A Dozen Things Love is and A Dozen Things Love is Not

For you to ponder, puzzle over, and share with others here are a dozen wonderfully important concepts about What Love Is  and  a dozen about What Love Is Not.  These ideas have been garnered from both the wisdom literature of the ages and from some of the most recent advances in a number of sciences investigating love and love’s many related phenomena.   Let’s start with what is considered to be the ‘wrong’ ideas about love.

What Love is NOT

1.  Love is not an emotion
This is easy to see when you think about the fact that love is long-lasting and emotions come and go quickly.  The truth is love brings forth many rich and varied emotions including emotions called feeling loved, lovable, and loving which may be why the natural force called ‘Love’ gets confused with emotions.

2.  Love is not an addiction
Only a false form of love can be an addiction, but there are a number of those and they can be very destructive.  Addiction to a false form of love can waste your life, help ruin your life and maybe the lives of others, and once in awhile can even lead to someone’s death.  Healthy real love is always working to do the opposite.

3.  Love is not sex
It is true that sex is a delightful healthy thing to mix with certain kinds of love.  Without some form of healthy, real love sexual relationships tend not to be long-lasting and often disappear.  With healthy real love sexual relationships can be repeatedly revived and reinvigorated.  Also without healthy real self-love sexual relationships tend to become problematic.

4.  Love is not attraction
Attraction psychologically helps us move toward others while love helps us move with them.  Attraction can lead to contact from which love may later grow.  Love works to maintain and expand the connection that attraction led to.  However, love and attraction, although often confused, are two different things.  A truth is we can come to deeply love someone to whom at first we were not attracted at all.

5.  Love is not ephemeral
Love is very real.  Science has discovered neuro-chemical brain processes and neuro-physical circuits having to do with love and its functions.   The behaviors which come from love such as nurturing and protecting even appear to be in evidence in dinosaurs who lived over 200 million years ago; and also are in evidence in all higher order species that live today.  Each of the eight major groups of behavior associated with the conveyance of love are known to trigger different biologically healthful results.   While there are many mysteries yet to be solved concerning love, the evidence demonstrates love is not some ‘airy fairy’, silly, or stupid ephemeral abstraction.  Love, therefore, is a much more solid, tangible, and increasingly knowable phenomenon.

6.  Love is not an insanity
Healthy real love is probably the most sane thing humans do.   All the evidence shows that healthy real love in fact has a very sane- making effect.   Both giving and receiving healthy real love tends to have a balancing effect on abnormal brain chemistry.  Love tends to alleviate depression and calm  anxiety.  It even has a curative effect on certain forms of  brain damage.  While under the influence of love it is possible to think more creatively, and be more open to new and different possibilities, and be more in-touch with deeper than usual mind systems; all this represents greater sanity not less.

7.  Love is not infatuation
Infatuation and its ‘cousins’ (crushes, lust, idealization, the two to four year phenomenon known as Limerance, etc.) are often confused with real healthy love.   However, these tend to be filled with the false love indicators of jealousy, possessiveness, control efforts, over restrictiveness, etc.   The majority of the false forms of love are largely fear-based rather than love-based, and the actions that come from them show this to be the truth.   These false love forms fade away while love of the real type lasts.

8.  Love is not a weakness
Everything the sciences are discovering about healthy real love shows it to be strengthening, healthful, and empowering.  False forms of love, however, often are weakening and debilitating.  There are many who have studied love who come to the conclusion that love is perhaps the most powerful force in the universe.   This would make love-filled people the strongest of all people.

9.  Love is not exclusive
If I really love you I also will try to love and like the people you love and like.  I will not try to exclude you from them, but rather will include myself, and them, and you all together.  Love also will make me reach out to others, and take in more of the world, not less.  It is fear that brings on exclusivity, not love.

10.  Love is not harmful
It is important to remember that hurt is the enemy of harm.  With love we may say or do things that are hurtful to those we love in order for them, and us, to avoid harm.  However, from healthy real love there can be no action meant to harm, destroy, damage, or harmfully deprive a loved one.  Healthy real love is constructive, not destructive.

11.  Love is not dependency
Healthy real love helps people become more self-dependent, not dependent. There may be the interdependence of teamwork and cooperation. However, the effect of love is to make people grow more competent and able not less so.

12.  Love is not frivolous
Healthy real love is probably the most important thing  people do in their lives.  According to the ancients love is above all else in importance because love is the essence of divinity.  It is love that brings us our strongest connections with others, causes us to nurture one another and ourselves, motivates us to heroic actions of protection, motivates our greatest advances, brings amazing healing, and rewards us with our highest and most profound emotions. While the word love often may be used in frivolous and trivial ways the phenomenon itself is of prime significance.
Now with all that in mind let us turn to what is really coming to be understood to represent the nature of Real Healthy Love.

What Love  IS

1.  Love is awesomely natural
The brains of all higher order species seem to contain special sections and neural net circuits for processing love, special neuro-chemistry and neuro-electric activations, and other special biological phenomena all having to do with how and why we love.

2.  Love is desire for the well-being of the loved
Healthy real love drives us to want and act for our loved ones’ healthful continuance and enhancement (and happiness when possible ).  This, by the way, includes healthy self-love.

3.  Love is the great positive force
Philosophers, scientists, religionists of many faiths, and “the Wisdom  Masters” of many ages have come to this conclusion.

4.  Love is deep connection
Wherever there is healthy real love there is profound connection with
others, with self, with life, with the universe, etc.

5.  Love is survival
Healthy real love brings us the ongoing cooperation, providing protection and strength vital to our continuance individually and collectively.

6.  Love is the pathway to myriad grand emotions
Through the giving and receiving of love we experience the greatest array of our most profound emotional feelings.

7.  Love is healing and healthful
The highly curative and revitalizing effects of healthy real love are documented throughout history, and backed by a many recent scientific discoveries about love in a wide variety of medical research fields.  Likewise, the ability of love behaviors and love relationships to keep us healthy and add to our longevity is well established scientifically.

8.  Love is passionately compassionate
From love more than any other thing emerges the great acts of caring, the intense empathy for and with others, and the passion-fueled energy it takes  to change the world for the better, again and again.

9.  Love is growthful
Healthy real love is forever pushing us to nurture, enhance, construct and create that which helps our loved ones to be more, be better, and be fulfilled.

10.  Love is freedom insistent
Healthy real love works to set loved ones free to be the most they can be, and to be the most uniquely themselves they can be, and insists we democratically relate to our loved ones.

11.  Love is the greatest motivation and reward system of the life force
Nothing motivates more constructive action than love, and nothing rewards that constructive action more than experiencing the vast and varied joys of love.  Therefore, nothing makes life worth living more than love does.

12.  Love is Divine spiritual essence
Across the high philosophies and great religions of the world, and down through the ages it is repeatedly taught that the essence of divinity is love, and that all true real love originates and flows via the grand, loving, spirituality permeating existence.

Now of course you do not have to agree with or believe any of this.  You don’t have to disbelieve it either.  The thing to do is with your very good mind study it.  It also helps to share and study it with others.

To research love further let me egotistically recommend my book Recovering Love ( available from [hardback]: McGraw – Hill, [softback]: Authors Choice Press, and at amazon.com, iuniverse.com, and at my office).  Also great for studying love I heartily recommend the Anatomy of Love by Dr. Helen Fisher, Love and Survival by Dr. Dean Ornish, The Meaning of Love in Human Experience by Dr. Rubin Fine ( this one is superb for counselors and therapists) and All About Love by Dr. Bell Hooks.  All these of course, are available in bookstores and via amazon.com and other internet providers.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Image Credits: Pink cupcakes: Flickr user makeshiftlove, Dark cupcake: Flickr user Sailor Coruscant

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The next installment in this series is:A Functional Definition Of Love

Related posts:

1. An Introduction: What is Love Dr. Cookerly?

Definition of Love Series
An Introduction: What is Love Dr. Cookerly?
The Definition of Love
A More ‘Ample’ Definition of Love
How This Definition of Love was Derived
A Dozen Things LOVE IS and A Dozen Things LOVE IS NOT
A Functional Definition Of Love
A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love
What About a Scientific Definition of Love?
7 Other Definitions of Real Love Worth Considering

Self-Love and Its Five Healthy Functions

Synopsis: Self-love dynamics and importance; the five functions via healthy self-love; living with and without functioning healthy self-love; a healthy self-love self exam.

Consider this understanding of how ‘healthy self-love’ and the ‘five major functions of all forms of love’ work, how it has great importance and how it is something you will do well to know about.

Dynamics and Importance

Healthy, real love serves us and drives us by way of love’s five major functions.  This is true of all types of love including healthy self-love.

Knowing the five major functions of healthy, real love and how to apply them in healthy self-love development can greatly assist a person in growing their healthy self-love.  That can amazingly and significantly assists people in succeeding at all other types of love relationships.

How well couple’s love, family love, friendship love and a great many other kinds of love flourish or perish often depends on sufficient healthy self-love.  The greater one’s healthy self-love the less one tends to operate from fear, insecurity, jealousy, anger, deception and a host of other positions that tend to destroy love relationships.  Greater healthy self-love also results in the development of greater self-confidence, self-reliance, self-esteem, self-understanding, self-directed living, self-trust, self-assurance and self-sufficiency.  All those strongly tend to lead to greater success in all areas of life.  Therefore, I vigorously recommend developing a really good understanding of the major functions of love and what they accomplish when applied to healthy, self-love growth and improvement.

Self-Love and the Five Major Functions of Healthy Real Love

1.  Connection
    It is by love that we are best connected to one another.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we are best connected with our self.

2.  Nurturing
    It is by love that we best nurture the growth and well-being of each other.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we best nurture the growth and well-being of our self.

3.  Protection
    It is by love that we protect and safeguard our loved ones.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we protect and safeguard our self.

4.  Healing
    It is by love that we strive to heal our loved ones when they become afflicted.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we best strive to heal our self.

5.  Reward
    It is by love that we best take joy in one another and reward one another.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we best take joy in and reward our self.
So, in these ways let us adhere to the ancient admonition – love others as you love yourself.

Rewards, Survival and Well-Being

Joy (part of the fifth function listed above) rewards and reinforces the actions that stem from the previous four functions.

Each of the functions of love works for our survival, well-being and improvement.  Therefore, our healthy self-love works for our individual survival, well-being and improvement.  This in turn works to keep us going and, therefore, can greatly aid us in acting on behalf of the survival, well-being and improvement of those we love.

Loveless Malfunction

Without love and the functions it provides we malfunction.  When we malfunction we deprive both our self and those we love of the benefits that flow from our love.  Think about each of the five functions not occurring.  When we are not well-connected with our self we tend to live in inner disharmony and often work against our self.  When we do not nurture our self we grow overly dependent on others and may psychosocially starve.  When we are not sufficiently self-protective we live increasingly in danger of being harmed.

When we do not sufficiently act to heal our self when afflicted psychologically and physically we promote our own dysfunction and demise.  When we do not sufficiently take in, digest and revel in the rewarding joys of love we do not reinforce the actions that stem from the first four functions of love and, thus, they go unrewarded.  Unrewarded behavior tends to diminish and disappear.  From the diminishment and cessation of love actions everyone may then suffer.

Greater Self-Love : Better Everything

The better one’s healthy self-love the better the five functions of love tend to operate keeping the self strong, healthy and, therefore, more able to love others.  The better one’s healthy self-love the better one can operate when other sources of love are not available.  The better one’s healthy self-love the more one is likely to attract strong, healthy love from strong, healthy others.  It is true that dependent, needy, weak people also may be attracted hoping that your love and strength will aid (save, rescue, fix and/or ‘adopt’) them.  So, out of love for others one may be healthfully assistive to the weak and needy but only if out of healthy self-love one avoids becoming depleted or enmeshed in a weakness-enabling dynamic.

Self-evaluation

Now, you might want to evaluate yourself.  Here are some questions to help.  Are you becoming appreciatively more knowledgeable of yourself and your many miraculous workings and, therefore, more healthfully inner-connected?  Are you good at nurturing yourself and, therefore, helping your further growth and development?  Are you sufficiently self-protective and safeguarding of your well-being?

When you are sick, or wounded or in any other way afflicted physically or emotionally do you act sufficiently for your own self-healing?  Are you joyous about yourself and the bundle of miracles that you are and, therefore, are self-rewarding enough?  Are you helping those you love and care about grow to where they can answer the above questions in the affirmative for themselves?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
When you were growing up how much were you perhaps taught to regard self-love as a bad thing to be avoided and if you were so taught does that teaching make you a weaker person today?  For help with this see the entry “Loving Others “as” You Love Yourself ???”.

Related posts:

1. Getting Healthy, Real Love in Your Life
2. Healthy Self-Love and Not Giving Your Power Away
3. Number 51: Your Super Tool for Healthy Self-Love
4. Forgiveness in Healthy Self-Love
5. It Might Be Healthy, Real Love … 

Bewildering Love Abandonment

Mini-Love-Lesson #258

 Synopsis: In this mini-love-lesson the painful and bewildering issue of sudden, unexpected and unexplained ending of love relationships is explored. Included are common and uncommon reasons and six important things to do about it if it happens to you.

Suddenly Gone

"I thought we were good until the day I came home to an empty house and a note that explained nothing". I can't count how many times I've heard a bewildered and very hurting client tell me that story or something very like it as to why they had come to see me. Some of those had been married for decades, some not long back from their honeymoon or what they thought had been a great vacation. Often their children also had gone with their exiting spouse which, of course, greatly increased the trauma, hurt and anxiety. Quite a few times a departing note had not even been left or they only found divorce papers. Startled, stunned, confused, profoundly hurt, panicked, anxious, angry and totally bewildered were the responses time and time again.

Why does this happen? How can it be prevented? How does one get over it and go forward? How can one make sure it never happens again? Can there ever be trust and love again? These are among the agonizing questions that victims of sudden, love relationship abandonment often struggle with as their feelings of betrayal, self-doubt, loneliness and depression grows (see “The Huge, Hidden Reason So Many Fail at Love?” and “Trust Recovery and Love”).

Other sudden love relationship abandonment situations occur. A young, adult child suddenly breaks off all contact with parents and family offering no explanation. A long-term friend does the same thing. Once in a while, the person doing the abandoning completely disappears from their regular life leaving no forwarding address or way of contacting them. In those situations, there is no way to figure out what occurred or went wrong and no chance to fix it or reconnect. Chances for relationship reconnection, repair, obtaining closure, learning from mistakes, explaining misunderstandings, healing relational wounds, understanding divergent perceptions or doing anything else that is jointly constructive are hopelessly blocked. This can be like having a wound that never completely heals. The person left is left to individually try to recover on their own or with the help of others. The good news is that can be done especially with the right assistance.

Why? The Common and Uncommon Reasons

Coming to understand something of what leads a lot of people to suddenly and surprisingly abandon another without sufficient explanation, in many instances can help a lot. Such an understanding provides a groundwork from which to work toward recovery and reduce the bewilderment factor and its damaging effects. Bewilderment helps keep people stuck and gives them little or nothing constructive to work with. That usually leads to a lot of circular thinking going nowhere and quite a bit of emotional fatigue which ends up growing a sense of hopelessness.

Where possible, I frequently have requested contact with those who have done the sudden leaving and often they have come in for at least one session. Here is what I have seen are the most helpful and useful things to understand about why people will suddenly and shockingly abandon a love relationship.

Secret fear is the most common reason people suddenly and surprisingly leave a love relationship. This can involve a fear of physical violence, psychological conflict, pressure and debasement, being guilt tripped, demeaned, shamed, controlled, dominated, harassed, teamed up on by family and/or friends, blocked and prevented from their own actualization, not being really or healthfully loved , wasting life with the wrong person and a great host of other similar things. Usually involved is a great fear of communicating the fear and expecting one kind or another of a very negative outcome if they did try to communicate their fear. Likewise, they also usually fear trying to explain why they feel the need to leave and they see attempting to do so successfully as impossible, and/or dangerous or likely to be more destructive than constructive.

Secret anger is another common reason many people plan and carry out a sudden revenge-filled attack/escape from what they usually secretly see as having to live a phony, pseudo-love relationship life where they are repeatedly maltreated one way or another. Neglect, demeaning treatment, control, suppression, inadequate love expression, toxic mistreatment, mistrust, misuse and being misperceived are issues often involved also are not getting emotional needs met, repetitious unfair treatment, sex problems, growing hopelessness, psychological, behavioral and physical abuse. Incompatibility, deficient emotional intimacy, excessive criticism, destructive addictions, lack of affirmation and fulfillment, repeated and frequent frustration, high and repeated stressful living, and fidelity issues also are commonly involved in helping resentment, anger and secret desires for vengeful retaliation grow and finally erupt.

Often in talking with the abandoning spouse or love mate, I have heard things like "He, or she, never listened to me before so why should I try to explain myself now". Then there is the "I'm not proud of my reasons so why would I reveal them now". And "They would just try to use what I said against me anyway", “They would try to talk me out of it and my mind is made up”. "It would be useless", and "I refuse to go through any more grief than I already have". "He, or she, knows, I can't believe they don't know, they must be aware of why I left. I think they have known all along and just don't care", and once in a while "I didn't know they didn't know, how could they not know?"

The truth was they usually did not know because the couple’s or family’s communication system was so poor, so phony and so lacking in honest self-disclosure that no one in the system could know the truth about what anyone was feeling, thinking or privately doing. Also, there were statements like "it's just too hard to talk to them about anything personal, I'm lousy at explaining myself, no one ever understands me, it's all my fault because I secretly knew it couldn't ever work". And "I can't tell him, or her, I never really loved them in the first place, that would hurt them too much".

Is There Someone Else?

Secret affairs, both falsely and rightly suspected, are another common reason for the bewildering, sudden, love relationship abandonment occurrence. Also, sometimes it is a desire to go looking for someone else or just for a new and different life. Those often are the hardest reasons to accept. Lots of healthy, self-love action can help the one abandoned (see “Love Affairs: Bad?, Good? And Otherwise” and “From Self-Love to Other Love and Back Again”).

Uncommon Reasons and What They Can Teach Us

 Sometimes the reasons are entirely different from what anyone would have guessed or deduced. Here are some examples. "I was surprised to find out I was pregnant and decided to get a secret abortion. That would never have been accepted where I lived. Instead, I found out I actually wanted to be a mother. I decided to have and raise the baby on my own. I'm quite certain the father would've been a terrible parent and I didn't want his corrupting interference ruining my child, so I just left".

Here is another, "I had done a good job of making sure no one knew that secretly I was a serious addict beginning to deteriorate. I knew that I would never recover if I stayed and especially if they learned of my addiction, so I left suddenly. I'm sure I would relapse if I went back and probably overdose and die soon after they learned of my addiction. And another "I finally accepted that I'm bisexual and I believe my spouse, family, old friends, church and boss never could or would let it alone. They all would just keep trying to condemn and convert me, no matter what. They might even try to have me committed like they did my uncle. So, I decided to save everybody from the hell we all would have gone through, over and over again. Alone I got it all together and disappeared. Now I'm happy with a couple of him and hers in my life and think I'm going to keep it that way."

Here is one more, "If my spouse or his family learned of my coming inheritance, I really believe they would find a way to drag me back to his country where all the laws give husbands all the power over everything a wife owns. So, I’m gone and hiding out until the divorce goes through. So far, I hear they all are glad to be rid of me except for my husband but he is too damned controlling and I was crazy to marry him in the first place. My feelings for him started changing right after the honeymoon so I guess it wasn't real love after all." So remember, the truth can be very different than you, or anyone else, suspects.

What to Do If Sudden, Unexpected Abandonment Happens to You

First, I heartily recommend finding yourself a good, hopefully love-knowledgeable therapist well-versed in relationship issues and especially divorce and break up recovery and/or couple and family reconciliation work, if that is your hope and aim. Therapists who hold advanced credentials in couples, marriage and family therapy are usually best.

Second, with the therapist’s help, decide if you want to have contact with the one who left to at least get some further information about why you were left, but understand, some people give phony reasons (see “Re-Sparking Your Love”, “Dealing with Love Hurts: A Dozen Love Hurts to Know and Grow From”, “Dealing With Love Hurts: First Aid Tips”, “Dealing With Love Hurts: Pain's Crucial Guidance”, “Dealing With Love Hurts: Shared And Unshared Pain”, and“Returning to a Bad Lover? - A Blocking Technique ”).

Third, join a support group or even better a therapy group for divorce recovery or break-up healing and repair. It is amazing how a good group can help with relationship issues.

Fourth, start learning all you can, every way you can about healthy, real, love relating and how it is done (see my book, Recovering Love: Codependency to Co-Recovery and The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman).

Fifth, start a love-relating learnings Journal. Record and review, repeatedly, everything you think, talk and read concerning love-relating for a year. Especially concentrate on the behaviors of love and practicing them (see “Love Is a Performance Art”).

Sixth, get active with others but keep it light at first. Don't isolate, don't center in, or on, just one possible romantic interest for quite a while and don't try to do it all on your own. Others can care, help with healing, offered distraction and useful input that you, on your own, might take forever to get to.

One More Thing: It is advisable to talk all this over with others because doing so helps you use other parts of your brain than when you just think silently, it gives you fresh input, helps embed and discover new ideas, knowledge, etc. And often it gives needed, empowering, human contact. When you do this, we would so much like it if you would tell others about this site and all our mini-love-lessons helping people around the world with their love-relating issues.

As always – Go and Grow with Love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: Is it not true that trying to solve love problems all on your own is a lot like trying to reinvent the wheel, the lever and the lightbulb simultaneously, when you could just learn and use what is already known and working for others?

Love and Your Body

Mini-Love-Lesson  #256

Synopsis: How experiencing healthy, real love makes your body healthy and how giving and getting love is both healthy for you and those you are doing love with as well as bystanders; how not having love connections is unhealthy; and how living in healthful, real, love networks works best for all concerned is insightfully delved into here.

Body Thriving Love

Love is a great component for a thriving body!  Mounting evidence points to the fact that we mammals are biologically hardwired to seek, make and maintain love connections with others.  One way we benefit from that has to do with our physical health.  Our safety, survival and better health functioning depend on connecting and especially love connecting with others.

Any and all emotional connections can help but it is love connecting that we thrive on.  When we are in good and healthy, getting and giving love relationships, all our body systems tend to work better.  Our circulation, our blood pressure, our digestion, our immunity mechanisms, our metabolism – everything works better once we are established in ongoing, stable, healthy, real, love relationships.  link Love & Survival by Dean Ornish.

Lacking Love Connections

When we do not feel love-connected to others our sense of safety tends to recede and then our physical and psychological stress mounts.  That means parts of our non-conscious brain (amygdala, posterior cingulate, etc.) start sensing a threat.  That triggers the release of stress hormones (adrenaline, cortisol, etc.) into our bodies.  At first this can, in the short term, help us fight or flee a threat.  However, in the long term, feeling threatened continuously and/or repeatedly can be very damaging to us.  Prolonged stress, tension and threat can cause strokes and heart attacks, hike cancer susceptibility and bring on a host of other serious, physical health problems (see “Connection Matching – A Love Skill” and “Co-Connecting – An Essential Love Team Skill”).

Psycho-neurologically, the dynamics of stress are causally linked to increasing chemical imbalances in the brain, micro brain structure damage causing cognition and emotion control problems, and other serious brain system malfunctions.  These, in turn, are associated with the exacerbation or the cause of a great many different mental, emotional and behavioral problems including addictions, ultra- sensitivity to emotional hurts, hyper-reaction and over-responsiveness to anything perceived and interpreted as personally negative.  All that can, and often does, lead to much interaction failure and relational dysfunction in couples, families, friendships, etc.

A new love connection or a prior love re-connection can greatly help reverse all of the above difficulties.  Increases in healthy self-love with a sense of being better internally-self-connected can often do much the same (see “Wellness: Its Necessity, Healthy Real Love”  and “From Self-Love to Other Love and Back Again”).

On the Positive Side

Physically, when you receive well the behaviors which trigger your brain into feeling well loved, your brain begins to reduce its production of destructive, stress hormones.  That, in turn, triggers increases in your immunity functioning and disease resistance.  It also helps with good digestion, sleep, reduces addictions susceptibility and relapse proneness, plus it increases your ability to heal damaged tissue.  Healthy, real love in your life means you will age slower and probably live longer.

Being healthfully and well loved as well as being loving creates and aids healthfulness in many ways.  Essential to this process is being good at receiving love and going after the love you need and want in successful ways.  With good and sufficient reception of the behaviors that trigger the brain into feeling well loved, every body process operates better.  Receiving love well  also usually leads to more happy, harmonious and cooperative love relating.  Body-wise this means better disease resistance, regenerative tissue growth, blood pleasure balance, illness recovery, good digestive functioning, general resilience, more energy and greater likelihood of longevity (see “How Receiving Love Well Gives Love Better”).

Love Relationships – A Two-Way Thing

Living in two-way, giving and getting love filled and love cycling relationships is physically, mentally and emotionally beneficial for, not only both participants, but also for the people you jointly effect like children and other family members and dear friends.  Such loving relationships benefit everybody.  They produce I win, You win, Everybody wins relating patterns and networks.

Love connection loss is unhealthfully stressful for all mammals, and birds too, and probably for other species as well.  Likewise, insufficient and erratic love also can produce stress and resulting health problems.  When we are infants, a lack of receiving the behaviors of love can physically kill us via failure to thrive syndromes.  That even is true for infants who otherwise are very well taken care of minus the behaviors of love.  When we are adults, love loss and loveless situations can make us more susceptible to disease, addictions, stress illnesses and suicidal depression.  When we are elderly, active healthy love relating of every kind can help us live longer, healthier and happier than we otherwise would.

Living in isolation from love relating, even though surrounded by people, can be quite bad for you.  Some people live lives of giving love but not getting much love, and some try it the other way too.  Such people are not living in love relating networks and they benefit from love but not nearly as well as those in love networks that are really filled with both giving and getting love connections.  Our bodies react very positively to living in a love relating network such as a healthfully loving family, group of close friends, comrade networks, etc.

Giving and Getting Love Both Count

A good number of studies show giving love has many of the same positive effects as getting love.  Even altruistic love actions toward recipients who have no chance of returning positive behaviors is quite healthful.  Love of pets (especially mammals) as well as healthy self-love actions also produce lots of healthful body reactions.  Link “Self-love and Its Five Healthy Functions”

Having more than one place, or person, to give your love to also is a very helpful thing to do.  Giving love to more than one person, as well as receiving love from more than just one, protects against the damages of losing a one and only love source.  Every love relationship you have can be an enrichment, not only to you but also to all the other love relationships you have.  Consider the concept that love grows on love and love creates more love.  Then there is the idea that love, like ideas, tends to increase the more you give it away.

Having a love-related-purpose in life, or a love-related-cause to pour yourself into, also can be quite useful to one’s own health and well-being, as well as to others.  It is important that you choose carefully.  Some people pour themselves into achievements that make no particular contribution.  Then later they become quite disappointed and depressed because they realize those efforts seem meaningless.

Giving love to pets and receiving love from them (especially it seems with dogs, but also with other mammals and sometimes also with birds) has helped many people through very difficult times (see “Pet Love”).

Giving and getting love from yourself seems a bit strange and baffling to many at first.  However, those who get good at it report very good results.  Remember, there are two sides to the ancient adage “Love others AS you love yourself”  and so, I recommend being quite active about both. 

One More Thing

Will you, and perhaps others, benefit from you talking about all you have just read with other people?  You might want to experiment with that idea.  If so, please mention this site and all of our many mini-love-lessons and help spread some love knowledge into our love-needy world.   Thanks.   

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


Love Success Question: Your body is made of many miracles so, with healthy self-love do you love, honor and respect it?

Non-Defensiveness - A Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with discussing offensive defensiveness; goes on to how we “see through a glass darkly”; and take offense when none is meant; and ends with “when the best defense is no defense”.

Offensive Defensiveness

Lots of defensiveness comes across as being quite offensive and, therefore, is anti-loving. People frequently become defensive when they feel blamed, threatened, unjustly accused, putdown, judged, rejected, at a disadvantage, unfairly treated or wronged.

Often frustration, urgency and anger wells up inside them and spills out into the way they express their defense of themselves.  Mentally they are trying to present their understandings, reasons, perceptions and memories to back up, prove or excuse their version of the issues at hand.  Emotionally they are upset and it shows.

With urgency, frustration and perhaps anger showing in the way they say what they say, they are perceived as attacking.  Frequently this triggers a defensive counter-attack.  When that happens we get two people who are increasingly, defensively offensive in the way they are treating each other.  Both are trying to prove that their version of things is right and the other one’s is wrong or that they are more okay than the other person who is attacking them.  They think they are just defending themselves and they have to defend because they are under attack.  This often means that no one really is listening to the other one but rather they are trying to come up with the next thing to prove themselves right and the other one wrong.  None of this is helpful to the processes of love!

Seeing through a Glass Darkly

“I know I’m right and you’re wrong, and that’s all there is to it”.  “The way I remember things is accurate and yours is not”.  “Your thinking is stupid and you ought to be able to see that my way is the one, true and only way to see things”.  “ I’m telling the truth so you must be lying”.  “I did not do what you accuse me of, and how could you even think that I did”.  “That was not the way it happened”.  “You must be crazy to think that way”.  These are the kinds of defensive statements that are easily seen as being offensive rather than simply defensive.  They often emerge from a mindset that does not fully understand that other people’s minds work quite differently than their own and, therefore, see and understand things differently than they do.

Are you fully aware that no two minds see anything in exactly the same way?  Are you fully aware that no two people ever remember anything exactly the same way?  Are you fully aware that memories change over time?  Are you fully aware that our current needs and wants alter and influence what and how we perceive our world.  An example of this is a hungry person and someone who has just eaten, driving down the street will see the street differently.  The hungry person is likely to see many more signs for restaurants while the person who has just eaten may see none at all.

How your loved ones perceive the world, remember it and understand it will never be exactly the same as your way.  This means that when you are talking to them they will understand your actions, words and everything else at least a little and sometimes a lot differently than you do.  Some of their perceptions and understandings may upset you.  When that happens you may think they are upsetting you on purpose, or they are trying to attack you, prove you wrong, insult you, put you down or just get you upset.

When you perceive their words or actions that way you are likely to become defensive in an offensive, anti-loving way.  That produces disagreements, arguments, fights and other problematic results that can be avoided if handled differently and more lovingly.  When we expect other people to think like we do, we see into their minds and hearts very much like looking through a very dark glass.  We miss a lot and we get only blurry dark images which are easily misinterpreted.

Taking Offense When None Is Meant

Conclusions based on misinterpretation are another way that people feel demeaned, insulted or disrespected, often leading to them becoming defensive.  “How rude. He went right to bed after our company left and he didn’t even ask me if I wanted his help in cleaning up.  He must not respect me at all.  I must be totally unimportant to him.  Maybe he really doesn’t love me anymore.  If he is going to treat me that way I’m going to stop having sex with him.  I guess I will have to be cold and distant to protect myself”.

The person who said this got around to realizing she had not asked him to stay and  help her. The next day she angrily asked him if she had requested him to stay what would he have done?  He said he would have been glad to stay and help and keep her company, and he actually thought she wanted some time to be by herself after the company left.  She did not believe him and they had a fight.  Later they apologized to each other realizing they had destructively non-communicated.  Sadly many people believe their first conclusion instead of ‘checking it out’ and hearing how the other person perceived the situation.

Learn to say things like “maybe I took you the wrong way, did you mean to say something that might make me feel bad?”.  “I think I’m hearing that you’re mad at me or maybe just upset, but I could be making a misinterpretation.  I think I need to hear you better, so could you tell me what you’re feeling and thinking so I really can understand?”  “Could you tell me a little more clearly what you’re thinking and feeling?”  These ‘check it out’ questions and statements can avoid a lot of the disharmony caused by offensive defensiveness.

When No Defense Is the Best Defense

When you feel attacked it is entirely possible that you are being attacked.  Then again, it might be that someone just wants you to show care by kindly listening to their cathartic release of bad feelings.  Maybe they just want to know they have been truly heard and are not all alone in their feelings.  If you jump to your own defense, giving reasons and explanations that counter what they are saying maybe you are not really listening to their emotions – which often is what they really want.  If you defend yourself with a counterattack they certainly won’t feel lovingly heard or dealt with.

The more loving thing to do usually is to help them get said whatever has been building up inside them and is now spilling out – often this means looking at them with love, saying responsive things like “I’m sorry you feel . . .  (whatever is appropriate)” or “I can see that really upset you” or “Ahh!”  After that there may be room for what you might want to add but by then it may not be necessary.  If your own thinking tells you that they are wrong, and you have to prove them wrong and then everything will be settled, you are likely to be wrong about that.  If a loved one is upset with you try to lovingly listen instead of defending yourself and you are much more likely to get a good outcome.

Of course, this is hard to do when something inside you is commanding you to defend yourself and is saying “if they just knew my truth they would see things like I see things and everything would get better”.  Has that approach ever really worked for you?.  Not until they get their upset feelings released is a loved one’s hearing system likely to start functioning.  It’s like they have to get something out of their system before they’ll have room to put anything new in.  So, if you just show carrying interest instead of defensiveness you are much more likely to get a better outcome.

Even though you feel an urgent need to show them the error of their thinking and how they are unjustly attacking you, don’t do it.  Try just listening with care.  You do not have to agree, or accept or acquiesce to anything.  You just have to stay okay enough to really hear what your loved one is saying and feeling.  Getting defensive really gets in the way of that.

It also is important to know that when you defend yourself by saying a lot of words to a loved one, while they are still trying to get their thoughts and feelings out, you may be doing something which gets called “feeding their fire”.  The more you feed their fire the more likely you are to get burned.  You might want to learn about ‘reflective listening’, ‘active listening’ and loving listening which tend to work a lot better then defending your point of view, your version of what happened, or your ego.
After things settle down because you have been non-defensive and have done some good, loving listening to your upset loved one, they may be able to listen to you.

Remember to say what you have got to say with loving tones of voice and democratically, not judgmentally or in an autocratic, dogmatic or dictatorial style.  It usually works best to mix a lot of love into your truths.  Loving looks and sounds, using terms of endearment and maybe some affectionate touch can make a world of difference. Not to mix love into your way of expressing what you want to say to a loved one can result in a lot of contention and disharmony.

Please remember, in a love relationship all things can be said with love and are better said with love.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who is the best listener you know, and are you copying them?

Related posts:

1. Dining with Heart – A Love Skill
2. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
3. Checking It Out – As a Love Skill
4. Catharsis Empathy – A Love Skill