Can We Love Too Much?

Synopsis: This mini love lesson on whether we can love too much starts with two brief case examples of the problem of big hearts that eventually empty out; then presents a cure for the problem; and an answer to the core question; what must be unlearned and learned is discussed; an understanding of needless self-sacrifice is woven in; and closes with an “I win, you win, nobody loses” approach and goal.

Big Hearts That Empty-out

Gloria had a big heart.  She gave, and gave, and gave to those she liked and loved.  The trouble was, no one gave her much love.  Nevertheless, she just tried harder and harder, sacrificing herself for everyone.  She occasionally got some appreciation and thanks, but not much.  Then one day she collapsed.  She literally had ‘given out’.  When it came time for her to leave the hospital, she didn’t want to go back to her marriage, her family, her friends or her work.  She was pretty sure she would just do what she done before and that would lead to another breakdown and collapse.

In the hospital Gloria met Jake, who pretty much had the same story except with a little different last part.  He had given too much of his time, energy, money and everything else he had to those in need and those he loved.  Just like Gloria, he didn’t get much back.  Sometimes Jake complained a bit and he often wondered why he felt so empty.  Then a day came when he just stopped doing for others, but he did that differently than Gloria.  He suddenly started ranting and raving.  He broke things, threatened and cussed at everyone including his priest, and he scared a nun half to death at the hospital.  Then he was overcome with guilt and shame.  Like Gloria, he also did not want to go home because he thought it would all repeat and he would suffer the same consequences.

Had Gloria and Jake loved too much?  Some family and friends said that was the problem?  Can we be too loving and too good to those we love and care about?  Can we run out of the love?  Isn’t love supposed to work like thoughts – the more you give them away the more you have?

The Answer and the Cure

Gloria and Jake found the cure to their problems and answers to these questions in counseling.  There they discovered, learned and deeply digested a new way to understand a very old teaching.  They both learned that they must do a far better job of attending to the second part of the 3000 year old teaching that tells us “to love others AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF!”  In essence, Gloria and Jake had not loved others too much, they just hadn’t loved themselves enough as they went about loving others.  With the help of loving and wise counselors, Gloria and Jake were guided in learning the skills of healthy self-love, and how to ‘add it to’ and ‘integrate it’ with their way of giving love to others.

Basically, the answer to the question “can we love too much is?” is this.  We cannot love too much, but we can love unwisely, in imbalanced ways, in corrupted and contaminated ways, and in dysfunctional ways.  We also can do several forms of false love, thinking that it is real love (See Forms of False Love Identified, discussed and listed in the Titles index, under F of this website).

Necessary Un–Learning and New Learning

It wasn’t easy for Gloria and Jake.  The hardest part was to unlearn lifelong training in ‘putting themselves last’ and instead ‘holding themselves to be of equal importance’ to others.  Learning to treat the self well, giving one’s own self equal care, energy and time (except in true emergencies) and not feel guilty about it was also tough.  At first Gloria felt quite selfish, just like she had been trained to feel.  Then slowly she experienced and saw others and herself, both benefit more by adding healthy self-love to her way of going about life.  Jake came to the realization that in the long-run, he had more to offer others by way of learning the ‘how to’s’ of healthy self-love added to the love of others.

Destructive Self-sacrifice

It was painful for Gloria and Jake to learn that much of their self-sacrifice was needless, and sometimes even harmful to others.  It sometimes got in the way of people learning to do for themselves, and occasionally it had a weakening effect on those they cared about.  It also could promote unhealthy dependency tendencies, and once in a while worked to just reward others for being takers.  They saw that by giving people a chance to do for themselves, they helped them build self-confidence and self-reliance.  They learned to come to the aid of others much more cautiously, and wisely, and mostly after those they cared about had made their own considerable efforts.  But this was new, strange and surprisingly difficult for both Gloria and Jake at first, but they did get the hang of it and they increasingly grew to like these new, more successful ways of loving.

The ‘I Win, You Win, Nobody Loses’ Goal

Loving others and putting myself last makes it more likely I will be the loser.  Loving myself first and foremost and treating others as less or last makes them likely to be the losers.  However, if ‘I love myself as I love others’ there is a much better chance for us all to be winners and there be no losers.  This, I suggest, may be the secret wisdom and goal of the ancient teaching – Love others AS you love yourself.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question

Right now, can you think of any way to offer love to someone else, and at the same time give yourself some love?

Marriage By Love or by Law

Synopsis: Who’s really married; fighting legal love wars; let us remember ill-legalities of the past; not what you have been led to believe; the big comprehensive question; where are we headed; what matters to and for you.

Really Married?

Who’s really married?  Some answer only those who are deeply bonded together with true love.  Others say only those who hold a valid, governmental, marriage license.  Still others argue only those who have been sanctioned as married according to religious law and its authorities. 

Then there are those who reject the religious law viewpoint but hold that the truly married are those spiritually bonded together with divine power.  Of course, there also are those who use a sociological or cultural anthropology checklist to answer the question of who is really married and who is not.  There even are some who hypothesize that, in the future, possible psychoneurological phenomena measured as present or absent in behavior and/or in the brain could be used to analyze who’s really married and who’s not.

Legal Love Wars

Did you know that there are ongoing court battles over who gets to call themselves married and who does not?  Involved in some of those disputes are arguments about whether or not the litigants have marital type love for one another.  Calling yourself married and not having a license is legally punishable fraud, some argue.  Not being ‘in love’ and getting legally married also is considered legally fraudulent by some authorities.  Then there are those who propose that the state ought be legally banned from having anything to do about who is and who is not married, and that the government should be kept out of love relationships in general.  They argue that both love and marriage are private matters about which the government has no good reason or right to regulate or interfere.  Of course divorce lawyers, various political and governmental groups like those involved with family law, and especially immigration authorities tend to vehemently disagree with that position.

Throughout history both secular and religious law has had a lot to say about both love and marriage as well as the often related topic of sex.  Actually it is thought that long ago people got ‘love married’ to one another without any governmental or formal religious involvement at all.  Some think we ought to return to those days.  Others think we are indeed progressing or, depending on your point of view, regressing toward that very thing.

Did you know that how courts come to rule on who is married and who is not may influence how over 1000 federal rules, rights, benefits and crimes are adjudicated in the US alone?  In some other countries the numbers are even higher.  All over the world love and marriage questions are being legally struggled over and new trends are emerging.  In some lands parents who said they no longer loved each other and could not live together were not allowed to legally divorce and their children were awarded to the father, in other lands they were awarded to the mother, in still others to the grandparents, and in some cases to the state.  In the developed world this is giving way to ‘joint custody’ but that arrangement is by no means a universal option.

Can same-sex couples marry or even call themselves married.  The answer varies from country to country, and within some countries from state to state or province to province.  In some jurisdictions certain people are afforded the right to behave married in every way known, except they do not have the right to call themselves legally married.  There is a movement which proposes that all legal, romantic, partner unions be legally termed ‘domestic partners’ and the term ‘marriage’ be totally dropped from legal usage.

Let Us Remember

It is worth remembering that the battle over legalized, interracial marriage is still being fought in some places and that it was illegal in some US states until 1967.  At various times and places (and still to this day in some locales) battles were fought concerning banning people from being married legally if they were disabled, retarded, mentally ill, of different religions, different ethnic groups, different nationalities, too closely related, too old, too poor or in debt, were in slavery or indentured servitude, were in certain occupations, certain classes, certain casts or were already married to too many others (4 being a common limit).  Remember also the French Courts of Love once held that people married to one another could not love each other because marriage was essentially a relationship of unequals, while romantic love necessitated equality.

Not What You’ve Been Led to Believe!

Many people have been misled into believing romantic love and marriage have always been pretty much the same thing they think it to be now.  Factually who is really married is a question with vastly different answers throughout history and across the world’s many cultures.  Giving birth to a child has been a prerequisite for marriage in some places and times.  There were times and places in which commoners could not marry and only the Royals and the rich were allowed to wed.  Women marrying sets of brothers, men required to marry their wife’s sisters if the sisters became available, siblings marrying each other, parents marrying their offspring, some married to various deities, time-limited marriage, being more married by way of having sub-wives and sub-husbands and many stranger (to us) and more different customs all have been part of the world’s ‘who’s married’ picture.

Loving a left-handed person, an orphan, a redhead, a person whose middle finger was shorter than another finger, anyone born with any deformity, along with people who possessed full-length mirrors and full immersion bathtubs were forbidden and condemned because they were obviously under the influence of Satan.  If you married a person who was later discovered to be any of the above, or of a different race, nationality, ethnicity or religion, of a lesser cast or under-class annulments were easily obtained because no true marriage could have existed with such a person.  Slowly in most parts of the modern world love has won out over these restrictions and democratic inclusiveness has pushed autocratic exclusiveness aside in the world of who can love and marry.  Unfortunately in some parts of the world attempting to love or marry the ‘wrong person’ still can get you ‘honor’-killed (even without there being enforced legal or religious sanctions against it).

The Big Question

Do you believe or suspect that true marriage really is best understood to primarily be love-based, psychologically-based, spiritually-based, religiously-based, societally-based, biologically-based or legally-based?  What people come to think about this is perhaps going to determine the future of marriage in the world.  There are people preaching, teaching and proselytizing for each of the above positions.  There are people arguing for each of the above positions, putting forth public policies related to each, proposing and attacking laws related to each, and shaping their own personal lives according to each.  You, or your children, or your grandchildren and the community you live in are likely to be effected by this issue.  The very structure of society may become shaped by how people align themselves according to the answer to this question.

Where Are We Headed?

All over the developed world fewer and fewer people get married, stay married or live in what is called traditional marriage.  Various religious and political groups are fighting to reverse these modern world trends.  It seems they hope to take us back to what they suppose was the way things were a century or more ago.  These regressive and sometimes repressive forces try to deny the great historical tenet that says ‘you can’t go back’ or at least not successfully.  But what will progress look like?

Egalitarian marriage is already replacing male dominant marriage in much of the world.  Will that continue or will people living single dominate the future?  Will a majority of people float in and out of various temporary married-like living arrangements as their life situations ebb and flow?  Will most mothers and fathers have other lovers as they carry on parenting as is so common with current divorce rates being what they are?  How many people will come to live communally or semi-communally as is common in retirement communities?  Could polygamy, polyandry or polyamore lifestyles someday proliferate?  Would we ever adopt having primary, secondary and tertiary spouses copying a people who live in southern India.  What about the Eastern sect that allows for temporary additional spouses?  Might we someday become like a people of southern China who have no form of marriage whatsoever?  Might we eventually have all of the above and more, as yet not invented, forms of doing love-bonded relationships?

What Matters To and For You?

Are you ready for the coming changes whatever they may turn out to be?  Or are you going toward the future of love and marriage blind and unaware?  Are you afraid of the future and want to go back to your childhood understanding of how marriage and love should work?  What will you do if you come to love someone who sees love and marriage very differently than you do?  How will you react if your offspring experiment and explore love and marriage outside the traditional box’?

Currently there seem to be lots of parents getting upset because they are hearing their offspring say

things like, “We are going to live together but not get legally married”.  The core of some family counseling I once supervised was epitomized by the statement “We might marry someday but if we do it won’t be until after we have a child”.  “I’m going to legally marry and live with Xavier so he can stay in this country and finish his degree, but after that I’ll probably move in with Tom”, initiated another set of interesting family sessions for one of my colleagues.  “Mom and Dad, will you attend if Sarah, Lester and I have a wedding ceremony and non-legally marry each other next summer?” was a question that lead to some fairly intense, extended family and parent guidance counseling I am aware of.

Sometimes it’s the parents upsetting their offspring that brings forth the ‘who’s really married’ issues.  Here are a few examples.  “After retirement next month we’re going to start co-habiting but we will not be getting legally married because it would be bad for us financially.  We hope that won’t be a problem for you bringing over the grandchildren, will it?”

Another: “We have started sharing our bed with Rosalind every so often because she lost her spouse a while back and she’s lonely and misses making love, cuddling and hugging too, and, well, it just seems like it’s the kind, loving thing to do.”  Also:  “Its better here at this swanky, old folk’s home than I thought it would be.  The custom here is called roaming.  Every night I can be in someone else’s bed if I want to, and it’s not always about sex but if it is we practice safe-sex.  I think I’m coming to really like and maybe even actually love some of these people here.  Also I need to let you know Larry and I may move in together.  That way we can afford one of the cottages they have for couples, and we’d have more room and it just would be nicer all in all.  We both agreed we will let each other keep roaming, at least some of the time, because truth be told we both like it”.

Another: “Your father and I won’t be babysitting for you as often as we were now that we’re both retired.  Frankly, that’s because our sex life has picked up now that we have more time.  Also our social calendar is looking a lot more full”.  What will you do if your parents, aunts and uncles, or other older family members tell you things like this?  What will your offspring or younger family members do if messages like these are your messages to them?  You see, love and marriage-issue culture shock can go both up and down the age continuum.
Seeing your options provides freedom.  I like to suggest that people see and study their own possible opportunities.

The many points and life style options presented here are not to advocate or disparage any particular choice or custom but rather to put forth the many ways human beings have behaved, are behaving and might behave in regard to love, marriage, bonding, and marital law.  Some get upset when they are faced with new or different options concerning marriage.  Let me suggest the guidance message (see the entry “Dealing with Love Hurt: Pain’s Crucial Guidance”) of ‘feeling upset’ is a warning about vulnerability requiring some study and strengthening.

So, dear reader, how do you think and perhaps even more important emotionally how do you feel as you contemplate these issues?  Do you want governmental law, religious law, scientific law, societal ‘law’ or the natural law of love to provide the dominant answers to the question ‘who’s really married’?  All these different situations and scenarios are put forth as important to think about, not just to accept what you may have been conditioned to believe in regard to marriage by love or by law.

As always, Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Concerning love and marriage, for yourself and those closest to you, which do you think will give you more trouble, being more old-fashioned traditional or being more New Age progressive?

Related posts:

1. Are Love and Marriage Getting a Divorce?
2. All or Nothing Love – The New Way of Marriage
3. Exes And Love
4. Age Differences and Romantic Love 

Happy Empathy: A Love Talent to Grow

Mini-Love-Lesson  #260

Synopsis: Presented here are the many benefits of happy empathy; brain research on natural, inborn empathy; three types of empathy; empathy as a talent to grow; some important negatives concerning empathy; happy sexual and emotional, intimate empathy; and a basic how-to approach for developing empathetic skills.

The Many Benefits of Happy Empathy

Alex is a no nonsense, get the job done and on to the next task sort of guy with little concern or time for peoples feelings.  Zorba is a stop and smell the roses, enthusiasm for life and living it fully – a very feelings focused fellow.  Upon seeing a loved one smiling, laughing or just enjoying something, Alex feels and soon shows impatience and sometimes annoyance.  Upon seeing the same happiness in another, Zorba stops what he is doing and joins with that person showing them up-beat emotions similar to their own.  Then Zorba may ask questions, demonstrate happiness for their happiness and extend the good feeling time together.  This conjoint happiness is shown by Zorba for others having exuberant joy, serene pleasure, sweet feelings, pride and every other kind of happiness.  Alex sees such actions as frivolous and a waste of time and effort.

Now, consider these life quality questions about Alex and Zorba.  All else being equal, which one will be more likely to raise happier, healthier children, have more and better close friends, have a really good and lasting marriage, a more interesting sex life, more cooperative work relationships, fewer stress related illnesses and have a general healthier longer life?  Which one will accomplish more in a longer and more cooperation filled life?  Also, who may have more good opportunities come their way?  Who likely will be appreciated and respected more?  Most importantly, who probably will be loved more by others and likely have more healthy, real self-love.  In addition, who will more likely have both happy empathy and empathy for others who are suffering?  Finally, which one would you rather be like?

Natural Empathy

Do you ever yawn when you see another yawning? If you walk into a room of laughing people, do you start laughing too even though you don't know what anyone is laughing about?  If you hear a baby giggle do you start to smile?  If you answer yes to any of these questions, you likely have experienced  natural, automatic, empathetic responses including those of happy empathy.  That means, according to psychoneurological research, you probably have the innate brain circuitry for empathy along with its neurochemical processes.  Some people do not.  Many of those people diagnosed as sociopathic and psychopathic and those having alexithymic difficulties tend to have brain scans showing peculiarities, problems and deficiencies in the areas and circuits of the brain identified as processing empathetic responses.  Other brain research shows most mammals, including humans and perhaps birds, are likely to have at least basic, natural, empathetic response capability.

When happy empathy is done with someone you love, it is a part of connection joy, a natural reward function of healthy, real love (see“A Functional Definition of Love”).  This can be seen in parents who cannot help smiling when their baby smiles, proud family members at a graduation ceremony, close friends on reconnecting and the awesome joy of seeing your heartmate in ecstasy.

A Talent to Grow

Talents are innate, natural, ability proclivities you can develop and actualize with purposeful effort.  Empathy can be viewed as a natural component experience and/or companion talent of and with healthy real love.  Empathetic ability, like other inborn talents, is seen to be a thing you can work with, grow, develop and improve your ability to feel it, do it, convey it, exude it, hone it, shape the doing of it and more effectively and skillfully express it with practice.

When it is done well and lovingly communicated, both compassionate empathy and happy empathy are thought to be some of the very best and most important ways to love another, or for that matter to love yourself.  To help accomplish that, let’s do some thinking about empathy and happy empathy..

What Is Empathy?

In popular usage, empathy has to do with what generally is known as feeling another person’s feelings.  Empathy especially is a term widely used to indicate feeling similar pain for and with another person feeling pain.  If another person is sad, you are sad with them; if they are mad, you too are mad at what they are mad about.  If they are shocked, so are you, etc.  Their suffering is your suffering and, therefore, is shared suffering.  This kind of emotional empathy provides a basis for more accurate caring and comprehending of what another person is emotionally going through.  This frequently is seen as being quite therapeutic, surprisingly healing and sometimes even comprehensively curative.  However, there is a lot more to empathy.

Psychological research has identified three main forms of empathy.  They are called Cognitive Empathy, Emotional Empathy and a special emotional connected category called Compassionate Empathy. 

Cognitive empathy means mentally understanding what and how strongly another person is experiencing an emotional or sometimes a physical feeling.  It may include further understanding of the feelings cause, dynamics and possible results, along with what to do about it, if anything.  Cognitive empathy enables accurate understanding, identifying and constructive thinking about feelings.

Emotional empathy is having very similar emotional feelings to the emotional feelings another person is perceived as having, and perhaps to a similar intensity.  With this understanding, both good and bad feelings can be empathetically responded to and, thus, happy empathy is included in this category.

Compassionate empathy can include both of the above but with the addition of a caring desire to help, assist or alleviate another’s hurt or harm.  Motivated actions of support, assistance and/or rescue, if it is possible, often flow from compassionate empathy.  This especially occurs in all kinds of real and healthy love relationships.  Link “Empathy – A Love Skill”

Sympathy often is confused with empathy.  Sympathy, a much older term (sympathy from the 1500's, empathy from circa 1900) now is understood to mean feeling pity or being sorry for someone but not so likely as to motivate assistive action-taking.

Empathy’s Bad News

Some people have too much, automatic, compassionate empathy.  They can be overwhelmed by it to the point of becoming dysfunctional.  They cannot stop crying for, or being mad about another’s misfortune, or they may sacrifice too much of themselves or their resources needlessly, or their impulsive efforts of assistance or rescue may backfire and make things worse for whoever they want to help.

Compassionate empathy mixed with a lack of critical judgment sets-up many an empathetic person to be a victim of manipulators and the unscrupulous.  Without sufficient critical judgment and self-care, empathetic people often unknowingly can become well-meaning enablers of destructive behavior like harmful addictions and habit patterns.

There are people who seem to be cognitively empathetic, in that they mentally understand the happy feelings of others, but their response is to be overly envious or jealous.  Then there are those who, on perceiving and comprehending other’s bad feelings, get happy about it -- the anti-love, schadenfreude response.

What Is Happy Empathy?

Happy empathy is responding with happiness, or any other positive feeling, to happiness or similar positive feelings perceived to be occurring in another.  Relationally, happy empathy has a sharing joy-type of dynamic often very helpful with love connecting, bonding and unifying experiences.

Intimate Love and Happy Empathy

To have an intimate experience with a loved one and take high joy in their happiness, pleasure, fun, ecstasy and/or serene satisfaction, is what intimate, happy empathy is all about.  To have intense joy because a heartmate is experiencing awesome, soul-felt ecstasy, or simple serene closeness, or even laughter-filled silly, sexy fun, helps imbue a love relationship with very special, intimate, empathetic love experiences.  Empathy brings closeness and closeness circles back to intimacy which increase both.  That can happen emotionally and sexually separately or mixed together.

Intimate love, intimate sex and happy empathy all go quite well together.  That mix makes for happy couples, throuples and other heartmate partnerships.  Link “Throuple Love, a Growing Worldwide Way of the Future?”  It also can be involved in the more newly identified emotion of compersion and the loving with sexy fun phenomena of tertaliation which has to do with getting sexually and happily turned on by your heartmate being turned on to and/or by someone else, instead of being insecure and jealous (see “Compersion: A Newly Identified Emotion of Love”).

Some How-To’s for Happy Empathy Making

There are several approaches to creating happy empathy experiences.  It usually takes making several steps.  Here is one of the sundry ways one might go about it.

Usually, first comes either vividly remembering or finding a happy person to observe.  It can be a person of any age, gender or any other categorization.  Then, often comes deciding to slow any clamoring thoughts about your concerns and reduce the residual tension that accompanies them.  A bit of slow, deep breathing along with a bit of mild, slow stretching usually helps.

Next, comes really noticing, or vividly remembering, the really happy or otherwise positive feeling person.  Avoid thinking about why they are feeling good and just focus on how they are demonstrating that they feel positive.  Is it their face, or in their voice, or their gestures and posture changes, their general demeanor, is it what they are talking about or what is it that helps you know they are experiencing a positive emotion.

By the way, it can greatly help if you have in the past learned mindfulness techniques like being present in the now, having an awakening heart-mind, moment to moment awareness, emotion focusing, empathetic flowing, total otherness appreciating, etc.

It usually helps to do some mirroring movement which means to take a similar posture and make your face, body, arm and hand movements mirror, or copy, those of the happy person you are noticing.  Now, notice their voice volume and tonal qualities and copy those saying just about anything you want to say.  Keep moving like they move.  Remember that motions can change emotions and making similar motions often brings on similar emotions along with feelings of empathetic connection.

Some thinking about what is being felt, but again, not the why of it may be in order.  That is for identifying what they are feeling but needs only to be done in a broad sort of way for right now.  Getting too mentally analytical can take your focus away from your feelings which, in turn, can block the happiness empathy from happening.  Purposefully saying to yourself things like, “I’m really going to get into that person’s happiness with them, and because of them I’m starting to do that right now” while continuing the mirror movements frequently helps quite a bit.

Regard the first time you do this as a sort of pilot study or dry run and don’t expect it to work well but just orient you to the procedures.  Now, go looking for positive feeling people to practice on.  Some people do well to find stupid things on TV and, at first, turn off the sound and just copy the movements of someone who looks happy.

If, as you do these things, you hear anything going on in your head that is critical, disparaging or distracting, tell it to shut up and that you are attempting something new and different and are not to be disturbed.  Also, after you tried this system a few times, feel free to adapt it anyway you think might work better for you.  Know also that working at happiness empathy might just make some wonders happen in your life and especially in your relationship life.

One More Thing. Think about talking over happy empathy and this mini-love-lesson on it with someone you like or love.  Then do it and while you are at it, please mention this site and its hundreds of facts and ideas for improving love relating.  Thanks

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Love Success Question: How well and how often do you give your loved ones the love gift of your happiness?

Other Genders Love

Synopsis: Here we address these troubling yet intriguing questions: Are there more than two genders; What are other genders; Why does nature make more than just male and female; This mini-love-lesson ends with a list of the words and terms now used in the new understandings of gender; more.

Are There More Than Two Genders?

Yes, according to science there are more than just male and female.  Biology, physiology and especially the brain sciences, along with a good many other scientific fields show us this truth which is so troubling to many.  Nature makes humans and a host of other animals with other genders than just the standard two – those distinctly male and those distinctly female.  It is true, at least among humans, that most are easily identified as pretty much male or pretty much female.  However, though in minority, there are others.

What Are “Other” Genders?

We have known for a long time that nature occasionally produces people with the genitalia of both males and females.  More recently, the brain sciences have discovered nature makes a lot more people with the brain chemistry of both males and females.  Not only that, we now know that just about everyone has at least a little bit of both male and female neurochemistry and dual gender brain functioning.  We also have more people, than was originally thought, who are neuropsychologically one gender but their overt biology is that of the other gender.  Thus, in simple terms we have males in female bodies and females in male bodies.

We also may have people whose brain functioning and neurochemistry goes back and forth between being male and female.  Some other species do this biologically whenever there are too many females or males and gender rebalancing a population is in order.  Then of course we have those who seem pretty much male overtly except that they are naturally built to be attracted to other males and those who are pretty much overtly female who are naturally attracted to other females.  And then there are the bisexuals, many of whom can be pretty much equally naturally attracted to both.  Those varieties also occur among other species a lot.  The preponderance of scientific evidence shows all this variety to be natural and not at all unhealthy.

Why Does Nature Make More Than Just Straight Males and Straight Females?

One answer is that nature loves variety.  Variety has great survival value.  You never know when conditions are going to change and a life form variation is going to turn out to better cope with that change in conditions.  Seldom does nature make just one or two varieties of anything.  Think of leaves.  They all do pretty much the same thing yet they come in endless variations of shape.  A small minority are not even green but rather several other colors.  Other leaves are green part of the time but then change to a variety of other often vivid colors.  It seems nature is always making new variations and some of them have advantages in dealing with whatever the changing conditions are at the time.

Another answer is that there are unrecognized species survival contribution and advancement advantages brought to us by those having a not strictly male or female psychobiology.  For instance, it is thought by some that those people who are more androgynous (mentally and emotionally both male and female balanced) may be better at diplomacy, cooperation skills, democratic leadership, mentoring, mediation, counseling, personality assessment, cognition flexibility and altruistic achievement.

Previously and still in certain circles, androgynous people were/are negatively viewed as having what was seen to be the typical weaknesses of both males and females.  Consequently, they often were rejected and excluded as not being male enough or female enough depending on their overt gender identity.  Thus, the Renaissance Man was seen as a “sissy” and the Renaissance Woman as a “pushy broad”.  Both were “freaks”and “misfits” in times and places of high social conformity.

Do the People of “Other” Genders Have Different Love Problems?

Do you agree with these ideas?  Everybody needs love no matter what their difference is from the supposed norm.  Everybody who is different from the norm is in danger of rejection and worse from those who fear difference and desire continuance of the perceived and “correct” norm.  If you see it this way, then you can see how those who have “other” than the usual male and female ways may need extra love, acceptance and inclusion experiences to counter the anti-love events they may experience while they are trying to figure out and adjust to their own differences from the perceived norm.

Healthy self-love development is often an extra tough problem for those growing up or starting to live “other”.  Valuing, appreciating, accepting and honoring oneself can get really tough when faced with exclusion, rejection, criticism and demeaning messages coming from others.  Especially is that true if those anti- love messages are coming from people who are supposed to love you, like parents and family.

Romantic love often presents some very perplexing problems.  If a she loves a he and transgenders into a he, does that make them homosexual lovers and does that matter?  When a bisexual or bi-amore person is loved by both a male and a female can they all three live successfully married together?  If they do, does that mean they are illegally practicing polygamy?  Could you romantically successfully love a transgendered person who used to be the same gender you are?  ‘Is it real love or a form of false love’ is a question that is extra confounding for those who live in the various “other” categories.

Loving family and friends who may experience culture shock and/or strong religious values dissonance because someone is in an “other” category, also is a common but big love problem.  Experiencing being put down, shunned, damned, pitied, preached at or even ‘prayed for’ because you naturally are different is frequently quite tough.

Not hating but instead continuing to love the person or persons sending judgmental rejection messages, also is a love challenge and issue for those who are in some way “other”.  Sometimes in self-love, withdrawing contact from the judgmental and condemning is at first necessary for sufficient self protection.  Family counseling with a good love-oriented therapist is what helps the most, as I see it.

Strengthening oneself through therapy and healthy self-love development so that a love based re-approachment of those who condemn usually is the eventual best solution, from my experience.  Never making such a re-approachment can mean having a wound that never heals and a disturbing lack of closure.  Attempting the re-approachment too soon before your strong enough to be unaffected by the ‘arrows’ that may be fired at you can be disastrous.  So, great care is in order.

Love of children when there are gender issues presents a whole special set of challenges.  How does a parent deal with a child who is exhibiting a tendency towards some form of “other” gender orientation?  How does a parent best explain to a child that parent changing genders or not being of the standard male or female identity?  How can parental or family love best help children struggling with peer rejection because of some “other” gender factor?

Loving the Angry & Threatened

A fair number of people seem to be quite threatened, upset, in denial, and angry concerning all these new “other” ideas, discoveries and social changes concerning gender.

They want all of us to regress to the old understandings that there are only males and females.  The trouble is that science is showing those understandings to be inaccurate, inadequate and quite destructive for a considerable number of people..  Abuses of those who are “other gendered” are abundant.  Anxiety, stress, depression, family breakups, suicide and even murder are sometimes the result of the more extreme abuses enacted by the regressives.  With love must we not therefore embrace the progressive and constructively use the new knowledge concerning gender?  Those who are threatened and angry can, with careful love, decrease their fear and be brought along into a world where difference is so often a good thing.

Do You Know the New Language of Gender?

Recent research has discovered a lot in this area of gender and that has resulted in quite a few new terms.  These terms can help a lot for comprehending more fully, becoming more knowledgeable, thinking more clearly, talking productively, and interacting knowledgeably concerning gender issues.

To help you with that, here is a partial list of words and terms you may wish to familiarize yourself with and be sure you understand.  Affirmed gender, alternating gender neurochemistry, androgyny, asexual, assigned gender, bi-amore, bi-gender, bisexual, cisgender, cross-dresser, dual identity, gender dysphoria, gender expression, gender fluidity, gender identity, gender continuum, gender spectrum, gender predominance, gender web, homo-amore, hermaphodite, hrm, hir, medical gender transition, pansexual, polyAmore , social gender transition, “they” (singular), trans-amore , transgender, transsexual, transman, transwoman, ze.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: How much of yourself do you suppose is both male and female, and how okay (self loving) are you with that?

Related posts:

1. What about “Bi” Love?
2. Power or Love or Both
3. Men: Doing Well at Love !
4. What Makes Love Last?
5. Attraction or Love or What? 

Protecting Those You Love from Yourself

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

Real Love Is Protective

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

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

Our Protective Blind Spot

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

Overprotection Is Anti-Protection!

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

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

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

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

What Are You Modeling?

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

Romantic Rage

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

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

Protection and Affairs

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

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

Protection and Addictions

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

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

Self Appraisal with Self-Love

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

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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