

Gender Diversity Love

Mini-Love-Lesson  #194

Synopsis: How a lot of people are a wide variety of something other than strictly male or female; the big problems that diversity presents; what that can have to do with several kinds of love and how those kinds of love can help are presented in this mini-love-lesson.

Whose What And What Difference Does It Make?

Transgender, transsexual, intersexual, gender dysphoric, omni-sexual, bisexual, homosexual, androgyny and other not strictly or primarily straight female or straight male gender variations have been scientifically identified as existing in the human race.  Both psychology and biology offer confirmation of these different gender diversity states being part of natural reality.  Neurophysiology, neurochemistry, neuropsychology and other brain sciences in particular yield evidence that gender is much more in the brain as well as much more diverse than previously thought.

What is not very different in all gender variations including heterosexuality is the natural need for love, the ways of giving love and the many beneficial effects of being healthfully well loved.  There are some larger differences in the area of love problems but even in that area there is not as much difference as you might at first think.

But for the gender diverse there are extra confounding complications, conflicts, confusions, stressors as well as some very puzzling romantic and heart-mate dilemmas.  Also there can be some hard to cope with biological concerns.

Perhaps worst of all for many are the very dangerous social and religious value clashes that occur in many cultures and subcultures around the world.  For all too long and for far too many, being gender different has been deadly.  To this day in many parts of the world having certain types of gender diversity can get you physically assaulted, jailed and even killed.

Especially dangerous has been the area of who you love and who loves you.  Romantic and spousal love, family love, friendship love, parent-child love, spiritual love and healthy self-love all have been fraught with stressors and serious problems for those whose gender is other than standard heterosexual.  Children, youth and young adults having gender diversity issues have suffered especially.  Embarrassment, shaming, bullying and religious guilt-tripping push many to suicide.  In pockets of the world, it is getting better but certainly not everywhere.

We suggest all this means the people of gender diversity can use extra acceptance, extra understanding and extra love.  So, let’s look at three very important, different kinds of love and what they can mean for the gender diverse.

Healthy, Real Self-Love

Healthy, real self-love is so often extremely important, hugely needed and so very often hard to come by for the people of prevalent and strong gender variation.  The problem is worse wherever there are prevailing anti-gender variation biases, fears, social norms, teachings and laws.  As perhaps you know, some societies, religious groups and families are much more loving and positive toward the gender variant.  Others are very condemning, anti-loving, rejecting, hateful and even murderous.

The gender diverse are so often confronted with overt and covert hate, rejection, exclusion and severe social disapproval.  Sometimes even worse is this.  Whether it is in a family or a whole culture, there frequently is a prevalent teaching something like “you should hate yourself for being anything but straight male or straight female”.  When that teaching becomes an internalized mindset in an individual, the results can be devastatingly self-destructive.

Doing the hard work of finding and growing enough healthy self-love to survive all that can be the best defense.  That is because healthy self-love is something you can carry with you and always have available.  Without sufficient self-love and its strengthen effects, it is very hard to stay okay when hearing “you’re wrong, you’re sinful, you’re sick, you’re not right, etc. for being the way you are”. 

Whether you hear that sort of message internally, externally or both it is destructive.  Depression, anxiety, self rejection, lonely isolation, escape into addiction, breakdowns and suicide all may result.  The good news is all that can be prevented, blocked and reversed with enough healthy self-love.  The bad news is self-love is taught against just as much as gender diversity is taught against and often by the same people.

Gender diverse youth especially are vulnerable to becoming victims of diversity negation coming from culture, society, family, religion, governments and elsewhere.  As gender identity and preference begins to emerge, insecurity and hormonal based confusions tend to mount.  Furthermore, the development of strong, healthy self-love frequently is quite tentative at best among the young.

If you are not strictly heterosexual, go to work on your self-love.  Learn, know and own the fact that you have a lot to offer and certainly are at least just as worthy as any other human being.  Then find out how your variance from standard is a blessing if you use it smartly, bravely and productively.  Most of all, learn and own the following: The core, real you is lovable just the way you are.  Also own that you have healthy, real love to give and that, all by itself, makes you of high value.
If you care about and/or love someone struggling with gender diversity issues, love them by assisting them toward healthy, real self-love.  See this site’s Subject Index concerning healthy self-love for more mini-love-lessons on how to do just that.

Family Love

Those families that offer accepting and affirming love to a gender diverse family member tend to have and keep better cohesiveness, be more resilient and generally function more healthfully and happily.  Those families who try to force or manipulate a family member into a conformist, gender role that the person is not comfortable with, tend to experience severe family disruption and family dysfunction.  Families that reject, shame, personally attack, expel, condemn, guilt trip and are judgmental against someone showing A gender diversity can and are so often ripped apart by these anti-love ways of behaving.

On the other hand, if family members have ongoing clashes about gender issues but they handle disagreements with loving tolerance and democratic acceptance of each other, they can be quite functional and successful.  Likewise, families wounded by gender issue disputes can be healed by activated family love, whether or not they come to agreement on the disputed issues.  Love focused family therapy can be wonderful for this healing process.

Best of all are the loving families that accept, expect and encourage their individual members to develop themselves in whatever way they want to, so long as it is sufficiently healthy.  Love is not dependent on conformity in such families but rather is given freely for whatever variations come about.  Then those variations become enrichments to the family bonded together by family love rather than restricted by compliance.

Friendship Love

Friendship love has been known to save the lives of those suffering conflicts concerning gender.  Friendship love also is known to greatly help lives to be lived well in spite of discrimination, misunderstanding, prejudice, bias, fact free opinions and the other negatives that commonly beset those who are a bit different in gender.  Friendship love also has been known to counterbalance the anti-love effects of hateful, abusive and indifferent families when they cease giving nurturing love to a family member of a diverse gender orientation.

Friendship love is so often a vital element in the development of healthy self-love among the more isolated individual struggling with gender issues.

A big problem arises when a person of gender variation fears peer rejection and, therefore, hides their gender differences, pretending to be someone they are not in regard to gender preference.  They tend not to do the required self-disclosure needed for the development of deep, real, friendship love.  If they do reveal their gender truth about themselves and they receive loving acceptance from a friend or friends, they then may blossom and their social whole world can change for the better.

If they meet with rejection it can be very dangerous unless they have sufficient self-love or other loving friends.  I do understand the fear and self-protectiveness and I suggest careful patience when deciding who might be a worthy friend to share your true self with.  Observe over time who appears open to differences and start with small revelations to test the water before jumping in the deep end.

Those who publicly show openness and acceptance to all gender variations do a great love-positive service.  They give to those struggling to figure out who and what they are gender-wise and to the self rejecting, the chance to know acceptance, inclusion and real friendship is possible for them.  From such demonstrations of open-heartedness, great and enduring friendships have been known to result.
In the next mini-love-lesson, “Gender Diversity – Romantic, Heart-mate Love” we will cover romantic and mated love issues among those of gender diversity.

Help spread love knowledge – tell some people about this site.

As always Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: How much do your ideas and feelings about gender influence who and how you love?

Related posts:

1. Other Genders Love
2. Age Differences and Romantic Love
3. Removing Your Hidden Blocks to Receiving Love Fully
4. Power or Love or Both
5. Does Sexual Preference Influence Love? 

A Sexy Halloween Love Story

Jack and Jill (not their real names, of course) were both in their 90’s and starting to celebrate their 50th Halloween together.  In their first year together as a couple they hosted a very sexy, Halloween party inviting all their friends to come costumed ‘as their favorite sexy character from history or literature’.

Jill had read about Winston Churchill’s mother, Jenny, shocking Victorian London society by going to a big, Royal, costume affair as the prostitute who rose to become Theodora, Empress of the world’s grandest and most glorious Empire, Byzantium.  So, copying Jenny, Jill created her risqué costume, one made up entirely of strings of fake jewels (glass beads) including a totally glorious crown.  Jack went as a sexy sorcerer from a fantasy novel.  The party was a great success, pictures were taken and, thus, the first entry into their Halloween scrapbook was soon thereafter created.

Now, Jack got out the large, old-fashioned, leather bound, orange and black scrapbook and placed it in front of Jill.  Jill poured a glass of their special celebration wine, and they began to look at the pictures from 50 naughty, intimate and ever so love-bonding experiences which they had so happily experienced and created together over the years.

There were pictures from the Halloween, midnight, Goth wedding and party of their best friend’s child, where almost everyone was dressed in weird, black, Goth garb.  They reminisced about the Wicca ceremony which had been surprisingly spiritual and how everyone had cheered as the couple left for their honeymoon in a hearse.  Jack and Jill laughed and smiled knowingly at each other as they turned the pages and paused at a picture of one Halloween night that showed them so very together in their bedroom, lighted only with five, very saucy, carved jack-o’-lanterns which cast amazing, wanton, leering shadows on the walls turning their skin a mischievous orange color.

Other photos were from a nearby city’s gay pride organization’s costume party for everybody, which had been attended by thousands of gays and straights in costumes both ‘beyond the pale’ and beyond belief.  Some pictures were taken at the restaurant which every year held an after Halloween party, 2 AM breakfast reminded of them of the time they arrived and everyone from other parties stood up and clapped because their costumes and those of their friends were so sexy, elaborate and amazing.
Jack and Jill recalled with sadness as they viewed pictures of costumed close friends they had loved but who had since passed away.  They still were amazed by the New Orleans, French Quarter Halloween party where they had seen a woman dressed only in boots, a cat mask and holding two, live leopards on leashes.

The wildest pictures came from the time friends invited them to a nudist colony, costume party where they both went festooned in ribbons as elves. (Let your imagination work on a ‘nude, costume party’).  Jack and Jill hugged each other remembering the time in New England where they attended the telling of Halloween ghost stories at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Many other pictures showed them dancing into the wee hours at a costume ball; carving jack-o’-lanterns with their grandchildren and the friends of grandchildren; other super sexy times, in super sexy costumes, with dear super sexy friends; the Halloween hospital staff party were a nurse won the best costume prize by wearing only very skimpy orange and black bandages; the Boo-at-the-Zoo Halloween party for disadvantaged children where quite a few little tiny Darth Vaders were observed flashing their light sabers.

Then there was the long ago time they, with other Americans in Germany, gave a Halloween party with hand-made cardboard bats, skulls and skeletons everywhere.  Their European guests were very puzzled about this seemingly macabre holiday celebration; they thought it must all have some strange, religious significance, and couldn’t believe all the fun the Americans were having but joined in once they got past their shock.

Jill and Jack got a big laugh viewing the pictures of a dear friend who had come to their party looking extremely ordinary, until you realized he had three arms, one arm which mechanically stretched out stealthily to pinch bottoms and lift skirts at quite a distance.  Jack, once again, expressed his great appreciation for Jill going to the trouble to make a marvelous wizard’s cloak costume for him and one for herself as Queen of the Autumn fairies.  Even more amazing was the costume she had made for him as the Greek god, Pan, and for herself as a woodland sprite.

Pictures of another party where their blackest, dear friend came in a safari outfit explaining he, of course, was “the great white hunter”.  Then there was the time at a Halloween party where Jack and Jill sneaked into a closet to make out, only to find a unicorn getting it on with a fairy princess already there.  Other times of passion, after the guests left their parties were recalled, and they smiled at each other in the most intimate way.

As Jack and Jill went back through the many pages of their scrapbook, they cried together, they laughed often, they talked seriously, and they shared and re-lived great times of spicy and sweet love with one another and with those most dear to them.  Then they went to their special toy chest — where we will leave them now in this little Halloween story of ours.

So, dear reader, are you and yours doing as well at creating love experiences and using things like Halloween to help in that endeavor?  You can, you know!  You can weave together love, sex, intimacy and fun and in doing so grow your love-bonds and love-memories together most magically.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
If your next Halloween was a lover’s Halloween, what would you want it to consist of?

Age Differences and Romantic Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson discusses what is too much age difference; should age matter in love; loves many battles and many victories; why some get so upset and others don’t; love against age prejudice; love theory and age difference.

What Is Too Much Age Difference?

What do you think about a 30-year-old man marrying a 15-year-old girl?  Did you know that for many years marrying at those ages, and with that age difference, used to be considered quite proper and highly desirable.  A man at 30 had had time to establish himself financially and then could properly take care of a ‘sweet young thing’ and their subsequent children.  She was freshly ready for pregnancy.  Even a 20 year difference, if the man was wealthy enough, was seen as quite acceptable.  In those days if he and she were close to each other’s age it was seen as indecent and problematic.

Also, age differences where the woman is older and independently wealthy made it quite acceptable for her to take a younger man as her protégée and lover.  Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, can be said to have ‘set the standard’ for this by having a string of young, officer lovers.  Royalty all over Europe followed suit, as did wealthy courtesans and the wealthier members of the rising middle class.  Twenty, thirty and even forty-year differences in people having affairs with one another and/or marrying was not infrequent.

In the developed nations of the world, the acceptance of wide, age range difference varies greatly.  Nowadays, big differences in age cause many couples to be met with disapproval and condemnation in some social spheres, societies and countries.  To this day in various other parts of the world, romantic love relationships and marriages between people of surprisingly large age difference occur and meet with local acceptance and approval.  Such unions also quite often are seen in those places as working quite well.  I once worked with a Superior Court judge who on following a US supreme court judge’s example, came to love and wed his law clerk, a woman 31 years his junior.  Years later both reported being ideal for one another and their union extremely happy.  Of course, this is not always the case.

Should Age Difference Matter in Love?

Some argue that any two, single adults who profess love for one another, no matter what their age difference, should be treated with acceptance and respect as they carry out their relationship with one another.  Others argue that there is something unseemly, indecent or pathological about people of greatly varying age trying to romantically love each other.  There are those who hold a five-year difference to be questionable, an eight year difference to be dubious and anything more than a ten year difference to be reprehensible.  Still others think we should celebrate any two people trying to do real love with one another, no matter what their age or other differences are.

I once counseled a couple in which she was a vivacious 60 and he a very mature 32.  Their big problem was that their families were not able to accept the age disparity.  With love, time, work, plus a lot of family therapy they got most, but not all, of their respective family members acceptance.  I have seen other families expel and reject a family member because of who they wanted to wed and the age disparity issue.  I also have dealt with a few families in which the adult children were horrified that their widower father wanted to marry a woman younger than the father’s oldest child.  Eventually those situations also turned out okay for all concerned, with a lot of therapeutic help.

Love’s Many Battles and Many Victories

In the history of love, time and again love has battled social norms, changed customs, overcome prohibitions and altered or abolished laws aimed at restricting love relationships.  Often at great cost, love usually eventually wins.  In a great many different places and times, it has been deemed wrong and even unlawful for people to attempt to love one another and get married if they were of different social classes, religions, ethnic backgrounds, races, clans, casts, political ranks, handedness, types of disability and just about every other kind of classification you can think of.  Getting married to a redhead or someone who had too many freckles was even once considered a ‘big no-no’ and, Heaven forbid, if they should also be left-handed – all signs of Satanic involvement you see.

Royals could not marry commoners, mulattos, octoroons and quadroons could only marry others of their same or lesser classification, and Roman Catholics should never get romantically involved with Eastern Orthodox Catholics or, even worse, with Protestants.  And until quite recently, homosexuals should not marry anyone unless it was a heterosexual and part of their attempt to change into the same.  Still to this day, in some places around the world marrying someone who has a prohibited difference can get you jailed or even killed.  Age differences have been one of the few prohibitive factors to have more recently developed in certain areas of the world in the last hundred years.

Why Some Get Upset and Others Don’t

In some parts of the world a lot of people get very upset and even nauseated seeing or hearing about people of large age differences loving each other.  In other parts of the world no one thinks anything about it except “how nice, they love each other”.  What makes the difference?  There are the Freudian theorists who talk about Oedipal conflicts and mommy and daddy fixation.  Some think it is just social conditioning.  Here is another concept that seems to have considerable merit for answering this question.

Some cultures are very age integrated and others much more age segregated.  Generally the more a society or nation operates to keep its people age group segregated from each other, the more people in those age groups do not understand or do well with people in the other age groups.  In such places, age group prejudice grows, misconceptions abound, and it is more likely that differing age group cooperation and coordination becomes much more problematic.  Wherever elders are not frequently mixed with adolescents and children, conflicts between these classifications are seen as much more likely.  The reverse also is seen to be true.  The more people of different ages mingle the more they do well together, come to respect, like and love people in other age categories.  People in age integrated societies are thought to tolerate and accept age differences in romance far more readily.

Love Against Age Prejudice

If you romantically love someone considerably older or younger than the norms of those you associate with, you likely will meet with at least some disapproval, rejection, possibly ostracization, and in some instances even hate.  What can you do?  Well, actually you can do a lot.  First, you can work to understand that ‘rejection usually is a form of self protection, brought on by fear’.  Fear of change, difference, the unknown, being wrong, and a fear of deep, unacceptable forces emerging from within the self,  all are possible

Next, you can love your enemies, rejecters, nay-sayers and doubters, knowing they probably somehow feel threatened by your love choices.  Then, you can seek out and ally yourself with those who are more openhearted and open-minded.  Another thing to do is to really work hard to learn and practice the skills of love and use them to really succeed at your major, love relationship.  After that, and with love, keep showing your detractors how happy and successful you and your chosen are with one another.

In cases of family dissonance about age differences, a proficient, well trained and experienced family therapist has been known to make all the difference.

Love Theory and Age Difference

Among adults, love is not seen as being bound by age.  Once people have attained sufficient maturation, any two people can healthfully and romantically love each other.  There always are special drawbacks and challenges to every kind of difference in a love relationship.  However, that also is true for couples with many similarities.  With sufficient healthy, real love, skillfully given and received, handling age and every other kind of difference can be managed and accomplished significantly well.  When loving couples custom tailor their relationship, instead of trying over-hard to fit themselves to outside, social norms, they can do especially well if they work at it.  It does seem true that the greater the difference, the greater the need for love to be done well.  At least that is a postulated love theory position (see also “Elder Love”).
Now what do you think?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Could you romantically come to love someone a good bit older or younger than yourself, and might that actually work better than someone closer to your own age?

Related posts:

1. Does “Cougar” Love Work?
2. Marriage By Love or by Law
3. Are Love and Marriage Getting a Divorce?
4. Virginity Surpassed and Parental Love 

Love Against Bigotry

Mini-Love-Lesson  #233

Synopsis: The dangers of bigotry for its targets, practitioners and those who fight it; personal questions to face; bigotry more deeply defined with a deeper psychological understanding of its dynamics and causes; Adamant Love as bigotry’s best enemy; the survival necessity of fighting bigotry and three major ways to fight bigotry with love are well and succinctly presented in this mini-love-lesson.

Tough Love May Be Required

Bigotry is dangerous!  Not only does bigotry cause harm to others but eventually it becomes self-destructive to those who obsessively practice it.  It works much like a dangerous, contagious disease often subtly spreading and becoming more virulent and resistant to cure as it infects more and more of the vulnerable.  That is when the hate and fear-based core of toxic bigotry can come to dominate the entire life of the bigot destroying everything even connection to other bigots which is thought to be the last thing to go.  Family life, social life, physical and mental health, self-care and everything constructive usually eventually suffers due to bigotry’s pathological effects.  Physical disease susceptibility tends to grow and bring about a final demise of the profoundly bigoted.  That is part of what research into bigotry is revealing.  Research also gives evidence to bigotry being a serious and dangerous, pathological psychodynamic for all concerned (Check out The Violence of Hate, 3ed. by Jack Levine and Jim Nolan).

Of course, in many people bigotry appears in milder and more restricted forms.  Even there, research suggests it has a corrosive effect on its practitioners, on their healthier relationships and on the people they effect.  Even in its milder forms, bigotry retards progress and advancement by merit, and thus, it works to limit societal improvement.

There is one good thing about bigotry.  Paradoxically throughout history, bigotry has been a great help to the countries who welcome the refugees of bigotry.  Many countries’s best and highest achievers in countless fields were once escapees from persecutory bigotry.

Combating bigotry can also can be quite dangerous at times.  Done unwisely and without sufficient self-care, bigotry can get you and yours hurt, harmed and, although rarely, may even get you or yours killed.  However, not fighting bigotry can arrive at very similar results, but perhaps for different victims.  Often it is the innocent, uninformed and the unaware who fall victim to bigotry’s most dangerous acting-out manifestations.

Love (not reason or facts) is bigotry’s most successful enemy.  But because of bigotry’s considerable danger, opposition is best accomplished through tough love, or more accurately, love’s strongest most powerful form known as Adamant Love (see “Adamant Love – and How It Wins for Us All”).  Softer forms of love, such as compassionate love, usually are treated by bigots as only contemptible weakness.  Reason and facts have their place but they only treat, if at all, the surface symptoms of bigotry (fallacious thinking) not even touching the profound hate-undergirding fear and bigotry’s deep roots in personal love deprivation.

Know Your Enemy

What exactly is bigotry?  What causes bigotry?  Who becomes a bigot?  Are you or those you care about perhaps unknowingly infected with the seeds of pathological bigotry?  Most importantly what can be done that works to prevent and defeat bigotry?  To effectively go against bigotry, it helps to have good answers to these and similar questions.  For all that, here is a bit of assistance.

Bigotry More Deeply Defined

Overtly and at the surface symptom level, bigotry simply can be defined as stubborn and intense intolerance of any opinion, belief, creed, policy, tenant or lifestyle differing from one’s own.  More completely, bigotry is also obstinate intolerant, blind devotion to one’s own opinions, prejudice, viewpoints, lifestyle and one’s own identity tribe’s myths, mores, customs, values, hatreds, conceptualized enemies and hierarchies done to the defensive exclusion of the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of outside other identity groups or tribes.

A Psychological Understanding of Bigotry

A deeper more psychological understanding suggests that bigotry is a deep-seated, unconscious fear and insecurity about being replaced and reduced in importance, and not having the qualities and attributes necessary to maintain one’s level of importance, status and general sense of okayness.  Hate-filled bigotry seems to be most strongly activated when the bigoted perceive or sense they are in danger of having their own inadequacies exposed and social standing reduced.  This is especially onerous to bigots when it involves being compared to what they consider to be lower status identity groups which might gain higher status over their own.

Such inadequacy fears activate the brain’s defensive emergency power systems of anger, hatred, rejection and tendencies for exclusionary and/or destructive action taking.  Cognitively, the resulting symptomatic thought process is one of self-justifying rationalization rather than real reasoning, dodging, denial and distortion of facts coupled with irrational protective blaming.

This is well revealed in the white nationalist’s marching chant, “Jews will not take our jobs”.  Exposed in this chant is the secret, underlying fear that jews have what it takes to take their jobs away from them.  Furthermore, the secret fear is the white nationalists do not have sufficient adequacy to hold on to their jobs in the face of the  Jewish competition which is seen as unfair and perverse.

What Causes Bigotry

“You have to teach them to hate before they are six, or seven or eight” so goes, the once banned, line from the musical South Pacific.  This expresses the simple truth that in many families children are raised to be hate-filled and secretly fear-filled offspring of their likewise-minded parents and relatives.  Add exclusionary hate-filled religion, authoritarian sociopolitical thinking, autocratic charismatic leaders and a simple lack of education delineating the superior advantages of healthy, real love and democracy and you have the social milieu ethos that breeds bigotry.

Another cause seems to have to do with erratic and inefficient love in infancy and childhood.  Research indicates certain patterns of erratic and inconsistent love behaviors occurring in the raising of infants and children cause long-lasting insecurities as well as certain deficiencies in normal physical growth.  Both human children and laboratory animals raised with these love deprivation behavioral patterns develop larger fear-based reactions to new and different things and others entering their environment.  In children, this sometimes takes the form of obvious bigotry type reactions.  In laboratory animals especially monkeys, more primitive withdrawal, fear and angry attack behaviors toward the new and different occur.  Behaviorally, consistently well loved lab animals show mostly friendly curiosity toward the new and different.

Some developmental researchers suspect that in the above situation of inconsistent, reassuring love which occurs during certain critical periods of brain development, the amygdala (a brain part having to do with processing fear) may be damaged and become lifelong prone to producing stronger and more frequent fear feelings, interpretations and resulting fear-based behaviors.  Such children are suspected of becoming more highly susceptible to developing bigotry-filled outlooks on life and especially toward anything or anyone new and different.

Similarly, certain research results in the neurosciences and genetics suggests some people inherit amygdalas that easily overproduce, and too frequently produce, strong fear and resulting defensive anger reactions when encountering new and different others.  Other brains, especially those of children securely loved in their infancy, tend to produce happy curiosity on encountering the same new and different others.  The genetic neuroscience results posit that between 10% and 40% of bigotry may be attributable to genetics.

The highly healthfully, self loving and those who live in happy, healthful, love-interactive, inclusive and not isolationistic networks tend to be those least prone to developing bigotry.

Likewise, those who have the most frequent personal contact with people of varying identity groups tend to be the most comfortable and appreciative of people differing from themselves.  Those who have the least contact with people of identity groups different than their own tend to exhibit the most fear of differing others.  Basically, more contact equals more comfort and less bigotry.

Adamant Love Can Defeat Bigotry

Love naturally opposes bigotry.  Healthy, real love is kind, compassionate, not easily threatened, inclusive not exclusive, prone to seek the well-being of all, brave and much more – just as Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Rumi and the Scriptures of the major religions of the world have taught us.  Bigotry is fear-based, hate empowered, exclusionary, unkind, easily threatened, defensively aggressive and prone to seek only the well-being of the similarly bigoted.

Adamant love is the type of love which is strong, determined, steadfast, powerful in face of adversity and in the service of the well-being of the loved (see “Adamant Love – and How It Wins for Us All”).  It, therefore, is likely the form of love best able to powerfully combat the fear and hate of militant bigotry.  Other forms of love such as compassionate love and serene love also have a roles to play.

Working and Fighting for Love Victories Is the Best Option!
Let me suggest, it is good but not enough to be against bigotry, hate, prejudice, inequality, etc.  It works better to also be for what needs to go in place of those things, or in other words, fill the vacuum that defeating bigotry leaves.  Otherwise, like weeds, they return.  Growing evidence points to humanitarian, altruistic and inclusive, healthy, real love being the best, strongest and most positive vacuum filler.

Wherever love loses, and bigotry, hate and/or indifference wins, history shows disintegration, destruction and demise become the eventual outcome.  This proves true for couples, families, societies, nations, cultures and even empires.  You can read all about that in A New Reality by Drs Jonas and Jonathan Salk and in several of Jonas Salk’s previous works.  This is also well backed by the work of Dr. Reuben Fine in The Meaning of Love in Human Experience and also in Love and Survival by Dr. Dean Ornish.

Three Ways to Fight Bigotry with Love!

First arm yourself with knowledge about the behaviors that convey healthy, real love.  That knowledge and those behaviors become your primary tools or, if you prefer, weapons by which you can fight for and with love and against bigotry (see “Behaviors that Give Love – The Basic Core Four” and Link “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”).

Now for a little personal example.  At an interfaith conference, I once had the privilege of seeing the theologian, Nels Ferre, lovingly handle being confronted by two very angry and accusatory Palestinian graduate students.  Through the sincere use of love listening techniques, friendly facial expressions, kind tones of voice, open arm gestures and non-combative questions, he literally loved them into receptiveness.  The next day they were all walking to breakfast together laughing and acting like long-standing comrades.  Best of all, the Palestinians were now very interested in listening to Dr. Ferre’s input, where before, interruptive attack statements were all they seemed capable of.

You might want to review what your own religious tradition teaches about love.  Most major religions have very important, healthy, positive things to say about how we are to love one another – which turns out to be in surprising agreement with each other.

If and when you encounter anyone talking or acting in bigoted ways, think about not arguing with them or being silent but rather with kind, expressional love (see “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”) asking them a few questions and perhaps later getting around to a short, positive, personal testimony, laudatory statement about the people they seem to be against.  Imagine saying something like “what you’re saying about them could be true, I suppose, but my own personal experience with them has been mostly quite positive.  Why do you suppose that is?”  In this way you use some of your behaviors of love tools, usually avoid the wasted energy of combativeness, and just possibly get your positive message actually heard a bit.

Second, Live Social Diversity!  The research is clear.  The more people personally experience those of other identity groups the more bigotry, negative bias and prejudice diminish and feelings of fraternity grow.  There are exceptions but not nearly as many as researchers once thought likely.  Those people who have the least contact with any outside identity group tend to exhibit the most fear, disapproval, intolerance, and bigotry toward that group.  It has long been noted that, for the most part, it is not the people who live along a peaceful border who are intolerant of those on the other side but those who live further in-land away from that border, and out of contact with those people across the border.

So, though it is sometimes complicated and difficult work to seek contact with those who are different and diverse from yourself and your own identity group, I bet it will prove well worth it.  In your own environment, ponder who are the most likely targets of bigotry, exclusionary treatment, negative bias and derogatory opinions.  Seek some of them out.  Start with the concept that if you get to know some of them you probably will be considerably enriched by interacting with them.  And you probably have a lot to learn from them that will be ever so good for you to learn.  Not only that, you will increasingly enjoy it and, who knows, you may make a truly loving friendship or two.

Almost everywhere there are both informal and organized groups of people made up of those who interact with and/or support people who are more different from you but who are open to your inclusion.  It takes a little social bravery and doing a bit of homework but you can find and start befriending some of them.  They may be a little protectively standoffish at first but keep being friendly and you can put them in your life and be better for it and likely so will they.

Third, join and become active in one or more groups that actively fight for or work for positive social diversity interaction and democratic equality/inclusiveness.  You also can join and be active in groups that fight against hate, bigotry and various forms of destructive prejudice and authoritarian anti-democratic movements (Check out the prevention programs of the International Network for Hate Studies and the Counter Bigotry Action Report of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee).

You can do these things both locally and in much wider ways.  For instance, both globally and locally and also for an easy start you might want to join up with Friendship Force International where you get to fairly inexpensively travel to and live briefly with people in other countries all over the world.  Then you get to host some of them in your home if you wish.  Remember, Mark Twain told us “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness”.

So, the challenge is be a part of those who fight for the ways of healthy, real love and against the anti-love forces of bigotry, hatred, prejudice, etc.  Part of that challenge is to not live inactive or indifferent about love.  Both inaction and indifference assist the anti-love forces which would and could destroy us all.

One More Little Thing.  How about talking all this over with somebody and in the process tell them about our FREE mini-love-lessons and our FREE subscriptions.  We would appreciate that.

As always – Go and Grow with Love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Quotable Question:  Could the human race lose the race for human survival because enough humans didn’t fight hard enough for treating one another with the ways of love?

Religion, Love and Mental-Health

“Religion has done me a lot more harm than good,” Molly angrily proclaimed.

Preston, her lover of 6 months, replied with a serious, worried look, “In my way of looking at it religion has been a lifesaver, and it’s what gets me through the bad times”.  Molly folded her arms across her chest and firmly announced, “It took me a lot of work to get over what religion did to me and if we go further in this relationship I don’t want us, or our kids if we decide to have any, to have anything to do with it.”

Preston turned to me with a sad look saying, “Dr. Cookerly, which is it?  Will religion do us more harm or good?  Is our religious difference going to sink us?”  Molly added, “Is religion, if we get into it, going to be a constructive or a destructive thing like it was for me?  You can see this is huge for us and it’s the only big thing keeping Preston and me from going deeper in our relationship.  Can you help us with this?”

Having worked for years with many ‘buckle of the Bible belt’ individuals, couples and families, and later working with a large number of multi-cultural and bi-religion couples and families, I am well acquainted with religion issue questions.  I usually explain that I approach my client’s religion and spiritual issues in counseling as a mental-health professional and not as a theologian or religionist.  As both a psychotherapist and a relational therapist I can agree with Molly that I have seen many people more harmed by some religious involvements than benefited.  I also can agree with Preston having seen religion be a lifesaver, a great helper in the worst of times, and the most constructive influence in many people’s lives.

Sometimes individuals, couples, families and even whole communities are ruined by clashing and destructive religious-based actions, beliefs, judgmentalism, guilt training, and downright sick ways of going about things.  Likewise, by way of religion individuals, couples, families and communities often are healed, reconciled, inspired and re-directed toward healthier, richer, fuller lives through religion.  So the counseling focus for Molly and Preston, and for so many like them, is a three-part question.  Will their religious involvement be more healthful, or more destructive, or will it be the seeming safety of non-involvement?

To help the people I work with discover what their healthiest approach will be concerning religion I start by asking about love.  That’s because how much healthy, real love is, or is not mixed with religion has a lot to do with the mental-health effect the religion has in its participants’ lives.   Starting with simple questions often leads to deep thinking and discussions.  “How’s the love?”  “Where’s the love?”  “Are the people there mostly about love or mostly about something else?”  “How much of what they teach is about love?”  “Is love evident in the practice and actions of the people who practice that religion?”  “Is love central to what’s going on with that religion?”

These and other such questions are typical and important explorations.  Soon we’re talking about how much healthy, real love (see the entries Love’s Definition series) is in evidence at the church, mosque, synagogue, temple, sacred studies class, prayer group, etc. they are contemplating being a part of?

From this mental-health professional’s perspective when considering a religious issue the prime focus is helping clients examine the mental and relational health influence of their religious involvement.  The quickest and best way to start on that is to explore the love issue.  How much is healthy, real love actively being taught and demonstrated by the practitioners of the religion, or religions, being considered?  Likewise, how much anti-healthy, real love teachings and actions are evident in the religious involvement being considered?

Next, it is usually important to look at the following question: In the teachings of the religion being considered is there a high priority placed on compassionate, caring, empathetic, healthy, real love?  Sometimes there is only ‘lip service’ given to compassion and caring love but little or no action.  Here’s another important question.  Where is the love manifest – toward all people or only a select few?  To the clients I’m talking to I also may ask, “How much love do you personally experience coming from the people and the leadership of the religion you’re exploring or getting involved in?”  “Are you dealing with truly love-centered people, or are they practicing more of a ‘fire insurance’ religion where the main interest is just keeping their members out of Hell?”

Also we look into, “Are you getting involved in a religious group where the main thrust is doing healthful love, or is their main dynamic sort of like a game of ‘we are OK, and everyone else is not OK’?”  Could you be in a religion, or subgroup of a religion, which is just a mutual support group for arrogance and safe, social conformity?  Often essential is an answer to this question: As you understand it and discover it, do the religious teachings, scriptures, educational efforts and practices of the religion’s leaders truly exemplify healthy, real love?

Some religious leaders are good at ‘fake love’ so this is sometimes hard to discern.  Is the religion and are the people of the religion love-centered or more centered in status, money, fear, guilt, control or what?  Yes, the first issue to look at, as I see it, has to do with ‘how goes the love’ in the religion and its practitioners.  If the people practicing a religion are not sufficiently about love I have grave doubts about how mentally healthy your experience with them and their ways might be.

It is unfortunate that, as practiced, some religionists are centered on doing non-love and anti-love things.  There are those in religion who just are going through the motions and they are pretty much indifferent, lifeless and loveless.  Others are ‘exclusivity groups’ primarily protecting each other from the new and the different.  A surprising number are primarily about money, and others are about status.  Then there are the groups that are principally about hate.  From a mental-health point of view they are the worst.  Too many others are more about dictatorially telling people what not to do, rather than lovingly suggesting what to do.

Those that are truly love-centered and love-active usually can be found doing great love-centered and love-infused good works helping others.  Their teachings more often tend to coincide with good mental-health concepts and they are actively assisting people toward compassionate, caring, constructive, loving ways of living.  Find and become involved with those groups and you are likely to be much more benefited than harmed.

Now, with those thoughts in mind there is a tricky thing to watch out for.  Some religious groups do ‘fake love’.  This especially is a problem with cults and cult-like groups who practice ‘love bombing’ their candidates for conversion.  This means a person new to the religious cult will be hugged, praised, complimented and well treated so as to get that person addicted to the cult.  Once they are a convert they will be asked for lots of their time, money, effort, etc. and to make sacrifices for the good of the cult.

They also will be pushed toward isolation from ‘unbelievers’ including friends and family, and encouraged to suspend their self-determination and self-directed living.  The convert is, in essence, programmed to not function as a mentally healthy adult but rather as an obedient, unquestioning child.  Reason, skepticism and what we usually think of mature, adult thinking have to be surrendered to the dogmatic tenants and interpretations of the leadership.  Acceptance of the dogma and the leader’s mandates will become primary and real love tertiary at best.

All this and much more were part of Molly and Preston’s discussions concerning religion.  Then Preston asked Molly if she would do him a big love-favor by going to some different religious services, reading different religious material, experimentally engage in some different religious rituals, and be around some different religious groups.  He explained he would like these things to be done so as to jointly get some real experience with religion beyond discussion.  Molly gave this a fair amount of thought and then said she would, if he would endure (out of love for her), any and all doubt, criticism, skepticism and irreverence she might manifest.  She did, however, promise to be publicly polite and respectful.

Preston agreed.  Before they went exploring, however, they made a list of what they thought would be the criteria of a mentally healthy religion which is centered in healthy, real love.  They drew up a list of their own questions and actually were having fun doing this together.  Previously they had been very stuck and only able to destructively argue with one another concerning religion.  Molly said she was going about this exploration like a scientist and pronounced her hypothesis which was that they would never find a religion that would be sufficiently mentally healthy and sufficiently love-centered.  However, she promised to be open minded and to really look at the evidence.

Preston then made his hypothesis which was that they would find at least one, and probably several, religious groups that were mentally healthy and love-centered, and that their involvement in one or more of them would do them a world of good.  Then as a fully loving, good-natured couple they went out to explore and see what they could jointly discover.
Hopefully you and your loved ones can do as well if needed.

Grow and Go with Love, as always!

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Might it be healthful for you to analyze what role religion has played in your own mental health and in your ability to love and be loved?

Related posts:

1. Multiple Sex Partners and Love
2. Do You Want To Say ‘Love’ When You Mean ‘Sex’?
3. Virginity Surpassed and Parental Love
4. Ready or Not for Love?
5. Marriage By Love or by Law

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Poly Love

Synopsis: Uncle Charlie’s introduction to a love weirdness; The Poly Advantage; Questions and Quandaries; Personal Questions; and the Worldwide Scene.

Uncle Charlie’s Introduction to a Love ‘Weirdness’

Jackie opened the door and said, “Hi Mom, Dad, Uncle Charlie.  Come on in and meet two of the guys I’m considering marrying or at least someday living with”.

Dad and Mom looked at her a bit sheepishly and Uncle Charlie looked happily confused but interested. Uncle Charlie said, “So what are you going to do with the husband you already have”?  “I’ll keep him too of course,” Jackie replied.  “All three at the same time?”, Charlie asked, acting like he was sort of going along with a joke.  “Yes, all three, at least some of them at the same time,” Jackie replied in a serious, contemplative tone of voice.

Uncle Charlie looked more puzzled.  “Ah hah,” said Jackie turning to her mother and father.  “You haven’t told him I’m a Poly, have you?”  Jackie’s father spoke up saying, “ I would just get him confused trying to explain it, because I haven’t quite figured it out yet myself”.  Jackie then replied, “Come on in to dinner and I’ll see if I can explain it to you without too much confusion and maybe even without too much embarrassment.”  More people arrived and were introduced as friends and part of Jackie’s “poly” network.  At dinner Jackie explained. “Poly love, or more officially Polyamory, is about two or more people openly loving each other, usually in an ongoing relationship, while acting supportive of their lover’s other love relationships.

“Here’s a basic concept.  If you love somebody you want the one you love to have what they want and need.  Many of us want and need more than one romantic or mate-like relationship.  Therefore, if someone we love intimately wants or needs others we want them to have those relationships.  Since you can love two or more parents, two or more siblings, two or more children,  two or more friends at the same time why not two or more lovers or love mates?

“There are different societies around the world who have lived this love style for hundreds even thousands of years.  More accurately poly love styles, in a variety of different ways, but none of them make for exclusive one-on-one living or for being dishonest about it.  Polys tend to argue that our culture’s way is ‘phony monogamy’ but actually it’s serial polygamy or polyandry with lots of dishonesty.  Affairs, adultery, unfaithfulness, cheating and the like, occur in over half the marriages pretending to be monogamous.  So much doesn’t get shared that deep sharing realness and real intimacy of the heart hardly have a chance.”

Uncle Charlie, an open-minded and bold sort of fella said, “So, let me ask the big question in my mind. What about sex ?  I can’t help but suspect all this Polyamory stuff is all just a mask for a form of ‘swinging’?”  Jackie laughed openly and everyone else giggled or blushed a bit.  “Sex is usually included but not always.  With some, Poly love is done more like long-lasting, deep friendship while relationships in the swinging world tend to be more shallow and brief, though that’s not always true.  But with us Polys it’s really not primarily about sex.  That’s more for ordinary singles, swingers and of course cheaters.  We Poly people are about the people we love having what they need and want, and that can include lots of sex with lots of people, though it usually is confined to a much smaller number of very special people”.

Uncle Charlie looking a bit devilish said, “Again let me ask, altogether at once?”  Jackie responded, “That can happen and does with some Polys.  For other Polys sex is a more private, one-on-one sort of thing.  Again it’s much more about healthy, real love that’s open and honest”.

The Poly Advantage

One of the other dinner guests then spoke up, “The Poly way has a great big advantage.  It is non-deceitful, non-possessive, non-controlling, non-restrictive and non-exclusive.  When you lust or feel love for another, which I think every spirited, really alive person does, you don’t have to hide it from those closest and dearest to you.”

Another guest at the table who had been quietly listening said, “The Poly way saves us from cheating and all the lies that go with it.  If you have a forbidden desire you get to talk about it instead of hiding and feeling bad about yourself about having the desire.  It also means having a whole lot more love in your life, and with it a whole lot more joy –  at least that’s the way I experience it”.

Then Sandra shyly spoke up saying, “Let me tell you my experience.  Before I became a Poly I was always afraid of losing whatever love I had, so I always had to secretly have a second lover on the side.  Time and again that meant someone found out what I was secretly doing on the side and there were horrible fights and a horrible breakup and a whole lot of time spent suffering and also in recovery.  Then the whole thing would start again. That nearly killed me.  I mean literally.  I nearly suicided twice.

“Then I got introduced to the Poly thing.  I learned I really have what it takes to love and be loved a lot.  It just seems natural to me.  What was messing it up was dishonesty and a value system which made sexual fidelity and monogamy more important than what I think of as natural, real love or truth.  When monogamy or sexual singularity are more important than love it can destroy love.  I’ve heard it said that whatever we make more important than love ruins love, and I think that’s true for me at least.  Now I see that anyone dumb or insecure enough to want to abandon me over who else I love probably isn’t right for me anyway.  Breaking up would hurt some but see I have deep and abiding love with the most wonderful set of other people, so I know I’m not going to be unloved. It’s more like the family you can count on, and I wouldn’t trade anything for it.  I know it’s not for everyone but it works way better for me than what I was doing before”.

Questions and Quandaries

Well, the evening went on with lots of humor, occasional tender, caring feelings and a surprising amount of frank, open honesty.  Some talked of their failures at being Poly and the failures of others they had known who tried it and found it wanting.  There was quite a lot of talk going on about children with some parents strongly testifying how much seeing their parents go Poly had done for them.  Others, of course, were very dubious about that part.

A lot of the other ways that a Poly lifestyle can be lived also got mentioned.  Handling jealousy and insecurity, plus the role of healthy self-love in doing so was focused on for a time.  How a Poly love lifestyle was being a great benefit to bisexuals in the Poly community was generally agreed on.  The question of “is Poly love real love?” resulted in people saying “sometimes yes and sometimes no”.  All acknowledged that false forms of love could happen in Poly relationships just like in monogamous relationships.  Also everybody agreed Poly love took just as much or more work as any other kind of relationship.  While it seemed like a sort of salvation for some, it was seldom easy, especially at first.

Some put forth the idea that it’s the English-speaking peoples that have the most trouble with Poly lifestyles, while maybe northern Europeans, the French, Polynesians and certain special indigenous people in China were more likely to do well with it.  Jackie’s parents testified to the fact that their daughter was happier this way than she ever had been before and that was what mattered to them.  Uncle Charlie said this dinner party had been the best conversational circus he had ever gone to, and he had never experienced so many surprising thoughts that he would have to think about a lot more and he was going to do just that.

Personal Questions And the Worldwide Scene

So, dear reader, how do you think you would go home from a dinner party like that one? What might your personal questions be?  If some of your close friends or family were to be revealed living a Poly lifestyle what would that mean to you?  Since all polls and other indicators show the Poly lifestyle to be growing with Poly clubs in every major city and many minor ones, Poly national and international conventions popping up all over the Western world, parts of the Far East , South America and especially North America, seminars talks, group discussions, Internet sites, online magazines and lots more, it seems likely you are going to run into it sooner or later personally.

Perhaps you already have.  It seems like a lot of people keep their Poly involvement kind of quiet because, after all, it is a rather personal thing.  As to love and lifestyles, the world seems to be changing one relationship at a time.  Concerning yourself, those closest to you, family, children, neighbors, etc. if any of them want you to come with them to the gathering of the Polys what you think you are likely to do if you haven’t already?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Are you more puzzled, threatened, dismissive, angered, worried, curious, amused, conflicted, inspired, excited, encouraged or just don’t know what to think by the Poly lifestyle?

Special note: Thanks to the several people who have requested this topic be addressed.  Sorry we didn’t get to it sooner.  For those new to the topic you might want to Google “Polyamory”, there’s lots of information at lots of different sites. Yes, there is likely to be more on this topic from time to time, along with information about other “alternative” lifestyles and how love is being carried out in those lifestyles, along with the “traditional”.