Behaviors That Give Love - The Basic Core Four

Synopsis: This mini love lesson gets you started on how to give healthy, real love as a useful step toward also being able to get it; then goes into the four most basic, core types of behavior discovered by research which convey healthy, real love.

How to Give Healthy, Real Love and Then Get It

To get love, learn to give it.  How do you do that, you ask.  A wonderful answer has been given to us by massive, expansive, long-range, wonderfully well done research conducted in social psychology.

That research has discovered 383 distinctive behaviors likely for stimulating feeling loved by the recipients of those behaviors.  Luckily, advanced, astonishing, ‘magical’, statistical analysis techniques now have boiled down all that to just eight simple groups of behavior, which you can learn .  In addition to that, clinical and field work by practitioners of relationship therapy have added all sorts of important goodies to this knowledge.

If you learn, practice and get good at the major ways of sending your love to others, all sorts of improvements in your life become likely.  A ton of research supports that contention.

Many people come to me asking how they can fall in love, become loved, find love, get love, be lovable, etc..  The first thing to do, I suggest, is concentrate and learn how to give healthy, real love.  Then practice and get really good at it.  At this site you can study what healthy, real love truly is and about the eight major categories of behavior that social psychologists and others have discovered which send, demonstrate, deliver and give healthy, real love directly to others. Plus there are four more larger, wide-ranging categories of how love is given, but first get the basics.

Presented here are the basic, core, four major ways to directly give love which lay down a groundwork for learning the rest.  Each of these can be applied to romantic love, spouse love, love of a child, friendship love, and many other types of love, including healthy self-love.

Introducing The Basic, Core Four

1.  Touch Love
Touch, or tactile love, is defined as physical contact which demonstrates loving affection, support, caring, comforting and also sensual and sexual loving, plus the special category of healing touch.  Touching with love perhaps is the most basic and oldest form of demonstrating love.  It probably is the first form of love people experience, usually beginning in the womb and very soon after birth.  Babies who do not receive loving touch die of ‘failure to thrive’ illnesses like marasmus even though they are otherwise well taken care of.

Before loving, holding, cuddling and stroking became part of the care program given to infant orphans, 99.9% of them died before reaching the age of two in the orphanages studied in North America and Europe.  It is feared that older people in various care facilities also may die sooner without loving touch.  There also is evidence to suggest that between those two age groups those who go without loving touch are far more likely to experience all kinds of serious, psychological disorders and perhaps physical ones also.  So, learn to do loving touch – a lot!

Take a look at the following list of words expressing how many different ways loving touch may be done.

Holding, hand holding, petting, stroking, caressing, cuddling, hugging, kissing, embracing, clasping, nuzzling, foot rubbing, snuggling, fondling, squeezing, tapping, light tickling, full body pressing, lap dancing , tease pinching, cupping and at least a dozen others for the sensual and erotic, love expressive, touch actions.

Why not get good at all of them?

Another category of tactile love involves healing touch.  To be lovingly touched when ill or injured, distressed, or in any way dysfunctional is known to be surprisingly healing, including at the physical level.  Wounded areas lovingly touched by someone loving you heal faster and better according to no small number of studies.

2.  Expressional Love
Expressional love probably is the second oldest and also is a very basic, quickly delivered form of showing love.  Expressional love is accomplished by loving expressions in your tones of voice, loving facial expressions, loving gestures and love communicated by posture movements.  If someone you love comes in the room and you stand up (posture movement expression), hold open your arms in welcoming (gesture expression), smile (facial expression) and say “aahh” in a most loving tone of voice (tonal expression) you probably have done a really good job of sending several bits of expressional love.

Most people are surprised to learn that in direct, personal, face-to-face communication only 7% of the communication is carried by the words being spoken.  Tonal expression conveys about 35% of the message and facial, gesture and body motion can convey 55% of the total message.  So, get good at studying what your tones, face, gesture and whole body movements are saying and help them speak of your love to those you love.

Become good at the looks and sounds of love and then it is more likely that those will flow back to you in greater abundance.  When you do this love-bonding becomes far more likely and love relationship health is nourished.  However, don’t do it for those reasons because the mere giving of love action does wonders for you whether you get anything in return from others or not.  Remember, real love is a free gift.

3.  Verbal Love
The words that convey love can add all sorts of power, intricacy, elaboration, understanding and magnificence to the way you deliver your love to another.  Verbal love includes words spoken and words written.  Verbal love simply is defined as the behavior of using words to convey and express love.

The simple “I love you” statements are perhaps the most common form of verbal love.  Pet names, nicknames, terms of endearment like sweetheart, darling, honey, etc., words expressing the many and varied, different emotions caused by love (remember, love itself is not an emotion but a powerful natural process), special made-up words shared only by intimately connecting lovers, words of passion when love is part of the passion, poetic and artful phraseology, positive humorous terms, double meanings, and other very personally expressive and descriptive word-craft all count here in the verbal expressions of love.

4.  Gift Love
Gift love is defined as presenting to a loved one tangible objects, resources, opportunities or experiences aimed at conveying love, and having no component of expecting a return action or object being sought.  Gift love is generally thought of in two major forms: those that are more tangible gifts like things attractively wrapped in boxes but also including resources like finances; and the other form of experience gifts like surprise birthday parties or a picnic date, offering opportunities counts here too like letting someone use your place for the party they are giving.
What is important is to enjoy the giving of the gift and let that be enough.  If the recipient of you gift enjoys it, says thanks, gives you something in return, or shows off your gift or makes laudatory statements to others on your behalf that’s all extra.  ‘Giving to get something back’ is not a gift, it’s a manipulation.

Experience gifts like taking someone to an event they really want to go to, playing music they really like to hear, or providing an opportunity for them to do something adventuresome, beautiful or extraordinary can be among the best of gifts.  For conveying intimate love sometimes unexpected, small gifts like a single rose can be more important than larger gifts like a whole bouquet when presented just right.  Gift love is best considered an ‘art form’ well worth learning and practicing.
To really learn and get into all eight of the major ways of directly giving healthy, real love I, perhaps egotistically, strongly recommend you read my book, Recovering Love, available through amazon.com, iuniverse.com, and others.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Of the above, basic, core, four ways to give love which are you best at and how are you going to get even better at it?

Related posts:

1. Other Ways to Say I Love You
2. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill 

Poly Love

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

Uncle Charlie’s Introduction to a Love ‘Weirdness’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Poly Advantage

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

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

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

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

Questions and Quandaries

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

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

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

Personal Questions And the Worldwide Scene

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

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

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

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

Can You Talk about Sex - with Love?

Talking about sex with love is known to work wonders for both the sex lives and love lives of many people.  Unfortunately there still are many others who don’t know how to do this very well.  In fact there are quite a few who don’t seem to be able to do this at all.

Some people can talk with love about sex to a close, intimate friend but not to a spouse or lover.  Many parents trying to instruct their children about sex do it in very loveless ways.  For others talking to a teenager concerning sex in ways that are love-filled is almost impossible.  Many people can’t talk to their family members about sex at all, let alone in ways that convey love.  Many people long to have more love in their sex lives but they don’t know how to talk about or ask for that very well.

Others want more sex in their love lives but they sure don’t know how to lovingly converse about that.  And then there are some who are vaguely aware that something is missing, which if they talked about it would probably turn out to be communications of love that are missing.  Sadly they don’t know how to talk about that so this important missing element is never discovered or dealt with.

For so many people learning how to talk about ways to grow and mix healthy real love with sexuality would lead to satisfying unmet desires and greatly, even profoundly, enrich their lives.  Regrettably that is something they mostly are unaware of so that way of talking probably won’t happen.  You may ask, how did these blocks or inabilities come to be?  Let’s look and see if one or more of these causes and initiating factors happened to you.

Lots of people grew up in homes where no one talked about sex.  If that happened to you you were probably being subconsciously programmed not to talk about sex at all or to have a very hard time talking about it.  Other people grew up in families that talked about sex only in negative ways of one type or another.  If in your family sex was talked about with heavy emotional tones of guilt, disgust, revulsion, judgmentalism, fear, nastiness or any other negative mood or mindset you could have been programmed to talk about sex in similar negative ways and perhaps not even realize it.

Some of us were raised in homes where adults talked about sex in flat, matter-of-fact ways or in puzzling, unclear ways.  When sex is mentioned today we may talk in that same matter-of-fact or puzzling, unclear way.  For a great many others any mention of sex was embarrassing, shameful, sinful, and something God was against; and as adults it still is.  There is another group when growing up perceived talking about sex as a naughty pleasure.  Everything referring to sex resulted in a delicious tasting of forbidden fruit. Thus, sex talk was fun but love was not a part of it.  Love, therefore, still may be absent or minimal when communicating about sex for people raised this way.

Another common background for many has to do with a conflicted subconscious programming.  Parents taught talking about sex was “bad” but siblings and friends taught sex talk was “good” in that it was exciting, powerful, independent, and more adult.  This especially seemed true if sex talk was sufficiently shocking, nasty, dirty, raunchy, filthy, salacious, etc..  Such talk was ‘socially forbidden’, therefore, it was filled with the raptures of secret rebellion. This too had a subconscious programming effect which lingers in the minds of many adults today.  All this means that too few of today’s adults who were raised in the Western world (and in some other parts of the world) grew up hearing sex talked about with loving words and tones of voice, coupled with loving looks and a general atmosphere of simple, loving okayness.  Love and sex effectively often have been uncoupled, divided and set apart from each other, at least as far as talk is concerned.

Let’s look at what to do to make this better.

Ask yourself these three questions.  Can you converse about sex with a mate, lover, friends, family members, a child you’re raising, a teenager or even with yourself with love?  Do you talk or avoid talking about sex in a way that avoids being loving?  Can you do a good job of mixing the words, sounds and looks of love with the words, sounds and looks of sexuality and the erotic?  If you can, be proud and happy, but also know that some of those you talk to in more personal ways may need some help in learning to do the same.

To talk about sex with love consider these words which sometimes are used to describe talking with love:
 
>>>Kind, caring, sweet, happy, tender, joyful, intimate, fun, affirming, praising, thankful, nonjudgmental, accepting, gentle, reassuring, challenging, honest, appreciative, celebratory, laudatory, passionate, reverent, zestful, precious, heartfelt, inspiring, adoring, close, delightful<<<

Can you talk about sex with yourself and others you love in the moods indicated by each of the above words?  If not, it might be good for you, and maybe for those who are closest to you, to work on learning how to speak about sex, sexiness and the erotic in at least a few of those loving moods.

Remember, doing a good job of talking together is not just about the words we use.  It also is about how well we listen and about the manner in which we receive and deliver messages.  A wink, a subtle smile, a whisper, a tonal change, the use of an innuendo and a great many other behaviors can empower or de-power our message, shape interpretation, convey emotions and deliver the ‘between the lines’ message.  All this especially is important when talking together about sex with someone you love.

The mood or manner in which we talk about sexuality often is far more important than the words spoken.  Mixing highly seductive intonations and strongly suggestive looks, postures and gestures with the sounds, looks and words of love can be enormously impactful in a personal relationship.  Happily and lovingly explaining sex to a child mixed with a certain amount of matter-of-factness can have a very positive effect in guiding a child toward a healthy, happy understanding of sexuality.  Being kind and caring while discussing a sexual difficulty may be crucial to overcoming the difficulty.  Being enthusiastically sexual with loving overtones can produce more superb, erotic love experiences.  Speaking intimately naughty but ever so lovingly friendly is another way to shape mood and manner in a positive fashion.

Sex talk with loving laughter, smiles and caresses can work to attain an atmosphere of intimate, relaxed, happy eroticism in which love with sex easily flows.  For many the success or failure of asking a love mate to try something new sexually depends on how lovingly the request is made.  Sweet, tender,  gentle, reassuring, and above all else love-filled talk about a sex conflict often is essential for the conflict’s resolution.  Heading into a new sex adventure together is frequently best started with strong, solid expressions of love for one another.

Another way to make talking about sex a love experience has to do with stating appreciation, thankfulness, praise, compliments and generally speaking in a laudatory fashion to and about your love mate.  Likewise, talking about sex and listening to someone else talk about sex with tolerance, open-mindedness, affirmation and kindness also can help make the talk a love-filled event.  And, of course, using terms of loving endearment like sweetheart, darling, honey, etc. can add quite a lot of love to sex talk.

For most couples doing well at talking about sex with one another is very important.  It may determine not only how well their sex life goes but influence a great deal more in their all over relationship.  How generally open, honest, intimate and real people can come to be with each other is frequently guided by how well they lovingly talk about sex with one another.  This can be true not only for couples but for close, intimate friends as well.  How lovingly people treat their love mate’s sex questions, requests and desires often determines how honest and self disclosing a person feels they can be in a relationship.

So crucial to a couple’s sexual development is the ability to hear ‘with love’ what turns on a love mate, what sex fantasies are imagined, what taboo explorations are secretly hoped for, what’s hard to talk about and, most of all, what’s desired.  Without demonstrations and expressions of love mixed into a couple’s sex communications there is a likelihood that censorship, inhibition, deception, intolerance, judgmentalism, boredom, emotional distancing and simple discomfort will grow.

Another part of mixing love and sex together in talk has to do with your healthy self-love and how you talk to yourself about your own sexuality.  In your internal dialogue can you speak with love to yourself about the erotic you?  Can you affirm the natural goodness and healthfulness of the sexuality you were born to experience?  Are you able to praise and give thanks for your sexual system and all the many good feelings it gives you?  Have you freed yourself of the unhealthy, anti-sexual and anti-self-loving influences that may have impacted you?  Are you able to love your own sexuality as a precious part of the bundle of miracles that you are?  Is your self talk increasingly loving and positive when it comes to your own sexuality?

It takes a bit of doing to overcome our subconscious programs from childhood that influence how we speak and don’t speak about love and sex.  To get a sense of this difficulty imagine you are talking, teaching and answering the questions of teen boys and girls concerning erections, vaginal lubrication, sexual intercourse, menstrual cramps, ejaculate, yeast infections, masturbation, orgasm, the G spot, birth control, STD’s, foreplay, condoms, oral sex, bi-sexuality  homosexuality, hypo- and hyper-sexuality and polygamous sex; and imagine you are doing it in a way that connects it all with reassuring love.  This is the challenge facing parents who have decided to do a thorough job of sexually educating their offspring.  Many would have some problems talking about these things coupled with love to their closest adult friends because of their childhood programs to be embarrassed, ashamed, etc.  Yet, the better we frankly can talk with love the better we can solve problems, avoid difficulties, achieve advancement and make growth occur in being lovingly sexual and sexually loving.

To overcome our subconscious programs that work against talking in a sex with love way often takes dedication and perseverance.  Those who practice it find the effort highly worthwhile.
Communicating with love and sex mixed together may be a primary way most couples build a sense of deep connectedness.  Without the love included a more limited, more narrow, more reserved and more distancing way of relating may be the result.  Experiencing the love your love mate has in their heart for you makes everything you do sexually together better.  It is the love that empowers sex to be dealt with in ways that enable sexual explorations, adventures, advancements, creativity, freedom, abandonment of inhibitions, and mutual attainment of erotic spiritual heights.  When love and sex are mixed together and well communicated awesome, oceanic, transcendental experiences of Eros may result.  Traveling together toward such incredible shared ecstasy can begin with developing your ability to talk about sex with love.

As always, grow in love
 
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question With whom are you actually going to talk to about mixing love and sex and the ideas in this blog entry; and how might that be for you?

Related posts:

1. How to Talk Love Without Words
2. Lasting Sex and Lasting Love
3. Sexual Love Laces
4. Emotional Intercourse
5. Are You Talking About Love Enough? 

Upbeat Emotions & Learning for Love

Synopsis: An Elven teaching about a difference between “smart” and “wise”, finding the guidance messages for upbeat love emotions, the grand importance of sharing emotions, 7 upbeat emotions to share and use for practice in getting your personal guidance messages and more.

It was told of old that the ancient elves taught:
“The smart learn from their hurts, agonies, disappointments and despair.

The wise learn from their joys, ecstasies, contentments, and elations,
while sadly – the rest learn not from their feelings at all.”
Natural, good feeling emotions can give us great guidance.  Natural, good feeling emotions tell us that we are doing something probably healthful and right for us to do.  Shared natural, good feeling emotions guide us toward more and better bonding together in love relationships.  Natural, good feeling emotions can teach us a great deal about ourselves, our relationships and how to make both stronger and more successful.  It is our job to learn how to get the guidance messages of our natural, good feeling emotions and use them for higher, greater and more wonderful love.

Feelings, both physical and emotional, are ancient, natural guidance systems working for our safety, survival and advancement.  They are far older than are reasoning and conscious thought.  In relationships and especially love relationships our emotional system of feelings often gives far wiser guidance than do reason or contemplation.  However, it is even more advantageous when we use our thinking and reasoning abilities with our emotions because that gives us the very best guidance our incredible brains can produce.

Of even greater benefit is when two or more people in a love relationship share in a simple, ‘four step process’.  First comes sharing their emotions, second is searching for and discovering the guidance messages in their emotions and sharing them with one another, third comes sharing and synthesizing their thinking about the feelings and the guidance message, and finally comes acting in teamwork with one another from what they have discovered from sharing and synthesizing.  Synthesizing means to interweave together the guidance messages of the emotions and actions stemming from those guidance messages.

Here’s a simple example.  Harriet feels cold and understands her feeling guidance message is to “warm up”.  Charlie feels hot and understands his guidance message is to  “cool down”.  Instead of arguing about whether or not they’re going to turn up or turn down the thermostat they synthesize their guidance messages, so Charlie takes off his shirt and hands it to Harriet who puts it on.  Charlie is cooler, Harriet is warmer, and both are happier in their harmony together via sharing feelings and their guidance messages and arriving at ‘synthesis’.

There are a number of good things that come from sharing emotions and together discovering the guidance that those emotions give.  Here’s the biggest and most wonderful part of that.  Sharing emotions together may result in the most significant relationship experiences people have together.  By lovingly sharing both the emotions we call “good” and the ones we call “bad” continued emotional connecting and bonding tends to become ongoing.  Without that sharing, emotional connection can fade and love relationships may die.

Sharing the emotions of good times and bad times, but especially the upbeat, good times tends to strengthen a couple, or a family, or friendship, or any other human unit.  Sharing upbeat feelings is more easily enriching to humans who love each other, but sometimes through sharing hurts there is deep connectedness also.  Without the sharing of good, happy, upbeat emotions the continued strengthening and enrichment of a love relationship is very hard to achieve.

Many people do not know that sharing good or upbeat emotions is just as important, if not more important, than sharing the ‘downer’ emotions of pain and displeasure.  While sharing pain tends to lessen the pain, sharing good feelings provides motivation to be together, stay together and move forward together.  Sharing good or upbeat feelings also provides knowledge, for those who know to learn from it, for how to repeatedly achieve good feelings and the enrichments, health and well-being that natural, good feelings bring.  Consider the statement “Date your mate or lose your mate” (see blog entry “Date Your Mate – Always!”).  It is in the shared joys of recreation that couples, families, and others are re-created as the word recreation indicates.  Therefore, dates, vacations and other ‘upbeat’ emotional experiences are vital to the healthful continuance of love relationships.

Of course it is really best and highly important to share both the feelings we call “good” and the feelings we call “bad” which enable us to better get the guidance messages of them all.  In a sense all feelings are good because all feelings give guidance.  The ‘team’ we call a couple, or a family, or a friendship, like any team, needs shared guidance.  Otherwise one part of the team doesn’t know what the other part of the team is all about and, thus, teamwork fails.  It is a simple truth that within a team shared guidance works far better than un-shared guidance and that’s why it is important that all the team members join in sharing their feelings with each other.  Only then can all share in the guidance those feelings can give.

Here is an example.  His strong emotions were pushing him toward adventure.  Her strong feelings were for safety.  With love they shared their emotions, and with wisdom they synthesized the guidance messages they got from their feelings.  Mountain climbing, starting with a modest mountain, became the most exciting thing they had ever done together and the shared excitement, shared adventure and the shared awe of grand vistas bonded them together like little else could.

She was so thankful for his spirit and desire for adventure because it brought her worlds she never knew and ecstasy she never imagined experiencing.  Her own emotions of fear, anxiety and foreboding motivated her request that they start with a not too difficult ascent and also that she bring an extra well-equipped first-aid kit, which contained the necessary items that saved his life when a rattlesnake bit him as they were descending the mountain.  He was so thankful that her emotions guided her to the safeguarding actions that saved his life.

Shared fears and desires lead to following the guidance messages that lead to both of them surviving adversity and to a grand and enriching shared adventure.  It also brought them closer together and strengthened their mutual love experience.  He at first had thought her safety concerns were a bit excessive.  She quite definitely thought his adventure desires were excessive but with love, hope and certain safeguarding actions she went forward with him.  Both came to feel very glad for being able to understand the guidance their emotions gave them.

So, are you learning the guidance messages and teachings hidden in the wisdom of your emotions?  (For more information about the guidance messages of emotions see the entry “Dealing with Love Hurts #1 – Pain’s Crucial Guidance”)  Are you especially learning from your upbeat, happy emotions?  With a loved one, together are you sharing those emotions, jointly learning their guidance messages, and weaving together what you learn?  Do you actively seek to learn the feelings of those you love and ascertain the guidance messages and teachings in the feelings of your loved ones?  Are you good at synthesizing yours and your loved one’s emotional guidance messages?

To help you toward doing these things here are five types of ‘good’ or pleasant to experience emotions, and typical learnings or guidance messages ‘wise people’ — or elves — sometimes get from these good feelings.

1. Emotion: Serenity: Possible Guidance Message: Here is restoration, so linger with it and soak it up.  Whenever you’re stressed, hassled, anguished or just drained learning from your serenity could help you remember what you did, and how you behaved, and where you went that got you to serenity and to its highly restorative enrichment so that you might do it again.  If you share your feelings of serenity with a loved one they may also feel some serenity or feel more connected with you and your current serene countenance, plus they could learn the same thing you’re learning from that feeling.  A loved one might also notice and remind you when you need to do those things that lead to your restorative serenity.

2.  Emotion: Joyful Anticipation: Possible Guidance Message: Go forward, let yourself get into the anticipated experience fully, soak it up and be enriched by it.  Sharing it with a loved one may help them have a good feeling of joyful anticipation also, and that may double both your pleasures, helping to connect you with your loved one more fully.

3.  Emotion: Tenderness: Possible Guidance Message: Feeling tender toward someone can guide you to show and share your feeling softly, delicately, slowly and somewhat carefully.  The guidance coming from tenderness can lead you toward a more intimate connection with someone you love.

4.  Emotion: Affection:  Possible Guidance Message: feeling affectionate can guide us to lovingly touch, say words of affection, give and act with affectionate affirmation, and actually be far more in touch with experiencing what is wonderful about a loved one.  Done well, expressed affectionate feelings are often highly rewarding to both the lover and the loved.  Received well, affection is often energizing, thus, boosting a person’s experience of you, themselves and life.

5. Emotion: Pride: Possible Guidance Message: Feeling pride guides you to be more confident in either ‘your being’ or ‘your doing’ accomplishments.  It also may get you to store up that confidence so that you can accomplish more.  Pride may help you honor yourself which will tend to strengthen your self-esteem, your sense of worth, and be more motivated ‘to own’ your okayness and, therefore, attempt more in your life.  Accurate pride also may counter low self esteem, poor self concept, and a general sense of inadequacy, along with encouraging independence and self-assertion. (Note: Accurate pride in yourself is always the enemy of that which is dictatorial and controlling).

Pride in a loved one, or in your coupleness, in your family, in a friendship or anything else you’re a part of is great for feeling united and inspired.  Furthermore, accurate pride can guide us toward having a greater sense of empowered security because of a solidarity with ourselves and others.  Pride in others is best when it is shared, which rewards other’s actions and helps with feeling connected.  Sharing pride in yourself with a good, self respecting loved one, so long as it is not overdone and is accurate, usually garners respect and greater relaxation together.  Do note, there are those who may have trouble with you being proud, for example, the envious, the jealous, the inadequate and those who have been taught that pride is a sin

It is important that everyone work to get their own guidance messages from their own emotions because the guidance messages can vary to a fair degree from person to person.  Generally the guidance message in all so-called “good” feeling emotions is to keep doing the actions or thoughts that brought the feelings, until boredom comes along to tell you to do something else.  The general guidance message in most emotions known as “bad” feelings is to do something different, usually right away.  But as you can see from the above examples of upbeat emotions there is a lot more ‘wisdom’ to be learned and lived by in the “guidance messages for the wise”.

You and a loved one might want to talk about what you think the guidance messages could be for both of you together when experiencing the following ‘upbeat’ emotions: 1. Awe, 2. Joy, 3. Sweetness,  4. Closeness,  5. Tickled , 6. Ecstasy & 7. Respect.

As always –Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Will you identify and share with a loved one the strongest two emotions you have felt so far today, and together see if you can discern what the guidance messages in those feelings might be?

Related posts:

1. Dealing With Love Hurts: Shared And Unshared Pain
2. Emotional Intercourse
3. Listening with Love
4. Growing Closeness – A Love Skill
5. Say It With Love 

What Your Brain Does with Love - Put Simply

Mini-Love-Lesson #208

Synopsis: Where your heart resides in your brain and what that has to do with the many emotions triggered by love; how feeding your brain love makes you healthy are all presented and surveyed in this mini-love-lesson; more.

The Heart in Your Brain

First, in cherished tones, you hear the words “I love you”, or perhaps you feel a tender loving touch, or maybe you see a precious sweet smile on the face of a beloved one, or it could be any of the 383 other loving behaviors (so far discovered, Swenson) which can activate your sensory systems to help you experience love.  Next, as your nerves are stimulated by a love input they send electrical messages to centers and circuits of your deeper, ancient, non-conscious brain designed for receiving and processing love.

That deeper part of your brain primarily is where your psychological heart resides.  It is where you process love, being loved and loving.  It also is the part of that sends out electrical and chemical messages to other parts of your brain and to many parts of your body activating them to function more healthfully, and generally to beneficially guide you.  Then those messages stimulate your brain to make a variety of neurochemical compounds which in turn help to make you conscious of starting to feel the many, various, good, emotional and physical feelings of love.

All of that happens mostly quite naturally, automatically and also largely non-consciously at first.  But your subconscious knows and is responding.  When it comes to love, it seems that the conscious, aware and thinking mind, to a large extent, gets bypassed at first.  Some have postulated that perhaps nature does not really trust the conscious mind to handle anything as important as love, other than to be aware of feeling it after it is up and running.  Notice, people tend more often to say things like “I realized I love him (or her)”, or “suddenly I just knew I loved (so-and-so)” rather than saying things like “I can tell I love that person a little bit and maybe that love is growing”.  That occasionally does happen.  Perhaps also that is why you can not feel your love for someone all the time but it is there all the time where you can draw on it when it is called for.

You purposely can come to sense love when it exists in you and, thus, know you love someone, but this is just the awareness of love and not the love itself.  Because love neurologically is not an emotion but rather a natural, complicated, internal, deep brain process which you sometimes feel or sense.  It also is a process which can give you a great many different emotions, among which are feeling loving, feeling loved and feeling lovable.

Love and Its Accompanying Emotions

While love happens, you frequently do become consciously aware of the feelings of being loved, and/or loving, or just a sense of love itself.  You also may get a wide range of other, accompanying, positive feelings which the experience of love triggers or sets off in your brain.  When love is being experienced, there can be accompanying positive feelings of tenderness, intimacy, ecstasy, serenity, passion, emotional closeness and connection, compassion, ebullience, preciousness, empathetic care, oceanic awareness and a great many other fantastic feelings.

Identifying love as only an emotion is grossly inaccurate and can lead to mis-judging its emotional richness, nature, power, importance and functional dynamics.  In turn, that can lead to a great many missed opportunities, misunderstandings and relational mistakes concerning love.  Some of those can be quite tragic.  Remember, feeling love is natural but love relating is learned.

Blocked and Anti-Love Interference

The whole love process described above can be blocked, confounded and in essence sabotaged by other things that go on both in your brain and in your life.  For instance, a former love relationship that was too often or too severely painful can cause you to be extra reluctant and cautious about entering a new love involvement.  If you have been trained or subconsciously programmed to be more oriented to one, or more, of the false forms of love you may greatly misinterpret or overlook a current, real love opportunity.

Too much emphasis on sexuality, romance, marriage or strong personal insecurity also can get in the way of healthy, real love development.  Substance addictions, compulsive avarice and status desires, plus simply plain ignorance about love also provides lots of dangers.  These are but some of the many things that can block or interfere with processing love healthfully and doing love-relating successfully.

Love and Your Brain for the More Anatomically Fascinated

You could skip this section if you are not intrigued about knowing some of the brain/body details of love’s psychoneurophysiology and neurochemistry.

There is a lot we don’t know yet and what we do know is like everything else about the brain – complicated.  Nevertheless, here is a little bit of more technical brain knowledge concerning what your brain does with love.  These knowledge bits can be used to lookup much more complete information than is given here.

First of all, the preponderance of research evidence shows love not to be an emotion like it is so often misidentified.  Rather, love, at least in part, is seen as a natural, very healthy, systemic, brain process involving many emotions and a whole lot more than that.  Brain-wise the process of love is more similar to the biological process of turning food into energy or your body’s systems and for keeping you free from infections than it is to being just a simple emotional feeling.  Unlike an emotion, real love is not a temporary, or frequently fleeting feeling.  Rather, once real love is established it likely is going to be with you from then on, and some postulate even after death.  A relationship may end but if there was real love that will remain even though there might be many contravening variables about other aspects of the relationship.

Your psychological heart mostly is in your brain’s limbic system.   Love processing involves a good many of your limbic system’s component parts.  Thought to be included are your insula, anterior cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus and putamen, all of which show heightened activation when you come in contact with someone you feel love with or for.  Lower activation also occurs in the amygdala, posterior cingulate, and the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices in the right hemisphere of your brain.  Those changes in brain activity show love to be at least a twofold process.  One, increases good or positive feelings and the other decreases your negative or bad feelings.  Among those are a lowered sense of fear and a heightened sense of safety.  Changes in the activation rate of those brain parts also mean you become less outer environmentally aware and more internally and emotionally aware as the love process happens.  Worry decreases and as love-induced endorphins and dopamine levels increase so does your all-over sense of happiness and well-being.

Also thought to be probably involved with the love process in your brain are your hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, temporal lobe, orbitofrontal cortex, septal area, corpus callosum, frontal lobe, fornex, mammillary bodies and limbic cortex.  Each of those may have to do with different aspects and factors of the love process.

When referring to a couple, some may say “they have chemistry” that certainly is true.  Love makes a host of neurochemical things happen.  Chemical changes in your brain and body frequently include changes in androgen, testosterone, pheromones, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin, epinephrine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine, and that is just what researchers have discovered, it seems so far that I know about.  Each of those helps you process different aspects of loves dynamics.  For instance, oxytocin helps you with feeling love connected and bonded with another.  Please note, these are natural, good chemicals that are produced by our bodies when love occurs.  So, those who get lots of love in their lives don’t need similar kinds of pharmaceuticals or street drugs with potential toxic side effects.

From Your Brain to Your Body

The chemicals your brain makes when it is processing love go into your blood and flow through not only your brain but also through the rest of your body.  Everywhere they go they work to have a great variety of beneficial and healthful effects.  It seems that each of the three tiers and 12 major categories of loving behavior [see “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”] may trigger different, healthful benefits.  Some are quite invigorating, energizing and mobilizing for action.  Others are calming, soothing and make for antidepressant serenity.  Quite a few have various kinds of physical healing effects.  Others are more healing in a psychological sense.

Feeling loved from any source can sort of work like food giving you energy, sometimes a great deal of energy.  Feeling serenely loved especially is good for lowering stress and the body’s reactions to stress.  Feeling loving toward others brings on one set of physically healthful effects, while acting loving toward others adds another set of physically healthful, biophysical reactions.

Getting and giving different behaviors that convey love has a positive effect on your immune system’s functioning, can lower your bad cholesterol and can help your T cells fight cancer.  The health benefits go on and on, with research discovering more all the time.

Feeding Your Brain Love Makes You Healthy

Your psychological mind and your psychological heart are in your brain.  The brain is in your body and they are all linked together affecting each other.  Experiencing healthy, real love works like a vital health food and a rather miraculous medicine.  The more you interact with people you love, and are loved by the more your brain produces helpful responses that affect your entire body’s health.  This also seems true for those you like and those you are liked by.  More love equals more health.  That is what more and more research is showing.

The more you are absent from healthy, real love input, the more you are psycho-physically malnourished or even starved and the more likely you are to have a physical and/or psychological health malfunction.  Mixing a lot with people doing false love is like eating non-nourishing, junk food.  Even worse, is to be around and interact with negative, anti-love acting people.  That is akin to eating toxic and poisonous food.  Also bad for your health is a lack of healthy self-love, and self-hate and self negation are even worse.

If at your work, or somewhere else you spend time, involves a lot of contact with non-loving, false love or anti-loving people, you had best counterbalance that with healthy self-love and with others who love well.  Remember, it is very important to “love others as you love yourself”.  It is likely your health depends on it!

One More Thing

How about sharing and talking over this mini-love-lesson with a friend or two and, thus, spread some love knowledge into our rather love ignorant world.
As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: How much real healthy love, shown physically and psychologically, have you been feeding your brain lately?

Related posts:

1. Listening With Love and IN and OUT Brain Functions
2. A Functional Definition Of Love
3. Love in the Fridge
4. Dog Love Is Real Love !
5. Self-Love – What Is It?