What is LOVE, Dr. Cookerly?: sex

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Always – Grow in love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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Image credits: “Hotel beds at 9am” by Flickr user .guilty.
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What about "Bi" Love?

Synopsis: Betty’s Bi Love dilemma; can a Bi be happily well loved?; what is Bi exactly?; where does Bi come from?; Bi or gay?, more Bi males or females?; can you become Bi; Bi’s and marriage?; are you ready for a more Bi world?; can Bi love be healthy, real love?

Betty’s ‘Bi’ Love Dilemma

“What am I to do? I am madly in love with an astonishing man but I’m also passionately, deeply in love with an absolutely wonderful woman.

Not only that but they both are incredible in bed, although really different from each other! But it’s a whole lot more than just sex, its romance and it’s being able to talk with each other and hanging out, it’s everything. I so want them both, and I can’t give either one of them up. Do I have to choose? There are other problems though. What will my children think? Then there’s my parents and family, and I have some really conservative friends, and what about my neighbors when my lovers visit, and do I dare talk this over with my preacher? Am I headed toward disaster? Is there any way all this can work?

Both of them are starting to hint about marriage. What in the world am I going to do about that? Do I introduce them to each other and see if we can try to be some kind of threesome? As a bisexual can I be happy and well loved or am I doomed to always be in some kind of big, bad, love mess?” These and many other such questions drove Betty to seek help for her ‘Bi’ dilemma. Can you guess how she came to resolve her dilemma? Study what comes next and see if you can figure it out.

Can ‘Bi’s’ be happily well loved?

In answer to this question I have heard a ‘Bi’ say, “Yes, definitely. We, who are Bi, can be far better loved than most people because we have all the joys and everything else a male and a female lover can give. From my point of view that’s twice as good as what straight or gay people get”. I have also heard ‘Bi’s’ say things like, “For me being Bi is absolute hell because both my partners want me to pick one of them and give up the other. They’re always pulling and tugging at me and there’s just way too much drama. Every time I try to choose one I end up going back the other way. It seems endless”.

For Bi’s who can choose both loves, and continue to be chosen by both, it can be wonderful but very, very busy. Bi people with two lovers also talk of their situation being quite demanding and often exhausting. However, breakups often are rather easier because there is always the other lover already in place offering comfort and solace. Thus, there are seldom abandoned or all alone situations.
Some Bi’s live happily in a married lifestyle with one lover while frequently seeing their other lover. Quite a few seem to try living as a threesome, or each living under a different roof but getting together frequently both as twosomes but also regularly as a threesome. Various forms of open marriage are tried and there are some who secretly live in larger group marriages. It is thought quite a few Bi’s take part in polyamore affiliations.

The truth is, just like gays and heterosexuals, some live happily, some live sort of mediocre and some repeatedly are in relationship struggles and agony. I think mostly it has do with whether or not the people involved know how to do healthy, real love with one another, or not. Then there are those people who are bisexual but they cannot break out of their family and cultural heterosexual training, so they forever are battling to live “traditionally” or what gets called ‘normally’ but often that doesn’t work out well.

“Yes” is the short answer to the questions “can Bi’s live happily, well loved” and a considerable number do, especially if they learn and practice healthy, real love but it also is true that there are Bi’s that don’t.

What Is ‘Bi’ Actually?

‘Bi’ is a term relating to two different but often integrated phenomena. One has to do with sex and the other to romantic love. It might be better if there was wide usage of a term like Bi-Amore along with the word bisexual. Bi-Amore refers to a relationship which is characterized by mutual deep care, emotional intercourse and intimacy, kindness, precious interaction, shared feeling at every level, high personal valuing of one another, and joy and happiness in the well being of one another – or in a word, LOVE. Therefore, it is not so much about sex as it is about healthy, real love being given and received.

Some people, it seems, are sexually attracted to both males and females naturally. Some people naturally, romantically form a ‘couple’s type’ love relationship with people of either or both genders. There seem to be those who only will experience spousal mate love with people of one gender but find both genders sexually enjoyable. There are those who can have a close, bonded, intimate spouse-like love with one gender but they want sex with the other gender. Those who can have a spousal love with two genders but sex with only one gender also exist. The term ‘Bi’ and the word bisexual can be and is applied to all of these.

Where Does ‘Bi’ Come from?

The available scientific evidence today points to there naturally being a certain percentage of people who are ‘Bi’. This natural percentage of ‘Bi’s’ also seems to occur in quite a few species. Not only that but there are species that are heterosexual part of the time, homosexual part of the time and bisexual part of the time. Among humans some researchers suggest everyone is it least a little bit ‘Bi’. By one definition, the term bisexual is everyone who ever has had any sexual attraction feelings toward both, any male and any female. ‘Bi’, therefore, is everyone, subconsciously if not consciously – or so the thinking goes. People who have close, intimate, natural love for both males and females have been considered ‘Bi’ or Bi-Amore by some. In any case, the simple answer is all types of sexual preference, and love preferences too, probably come from nature.

Bi or Gay?

For a while it was popular in some circles for people to believe all ‘Bi’ people really were homosexual and were in denial or disguise. Recent research disagrees. The available scientific evidence says there are many species, including humans, who are born with a natural, mate-bonding proclivity to both genders.

More Bi Males or Females?

No one knows for sure but there is evidence suggesting more females than males are becoming OK with bisexual and bi-amore involvement. Perhaps they have a ‘bi’ component in their personality or genetics, or they just might be more willing to experiment with different sexual and love relationships. Then again, they just could be born more sexually flexible. Traditionally males get more anti-homosexual training than women and that may play a big role here also.

Can You Become Bi?

In some people their Bi nature seems to emerge later in life after having lived heterosexual or homosexual for many years. Some people try being Bi when they learn their spouse or lover wants them to do so. Some of them like it and keep desiring Bi experiences and some do not, while still others can ‘take it or leave it’. Naturally those who have a good first Bi experience are more prone to having other Bi experiences. Those who have bad experiences, especially two or three in a row, tend not to attempt additional Bi experiences.

It appears that a fair number of people who experience strong, intimate love for someone of their own gender and also have a lover of the opposite gender often engage in threesomes which may later change to at least occasional twosomes with both. There are quite a few who will engage in what might be called the homosexual part of being bi only when their opposite gender partner is present and participating.. To get the flavor of this listen to Blake. “I tried being Bi because I love my wife so much, and she got the most turned on being with two men, and especially watching two men ‘get it on’ with each other. She also gets turned on by women, just like me, so quite often we are sexual with other Bi couples.

When we date other couples it’s likely we will all ‘get it on’ with everybody, every which way. Neither one of us would ever do anything without the other being there too because that just wouldn’t be exciting or satisfying. I don’t think I could genuinely love or lust for another guy like she might, and I think she’s pretty much the same, so none of this is really homosexual, it’s all just part of being Bi the way we do it.”

So, the short answer here seems to be “yes” you might be able to become sort of semi-Bi if you wanted to and tried hard enough. However, probably for the majority of Bi’s their Bi-ness has a natural, genetic basis.

What about Bi’s and Marriage?

Listen to Smitty who said, “I was so happy to find out my wife was bisexual. I’m one of those guys who just has to have sex with other women. So years ago Kate, my wife, and I went looking for other females, and since then we’ve been sharing sex with several, and with one it’s grown into a real, lasting, love relationship”. And listen to Molly. “Like a lot of other bisexuals I know, I live in what outwardly looks like a traditional marriage but secretly it’s not traditional at all. I got into having sex with both males and females in college and it just sort of continued that way. It works great with my husband, and it seems to work pretty good for our Bi couple friends too”.

It appears that especially a lot of younger Bi people live outside legal marriage but inside psychological marriage. There are some who seem to be legally married to one person but in a love sense psychologically are married to another. Some, of course, have a lot of trouble with marriage especially when their spouse cannot accept their Bi-ness; while others sort of are mixed about it, and still others do fine. So, the brief answer is “yes” bisexuals can be happily married, but there’s no guarantee.

Are You Ready for a More Bi World?

Bi-sexuality and Bi-love relationships either are on the rise, or more are coming out into the light of the world, according to some who study this sort of thing. Some marriage counselors report hearing more couples revealing Bi desires or affairs. Some family therapists talk about family counseling in which a family member talks about their Bi relationships. More people, both male and female, in individual therapy seem to be wondering about their own sexual preferences – one of which is being Bi. College counselors are running into more Bi relationship issues, especially among female students.

Being Bi is easier to disguise because half of it is very heterosexual, but as homosexuality becomes more acceptable so does being Bi. Consequently bi-sexuality may show up more in general awareness. We have to look at the fact that much of the world is very couple oriented and not at all designed for open Bi-ness. What this will mean for our societal and cultural future is an issue just beginning to be pondered.

Can Bi Love Be Healthy, Real Love?

Alice said, “We just celebrated our 30 years together, 25 of which have been spent living Bi. We’ve raised our kids and they are healthy, productive, happy, young adults. Bob said, “We run a successful business together, travel around the world, have donated thousands of hours and dollars to worthy charities, and by every way you can think of have been successful; not that we haven’t had some problems but we’ve overcome them as three loving people working together.” Carol said, “We are so caring, and so close, and so in love with each other that I don’t think it could be better.” Alice, Bob and Carol answered the question, can bi love be healthy, real love with a resounding “Yes”. There, of course, are others who would answered with a resounding “No”, it didn’t work for them (just like is true in all forms of love relating). So, what do you think?

Remember Betty and her dilemma from the first paragraph. She resolved her dilemma in a somewhat unexpected way. She summed it up saying, “About 2 months into counseling I realized I actually just was infatuated with both my lovers. It wasn’t real love, it was a kind of false love. Now I’m in a pretty traditional, heterosexual relationship, full of healthy, real love. It’s so different than infatuation. There’s more kindness, deep communication, delightful compatibility, and the tender, precious feelings are so plentiful. Well, as you can see, Bi’s like everyone else can be deceived by false forms of love and Betty’s resolution is another way things can turn out.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
How do you want to see yourself respond to someone who’s very personable, admirable, attractive and inviting you into a Bi experience?

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?

Dining with Heart - A Love Skill

Synopsis: Love nourishing the heart while feeding the body; a shared and broad ethology; love infused family dining; couples dining with love; serving friendship love; love, food and Eros; love and dining with self; the dining with heart challenge.

Love Nourishing the Heart While Feeding the Body

A loving family joyfully shares a meal together, a romantic couple share a candlelight dinner, eating birthday cake with close and jovial friends, chocolates presented in a heart shaped box, kids bringing parents breakfast in bed – all give evidence to how food can be used with the sharing and growing of love relationships of all types. It is an ancient adage that “The best meals are those served with love”.

A Shared, Long and Broad Ethology

Sharing food as evidence of a love does not only occur in human behavior. The animal world is full of examples of both mammals, birds and even fish bringing food-gifts to their love mates or hoped for love mates. There also are many examples where mammals especially, lovingly provide food to smaller and weaker and sometimes sick fellow creatures. There even are examples of cross species sharing of choice foods and of different species eating side-by-side along with affectionate muzzling, licking, grooming and other likely love-expressive actions.

The evidence suggests that if an animal brain has a limbic system it loves, and if it eats it will mix some sort of love behavior with eating behavior. The mixing of love and food behaviors probably begins with mothers feeding babies. Wherever it begins the sharing of food, along with various other acts of loving care and connection, can be traced all the way back into the time of the dinosaurs. And among humans it shows up in every tribe, culture and society.

Love Infused Family Dining

Making eating together a good, constructive, positive, family love experience is a goal that can be achieved in lots of different ways. It is interesting to note that all sorts of parents and families who have highly productive, famous offspring had mealtimes together and that those meals were treated in special ways. Many of the children of such families learned that they were to come to dinner with something by which they could enrich the rest of the family. Everyone brought to the table a funny story, an intriguing question, a curiosity, an item to be appreciated or perhaps even a contrary opinion.

Different families had different things to stress but they all stressed sharing and the enrichment of one another by the sharing. In some very musical families the requirement was to sing a line or two from a song or explaining a musical refrain. In political families it usually had something to do with news related to a cause or a conflict. In a good many families mealtime was marked by remarks offering another family member, or guest, some sort of affirmative statement.

Praises, compliments, thank you statements and other expressions of gratitude make many families’ meal times together a more loving experience. In some families the most positive remarks are rewarded with an extra helping of dessert. In some there is a rule against giving negative statements like criticism, put-downs and complaining; angry or hostile remarks are certainly usually against the dining-together family rules. The prayers offering blessings for food and thanksgiving, especially in those families where everyone adds something to the prayer, can help accomplish the making of the meal a more love-oriented event.

Sometimes families that ask everyone to hear or discuss unhappy and stressful things at the dinner table can bring about bonding when enough loving care is expressed in the process. However, such actions may cause indigestion and might bring about an aversion to eating with others in some people who have had numerous, negative, dining experiences. So, one must be careful about using mealtimes as a time to discuss problems.

Another important thing to remember is to really pay attention to the food and appreciating what tastes good, making comments out loud and also to verbally be thankful to whoever spent time and effort to prepare the food.

Couples Dining with Love

Did you know the romantic, candle lit dinner for two is a relatively new event and was once thought of as an indecent, radical, anti-establishment thing to do. Typically in many ‘old countries’ the woman served the male patriarch of the family first as he sat alone at the table and she stood behind him while he ate. Then the other males came to the table and were served, followed by the higher status females who in some lands had to eat at a different table. Then came the children who usually had to eat in another room.

Finally, the serving females got to eat whatever was left in the food preparation area which sometimes was outside. To this day men and women eating together in some places is quite frowned upon. Males and females eating together counters the male dominance in these cultures and represents movement toward female equality. Also for a couple to dine alone together adds the chance for intimate exchanges, the sin of self chosen love, and the possibility of indecency.

The intimate dinner for two can be a love feast when there are words of love spoken in soft tones of love, with lots of loving looks and eye contact, punctuated perhaps with touches of love, mixed with loving self disclosures of appreciation and affirmation of each other, and perhaps a little sexy, under the table foot action. A romantic meal means lots of loving sharing and good emotional intercourse while eating, with strong focus on each other and the experience being shared. A very important element, not to forget, is making enough time available so as not to be rushed or not to have the experience cut short.

Watch out for love sabotaging actions like complaining about anything, bringing up problems of any type, being distracted by anything, not paying close attention to each other, talking about unloved others, work and other non-couple positive issues, or anything likely to be regarded as impersonal. Especially important is avoiding unappetizing, gross and rude topics. Generally the idea is to talk about each other and very positive pleasant things, and to forget everybody and everything else. That way you do a good job of dining together with and for love.

If one or both of you prepared the food and/or the environmental atmosphere, lots of focus on both of these contributions with words of appreciation are definitely in order. Focusing on the thinking and feelings of each other by asking personal questions likely to be answered with positive, pleasant words is an exquisite way to dine with love.

When I have suggested these elements of ‘Dining with love’ to some people they have said things like, “What if I don’t like the food or I’m uncomfortable in the environment? Should I lie, or just keep quiet, or what?”. I like to suggest that to have a love-focused dining experience with someone that you look for what you can honestly be positive about, and say so. Then leave the rest for later, or never.

The couples’ love-focused dining experience for two is 1. giving a couple a chance to feed each other positive, love messages, in a romantic setting, while enjoying food, drink and atmosphere together. And 2. it is a love skill that is worth adding to your ‘love repertoire’.

Serving Friendship Love

Friends can eat together and in the process show each other friendship love. In doing so they can substantially grow and improve their relationships with each other. Sometimes the eating is done informally, quite often in the kitchen, sometimes it’s via a dinner party or going out to eat together in a really nice or interesting, different place. It can be friends preparing and eating a meal together. The most important part is the same as in all love-focused eating experiences. The food is not what it’s all about, although that’s important.

It’s the human interaction and the togetherness that are paramount. Are the interactions of love friendly, positive, deeper than with strangers, maybe sometimes rather quite but sometimes noisy with laughter, and are they often lighthearted and sometimes deeper and quite meaningful? The atmosphere usually is less important than in the romantic, lovers’ meals but the environment is best when it is at least comfortable if possible. Above all is to be personable, friendly, accepting, tolerant and sincerely caring. To joke, tell stories, tell on ones’ self, and to briefly honestly brag, to let out whatever are ones’ larger emotions and concerns, and to talk about whatever is truly important to you may be included. Also just being able to be quiet together is sometimes a very good, friendly way to share a meal.

Love, Food and Eros

She sat him on a giant pillow and put a turban on his head. She was dressed in a shockingly revealing, harem girl costume. She danced back and forth in front of him, erotically bringing him delicious tidbits of various exotic foods from a nearby table. Then with sensuous twists and turns her diaphanous garments began to disappear. She then poured aromatic sauces over various parts of her body and offered them to his lips and tongue. He tasted sweet and tangy juices, and he tasted her, and then she tasted him. It was indeed the finest meal he’d ever experienced, and one of the most loving dinners she ever served. His only quandary was how to give her an equally delicious experience when it was next his turn to prepare a love-meal for her. Need we say more?

Love and Dining with Self

Out of healthy, self-love do you treat yourself to love-filled, just right for you, dining experiences? When alone do you slowly savor fine tasting food and drink. Do you think something like, “I will take time to treat myself well with something I really like to taste? Do you make it a lovely experience with just the right environment and accouterments. Perhaps you might enhance a meal with a good book to read, or a special incense, or going outside with nature, or turning on background music you really enjoy. There are many ways to be extra good to yourself by way of love mixed with food.

A Dining with Heart Challenge

My challenge to you is to be focused on the giving and receiving of love when you feed or eat with loved ones or with yourself. The challenge also is to develop your skill at making shared eating experiences, those in which you give the heartfelt psychological nourishment of love while also taking it in. Graciousness, artfulness, thoughtfulness and a host of other loving ingredients all can be mixed in and can become part of the meals you share with loved ones. So, I hope you are or will enjoy developing this love skill as much as any other.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question How loving will you be the next time you eat with someone you love? What’s your recipe for creating love-nurturing dining experiences?

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?

Sexual Love With Spiritual Love

Mini-Love-Lesson #233

Synopsis: Very different mindsets about this topic help you explore your own, and how you might change your life for the better via love-filled, spiritual sexuality are covered here. Explanations of spiritual love (even for atheists), sexual love, sexual spirituality, spiritual sexuality and their mixing and more.

Can We and Should We Mix Sex and Spirituality?

Which of these following people think the closest to the way you think?

Trevor said, “I can’t think of sexual love and spiritual love at the same time. For me it’s almost like they’re enemies or at least they belong in completely different boxes in my head”.

Celia replied, “I’m just the opposite. To me all real loves (sexual, romantic, parental or whatever) are spiritual. If it’s not spiritual it’s not real love, no matter what kind of love it is”.

Donald added, “I guess I don’t know how to even start thinking about what spiritual love means and putting the word sexual with the words real love gives me trouble too”.

Darla related, “I’m wondering if that’s what went wrong in my love life. Just possibly I didn’t do romantic love or sexual love spiritually enough, so maybe my love life was bound to mess up”.

Jacob then asked, “Are we sure we are talking about anything real? What do all those words really mean? I know what my religion and sex are but spirituality with sex and love just confuses me.”

Ava emphatically pronounced, “Love and spirituality are the most real things in my life and they’re what make my whole life work right including the romantic and the sexual”!

Noah then firmly declared, “I don’t think we can or should try to mix sex with the spiritual. Sexuality will just corrupt the spiritual and bring us down into sin”.

What About You?

Which of these people comes closest to having said what goes on in your head if you ponder spirituality mixed with sexuality and love? Or do you think something entirely different from all of them?

Now for a couple of other possibly life-changing important questions. What do you think about your spiritual life becoming more sexual and your sexual life more spiritual? While we are at it, what do you know about the many religious movements and teachings the world over and throughout history that pronounced the unity of the spiritual and the sexual to be a good thing? Also what do you know about what the religion you are most familiar with has to say about spiritual and sexual love? Then there is what the nonreligious but spiritually-oriented ideologies and philosophies say? Finally, do you want to consider the spirituality of agnostics and atheists. Many say they are quite spiritual.

Now more personally, Do you suppose you will live more fully and more fulfilled if you achieve a greater confluence of your sexuality with and within romantic love and spirituality? Will those you love benefit more from your love if you work to intertwine these parts of your life?

How Were You Taught?

Were you perhaps subconsciously trained to keep spirituality and sexuality in separate boxes in your head like Trevor? If your love life has been very troubled or disappointing could Darla’s concerns be yours? About these matters, is your background training deficient, conflicted or just unhelpful leaving you confused like Donald or maybe a bit rigidly dubious more like Jacob?

Figuring out what and how much has already gotten in your head about these issues is often a good way to start exploring for what may turn out to be stupendous improvements in your life. I say that because that is what has been true for the many who proclaim the integration of sex and spirituality has been for them, nothing short of stupendous.

What Is Real Love?

To answer this question I refer you to the definition of love mini-love-lessons at this site (see “The Definition of Love” and “A More Ample Definition of Love”).

What Is Spiritual Love?

Spiritual love can be described as a sense of mysterious love connection with that which is perceived as being far greater than the self. It also is seen as transcending the ordinary, the mundane, the usual, the normative, the common and even time and space, and as infinitely profound and often amazingly life changing.

Is all real love spiritual? Sages of quite a number of diverse spiritual and metaphysical traditions have said that it is. Interestingly, several teach that before anything there was only love and love in its need to be creative burst forth with the birth of the universe. Therefore, everything of real importance is of love and especially is that true of sexuality because it can lead to the miracle of birth. Another shared teaching holds that the substance of deity is pure love from which all real love flows (see “Spirituality and Love, Great and Grand”).

Throughout history and all around the world, those in love relationships, be they spouses, lovers, deep dear friends, loving parents of a newborn or even lovers of life itself, proclaim the experience of love to sometimes be awesomely spiritual. Many a couple experiencing amazing love-filled sex testify to having undergone a profound, spiritual/sexual experience.

Some reductionist scientists posit that spiritual love must only be some unusual, neurophysical event in the brain. However, others comment that this reductionist explanation might describe how spiritual love is neurochemically processed and that cosmically there may well be much more to it than that arguably arrogant conclusion suggests.

More Spiritual or More Religious?

Spiritual seekers tend to be quite different from religionists though many are both. Spiritual quests lead seekers along mysterious paths into the unknown as well as toward uncertain goals. Religionists, on the other hand, tend more to accept and profess established doctrines and credos. Spiritual seekers often grapple with the great questions like why are we here and what is my purpose in life. Frequently they then quest for their own individual answers and personal enlightenment. Religionists more often conform and adhere to the belief systems provided for them by authoritative sources. Spiritual seekers can tend to be more open to a diversity of love experiences and understandings while many religionists not so much. At least that is what some research suggests.

What Is Sexual Love?

Sexual love is easier to define. It simply is real love integrated with natural sexuality. As such, it can be experienced confluently with spiritual love.

What Is Sexual Spirituality and Spiritual Sexuality?

These two can be described together as grand and powerful feelings of intimacy while feeling and acting passionately sexual and, at the same time, feeling intensely loving which brings on a sense of transcendental and oceanic connection with that which is far greater than the self. It often includes awesome feelings of being a part of the universal, unknowable and immensely wondrous. Spiritual sex and sexual spirituality also can be described as incredibly precious, highly personal, extraordinarily intimate, deep core uniting with the sacred spirit of another and/or a deistic presence.

Exploring Sexual and Spiritual Love Together

By exploring this mini-love-lesson, you already are joining millions of others who have, or are exploring sexual and spiritual love often together with a loved one or more. I suggest the next step might be for you to read more about it. There is plenty written. For that, you might check-out Sacred Sexuality by A. T. Mann and Jane Lyle, perhaps followed by Sex and Spirit by Clifford Bishop. Love and Living by the Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton, is full of the wisdom of love and the theological. For a more deeply psychological understanding, Sexuality and Spirituality, Pursuing Integration by Dr. William F. Kraft will do nicely. All of these help in giving a fascinating and wonderfully, wide-ranging look at the many components of our subject. The first two of these sources especially cover what a great many, different approaches actually have done about exploring love-filled sex and spirituality.

Some books give sexual/spiritual procedures to follow in the form of a series of exercises, and a fair number of couples have followed these and reported positively about their results.

A Google search will show you a huge number of other sources, many of which are not very useful in my opinion. Some are just propaganda for selling a particular brand of religion or costly stuff. But then again, some sources are quite fine, helpful and less expensive.

The next thing you might consider doing is attending workshops, retreats, courses, spirit quests, getting group coaching and attending other more experiential events. Tantric workshops and retreats are among the most popular in this area of spiritual sexuality. These kinds of experience-based events have a great range of intensity and for some are quite shocking.

So, considering the experiential, are you ready for participating in or observing reverent eroticism, prayerful masturbation and sacred mutual masturbation, liturgical naked chanting and dancing, reverential group nude massage, sacramental lovemaking, genital sanctification, risqué and sensuous religious rituals, aphrodisiac ceremony, orgasmic blessedness, Goddess sex and a great deal more. It is important to select carefully which of these kind of and level of experiences you will be okay with. Be sure to get enough information ahead of time from those who are in charge. Many of these are for couples only but there are ones for singles available. My suggestion is to carefully consider doing at least one or two of these type things but only if they seem to have a lot to say about love itself and are not ridiculously expensive. Perhaps start with the milder ones and watch out for con artists (see “Sex Fears Mastered with Love”).

Now, if you are in a romantic type, love relationship, consider together following a guidebook or receiving instruction in a course of spiritual/sexual/love-based procedures available via a well credentialed, trained and qualified sex educator, counselor or therapist with some modern loving, health-oriented, spiritual background and see where that leads.

This is not to say that a couple in a deeply loving relationship must search outside their relationship to learn and experiment with combining sexuality and spirituality. In a mutual, loving and trusting environment, peak experiences can be achieved together. Just don’t play strike one, you’re out; time and patience often leads to success. Outside alternatives sometimes offer things a couple might not have thought of or instructions that might prove helpful.

One More Little Thing: With whom might you lovingly talk-over this mini-love-lesson, perhaps mentioning where you got the ideas from?

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

Quotable Question: If we keep the sexual and the spiritual separate, who benefits and who is perhaps harmed?

Adultery And No Divorce Love

Synopsis: Bennett’s dilemma, What most couples are not doing about adultery, Adultery’s bigger definition, Bennett’s relief, Adultery commonality, Three major questions to grapple with, Accepting multiple causation, Changing mindsets, Adultery of the heart, Agony, struggling and no divorce love.

Quote: "Everybody’s telling me I should divorce my wife because she’s been having sex with somebody besides me. Even my priest has said my wife is an adulterer and that provides me with perfectly acceptable grounds for an annulment in our church. He even offered to help me with the paperwork. Both my brothers and my sister say “divorce her” and that’s what they would do. I know she’s committing adultery but I just can’t bring myself to divorce. I love her way too much to end it.” Bennett lamented all this in a very anguished individual counseling session late one evening. I replied, “Perhaps not going toward divorce is going to turn out to be a good thing.

You see most of the people who don’t divorce after adultery are glad they stayed married. Not only that, but most of the people who do divorce because of adultery a year later are not at all sure they did the right thing. Many wish they had stayed and worked on their marriage a lot more than they did. At least that’s what I see in my practice, and there’s also pretty good research that largely backs me up on this. It seems that more and more people don’t think adultery is worth getting a divorce over, even though adultery is usually an enormous, hurt-filled problem”.

As used here, the word adultery means having secret, sexual or powerfully romantic, emotional relations with someone other than your spouse in a way that involves betrayal, lies, deceptions, a lack of self disclosure and honest sharing, usually accompanied by the creation and maintenance of false and incomplete understandings.

Bennett said, “I’m so glad to hear something different than what I have been hearing. I want us to be one of those couples that didn’t let adultery break them up. I am going to go home and ask my wife to come to couple’s counseling, and tell her I am willing to do everything I can to help us get past this issue if she will just give it a try with me.” To make a long story short, he did just that and they came to couples counseling together, and now after some pretty hard work they’re doing great. In fact they both suspect they are probably doing better than they ever would have had they not learned to handle their adultery problem with lots of new and better ways to do healing love, and re-start their love relationship in bigger and better ways.

Are you aware that the majority of marriages in the Western world, and especially in the USA, go through at least one major event involving adultery (cheating, affair, unfaithful, etc.) and most do not divorce over it. Of course, for many couples it is immensely difficult and there is a great deal of agony, struggle and recovery work to do. (See the entries under “Dealing with Love Hurts”). The good news is many couples do the work it takes, and though it is a hard way to get there, their marriage becomes stronger and better than it ever was before.

If you’re facing an issue like the one Bennett was facing here are three hard but important questions to ask yourself. Is your love greater than your hurt? (Great love conquers great hurt!). Is the love you have with your spouse more powerful than what you have been taught to think, feel and do about adultery? (What you have been trained to think, feel and do may defeat love if you let it!). How did you help your spouse go toward adultery? (possibly by demonstrating your love for your mate too poorly, too narrowly, too infrequently, or possibly by behaving with very anti-love actions?). Notice in this last question we have said “help” not cause. Primary causal responsibility rests with the primary actor, but other people and assisting factors are to be considered for a full understanding.

Seldom is it wise to see one spouse as 100% victim and the other as 100% perpetrator when it comes to why someone commits adultery. In couples group therapy Jerry said it quite well when he remarked, “I stopped getting her flowers, writing her love notes, telling her how much she meant to me, taking her where she wanted to go on dates, and in just about every way I no longer showed her the love I felt for her. So, of course, she had an affair. What else could I expect?” Linda said, “I did worse than that. I kept putting my husband down, criticizing him, not acknowledging his achievements, taking him for granted, I didn’t really listen to him and sometimes I purposefully frustrated him about sex, and was way to prudish. I did almost every single thing you call anti-love behavior. The other woman did the opposite of all that, so guess what, he committed adultery with her. I might have done the same thing if I were in his place.”

There are lots of other important question/positions, but I suggest starting with these three: If you’re love can be bigger than your hurt that’s a fairly good indicator that you both may be able to recover together. If you develop your own thoughts and chosen actions beyond what you were taught to do, adultery can be responded to in all sorts of new, different and healthier ways. If you can discover and ‘own up to’ how your actions probably helped adultery happen, and then improve, there’s lots of hope. These questions are not usually easily or quickly answered, and each leads to other questions you may need to struggle with. But they often help people move toward the love healing needed.

People’s mindsets are changing in regard to the magnitude of difficulty having sex outside of marriage represents. Gloria said, “When I found out he had sex with someone he met at work I thought it meant he didn’t love me anymore, and that he wanted to replace me with her. That was devastating and terrifying to me. Eventually I discovered he just wanted to see what sex was like with a woman different than me. That was disturbing but not nearly as horrifying as what I had first thought. Now we are working it through, and I think we’re going to make it”.

I got asked a sort of peculiar question at a weekend retreat workshop I was conducting on love relationships. A participant asked, “Just what is the importance of one penis in one vagina as opposed to multiple penis’s in multiple vaginas”? How would you answer that? Follow up questions in that discussion were, “Do we give too much importance to penises in vaginas or other sex acts”, and “How is it that in some parts of the world people enjoy their spouse having sex with others, while elsewhere others can’t even stand the idea of that happening”. Perhaps those are questions you might do well to ponder. It is true that in some cultures and at various periods in history adultery has had almost no importance at all, while at other times and places it has had enormous significance. There are even societies in which there is no word for adultery in their language, while in others there is a whole vocabulary indicating widespread importance.

If you are struggling with an adultery issue in your life, a great big thing to examine is the influence of your societal, subconscious programming or conditioning concerning the subject of adultery. You see, your feelings and many of your thoughts may have been pre-programmed into you, and in a sense may not even be your own, true, self-derived thoughts and feelings. Likewise, what is your training and your subconscious programming concerning love and loving forgiveness? Do you find yourself more in the “love can conquer all and, therefore, forgive all” category, or are you in the “adultery is marriage’s unforgivable sin” category? Which of those do you really choose to be in and which is the most healthful for you?

Let’s look at ‘background’. There are those who think that in olden times the only real reason adultery became the singular, allowable reason for divorce was because the ancient religious elders who made the rules were sexually insecure, immature and quite possibly sexually inadequate. If that’s true they quite easily were threatened and, thereby, motivated to make big, strong rules protecting themselves. Naturally, to reinforce their defense they said it was God’s will, and they were but the messengers. Others point out that patrilineal societies tend to have much stricter prohibitions and punishments for adultery than do matrilineal societies. Then there are the cultures in which not having sex with guests, visitors and the like, outside of the pair bond is grounds for divorce. Also consider the societal groups in which everyone is expected to be having extra pair bond sex, and those in which a woman having children by different men is held in higher esteem than a woman having children by only one man.

Here in modern times and places there is a growth in finding ‘adultery of the heart’ to be far more grievous than ‘adultery of the body’. Marla said, “Just so long as he doesn’t bring home a disease I don’t care who he does what with, except he better not fall in love with her because that’s totally forbidden in our relationship”. Thomas remarked, “My wife and I can have sex with somebody else but three times is the limit. After that it might get too emotional and neither of us wants that. We love each other tremendously and want each other to have all sorts of pleasures, and at the same time we want to safeguard our love because it’s so precious.” People who think like this in the Western world are a minority, but be not mistaken it’s a growing minority.

There also are a growing number of couples who tell of their love of each other being far more significant than mere sex with others. “Adultery is a forgivable sin if you really love somebody, so that’s what I’ll work at,” said Jonathan who was struggling with this issue in his marriage. “Adultery is just not worth getting a divorce over,” said Sondra who was also battling to save her marriage. “When you have kids getting a divorce because of adultery is just plain selfish and shortsighted. If you really love them and your mate see if you can stick it out and make something better happen,” remarked Brenda whose marriage was coming back together. Charles proclaimed, “We have a great deal of love for each other so we’re not going to let adultery defeat our love, and that’s all there is to it”. So, you can see many couples have a strong “no divorce love”, or at least a no divorce over adultery love relationship, which wins the day for them.

Why explore other times, other cultures and other people’s ways of doing love and sex? Because it is one way we are more likely to make informed choices in our own love relationships instead of reacting out of subconscious programmed determined ways.

You may be finding it hard to wrap your mind around these ideas, and your heart may be aching, and your gut churning, because for most people grappling with adultery issues is one of the hardest things they ever do. Adulterous behavior for many leads to almost unbearable agony, great fear, and a great sickening of the heart. Even so, the message here is take heart. While most couples will face a real-life challenge in this area most will, with love and hard work, get past it and many will end up in a better functioning love relationship than they started with. My bias is the smart, the practical, and the most loving seek out the help of a love knowledgeable, nonjudgmental couple’s therapist and get past the difficulties together with help and insight. With competent couple’s counseling they do this far faster, more thoroughly, and with less pain than they otherwise would have.

Also very important is the fact that by way of counseling they do it with far less destructiveness for all concerned. Even though adultery can be terribly painful to a couple, divorce or breaking up is quite frequently not the best answer. Of course, if there is little true, healthy love, lots of emotional and/or other abuse, repeated lies, betrayal and deception, and an unwillingness to truly work for improvement a couple may be psychologically divorced already. However, adultery’s effects so very often can be overcome by a strong ‘no divorce’ committed love when two people keep working to grow their healthy, real love.

In regard to adultery a ‘no divorce love’ is one that makes an established, shared love more important than relations outside that established shared love, more important than fear, more important than hurt (but not more important than harm), and more important than social pressure and past teachings. It also must be one in which those in the established, shared love are willing and able to mutually work on the improvement of their love relationship giving it extremely high priority in their lives.
It is my sincere hope that these thoughts will be helpful to you and those you share these thoughts with.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Are you, or will you be working for your love (spouse type) to grow so strong that it can, if necessary, survive an adultery challenge?

Does Sexual Preference Influence Love?

To understand some of what’s involved here let’s first take a look at a few important questions and some possible, or probable, answers that have to do with sexual preference. Then we will apply that knowledge to love.

Question 1. What causes people to have different sexual preferences?

Answer: The preponderance of scientific evidence points to all sexual preferences – homosexuality, bisexuality, heterosexuality, transsexuality, etc. as primarily being biologically predisposed, probably before birth. There is considerable scientific evidence which shows that atypical gender identity development is influenced by variations in prenatal hormonal and neurochemical factors, which also influence the incidence of left-handedness and finger ratio measurements concordant with sexual preference development.

Furthermore, there are anatomical brain differences, especially in the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, a brain area vital to varying sexual behavior tendencies. Then there are the genetic influences illustrated by sexual preference inheritability being high among monozygotic twins, and less strong but also high among fraternal twins. Whatever your sexual inclination you were probably predisposed toward that inclination biologically, probably before birth according to the preponderance of the most recent scientific research.

Question 2. What is some of the other evidence that tells us biological predisposition is causal?

Answer: First, brain studies show a number of different parts of the brain of homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals and transsexuals tend to be different from each another. Especially different are the parts of the brain known as the corpus callosum, medial pre-optic nucleus and the hypothalamus. Brain chemistry also is somewhat different.

Second, over many decades hundreds of well conducted, psychological studies have been done trying to discover the psychological cause of homosexuality, and no psychological cause has ever been discovered and substantiated by replicated research. A number of newer theories still are under investigation but so far nothing definitive can be said to have been discovered.

Third, about 10% of most mammals exhibit homosexual preference and another 15 to 20% exhibit bisexual behavior. Many bird species show similar results. Bisexual behavior is extremely common among some mammal species like the bonobo apes. There also are brain differences in various homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual animals. By the way, some researchers think there is evidence to support the contention that bisexuality is on the rise, especially among human females. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that all people are at least a little bit bisexual.

Question 3. Why do different sexual preferences exist in nature?

Answer: Nature is all about variety and keeping its options open. We never know when a variation will turn out to help a species survive or advance in its development; for instance the bisexuality of bonobo apes seems to have contributed greatly to solving the problem of violence within that species. Bonobos when faced with conflict literally ‘make love not war’. Inter-species aggression so common among baboons, chimpanzees and humans is virtually nonexistent among bonobos, who are the most sexual and the most bisexual of us, who are classed as primates.

It also is to be noted that there are species that change gender, being female for a while, then male for a while, and being heterosexual part of their life, and homosexual another part of their life. Likewise, there are species that are both genders simultaneously. Furthermore, there is some evidence among humans that in times of war and other great stressors women give birth to more ‘bisexual and homosexual to be’ children who are then thought to become more tolerant, flexible, harmonious and generally peaceful in their adulthood than is average among heterosexuals.

Homosexuals and bisexuals also are thought to give higher than average child raising supportive and protective care to their heterosexual brother’s and sister’s children, thus, increasing the survivability of a family’s genetic line. Consequently homosexuality and bisexuality give certain of our species a noteworthy evolutionary advantage.

Question 4. Are there other things that influence the emergence or development of different sexual preferences?

Answer: There is some evidence which would suggest that some young children may go through a critical period in which exposure to more or less equally interesting, pleasuring and loving males and females may influence the early emergence of bisexuality. Certainly the social acceptability of various sexual preferences causes especially homosexuals not to try to suppress their emerging sexual tendencies. In those societies which are strongly anti-homosexual much greater inner conflict and stress results, which may cause some people to be able to inactivate their natural predispositions, especially if their sex drive is not very strong.

Question 5. Are people of one sexual preference or another more likely to be mentally ill, prone to criminality or addictions, or in other ways destructive to themselves and society?

Answer: Yes is the arguable answer; and the most destructive people according to gender preference are – heterosexual. Actually the differences are fairly negligible according to most reputable studies. In many cultures men and women who are homosexual have had far more societal stressors than heterosexuals or bisexuals, and those stressors are causal in mental and emotional illness and other dysfunctions for many. In societies much more accepting of people of different gender preference these problems turn out to be the same or slightly better than heterosexuals according to several authorities.

Those people who are one gender externally but another gender internally, like many transsexuals, are likely to experience even more stressors. Unless their stress coping mechanisms are good they are more likely to experience one type of dysfunction or another. Interestingly, highly androgynous people seem to do rather well in life in most cultures. Hermaphroditic people who have the physiology of both genders rather equally are too rare to have had significant data gathered.

Probably not enough good, quality research has been done in this area and we have more to learn. Your sexual preference makes a difference in who you are attracted to, who you come to love and make a primary life partnership with, if you do that. Other than that most studies seem to point to the idea that being homosexual, or bisexual or heterosexual doesn’t make much of a difference when it comes to the vast majority of other varying aspects of life.

Now let’s look at the love factor.
Question 6. Does your sexual preference make a difference in how you do love?

Answer: There is some evidence suggesting that homosexual men and women give more thought to how to do love than the average heterosexual. Furthermore, those who have sufficient emotional maturity may do love relating rather better than many heterosexuals. Both bisexual males and bisexual females actually even may be better at love. Contrarily, there is some evidence to suggest that homosexuals who are immature may have a harder time getting beyond romantic idealization and the many problems that accompany it.

Strongly bisexual males and females seem to have a somewhat harder time than homosexuals or heterosexuals when, and if, they attempt to be monogamous. However, if their primary mate relationship compatibly allows for some multi-person involvement they are thought to do better than average according to several researchers who study this sort of thing. For the most part, homosexuals, bisexuals and heterosexuals demonstrate the same range of behaviors when attempting to do a love relationship. All do better to about the same degree when they learn more about how love is healthfully given and received.

Question 7. How do people of different sexual preferences do at family and child love?

Answer: The evidence points to homosexual couples working harder than heterosexual couples at doing family love and child love well. Consequently they get better results in most areas measured. Other forms of sexual preference have not been studied sufficiently but there is some evidence which suggests bisexual people do no worse and possibly a little better than the average heterosexual.

Question 8. How do people of different sexual preferences do at healthy self-love?

Answer: Because of societal condemnation, and especially judgmentalism and condemnation in religious communities homosexuals have had a terrible time developing sufficient healthy self-love. Self-hate, self rejection, low self esteem, escapist addictions and suicide have been measured as quite high, although now with more social acceptance and more available support networks these problems are reducing. In those cultures where different sexuality is common and accepted these problems for the most part don’t exist in larger percentages than is true of heterosexuals. Even though bisexuals have been able to ‘hide out’ in heterosexual communities they have exhibited some of these self love problems also.

Question 9. Is there any reason to believe that people of one sexual preference or another will naturally or automatically do healthy, real love relating better or worse than people of other sexual preferences.

Answer: No!

Question 10. Do people of one sexual preference or another do spiritual love better or worse than people of other sexual preferences?

Answer: People who have more stressors, and difficulties and differences than average go looking for help and answers more than is typical. That often includes searching into religion and spiritual matters. Homosexuals, and bisexuals and other people with sexual differences have to cope with more stressors when they live in sexually, anti-democratic, social environments. Therefore, it is thought a fair number of these people search for spiritual solutions and spiritual development more than the average person does.

Those who search tend to find and, therefore, grow their abilities in spirituality. Homosexuals living in sexually anti-democratic societies especially run into lots of social and sometimes religious prejudice, rejection, hate, pseudo-love and related difficulties. Consequently they often turn away from organized religion and toward independent spirituality. Other than that there does not seem to be much of a spirituality difference between heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and other sexualities.

Among people who give arduous study to these sort of things there is this conclusion – the love of life, the love of nature, the love of a deity, the love of fellow humans and all other forms of love can be just as strong and done just as well by people of one sexual preference as it is of another.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Can you give and receive family love and friendship love equally to people of all different sexual persuasions?

Over 300 FREE mini-love-lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries worldwide!

Synopsis: Betty’s Bi Love dilemma; can a Bi be happily well loved?; what is Bi exactly?; where does Bi come from?; Bi or gay?, more Bi males or females?; can you become Bi; Bi’s and marriage?; are you ready for a more Bi world?; can Bi love be healthy, real love?

Betty’s ‘Bi’ Love Dilemma

Can ‘Bi’s’ be happily well loved?

What Is ‘Bi’ Actually?

Bi or Gay?

More Bi Males or Females?

Can You Become Bi?

What about Bi’s and Marriage?

Are You Ready for a More Bi World?

Can Bi Love Be Healthy, Real Love?

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

The Many Faces of Sex Fear

Subconscious Sex Fears

Things Not to Do

How Love Wins over Sex Fears

How Fear Can Assist You

What to Do

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Synopsis: Love nourishing the heart while feeding the body; a shared and broad ethology; love infused family dining; couples dining with love; serving friendship love; love, food and Eros; love and dining with self; the dining with heart challenge.

Love Nourishing the Heart While Feeding the Body

A Shared, Long and Broad Ethology

Love Infused Family Dining

Couples Dining with Love

Serving Friendship Love

Love, Food and Eros

Love and Dining with Self

A Dining with Heart Challenge

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Mini-Love-Lesson #233

Can We and Should We Mix Sex and Spirituality?

What About You?

How Were You Taught?

What Is Real Love?

What Is Spiritual Love?

More Spiritual or More Religious?

What Is Sexual Love?

What Is Sexual Spirituality and Spiritual Sexuality?

Exploring Sexual and Spiritual Love Together

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly