No Hurt, Under Attack Self-Love

Mini-Love-Lesson  #264

Synopsis:  If you learn to practice what this mini-love-lesson is all about, you likely will not have a lot of hurt feelings, worries, anxieties or stressors that might otherwise impact your future life and interfere with all your love relationships.  So, start by wondering what the Sanskrit word, Upeksha, means and to where it can lead you and your relationships.  Especially is this useful if you want to more freely express yourself without fear of being rejected or hurt in the process.

Getting "Dissed" and Not Hurt

Imagine being confronted by several people severely "dissing" you (disrespecting, demeaning, and disparaging you) and it not bothering you almost at all.  In fact, imagine you even are feeling a bit sad for those people because they seem to be the kind of people who have to behave this negative way.  Also imagine, that then you go about your life as okay as you were before the dissing.   You only are thinking "was there anything those people said that might be a bit useful”.  You consider what might be practical usage, feel just fine and then mentally and emotionally fully dismiss it.

How do you get to be such a person?  How do you become able to be unscathed by criticism, serious verbal attack and even hate?  Yet, you still non-defensively can evaluate what they had to say garnering whatever is useful and then be free of it.  Here is a major way toward that.

The Upeksha Way

Let me introduce you to the Buddhist and Hindu way of upeksha love if you don't already know about it.  Among other things, upeksha is a way of healthy self-love that frees you from being hurt when you are being disparaged, put down under covert or overt attack, or facing rejection.  Upeksha is also a way that frees you from becoming trapped in useless defensiveness or harmful offensiveness when responding to negatives coming your way.

Furthermore, it is an approach which opens the way to loving others, even your enemies, as you love yourself.  Upeksha, therefore, is an "I win, you can win too" approach that not only keeps you okay but tremendously helps in assisting relationships get and stay okay.  Upeksha love fits well with healthy self-love understandings and especially with not giving your power away concepts. Furthermore, a upeksha love mindset often is fantastic for developing one’s healthy self-love.

Upeksha Difficulties

The upeksha way has some drawbacks.  It often is hard for the western mind to understand and practice it at first.  It is even hard to translate into western languages.  The closest term to upeksha we have in English is the quite inadequate word "equanimity" which leaves out the very strong love aspects of upeksha.  Equanimity sort of gets close to the cognitive aspects of the upeksha approach.

Upeksha, as a concept, has been misunderstood and mistranslated as detachment, indifference, uncaring, uninvolvement, unconnectedness, and even non-loving.  Upeksha is a way of not getting involved in the tangle of dysfunctional ways of relating to others and not being destructively influenced by others.  At the same time, it definitely is a major way of love.

Upeksha love is great for avoiding fights, emotional distancing problems, destructive relating, staying okay in spite of what others do, making and keeping peace, getting to rational thought mixed with love, and reducing unhealthy stress and stressor illness effects.

One other difficulty for many is the necessary unlearning process of old programming in order to proceed with upeksha.  Some of those have to do with more western ways of quickly taking and returning offense, a proneness to overt conflict, and the western world way of being highly vulnerable to emotional hurts.

Exploring Upeksha Love

In the East, the upeksha is known as one of the four immeasurable mindsets of real love.  It, therefore, is of tremendous significance.  Reportedly, it is called immeasurable because the more you give it, do it and live it, the more you have of it to give, do and live.

Upeksha means having the wisdom to love with a mindset that sees the world with an equality of values and importance whether or not it is for, against or indifferent to you and yours.  This mindset embodies many great teachings like "love your enemies", respect all life and life forms, the most stupid crazy incomprehensible ideas of today can turn out to be the wisdom of tomorrow, victory and loss, praise and condemnation, hate, love and even indifference all have much to teach us, and all our ups and downs are relative to the perspective of where we are looking from.  Therefore, we are to look for the merit in all things even those things we would oppose vigorously.

So, the upeksha mindset recommends when facing negatives about you coming from others, work to see them with democratic curiosity.  Think of this.  If someone handed you a piece of paper and on it was written a scathing, lie-filled, discrediting and very negative description of you and your character written by someone you did not know very well, how might you feel -- upset, hurt, angry or what?  Now, if it was written in a language you cannot read and have no understanding of, how would you feel?  Perhaps only a bit curious, certainly not upset, hurt, angry, etc.  That is an example of how it is not the words that come at you but the meaning you attached to them, in your own brain, that hurts or upset you.  Of course, you have been trained, programmed and conditioned to attach great hurtful, emotional meaning to quite a few words and terms.  So, it is your training and upbringing that make you vulnerable to more or less being easily, emotionally hurt.  However, with the upeksha mindset you can overcome much and maybe even all of that.

With a upeksha mindset and thought tools, you dispassionately detach yourself from your inner program for getting upset and from the meaning you attach to the words of degradation coming your way.  You need not detach from the person speaking or writing critically of you but you can if you need to.  Here are a few thought tools you might use.  Think "what your detractors say of you probably says a lot more about them than about you" and "who are you giving your power away to, to be your judge and why even do that?".  Remember, you always can make yourself at least 51% of the vote on your own okayness.  You also can think “is there anything useful in what your detractor is telling you and, if there is, be thankful for it and use it.

Once you get into not hurting yourself with what others think or say of you, you become more free to better understand what they get themselves upset about and then you can be emotionally empathetic in regard to your naysayers.  That is a loving part of the upeksha mindset.  You need not defend yourself by being uncaring, counterattacking, fighting to defend yourself or change their thinking, or by fearfully trying to just escape.  If you fear there may be some truth to what they are saying against you, that deserves some evaluation-thinking with equanimity.  That means having a mental calmness and composure that gives even-tempered, balanced, levelheaded, democratic reasoning to all sides of whatever is the issue at hand.  At the same time, the upeksha mindset empowers you to love the people, including yourself, and/or other life forms evolved.  It is surprising that once you get into this mindset you often find things that are humorous absurdities and well worth laughing at.  Sometimes this includes yourself.

Upeksha Love and Fairness

One of the best things about the upeksha mindset is how it helps with thinking and acting with fairness.  The upeksha approach greatly assists in nondiscriminatory thinking, unbiased judgment, broad viewing and even-mindedness.  It is teacher speak for "the wisdom of seeing many things equally" and, therefore, not being unknowingly biased, unconsciously prejudice, blinded by traditional thinking, but instead, being egalitarian and sufficiently impartial, and still being passionately caring and kind of heart.

Only An Introduction

There is a whole lot more to the mindset of upeksha love and how it can help in each and every love relationship.  We can only scratch the surface here in this introduction to the subject.  So, I encourage you to find out more.  You might do that by reading Teachings on Love by the highly esteemed Buddhist teacher/author Thich Nhat Hahn.

Also germane to this topic is the article “Healthy Self-Love and Not Giving Your Power Away”, a a mini-love-lesson which can be of considerable help. More can be found in this site’s indexes.

One More Thing:  Talking about anything you are learning helps learn about it better, broader and in new and different ways.  So, who might you enjoy talking to about the upeksha love mindset?  Not all branches of Buddhism or Hinduism stress the Four Immeasurable Mindsets of Real Love the same way.  However, if you find a Buddhist, a Hindu or comparative religions teacher to talk to about these four mindsets – quite a few good, big things might come from it.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Dealing With Love Hurts: Shared And Unshared Pain

Know that there is great value and importance in sharing your love related hurts.  When you share any of your feelings you share an important part of yourself.  This is especially true of anything that involves your hurt, and also your joy.  When hurt is shared the people in a relationship can join together to work against the harm that the hurt is trying to lead you away from.  (Remember, hurt’s purpose is to help you avoid harm – see blog entry “Dealing with Love Hurts: Pain’s Crucial Guidance”).

Hurt shared also can lead to stronger, more loving, intimate connection, thus, strengthening a love relationship.  Hurt handled alone usually takes longer to get past and may be unnecessarily worse.  Shared hurt has cathartic or ‘venting’ value and with the right loving people gives you a chance to replace it with an input of love.

Too many people try to hide their love relationship hurt and handle it secretly on their own.  Of course, it can be satisfying and individually strengthening to know that you handled it on your own.  However, that may not do much for your relationships and it may be harder to deal with on your own.  Lots of people want to tough it out and avoid the shame or embarrassment of failing at love, or be seen as weak and love-needy.  Toughing it out can be done but it’s ever so much slower, and often less curative of love hurts than when they are shared with caring others.

Sharing your hurt with friends and family, carrying counselors, clerics, therapists and helping professionals of many types, along with one’s higher power all can be marvelously assistive.  It’s important to know that frequently it is not so much their advice but the receiving of a sense of loving care coming your way that makes the difference.  Loving listening (see blog entry “Listening with Love”) can be the great healing medicine for love related hurt.  This is especially true when hurt is intense.  Knowledge and suggestions, however, can come more and more into play as the hurt reduces.  That’s where counselors, therapists and the lore master’s of love can be ever so helpful in assisting you not to repeat the actions that lead to love related hurt and to possible harm.

So, if you’re hurting because of a love relationship situation going poorly, or badly, or one that is over, think about who are you going to share your hurt with.  Probably it will be whoever you feel closest to.  Perhaps you will hear a message in your head that you don’t want to burden anyone with your hurts.  If that’s the case be sure to offer to do the same caring listening for whomever you share your hurt with if they are hurting some day.  I’m prejudiced but I like to suggest that the very best person to share your pain with maybe an empathetic, love-wise counselor or therapist.  That way you also probably can learn what you need to learn from the hurt.  A very love-centered cleric, teacher, physician or other helping professional, and those wise people who do seem to know more about love also may do quite well.

When you share your love related hurt with someone that you see as the cause of your hurt there are special things to be aware of and special things to do.  First, be aware that a person you think has caused your hurt is likely to hear what you are saying as an attack, full of blame and accusation.  They then may respond with defensiveness which will come across to you as offensive.  A fight may then erupt.  You may be able to avoid all that by starting your statements with “I feel…”, “I’m experiencing…”, “I want…” and other “I” statements instead of “You did…”, “You should have…”, “You should not have…” and other “you” statements”.

Also avoiding angry blaming looks and sounds helps sharing a love hurt to go better.  You also likely would do well to acknowledge that you probably helped or played a part in the causation of your hurt.  The way you caught, interpreted, perhaps misunderstood, and otherwise processed what the person you’re talking to said or did possibly has as much to do with your hurt as does the actions or words of the other person.  Here’s another thing to be aware of.  As you share your hurt the person you are talking to may feel guilty, inadequate, unworthy and in other ways simply bad.  None of that may help them help you with your hurt.

To get the help you want from them you may have to ask them exactly for what you want.  Do you want to ‘blow off steam’ and have them just listen with care?  Do you want a hug?  Do you want them to express empathy that you hurt?  Whatever it is, its best if you ask them clearly.  Otherwise you may not get what you desire to help with your hurt.  It usually helps a lot to say something like “I just want you to listen to me express my hurt, and I want you to show me you really care that I hurt by saying you care, and give me a hug, and not do anything else, like give me advice.  And I don’t want you to have any problems with what I’m saying if you can – OK?”.  Sharing your hurt with someone who helped create the hurt, when done well, can lead to improved loving, a closer relationship, better understanding, and an avoidance of similar hurts in the future.

The trick, of course, is doing it well.  It is important not to think a loved one who helped create your hurt will know what to do to help you get over the hurt.  It’s your hurt, you own it, and you are the one most likely to know what to do to make it better, while you’re loved one just may be confused.  It’s a mistake to think that because they love you they’ll know what to do.  So, at least guess what will help you and then request that as clearly as you can.  If you completely don’t know what will help either try saying something like “Give me a break until I figure it out” or “I want to see a caring look on your face, hear caring sounds and words, and feel loving, caring touch” because those things usually do help soothe love related hurts and help them diminish.

As always, Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question If and when you are baffled or overwhelmed by your hurt in a difficult love relationship situation how easy is it for you to share your hurt and seek help from the loved one(s) involved in the situation, or a friend, family member, or helping professional?

Dealing With Love Hurts Series
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

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

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 

Love Never Fails or Ends

Mini-Love-Lesson  #253 

Note: This is the 16th and last in our series of What Is Love: A New Testament Reply based on Paul’s description of love and informed by the relational and behavioral sciences.

Synopsis: For your own personal use, explore the proclamations that love never fails or ends; search into the theology and psychology of these precepts; look at mysterious lifelong love; delve into three of the major ways to comprehend Paul’s teachings; contemplate the wide-ranging coverage of the English translations; review a bit of what science says and consider gambling on never and forever.

It’s Over, Or Is It?

Love may never die but love relationships do cease even if love is still felt.  Many a divorced person feels a love in their heart for an ex and at the same time they feel a strong, real love for a new spouse.  “I love my ex so much better now that I know I don’t have to live there anymore” is an idea I have often heard expressed in post-divorce counseling (see “Exes and Love”).

Love for a child, parent, sibling or other family member or even a deep friend, if estranged or on hold with little or no chance of reactivation, still can persist.  For many, once they strongly love someone that love is an ongoing state of being lasting a lifetime.  For millions who have lost those dear to their heart due to death, this ongoing love remains very true, real and active.  It has always been amazing to me in counseling with help when a client talks to a dead loved one and then listens for a reply, amazing things often happen.  Several counseling techniques assist this process but often they are not needed.  Replies almost invariably come, whether silently heard or spoken by the client, and most commonly are extremely heartfelt and beneficial to the one grieving.

Intellectually we all know to think that the replies come from the client’s own mind but at the heart level it still works.  Clients usually leave those sessions feeling a love connection event has occurred, nurtured them and they are better for it.  Perhaps it is because they were able to engage in the action of sending their love but then too they seem to have also received some love in the process.

Then there is the hard to explain, getting a reply containing information that seemingly could not have been known prior to the session.  That is rare but it does occur.  I can only conclude we see through a glass darkly and, therefore, who really knows what realms love can reach into?

Some think that once love is born and grows, it gets to a certain point of strength where thereafter it is always able to be tapped into and is a lifelong part of us.  In those cases, love seems to live on, deep in our subconscious. 

Think of the many loving friends who have not seen each other, maybe even for years, and they pick up right where they left off years ago.  Think of long lost relatives who do the same thing upon reuniting.  Many a parent and child who have been, for one reason or another, sometimes separated for decades rejoining together and manifesting love feelings that seem both old and fresh at the same time.  Then there are the exes who broke off relating years ago, then grew and came back together more successfully than before.  They rejoin with a love that they sometimes say it both has restarted and it was there all along.

There appears to be much evidence pointing to the truth that, as far as we can tell, real love is indeed often long lasting love.  As related by Paul, love may not fail or fade away but indeed be, just possibly, everlasting (see “A Dozen Kinds of Love to Have in Your Life”).

Contemplating and Comprehending Paul On Love

This is the last in our series on Paul’s precepts on what love is and is not and what love does and does not do.  This last precept is thought to be a sort of summation teaching aimed at having a final, potent impact with a compelling action-oriented effect.  For a great many readers it seems to succeed at that.

There are, however, some interpretation ponderments.  Translators seem to see two interrelated but definitely different ways of understanding this teaching. Then to make matters more complicated, other scholarly research appears to point to a third still interrelated yet different discernment.

Paul’s words in ancient biblical Greek are “he agape oudepote ekpiptei”.  Eighteen of the 30+ English translation efforts we reviewed decipher this as “love never fails” but eight others as “love never ends” or something very similar.  Then other scholarship now understands this to perhaps mean “love never weakens” (see “Spirituality and Love Great and Grand”).

So which is it “love never fails” or “love never ends” or “love never weakens”?  It is quite possible Paul’s words mean all three.  Just as is true in English, biblical Greek words can have more than one meaning.  Sometimes variations of meaning are simultaneously meant to be communicated.  Especially is this true in the communications of the more widely educated and intelligent of ancient Greece.  Paul was both according to what we know about him.

From a psychological perspective, it can be quite rewarding to include all three in our study and thoughtful usage of Paul’s summation precept on love.  Even so, there are some more to be intrigued about, contemplated and understood.

The English Possibilities

“Love never fails” in English has a wide variety of meanings.  It can mean love never succumbs, loses, goes down to defeat, and is ever victorious.  It also can suggest, love never declines, does not perish, waste away, flag, deteriorate, falter or flounder.  Then again, it can be understood as love never collapses, crumbles, is found defective, comes to nothing or is inconsequential.  Some put it as real, strong and healthy love always wins out in the end.

“Love has no end and/or love is eternal” can be seen as love always was and always will be, love once begun will last forever, love was and/or is self originating, love is ceaseless, perpetual, timeless, infinitely ongoing and once love is given birth love never dies.

“Love never weakens”, i.e. love never diminishes, depletes, declines, decays, degrades, fades or becomes de-powered is a third rendition being considered for interpretive value.

All of the above can be seen as having possible truth.  Arguably, the deity is seen theologically as eternal and omnipotent, plus the nature of deity is understood to be love and, therefore, love also is eternal and of an undiminishing strength.  In more than one world religion, these concepts have been posited or are articles of faith (see “7 Other Definitions of Real Love Worth Considering” which includes A Metaphysical Definition of Love).

What Does Science Say?

Science and especially the psychological sciences can not really adequately deal with much in the world of theology. As one researcher put it “We just can’t seem to fit eternity and all the other totality concepts into our labs so, alas, we best treat them as outside our jurisdictions”.  That, of course, has not stopped any number of scientists from proclaiming they know the real truths of existence.

The history of science is replete with examples of arrogant proclamations which turned out to be mistaken.  It seems all scientific truths are subject to at least greater elaboration later.  It would seem that we do well to remember that we see through a glass darkly but with science we probably do see far better and far more than ever before.

From a social sciences point of view, the fact is love relationships do end even if love itself does not. There are those that argue the evidence says love is like everything else – it is something that is born, grows, diminishes and then dies.  Arguably that might refer to false love relationships or relationships that did not grow to the point of strength that they could last a lifetime or beyond.

Now on a personal note, let me say that I, as a clinician, have seen and experienced things my scientific self can not come close to adequately explaining.  Especially has this been true in matters involving love.  I must say that from my astonished and awed perspective it appears the heart often sees far better and further than the mind.

Gambling On Love Eternally Today

A Theolog I knew and respected once wrote me a report on Paul’s precepts which ended with his collective take on Paul’s teachings.  It was, “In all circumstances and human relationships, when in doubt: love; it is never wrong to love.”  I agree.

I suggest gambling on love is likely, almost always, to be your best bet.  Believing or at least hoping and suspecting that love lasts forever and that love relationships may indeed go on beyond the grave is frequently a very life affirming and helpful thing to do.

Here is a suggestion to contemplate.  Work at doing ever better love everyday you love someone.  Adopt the perspective that it is a joy and privilege to do that work.  Therefore, why not hope to do it forever if you can.  That, I suggest is an attitudinal gamble well worth taking.

Likewise, there is a usefulness to knowing that at any moment a love relationship can be brought to an abrupt, earthly end.  So, do not waste your time, use it to do more love relating actions soon, often and better.

One more little thing.  I bet some good things will happen if you get to talk this mini-love-lesson over with some loving others.  If you do, then please mention this site and help spread love knowledge around a bit.  Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable question: In the high valley of the heart summer love is easy, but what about in the deep snows of winter?