What is LOVE, Dr. Cookerly?: problems

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Does Jealousy Prove Love?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always – grow in love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Forgiveness - A Much-Needed Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love lesson starts with the question “why forgive?”; then goes on to forgiveness is about the future more than the past; a surprising reason we don’t forgive; sex and forgiveness; the risk of forgiveness; big love forgives, small love does not; growing forgiveness; and ends with a forgiveness challenge.

Why forgive?

“Forgiveness is so hard. Why should I try to do it?” Often the answer is because not doing forgiveness is even harder. Not forgiving frequently means not healing.

In my work as a relational therapist I have dealt with couples where one or both have shot, poisoned, stabbed or tried to run over their mate with a car and who have come to forgive those actions and all that led to them. I have dealt with several hundred couples who have experienced infidelity, even repeated infidelity and all the deceit that goes with it and yet through forgiveness and healthy, real love development many are happy, successful couples today.

The most amazing examples of forgiveness I have seen came in my work with the parents and families of murdered children. Parents who sit before the convicted murders of their own, most precious children and yet still offer forgiveness to those murders. They love beyond my own love capabilities but not beyond my ability to be awed by them. Intellectually I understand that those who do not forgive are likely to never heal and to be forever be more troubled.

Emotionally my heart goes out to those who cannot yet forgive and experience the healing which forgiveness brings. When we forgive we are on the path to recovery. When we forgive we can let go and let that which wounded us recede into our past. Frequently forgiveness offers the one who is doing the forgiving more than what is offered to the one who is forgiven. To not forgive is to not let a wound heal and continues the harm one has experienced.

Forgiveness Is about the Future More Than the Past

Forgiveness offers a chance for a cleaner, lighter, brighter future. To not forgive poisons the future by carrying the past into it. This works as much for the one doing the forgiveness as the one receiving it. Honest to God, real love demands and requires forgiveness for both individuals and relationships so that the future of both has a chance. The future of both individuals and relationships can be especially sabotaged by seeking revenge, trying to ‘get even’, recrimination and bitter, endless judgmentalism.

Forgiveness does not have to be coupled with giving someone another chance but if another chance is to be attempted loving forgiveness is likely to be essential. Forgiveness clears the way for making new and better things happen. It is especially necessary in a couple’s ongoing life together. In every couple’s relationship there are small, medium and sometimes large things to be forgiven, gotten past and left behind. This also can be true of most deep friendships and lots of family relationships. This also is true of self forgiveness.

A Surprising Reason for Why We Don’t Forgive

“ I can’t forgive her! I just can’t forgive her cheating on me. I can’t forgive or forget her adultery”. This was Jake’s painful lament as he sat in front of me to start working on his recovery from discovering his wife in bed with another. I said, “Yes, you were hurt tremendously by your wife’s betrayal but I have to ask you, Jake, what do you have yet to learn from this terrible experience?” Jake replied “Why do you ask that? “ My reply was “Because in my experience sometimes we cannot forgive because we have yet to learn what we need to learn”.

Jake at first was baffled. However, in time and with work he discovered he had had a part to play which had helped motivate his wife toward cheating. He didn’t cause it but he contributed to it, and he needed to learn his part so he wouldn’t do it again. He slowly came to realize he too often was far too unloving, indifferent, inattentive and uncaring. He took his wife and his marriage for granted while mostly focusing his life on career success.

Jake also prioritized being tough, strong and authoritative far above being loving or lovable. In human interaction “winning” was much more important to him than cooperation and collaboration. This especially was true in the way he treated his wife and his children. Jake remembered his troubled teenage daughter once saying to him, “There’s just no way I can win with you, Dad. So I’m going to quit trying.” After that they grew increasingly distant from one another.

Sex and Forgiveness

One other thing Jake learned concerned his own sexuality. He was secretly afraid other men were more potent and could sexually perform better than he. As long as he was secretly insecure, forgiving his wife’s sexual infidelity meant facing his fear that he was sexually inadequate and that his wife had sexually experienced something better than he had to offer. However, once he had discovered and admitted this openly in therapy he became surprisingly open to developing a new and better sexuality, forgiving his wife, and starting with her again as she had asked him to do.
This is often the way it works.

Once a person learns what they need to learn about themselves and their own areas of weakness that need strengthening, it becomes a bit easier to forgive. This can be true even for people who have been heavily brought up to believe that sexual infidelity is unforgivable. Is it not interesting that what is sexually unforgivable in one culture is fairly unimportant in another, and even is considered admirable in still another culture.

The Risk of Forgiveness

Another reason we don’t forgive is that unless it is done with wisdom forgiveness can set you up for repeated, painful experiences. For many people forgiveness is not offered because they fear it makes them vulnerable and more likely to be hurt again. When forgiveness is seen as something ‘you do in your heart’ and that it is all right to join forgiveness with adequate self protection, it becomes an easier choice (See the entry Forgiveness in Healthy Self-Love).

It is important to realize that forgiveness can put you at risk. It is perfectly healthy to limit your risk to something you are pretty sure you can handle. Could you say and mean something like “I forgive you but I have my own problem of being vulnerable and repeating my own mistakes, so I’m not going to return to our relationship again. Therefore, I forgive you and wish you well. Goodbye.” That’s one way to deal with the risk of forgiveness.

Love often takes risking or gambling on the person you love. That often means you do give them another chance and risk again experiencing deception, betrayal and emotional pain. Strong and sufficient love often pushes us to forgive and risk again. That does not mean to try in ways that enable and reward being used and misused endlessly. Cooperatively making a clearly defined contract or agreement before starting over may help to minimize the risk and pain.

Big Love Forgives, Small Love Does Not

Some people never forgive the transgressions committed against them (real or imagined). Some hold grudges until the day they die. Those who are big enough and strong enough to forgive, give their love relationships a chance for renewal and new, ongoing success. Without forgiveness many, perhaps most, love relationships deteriorate and die, or at least become comatose. Forgiveness often takes being brave and loving in a big way.

If your own personal strengths are too weak or your love not powerful don’t forgive because you may not survive what you risk. However, if your love is real, big and bold and you have powerful character strengths forgiveness maybe is what it will take to achieve a great, lasting, love relationship. Sheila said, “He forgave me when no one else would. How can I not love him more and better than anyone else and choose to spend my life with him?” Some of the best love relationships could not come into being until there was great forgiveness – given and received. That is the way of big love.

Growing Forgiveness

If you are having trouble forgiving someone for something there are ways to work on it and win yourself the freedom forgiveness brings. You can work on coming to understand why someone choose a path of action that hurt you. If you can see through their eyes, feel their feelings and comprehend their thinking it may give you considerable assistance in the forgiving process. Understanding is best done with compassion and empathy. You don’t have to agree or call what they did ‘right’ to do that. You also can work to understand how your own actions and words may have contributed to their transgressions. Furthermore, you can work to understand your weakness which made you so vulnerable to being hurt, and from that you may find a way to grow stronger and defend against that vulnerability.

Another work you can do is to accept that you and all other humans are imperfect beings prone to making mistakes and needing forgiveness so that progress can go on. Sometimes it helps to know that major religions the world over preach and teach forgiveness as the way of love. If you work at it you can grow forgiveness and if you do not you may be stuck in the self poisoning of non-forgiveness. If you are in a ongoing, love relationship with a lover, spouse, friend or family member and are not sufficiently forgiving, or they are not, see if you can both go to a good relational, love-oriented therapist who can help both of you get forgiveness to start growing. Lasting love relationships require forgiveness skills and practices, or they don’t last.

There are books to read which can help. May I suggest you take a look at Dare to Forgive by Dr. E.M. Hollowell, and Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope by a Dr. Worthington. There are lots of counselors and therapists, and especially couples and family therapists, who are good at assisting two or more people with growing forgiveness and its many mutual benefits.

The Forgiveness Challenge

If you are going to do healthy, real love of anyone I suggest you develop your forgiveness skills. Every human relationship that is ongoing will need some forgiveness, sometimes a lot of forgiveness. The nature of love itself challenges you to be forgiving so that healing, repairing and love’s continuation can happen. It is important that your forgiveness be done wisely so that it does not reward and reinforce dysfunction. It often is important that your forgiveness be abundant and generous, but also wisely given.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who have you not forgiven, for what, and what effect is that having on you?

Repairing Damaged Love, Best Guidelines

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson gives you a dozen better, and different than usual, guidelines for working to repair a wounded or damaged love relationship.

Love Wounds Can Heal

Love relationships get damaged, wounded, broken and in other ways harmed from time to time. The good news is, often with enough healthy real love, well delivered, they can be healed, fixed, repaired and frequently in the process made stronger than they ever were before. Here are a dozen guidelines that can help accomplish just that:

1. Have and show patience Don’t rush, push, or try to force a quick repair. Do some showing of kind, gentle love and then back off. Let mother nature have time to effect some healing and then do a little more. If you do too much, too often it probably will not be love you are demonstrating. It might be weakness, insecurity and dependence, or at least it’s likely to be seen that way.

2. Focus forward Put your attention into making things better. Focus on ‘Now’ and ‘Next’ more than on the past. Work to create new, better and more positive love-filled experiences more than rehashing, analyzing or endlessly bemoaning the past. Some mentioning of past, positive experiences and learning from the past are useful so long as it doesn’t get in the way of focusing forward toward making new, better and more love-filled things happen.

3. Have and show empathetic compassion It is important that you show empathetic compassion much more than trying to communicate explanations, defensiveness, logic, analysis or reasoning. None of those are likely to convey much love. Especially defensiveness and explanations usually just result in making things worse because people see everything so differently, and they frequently are interpreted as making excuses and attacking with blame. They may have a place but usually only after a show of sufficient and repeated empathetic compassion (empathy = to feel another’s feeling; Compassion = to genuinely care).
4. ‘Own’ your share of the actions needed for cure and healing If you ‘own’ the desire for it to get better, you ‘own’ the responsibility (Response + Ability) to take actions to make it better. This usually includes owning-up to your share of causing the problem. Avoid blaming yourself or others, judgmentalism, denial and dodging the hurtful truths involved. Never conclude that just one person caused all the problems or one person can effect all the cure.

5. Work toward ‘I win, you win’ joint victories Concentrate on ‘we’ and ‘us’ more than ‘I and you’ so as to build toward connection, acting as a team, cooperation, collaboration, bonding and unity. Remember that in a ‘one person wins and one loses’ encounter, their relationship loses. It is only in ‘I win and you win’ situations that the relationship wins and the problems lose.

6. Work to do, say and hear all things through and with love Remember it is all about a LOVE relationship, so aim to do it all with love. Well shown, healthy, real love is extremely healing. All things can be said with love. All messages, even the worst ones, can be heard with heart-centered love. Without love actions, love-filled communications, and love-based understandings, all else is likely to be ineffectual or worse.

7. Love assertively, not aggressively or passively Act to freely offer your love, not force it on anyone. While doing this, remember to assertively love yourself as you love another. With love assert your ideas, feelings, wants, understandings, hopes and everything important to you. Non-action and surrendering can be seen as indifference or a lack of strong vigorous love.

8. Practice affirmational love especially Affirm clearly and often, the high value and worth of your loved one, yourself and your love relationship. Minimize or avoid all that might dis-affirm such as criticism, demeaning remarks, blame, condemnation, put-downs, character attacks and devaluing statements about your loved one, yourself and your relationship.

9. Relate from self respecting strength Don’t act desperate, beg, grovel, play victim or helpless. Those may get you some pity but not love. Show you have the strength to admit and own-up to your failings and shortcomings, but not as an inadequate, infantile weakling. That garners no respect and without respect adult-to-adult love fails.

10. Deal from clear requests, not expectations Remember the ancient adage “expect nothing, want everything and say what you want”. Misinterpretation, misunderstanding, malfunctioning and disappointment are the common results of operating from expectations which usually go unsaid, poorly related and not mutually or sufficiently comprehended.

11. Learn about love Then practice what you learn. Yes, love is magical, mysterious and complicated. That is all the more reason to study it. Study what it is, how to give it, and how to get it. Study what it is not, what it is confused with, and study the many tragic mistakes people make about it when they don’t sufficiently understand it. Study the false forms of love and how to avoid them. Study what the ancient wisdom masters taught and what modern science is discovering about love. There is a great wealth of available, practical knowledge about love all of us can put to good use. There is also a great deal of useless and destructive trash to sort through. The more you know and practice the skills of love, the more likely you will succeed.

12. Get help Preferably together, but if not together then by yourself search for and go to love-knowledgeable helpers. There are counselors, therapists, personal and relational coaches, clerics of many faiths, teachers, mentors, sponsors and those who just love well who can help guide you as you work to repair a wounded love relationship. Use them.

The many mini-love-lessons found at this site exist to assist you with # 11.

In particular, those mini-love-lessons found in the Subject Index under Pain and Problems may be of special help. Also let us suggest that if you know of others suffering with a love relationship problem, you might refer them to this free, informative site.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What do you read concerning love? And by whom?

Special note:
It seems like most of the people who seriously start to learn about love, do so after a big love failure or a very painful love relationship experience. Most of them turn to self help, relationship books, some of which are wonderful and some terrible, and many useless. Readings in religion, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, the brain sciences and many related fields also are usual places where people start their search into “loveology”.

For those who want to go deeper and broader, there is Aristotle, the apostle Paul, Rumi, Montague, Fromm, Kierkegaard, Brandon, Hooks, Reik, Harlow, Siegel, Fisher, Chapman and a host of other authors from a wide variety of fields and backgrounds. They all can be profoundly instructive for the serious student of love and how to succeed at it. Seek and you shall find!

Protecting Those You Love from Yourself

Synopsis: This important and possibly uncomfortable mini-love-lesson starts with explaining how real love is protective; alerts us to a common protection ‘blind spot’; explains overprotection is anti-protective; a prescription for self appraisal with self-love; and more.

Real Love Is Protective

Healthy, real love automatically involves the high valuing of the loved. Therefore, protecting that which is highly valued follows naturally.

Real Love helps us naturally to see after the safety and well-being of those we really love, safeguarding them if we can, from whatever might harm or destroy them including ourselves. By the way, false forms of love usually are not very protective.
In the Chicago slums where I spent some of my growing-up time, there was a sort of adage. It went like this, “It’s okay for me to fight my family and friends, but if you try to fight them, I’ll destroy you!” In my old neighborhood, expressions of love were seldom tender but they usually were often strong and clear, at least when it came to the love that protects. Of course, violence is not the best way to be protective; I’m just giving an extreme example of a verbal, protective attitude.

Our Protective Blind Spot

Just about everybody wants to protect their children from bad guys and bullies, but what if the bully is you? We don’t like to think about it this way, but there may be some part of how you go about your life that could be harmful to someone dearest to you. If you are going to be really effective at ‘protective love’ won’t it be good for you to start by evaluating your own, possibly harmful effects on those you genuinely love? Now, maybe you already do this kind of self-evaluation. Great! Maybe you even overdo it and worry about every single, little thing you do and how it might negatively effect someone you love. That has its own love effectiveness problems. You can be so worried about your effect on a loved one that the excessive worry will sabotage your effectiveness itself.
Let’s look at just a few of the more common ways we can be blind to having a harmful effect on someone we love.

Overprotection Is Anti-Protection!

Years ago it was discovered that lots of parents did not let their children go play in the dirt because they were protecting them from germs and the evils of dirtiness. It turned out that this was setting the kids up for not being able to fight off certain kinds of possibly serious infections. Ordinary dirt was just what little kids needed to help their immunity mechanisms develop. Sometimes overprotection has a spoiling effect. Bartley knew his parents would always bail him out of any trouble he got into, until his seventh arrest. It was only after that and six horrible months in jail that his judgment began to improve.

Of course, a lot of overprotection efforts really are self protection efforts. Here are a couple of examples. Bill would not let his wife go inside bars with her sisters because something bad might happen to her there. Actually he later admitted he was just afraid she would get attracted to somebody coming-on to her, and that person would treat her better than he did. Doris handled all the family finances and did not want her husband “to have to deal with money issues”. She died unexpectedly and he found out their accounts were overdue and all their other monetary affairs were a mess; Doris had been denying her inability to keep up the accounts – to herself and to him.

Overprotection tends to block people’s growth and their strengthening processes which makes overprotection anti-protection. Joe was vehemently against his wife taking a promotion offer. It would take her out of an all-female department and force her to mix with a mixed gender, upwardly mobile work staff. She would be part of lower-level, white-collar management and he was blue-collar with little likelihood of advancing as far up the ladder as his wife might go. It turned out that he trying to block her, cost him a lot more marital problems than supporting her job improvement would have.

Sometimes it is hard to know the difference between real protection and overprotection. It is something to keep working on, with love. So, ask yourself if you are doing things that might ‘protect’ your mate, children, family members, friends or other loved ones from the very growth challenges that might be good for them to have. Sally worked very hard at cleverly keeping her husband away from finishing his degree. She said it would take a lot of time, and cost too much money, and she was sure some of their friends would start judging him as “uppity”, and she didn’t want him to lose those friends. Then it came out. Secretly she was panicking that if he finished his degree he would start looking down on her and run off with somebody better educated.

What Are You Modeling?

Do you ever find yourself, kind of automatically, saying or doing something a loved one says or does? Or conversely, maybe they are saying or doing something you say or do? That is because loved ones kind of can rub off on each other. What we model and the examples we set can automatically get subconsciously incorporated. Some of what you are modeling may be very good and some not so good for those you love. You may want to protect your loved ones from those ‘not so good’ ones. If you are modeling fits or rage, hate, racism, abuse, neglect, addictions, poor self love, anti-love actions, etc. protection is called for.

Romantic Rage

Have you bought-into the myth that tells you love can lead to justifiable rage against those you love if you feel betrayed by them. Many murders of a spouse or lover result from this kind of belief about how love works. (No, Wrong, Untrue) Many battered mates or children, judged to be disobedient or violating some rule, also result from similar thinking. Along with this goes a sort of understanding that ‘if I love you, I own you, and because I own you I can hurt and harm you, if you don’t behave the way I insist you behave. Love give me that right.

My understanding is that healthy, real love of every kind, including romantic love, does not motivate or lead to hurting and harming those you love. It is only various forms of false love that do that. Love is protective not harming.

Protection and Affairs

Having a secret love affair, sex affair, one night stand, cheating, etc., even if you hide it really well so you “protect your mate from getting hurt”, is usually a really poor way to do protective love. We have a lot of problems with love/sex affairs in our culture, as do other cultures, but not all cultures. In some parts of the world it is understood or expected that spouses who have strong sex drives will have sex with a number of other people, and is OK as long as it is not done deceitfully or destructively to already established love relationships.

For a great many people in highly monogamous-oriented societies that seems both impossible and incomprehensible. Still, some manage to live honestly with love while swapping, swinging, doing open marriage, etc., and things go okay or even go better than good. Some even make the ‘secret affairs approach’ seem to work tolerably well. However, secrets, lies, deception, and the like, even if not discovered, tend to have corrosive relationship results. Truth expressed, even if disruptive, usually is far more protective in the long run than are lies. This is especially typical if the truth expressed is mixed well with lots of love.

Protection and Addictions

Substance abuse and addiction, and certain behavioral addictions and abuse syndromes are super-destructive to just about everybody in the addict’s or abuser’s immediate life. Spouses, family members, especially children, friends, co-workers and sometimes strangers are all harmed. The problem is the addict or abuser seldom sees how bad their effect on others actually is. Defensiveness, dodging and denial almost always reigns for quite a while, sometimes until somebody is dead.

Compounding the problem is codependency and the patterns of enabling. What is usually needed for all concerned is a loving confrontation with the uncomfortable truth. That usually is the only way to avoid causing or supporting serious harm being done. However, remember confrontation with out expressions of sufficient love tends not to work.

Self Appraisal with Self-Love

None of us is perfect. We are made so that we always can improve. To improve it often takes self appraisal, which does not mean ‘beating up’ or ‘being down’ on yourself’, or in any way being negative. In all probability there are some ways in which you have some negative effect on those you love. Just try to accurately evaluate what trends and behavior patterns you might exhibit which would be good to protect your loved ones from. Then work on it with forgiveness and tolerance, i.e. with healthy self-love for yourself.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Are there things those who raised you did that you wish they would have protecting you from, and are you perhaps subconsciously programmed to do something like that also?

Loneliness and Love

Synopsis: First this mini-love-lesson covers the surprising ways loneliness harms us; then the issues of ignore, fight, escape, just get used to loneliness, or what?; doing what loneliness wants you to do; a cautionary note; Ricardo’s example and Ricardo’s results, (can they be yours?).

Surprising Ways Loneliness Harms Us

Recent research shows loneliness is especially bad for your brain. What is bad for your brain can be bad for many of your body’s health processes and systems because the brain influences and regulates them. Loneliness also is bad for your psychological health and that can influence everything else in your life. One study of over 8000 men and women showed the lonely have up to a 20% faster rate of decline in mental abilities.

Those who have prolonged loneliness are seen to have more stress illnesses and a greater likelihood of having brain inflammation problems. Loneliness can be seen as a component of love malnutrition or love starvation, which is understood to have a very negative impact on our immunity mechanisms, cancer resistance, blood pressure and a host of other physical problems.

Ignore, Fight, Escape, Just Get Used To It – or ???

Many people try to escape their loneliness by diving into their work, business or various other involvements. Some try to escape into substance abuse or various behavioral addictions. Others get some temporary help from antidepressants and other medications. Another group of people try to fight loneliness seeing it as some kind of weakness or enemy. Still others see it as just one more human emotion to be ignored. Learning to live with it can dull the pain but the damage being done by prolonged loneliness still can happen. Usually none of these approaches prove to best serve our health or well-being. At best, they may provide some assistance in the short run but they can turn out to be quite bad for us in the long run, or at most, useless.

So what are we to do? Wallow in our loneliness and just let it do all the harm it can? Of course not, that won’t help but there is a way that will.

Doing What Loneliness Wants You to Do!

Like all emotions, loneliness was created in us to do us some good, even though it feels bad, sometimes extremely bad. It may in fact get worse for not doing what the feeling of loneliness wants us to do. When we follow the guidance message in loneliness, the bad feelings tend to subside. Sometimes they begin to subside as soon as we get loneliness’s message, even before we have begun to follow that message with action. So what is the healthful, constructive, guidance message in the feeling we call loneliness?

Basically loneliness can be seen as an emotional message telling us to go in search of love in any of its many forms. If you can’t find love quickly, go in search of “like” or at least tolerable company first because that might be on the way to healthy, real love.

It also is important to know that it is not just about romantic love, as our culture and/or family training may have subconsciously programmed us to think. We are a gregarious species, meant to connect with each other and especially to connect in love relationships with one another. So, hear the guidance message of loneliness telling you to go in search of new or renewed love.

You may be de-energized from your loneliness, think searching for love is too much work, you don’t have what it takes, love is all a matter of luck anyway and your luck in love is bad, and 100 other self sabotaging negatives with which to block yourself from taking productive action. Remember, your loneliness may just get worse if you do that. And none of those blocking mechanisms get you to a new and better place though they might help you rest up a bit first.

A Cautionary Note

As I have emphasized before, all our emotions, even the most painful ones, were created in us to do us constructive, healthy good though they may overdo it, under do it, or mis-do it like all human systems. If you get any kind of interpretation of an emotion’s guidance message that is destructive to yourself or to anyone, it may have cathartic value but that is all. Acting destructively is almost always destructive to yourself and not the real guidance message of any emotion. Unless your interpretation of an emotion’s guidance message goes toward health and well-being, probably for all concerned, it is likely not to be your best or most accurate interpretation.

Following Ricardo’s Example to Love

Ricardo was laying awake night after night, hurting badly with loneliness. He tried various prescription medications, then alcohol and other substances but nothing seemed to help all that much. Some people at work, including his boss, pressured and nagged him into going to a counselor, and he went along with that just to get them off his back. He expected to have to dredge up a lot of his past which would just use up a lot of time and money, but he thought he could probably cut it short being able to say okay, he tried that and it didn’t work either. He was surprised that his counselor didn’t want to talk much about his past but wanted him to do some immediate things that might be helpful.

After resisting and just a few sessions later, Ricardo got himself a pet dog and everything started changing for the better. He learned that a good pet dog is perhaps the world’s quickest and surest way to get some good, healthy love. Brain studies of canines show evidence that, in brain functioning, dogs really do love pretty much just like we do and it is not just because we feed and pet them.

In counseling Ricardo did have to do some work on his blocks and fears that had some causation from his past, but mostly it was about understanding and following the guidance messages in his emotions. It wasn’t long before Ricardo tentatively went in search of new involvements and new acquaintances. He went online and discovered some groups with similar interests to his own, and with reluctance got himself to some meetings. The new acquaintances showed him that new friendships might develop and were even likely. He then looked up some relatives that he had lost contact with and a renewed family love possibility came out of that.

Ricardo volunteered to help in a cause he believed was good, and surprise surprise, out of that came a new romantic interest. He took a class in something he was intrigued by and that yielded some more very interesting new people in his life. He got involved in a religious connected singles group and out of that came a sense of spiritual love that he had not known before, plus some other new friends. In counseling Ricardo learned about healthy, self-love and that there is a lot of good that comes from that.

Ricardo’s Results

Today Ricardo has a small group of deep, close friends he feels very bonded with, a renewed family love connection, a wide network of medium and milder friends, a fine and growing romantic love relationship and a much improved, healthy self-love. Ricardo is not lonely anymore.

Whether loneliness comes from months or years of aloneness, or the death of a mate, or from shyness or any other reason, the prescription is the same: overcome reluctance and connect with others, and grow a loving support network for your health and well being.

Can you follow Ricardo’s example if you are struggling with loneliness? I suspect you can, and hopefully you will if you need to. It would be a healthy act of self-love and self-care, if loneliness is pushing at you, to do something rather similar to what Ricardo did.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question

Are you willing to be a good friend so as to do your share of having a good, friendship love relationship?

Sex Fears Mastered with Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson first presents the harm that sex fears do to individuals and couples; and then goes on to review the many faces of sexual fears both, conscious and subconscious; talks about things not to do; and much more.

The Harm Sex Fears Do

Samuel and Sarah are breaking up mostly because of their fears related to sex. Sarah dreads even thinking or talking about some new sexual activities Samuel wants them to experiment with. Samuel secretly fears he is not sexually ‘man enough’ or sexy enough to keep turning Sarah on, so he wants to attempt some new, exciting, erotic things he has been hearing about. Both Sarah and Samuel are too afraid to openly and honestly talk with each other about their sex fears. Consequently, on the increasingly rare times when they try to make love, Sarah tightens up with fear. That in turn makes attempting intercourse painful for Sarah.

Sensing Sarah’s reluctance, Samuel has begun to fear that he will say or do something that will turn Sarah off to him more, which he thinks seems to be happening. This fearful worry is making him have trouble with maintaining erections. Recently Samuel has started having premature ejaculation problems. Because of those problems Samuel and Sarah are beginning to emotionally withdraw from one another. They also have started to argue about all sorts of small things that really do not matter to either of them. Therefore, they both are becoming increasingly sex and love malnourished in their relationship with each other. Both have begun to secretly fantasize about how things could be better with someone new and different.

In desperation Samuel and Sarah went to a counselor. It turned out the counselor did not know much about handling love relationship or sex problems; as that had not been a part of the counselor’s training. However, the counselor was able to refer them on to a well qualified couple’s therapist who had also been trained in sex therapy. Over a fairly short period of time this therapist artfully guided them to tap into their love for each other which gave them the courage to carefully, kindly and compassionately say the things they feared to say, in loving ways, and to accept the things they heard from one another, and later to do the erotic things they feared to do together before. In the process Samuel and Sarah learned to develop and use a variety of new love skills, applying them to overcoming fear and greatly expanding their sex life together.

Unfortunately there are thousands and thousands of couples and individuals whose relationships are defeated, divided and destroyed because they do not know how to ‘use their love to master their fears’. There are thousands more whose love and sex lives continue on but are hindered, hampered and harmed because they don’t know how to ‘use their love to master their fears related to sexuality’.

The Many Faces of Sex Fear

“I’m so afraid my wife doesn’t love me because I found her reading women’s porn and masturbating”. “I’m scared he just wants me for sex”. “I mask it well, but I’m really threatened by the idea that I may be sexually inadequate and inferior”. “Since I got out of the hospital I am totally terrified to try sex again”. “I guess I am a coward but I can’t bring myself to ask my husband to do the erotic things I want him to do to me and I’m just dying to try”. “I get really shaky when I start thinking about my sexual performance not being as good as what my spouse experienced with others”. “I sort of panic when I suspect my sex dreams and desires are actually very sick, wrong and sinful”. “Even though I really want to, I just can’t bring myself to do the things my lover wants me to do”. “If I get into sex the way I’d dearly like to, I fear I’ll get addicted to it, my husband will think I’m a slut, and God will hate me”.

These quotes represent just a fraction of the many life-limiting, sex-related fears people are struggling with and are consciously aware of. But then there also are the unrecognized, subconscious, sex-related fears which may be doing more harm than the conscious ones.

Subconscious Sex Fears

Many couples’ love relationships are being crippled, or at least limited, by deep sexual, non-conscious fears and the ‘cousins’ of fear – anxiety, worry, apprehension, sense of threat, etc. Subconscious fears often are rather complicated, confusing and a little harder to get to. After some in-depth counseling, Beth said, “I finally admitted to myself that I get mad at my husband for one thing or another, whenever I think he might want sex. Then we fight instead of having sex. Something about having sex makes me fearful”. “Looking way down inside me, I suspect I still believe sex is essentially bad, and I was taught no one will really love me if I’m bad”. “Understanding it that way makes me feel I might be able to change it. Now I think I might be able to by talk this over with my husband by asking him to choose to be extra loving as we work to get rid of this problem. I think that may work”.

Bill stated, “I see it now. What I’m actually upset about is not her looking at other men, it’s when she looks at me I irrationally think she will remember my penis is small and think those other men probably have bigger cocks than I do. God, I hate to say that but when I say it, it feels true”. Barbara related, “I’ve been denying the truth so much it’s coming out in my dreams. Although I truly enjoy sex with my husband, I dream about having sex with other women. I’m scared to ask but does that mean I’m really a lesbian, or maybe bisexual, or perhaps a sex addict who wants it with everybody? If I am one of those things what will that mean for my marriage, and my family and everything about my life? That’s really scary!”

Everyone can have, and just about everybody does have, or will have some sort of fear issues related to sex. When it happens to you, you may be quite conscious of it or it may affect you in strange subconscious kinds of ways. The good news is that with healthy self-love and/or the love of another, plus with some good inner-work you can master, overcome and defeat fear and its effects. But take note, it also is good to be aware of some of the things not to do.

Things Not to Do

Don’t blame! Don’t blame yourself, or your beloved, or your parents or anyone else. Blaming seldom arrives at solution. Don’t surrender! Letting your fears have their way just gets in the way of developing the love skills and methods which help you get past your fears. Don’t keep quiet! In the most loving way you can, talk to your beloved if you have one, talk to non-judgmental friends, knowledgeable source people, helpers like counselors and therapists and talk to yourself in encouraging, self honoring ways.

If it is your beloved who is having the most obvious problem with fears, don’t come at them without lots of love showing. Don’t use argumentative reasoning, logic and debate skills on them. Don’t use sarcasm and ridicule, and especially don’t use any condemnation. Don’t try to hint, suggest, use innuendo or in other ways ‘beat around the bush’ about the problem but rather ask for their loving help, while talking clearly and directly about the difficulty. Don’t use anger, threats, manipulation deception, withdrawal, cold silence or anything else that might be anti-loving.

How Love Wins over Sex Fears

Listen to Joe and Jesse. Joe asked Jesse to do a striptease for him. Jesse replied she would like to be able to do that but she couldn’t because she was too afraid. Joe with slow, soft kinds of tones in his voice reassuringly said it was okay if Jesse did not do that. Then he asked her if she could share what her reluctance was all about. With much hesitation and nervousness Jesse related that she thought she was too fat, and far too clumsy and awkward. She said, “Joe you will just laugh at me, and it would all end up as a great big turnoff”. Joe tenderly suggested that they just dance together, and as they dance together they take each other’s clothes off. Jesse replied she was still scared but that was something she could try if they turned down the lights. That’s how they started. A month later Jesse turned on stripper music and told Joe to just watch and applaud. Then she danced and stripped for him, better than anything he had ever imagined.

How did this victory over fear happen? Jesse and Joe approached each other, and the problem, gently but clearly with stated truth, mixed with tender caring love. Their love of each other led them to help each other take small, careful steps toward what was desired. Jesse said Joe made it obvious that his love for her was a lot more important to him than his desire. And that, she said, made her want to do what he wanted ever so much more, and gave her the courage to try. She also related that her self-confidence and self-love improved in the process. Joe says his love and respect for Jesse were already big, and now they were much bigger because she worked so very well with him about doing what he wanted.

How Fear Can Assist You

When you work with your fear, it can assist you. Fear is in us to protect us but, like all human systems, it can overdo it, miss do it, under do it, and otherwise malfunction. Fear tries to protect us from harm. However, many things we are trained to fear have no real harm potential. This is especially true in the area of sexuality. As Jesse learned, taking off her clothes to music could not really harm her. No bleeding, bruising or breakage would come from it. However, not doing it might be a bit harmful to their relationship. So, whatever you fear, assess the harm potential. ‘Harm’, by the way, is not to be confused with its enemy ‘hurt’. Hurt, like fear, warns you that harm may occur, so be careful. Some sexual hurt may occur, much like what happens with exercise, and then turn out to be a good thing for you.

What to Do

The basic thing to do is study love and develop your skills for conveying, receiving and applying love. Then use those skills of applying love to work on your own and your beloved’s fears. Whatever you fear to do, for healthy self-love, assess the harm potential. That may take some research. If the harm-potential is nonexistent or not high, carefully explore and experiment toward what you fear. Remember, many sexual things can be lovingly done best by playacting and shared fantasizing.

In good loving teamwork, help your beloved to do the same. You might want to read the book Feel Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. If your own efforts are not quickly getting you far enough, seek good professional assistance in the form of a love knowledgeable, couples therapist with sex therapy training and experience.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Sexually, what fear have you already overcome and what sexual related fear might you want to overcome next?

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?

For Failing Love: Avoid, or Convert, or Escape?

Mini-Love-Lesson #191

Synopsis: Briefly introduced here are three approaches for dealing with the enormously destructive issue of failing love and how to choose and then get started on each.

Three Strategies for a Huge Problem

Love relationships that fail are a monumentally tragic life-harming and life-destroying problem for countless millions all over the world! Agonizing breakups, anxiety filled separations, divorce resulting depression, loveless ongoing mutual-misery marriages, addiction relapses, relationship suicides and murders, wounded children, relational related abuse, loneliness, empty life problems and much more – all common outcomes of failing love.
What to do about failing love baffles and confounds so many people. Perhaps you are one of them or someone dear to you struggles with this issue.

To help cut through the enormous confusion about failing love here are three basic strategies or approaches known to help people think more clearly to get past failing love and then go on to successful, healthy love.

Avoid

If you are not now in a heart–mate type love relationship, or if you think you are in love and do not want it to turn into a failing love, or if you have couple troubles and do not wish to go further into failure here are some things you can do. Learn to identify and avoid what leads into failure. Do not just study what goes wrong but discover what leads up to and precedes failure. You can do this both in small-scale and large-scale ways as well as for short-term and long-term patterns and situations. Do not forget to look at your own preceding contributions to triggering or causing failure events. Major love failures are often built out of a series of mini-love-failures which possibly could have been avoided.

I am biased but I heartily recommend you and your loved ones study the dozen, big, false love patterns found in our book, Real Love False Love , so you can be sure to avoid them. As you are right now, you can keep studying the free mini-love-lessons that have to do with identifying and avoiding the traps and tragedies of love gone wrong found at this site. We especially recommend working on identifying and avoiding anti-love, pseudo-love and non-love communications and behaviors.

Who to avoid and why also is an important area of study and learning that is an act of healthy self-love. Sadly, some people subconsciously are programmed to be attracted to, and to fall in false love with only those who will hurt, harm and destroy them. Sharpening your own personal love knowledge of who you might be vulnerable to and how to avoid dangerous, self-sabotaging situations can be love-protective and life-protective. Lots of people get into bad-for-them relationships and have repeating love failures because they don’t do this.

Probably most major love failures, traps and tragedies could have been and can be avoided by those who learn how to identify and avoid. So work on your failure avoidance skills and free yourself to go on to the wonders, marvels and happiness of healthy, real and successful love.

Convert

A great many people in failing love relationships find they can convert failure to success if they work at it in the right ways, hard enough and long enough. Sadly, a great many other people do not do this. That also is true for every type of love relationship: parent, child, friend, family, comrade, self, etc. – all forms of love can improve with work. By way of recent really good research, we finally are learning what truly works to make love success. You can learn that too, and you are started or are progressing on that love learning path right now because you are reading this.

The feedback we get tells us many of our mini-love-lessons have helped a large number of individuals, couples, families and others convert failing love to successful love. Also, I am proud to say our book, Recovering Love, is about converting failing love to successful love and for years has been helping couples, and also especially couples facing addiction issues. Furthermore, the third major section of Real Love False Love contains some powerful how to’s for converting false love to real love.

Lots of other books, classes, retreats, workshops, couple’s counseling groups, and support groups, couple’s counselors and family therapists are very beneficial in helping people discover what it takes to convert failing love to successful love. Consider availing yourself of any and all of that.
Lots of people give up too soon or they just do not go about the work of learning and practicing what works for healthy, real, love relating.

Ovid, the great Roman poet and teacher of love, in the year 01 taught two things that apply here. First “if you would be loved – be lovable” and second “lasting love requires skill”. So, if you would convert love failure to love success, get busy developing your love skills and do not ever quit.

Escape

If you are in a failing love relationship that keeps failing in spite of you and your spouse’s or heart mate’s best efforts over time, if the relationship is physically and/or psychologically increasingly debilitating and/or dangerous and destructive, healthy self-love demands that you consider escaping. Trying endlessly in a deteriorating, destructive situation probably will just harm or destroy you, wound kids if they are involved, hurt or harm some others and likely enable your spouse’s dysfunction and decline.

Escape allows recovery and repair, followed by doing yourself and others more good than if you had remained in a destructive trap. You might even go back to him or her some day, but don’t unless you and hopefully your ex are far stronger and more powerfully love skilled.

Escaping a failing love relationship almost always is hard, painful conflicted and confusing but, if it means survival and not wasting your life, it could be the only healthy thing to do. It also often can be the only way to help children, family, friends and even the other person in the relationship.

At this site, there is lots of totally free information that can help in making a healthful for all concerned escape. Furthermore, in the last third of Real Love False Love there is a very helpful, strong section on healthful escape.

After escape from a destructive and failing love relationship, you may do best to engage in a lot of healthy, self-love, recovery work. Do not just stay wounded forever like some do. We humans are meant to heal and go on to more and better living. After escape, study how to avoid love failures in the future. If you escape from a seriously failing love relationship do you really want to go through getting into another similar situation from which you need to escape again?

I hope you will go on to a love-successful life enriched by all that love can bring. So, do your homework, study love and make that more likely.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Exactly what will you do next for learning more about how to avoid failing love, convert failing love to successful love, or escape toxic, destructive, failing and false love?

Can Love at First Sight Be Real Love?

People often ask me “Dr. Cookerly, can love at first sight be the real thing”? The answer according to most of the research I’m aware of and the knowledgeable thinking on this question is “No, love at first sight probably does not and can not involve real love”. “What is it then?” is usually the next question. Love at first sight most often is a case of Imprint Mating. Here is how Imprint Mating and the whole love at first sight thing is thought to usually work.

It seems that in early childhood we go through critical periods where we are naturally open to things having really strong effects upon us. In some of these critical periods we become highly susceptible to certain images that have to do with love sources being powerfully imprinted into our deep non-conscious brain. These images are of people who give us love or from whom we want our love to come during those critical periods.

Much later we encounter people who look, act, smell and perhaps sound like those images we imprinted. When that happens we automatically project onto these people a false recognition response. We subconsciously sense we are encountering someone to love, and to be loved by and to whom we already are love connected. This often causes excitement and positive feelings similar to reconnecting with a long-lost, very important loved one.

Most commonly it is thought our imprinted images come from how we perceived and experienced our mother, or father (or an integration of both parents) before our fifth birthday. Usually that means in our subconscious we are seeing a person similar to how one or both parents looked, sounded, acted, etc. when they were younger adults. Sometimes it is not our parents but an aunt or uncle, or someone else who was a possible source of love which we imprinted at a highly impressionable critical period.

Once we project onto another person and ‘see’ in them our imprinted image, it triggers our deep built in ‘mating drive’ which makes us want to ‘mate’ with that person we feel ‘love at first sight’ with. It’s kind of like, at that moment, that person is a screen onto whom we are putting our projected image. Therefore, we are falsely seeing who we want to see, and are basically blind to who is really there, at least for awhile. Mating, by the way, means much more than just having sex. Our built in mating drive frequently pushes us to much more totally ‘mate’ with that person usually for at least several months.

Another fact quite vital to understanding the love at first sight phenomenon is to know that attraction and love are two very different things. We can be attracted strongly and quite quickly to people we will never love. We also can deeply and powerfully love people we do not find necessarily attractive.

Most love at first sight relationships don’t last very long. Unfortunately some people who strongly rely on first sight love discover those relationships sometimes end in life damaging disappointment and heartbreak. Others keep missing out on real love because they continue looking for the love at first sight false thing mistakenly thinking it is the real thing. Still others just give up on romantic love entirely.

Does all this mean that ‘love at first sight’ never leads to a lasting, healthy, real mate-type love relationship? No, not at all. There are those who grow a real love relationship after getting their relationship started with Imprint Mating. That’s probably what keeps people believing in love at first sight; there are just enough people succeeding with a love at first sight start-up to keep people believing in it. Also, it is a very pretty romantic myth, even though it probably causes more hurt and harm than it causes good. Thus, love at first sight is best regarded as a form of false love which, nonetheless, could (but probably won’t) lead to a lasting, good love relationship.

What is the best thing to do if you feel like you have a love at first sight experience? I like to suggest that the best thing to do is to operate from the Apostle Paul’s declaration, “love is patient”. Therefore, taking lots of time to get to know who is really there usually works best. Look long and hard for what is behind your projections and beneath your first impressions. If real love is going to happen and grow, it will show itself to be real in time. So, give it enough time. Most forms of false love die out within a year. Some can last a lot longer but usually don’t. Proceed cautiously but also enjoy all the adventure and excitement of a first sight love experience, while getting to know the real person who is there over time.

Real love may develop but it will take exploration, experience and time to know if that is what’s happening. If and when a first sight relationship ends you may know that you have had a good, and hopefully growthful love related experience. Now, with this forewarning and knowledge you will know not to count on it too much, and hopefully you will avoid most of the hurt and all of the harm potential in a love at first sight experience. Good luck!

As always – Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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Image credits: “The Binocular Bunch” by Flickr user Supagroova.
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Over 300 FREE mini-love-lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries worldwide!

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