Is Love Winning?

Mini-Love Lesson  #265

Synopsis: Introduction to the unheralded and poorly heralded positive, world trends of adamant and compassionate love; criticism of the news media's imbalanced negativity and how you may be letting it affect you negatively; and benefiting yourself by joining those on the love causes bandwagon.

Take heart !

Has the news media convinced you that just about everything everywhere is getting worse and worse?  Have they gotten you used to thinking that the world's corruptions, crises and conflicts far outweigh and outnumber the advances, achievements and progress?  Have the naysayers and fear mongers got you wondering if humans largely may be a declining, mean, stupid, selfish and destructive lot with far too few exceptions?

Well take heart!  There is a preponderance of growing evidence that it is a lot better than the news media and the doom and gloom folk would have you believe.  Certainly, there are big problems and frightening challenges in abundance.  However, the good, the positive, the healthful and the improvement trends of the human condition all far outweigh the negative.  Let's glance at just some of the evidence that this is the accurate, reliable truth.

Proof positive!

A huge collection of scientific evidence gathered from the world's leading social scientists, contemporary historians, behavioral economists and behavioral neuroscientists shows most, but not all, of the bad stuff is in decline and the good stuff is on the rise.  All long-term measurements of the world’s violence, starvation, poverty, active warfare, major crime, illness and a host of other maladies and negatives are slowly and erratically reducing.  That has been true since World War II ended.  Actually some of the worldwide reduction in negatives trends goes back to at least the early 1700s.

Of course, there are major setbacks from time to time and the data graphs show serious peaks and valleys.  However, the trend lines are all in the desired direction with only a few rare exceptions.  The evidence is mounting that the human race culturally and perhaps even biologically slowly is becoming less cruel, more kind, more empathetic, less indifferent to other’s suffering, less conflict prone, more cooperative, less selfish and more compassionate.

Just a short 300 hundred years ago we still were burning witches at the stake, crucifying heretics, hanging minor crime offenders like pickpockets and starving bread thieves, and it was okay to beat your slave to death for just about any reason.  Much more recently, circa mid to late 1800s+, over 90% of the infants placed in orphanages died of absence of love behavior treatment/failure to thrive causes, hundreds more children suffered death or became maimed in mines and factories during six days a week 14+ hour work days, it was legal for husbands to beat and rape a wife regularly, you could spend years in jail for having not paid your debts, and offending a person of royal privilege might get you publicly flogged and deported to a colony.

It is with the rise of the humanitarian revolution and various subsequent rights movements that all that began to change for the better.  Still today because of corporate greed and anti-democratic politicians, people are made ill or die, poor children are breathing and drinking pollution, government-sponsored child separation trauma is causing brain damage, the elderly are being cheated out of retirement savings, pockets of starvation and abject poverty continue to exist, the mentally ill are imprisoned rather than treated, weaponized  violent acts are common, minorities are discriminated against -- and on and on goes the list of grievances that need the champions of humanitarian and altruistic adamant love.  Nevertheless, victories are being won, new and better trends established and the human condition in area after area made better, or at least, less bad (see “Adamant Love – And How It Wins For All of Us All”).

Search For Better Sources

While you can't much trust the regular media to cover the positive news very well or very much, there are a number of books, Internet sites and other sources giving more accurate and more balanced accounts on how the human race is really doing.  Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature is a great place to start.  It gives a massive array of research results, from a host of valid and reliable sources accompanied by some pretty fascinating reading.  It also can lead you to other good sources for the more positive side of things.

Don't Overdose on Negative News

Do you know that a number of counselors, therapists and personal improvement coaches advise against watching much TV news.  That is because so much of that news is so negatively focused.  After watching the news, clinical reports abound telling of people becoming more depressed, more anxiety ridden, more defeatist in attitude, more afraid of going out, traveling into new areas and even just going shopping locally.

Why is so much of the news media biased toward reporting mostly the negative?  Some suggest they mostly are largely mystified and muddled about how to report the positive.  Another reason seems to be that it always has been this way in journalism.  It is almost a religious doctrine that it is bad news that sells, draws interest and captivates while good news does not.  There also is the idea that news people lag far behind in the knowledge of how to even think about the positive let alone on how to report it and make it exciting.  Bad news focus has been practiced and perfected repeatedly so that is what reporters know how to do.  It follows that reporters want crises, conflicts, crime and disasters to report on.  Without those they might not  know what to do.  The thinking is all good news days are slow news days.  For good news to make it into the headlines, it has to be spectacular, not just good, or so it seems.

Another thing is to get to the top, in the news reporters and commentators world, you have to be lucky enough to get stories of the really awful stuff first.  They want to get a scoop of the breaking (the latest tragedy, crime, crisis or conflict).  Their training is to apply as many aggression and destruction descriptive adjectives as possible.  Have you ever noticed how news givers like to talk with words like fight, hostilities, battle, combat, attack, feud, punch, hit, strike, aggression, assault, etc.  This usage especially is common when reporting about politics.

Local news programs especially are bad about mostly reporting murders, auto accidents, burning houses and other news you really cannot use in your regular life except, perhaps for getting you used to staying home and being afraid or upset.

Now, to be an appropriately informed citizen, a certain amount of ongoing news is required.  Due to the growth of fake and biased, or one-sided news, it is important to listen to opposing sources.  Also, since the world at large increasingly influences everyone's local life, world news, good and bad, is important.  Actually, there usually are some pretty positive, funny and exciting things going  on out in the world you may want to seek out and enjoy if you do not already.

Warnings

If after watching or reading the news, you notice you feel vaguely or decidedly worse, cutback on the news and see if that helps.  If you notice family disagreements and all-over level of family positive interactions are diminishing, cutback on your news consumption.  If you notice a tendency to increasingly stay home and not go out into your outside world, cutback.  If you notice you more easily are angered, irritated, anxious, annoyed and frustrated, cutback.  Then as you make a news cutback, you might seek out some positive, funny and/or inspiring things on the Internet or you might talk more with upbeat friends and family.

Getting on the Love Victory Bandwagon

Love, healthy real love that is, is about highly valuing and when possible benefiting the health and well-being of the loved.  While the indicators of love winning in more and more places and ways, the enemies of love (hate, indifference, greed, bigotry, authoritarianism, cruelty, parochialism, destructive addictions, false love, proneness to violence, etc.) are all too active in our world today.  Those destructive forces work to defeat the valuing, the benefiting, the health and the well-being of the loved and potentially of the yet to be loved.  Only the perpetrators of those forces are benefiting.

Although the evidence is that love is more and more winning, the anti-love forces in the world still can win and destroy us all.  So, if you already are not, I urge you to join the forces of adamant and compassionate love.  The way you do that is to love everybody you love as well as you can and keep learning how to do that even more.  Then expand your range, if you already have not, by joining with those wonderful people involved in the many causes of love.  There are at least a 1000 of those, all with many marvelous people involved, all working to advance love-based goals, causes, efforts and movements all over the world.

That will very likely and perhaps profoundly benefit your own personal world of healthy, real love in both surprising and fulfilling ways.

One more thing:  Think about getting in a good, friendly argument with someone over whether or not love is winning in the world.  Be sure to keep it lovingly friendly and see where it leads.  If you do that, please be sure to mention this site and its many mini-love-lessons.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable questions:  If I only act with love toward those who already love me, am I not drastically limiting my life experience?  AND, If I only act with love toward those who are quite similar to me, might I not be drastically reducing my possibilities for life enrichment as well as my life’s adventures of love?

Intercourse Absent Lovemaking - a Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love skill lesson explorers the puzzle of sex without sex?; the great world of sexual variety for the loving; intercourse dependency; why have sex without intercourse; how do we start moving beyond intercourse dependency with a sample scenario; and a bit about fixing sexual intercourse problems:more.

Sex Without Sex?

Sex without sexual intercourse is almost unthinkable to some people.  When you say the word sex a whole bunch of people think sexual intercourse is what you mean.  Having sex, doing sex, making love and a hundred other phrases mean, to them, having sexual intercourse.

The truth is there are a lot of people having a lot of great sex and no sexual intercourse is going on.  Quite often there also is a great deal of healthy, real love happening, the intensity of the erotic experience is fantastic and yet there is no ‘penis in vagina’ sex happening.

The Great World of Sexual Variety for The Loving

For some people sex without intercourse is seen as a necessity.  For others it is seen as being preferable at least some of the time.  For a lot of people who really love each other sexual intercourse is kind of incidental so long as there is good, love-filled, emotional intercourse.  There is another group who somewhat crudely say “who cares how you get to come, just so you do”.  Then again, some proclaim there is so much more to sexuality than intercourse or climaxing they can do without both so long as they get to do all the rest with someone they really love and who loves them.

People who love each other ‘through and with’ their sexuality often tend toward engaging in a wide variety of different, erotic experiences with each other.  The more different things they do together the less they become what some call ‘intercourse dependent’.

Intercourse Dependency

Quite a lot of males protest things like “I just have to be in her.  In fact I’m driven to get in her again and again, that’s just the way I’m built.  I’ve got to feel that ‘inside her’ feeling and nothing else will do”.  No small number of females declare things like “having a man inside me is what makes me feel feminine and like a real woman.  I have to have that more than anything, even more than an orgasm”.
Others deeply and strongly want to have the “in” experience coupled with feeling their lover climax while “in”.  This is all likely to be quite natural and maybe genetic.  However, some people let this drive toward intercourse and/or climax in intercourse narrow their sexuality.  They’re sort of like the people who have to have meat at every meal or the don’t feel like they’ve eaten well.

There are those who are religiously trained that it is wrong to do anything but intercourse and so their sexuality has been unnaturally narrowed by outside forces.  From a health perspective behavioral variety is a good thing in almost everything humans do, sexuality included.  When humans have too much sameness in just about anything they tend1 to give up on it because humans are the creature that seeks variety more than any other.  Therefore, exploring for the wide variety of ways sexuality can be practiced outside of intercourse can be a healthy, enriching experience.

There are the millions who prefer oral-genital sexuality which some think of as a form of oral intercourse. There are men and women who are more desirous of anal intercourse than they are vaginal. A fair number of women enjoy and even prefer dildos and other intercourse toys.   There are quite a few people who don’t care which kind of intercourse is occurring, or whether or not there’s any intercourse, just as long as what’s happening  is very loving.  Along with oral, anal or vaginal intercourse some people also need to hear sexy words and see sexy looks, or they combine their intercourse with various “kinky” actions.  Plain  intercourse usually is not high on their priority list, though they can be quite intercourse involved.

Why Have Sex Without Intercourse?

Do you wonder why some people have and even strongly desire to have sex without intercourse?  One reason is to develop all one’s other loving sex skills.  Lots of couples who resist or abstain from having intercourse discover that they develop many other ways to excite and pleasure each other.  Some say intercourse-dependency deprives people of all the better things there are to do sexually with each another.  They say too much focus on intercourse makes for a rather limited sex life.  By not doing intercourse for a while other things often are explored, discovered and developed.  Thus, a much broader range of experience can be shared which often is a major joy in a loving couple’s life together.

There are a larger number than you might think of people who don’t participate in sexual intercourse for religious reasons, but ‘do everything else’.  These fall into three groups.  One is the group who has been religiously taught not to have intercourse unless it is to procreate – have a baby.  Another group it’s because they have been taught that they are still virgins if they don’t have male-female, vaginal intercourse, even though they might do everything else imaginable.  Then there is the group who has been taught that only  male-female sexual intercourse is sanctified (especially in marriage), and they are in religious rebellion attempting to break out of and away from their faith’s restrictive dogma, so they might do everything except sanctioned sexual intercourse.

Very large numbers of people do not engage in sexual intercourse because of medical reasons.  Sadly, some of those have just given up on sex when they don’t have to.  Sometimes they have given up because they are indeed intercourse dependent in the way they go about taking care of their natural, sexuality, and they are unaware or inexperienced in the many ways sexuality can be expressed.  They can learn that, in spite of injuries, illnesses and various other hampering or debilitating medical conditions that limit or prohibit sexual intercourse, they can have a great life of love-filled sexuality.  Even paraplegic and quadriplegic people can have a sex life, and treatment programs exist for accomplishing exactly that.

How Do People Have Great Sex Without Intercourse?

There are lots of ways people can have a great sex life without sexual intercourse or with only occasional sexual intercourse?  Some couples simultaneously masturbate each other, and some do side-by-side parallel masturbation while talking sexy to each other, or watching each other, or watching films.  Some take turns as giver and as receiver teasing, tempting and pleasuring each other sometimes applying oils, powders, feathers, toys, vibrators and other  stimulating actions and devices all over each other’s bodies.

Those people who have to spend time away from each other can do ‘Skype sex’ where they can watch each other do sexually stimulating things (according to company policies this is not supposed to be done, but often is).  Some couples watch the same sex video at the same time, though they are thousands of miles apart, while they talk to each other on the phone.  Of course, millions do ‘phone sex’ with their beloved on a regular basis while apart.

An amazingly large number of people, especially females, are sending naked and otherwise sexy pictures of themselves to their lovers as stimulating love gifts, and then delighting in hearing about what their lover did while looking at the pictures.  Oral sex, anal sex, spanking, B&D, S&M, D&H, Tantric sacred sex meditation exercises, mud pit sex, second life avatar with love partner avatar sex on the Internet, all sorts of role-playing, sharing porn sex, etc. – why the list goes on and on.

Not all these ways are pleasing to all people but choosing the ones that are can help loving couples share fantastic sex lives together without sexual intercourse.  For couples for whom intercourse is painful, somehow physically dangerous, ill-advised or impossible many of these ways are used and make available sexual alternatives which can show each other intimate, personal love and can make available loving, sexual adventures together.

What Does It Take for Couples to Have a Sex Life
Not Overly Based on Intercourse?

Usually it takes a very love-centered relationship where tolerance, acceptance and a “whatever works” attitude prevails.  It also takes being able to be lovingly open to experiments and explorations of lots of varying sexual behaviors.  Happy, shared, excited, anticipation, curiosity and a sense of joyful sharing in each other’s erotic, adventuring feelings also are great additions.

An important consideration backing up all these actions and adventures often has to be a sense of being able to (if needed) to take small steps, pause, back up or totally escape any sexual exploration with full, loving support from one’s lover.  Frequently a sense of strong support and protection of one another in each and every sexual experiment or adventure must be readily available for people to be able to move forward together.

When lovers fear their beloved may be critical, disappointed, disparaging , judgmental, angry, prudish or any other relationally negative process, it becomes quite difficult if not impossible for couples to sexually progress.  Also there has to be a sort of “we can try that again later” understanding.  No one wins by playing the destructive, psychological game known as ‘strike one, we are out and our game is over’.

How Do We Start Moving Beyond Intercourse Dependency

One way is to do a homework exercises that I sometimes assign which seems to work for a lot of couples.  It starts with a trip to a good bookstore and going to the sexuality section.  There a couple often can read and look at beautiful, erotic pictures portraying many of the different ways people can and do go about sex, with and without sexual intercourse.

It’s important to talk together about whatever grabs your attention, gets you interested or piques your curiosity.  You might want to take a book or two home, then share going deeper into the books with one another.  After that I suggest giving each other a full, very light touch, naked, all parts of the body massage with intercourse absolutely prohibited.

Following that you can begin to take little, mental, sexual adventurers like sharing some sex fantasy and maybe do a little role-playing.  There are more advanced ways to progress to sexual intercourse-absent sexuality, and then even much more advanced ways.  If you’re up for it you might attend a Tantric, Shakti or Taoist spiritual sex practices weekend workshop which many couples proclaim as the most amazing and productive way to maximize a couple’s sexual love together.

Sample Scenario

One couple followed this scenario.  Shy Sarah whispered, “I will go skinny dipping if you will, but it has to be dark and no intercourse.”  Timid Tim agreed, and it turned out to be incredibly exciting.  Then timid Tim said, “Let’s make out in the back seat of our old station wagon, and so they laughed and giggled while they kissed and fondled for hours.  Sarah, no longer quite so shy, had read about couples doing nude meditation together which they did and quite a few wide-ranging, new and intriguing feelings enveloped both of them.

Later Tim, less and less timid, brought home a sexy movie and side-by-side they played with each others genitals as they watched it, driving them into passions they never knew existed before. Even later their ecstasy soared when Sarah said to Tim, “Tease, tempt and lightly ‘torture’ me for the rest of the night.”  Tim quite enthusiastically obliged, although because of blissful exhaustion they didn’t make it all through the night.

Of course, some days later Tim came with chocolate syrup and did all manner of erotic oral things to and with Sarah.  Together they visited a sex shop and came home with a variety of toys plus a great eagerness to learn how to play with them.  Those were the beginning practices that went into shy Sarah and timid Tim building a love filled, not intercourse dependent, sex life.

Fixing Intercourse Problems

Couples who have sexual intercourse problems can do all the above, while working on whatever difficulties they might have concerning sexual intercourse itself.  If you have problems with intercourse, or getting started in the above described areas, come to talk to one of us who have received the additional training it takes to develop expertise in sex therapy.  We’ll be glad to help you.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question If you’re going to get into a sexy, new practices or actions with your beloved what would you really like them to be?  Do they include a healthy dose of love?

Related posts:

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

Holding Hands with Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lessons starts with questions you may not have thought of concerning holding hands; then works to help you examine your own inner programming concerning hand holding and love; and what you can do with this knowledge; and more.

Questions of Holding Hands

Have you ever given thought to how you hold hands with someone you love?  Do you know how you want your hand held by someone who loves you?  Do you, like many, want your hand held differently depending on how you feel at the time?  Are you good at conveying love via holding the hand of a loved one? Are you good at letting yourself feel loved when your hands are held by someone loving you?  Do you hold hands quite frequently, just every so often, or rarely?  Why?

Are there people, family members, dear friends, etc. you love that you would not hold hands with?  Why?  Did you grow up in a family, neighborhood or culture where there was a lot of the holding of hands going on, or the reverse?  Do you hold a loved one’s hands more or less for the same amount of time as what was going on around you when you were growing up, or do you know?  Would you, or the one you are most likely to hold hands with, desire more frequent or different holding hands experiences?

You might wonder, why ponder all these questions over such a simple thing as holding hands.  The reason is, holding hands is a major way to show and share love, and there is a lot more to it than you might think.

Hands: The Great Tools of Artful Love

Our hands are incredible!  Our hands have millions of nerve endings capable of receiving a vast array of stimulations, both physical and psychological.  Through the hands the emotion centers of the brain can be triggered into feeling a great many different things, including feeling loving and loved.  With touch, including the holding of hands, we are capable of giving messages of love that can vary from delicate and tender to strong and powerful.

Holding hands can convey comfort, support, security, connectedness, shared joy, playfulness, cherishing, enthusiasm, sensuality and, of course, with these emotions hands can convey love itself.  Holding hands, therefore, can be part of the way people come to experience the many emotions of love together.

The artful lover can vary holding hands by greater or lesser palm pressure, intertwining fingers, squeezing or giving very soft touch, and many other subtle, small movements.  In making these variations, different emotions may be felt and conveyed or triggered.  There is some evidence to suggest that people who love each other may experience a neuro–electrical interchange and harmonizing phenomena when holding hands.  That, in turn, may have something to do with feelings of being bonded together or feeling deeply united.

The Many Ways of Holding Hands with Love

Holding hands side-by-side, two hands holding one hand, two hands holding two hands, holding hands walking together, holding hands sitting side-by-side, holding hands in the moonlight, holding one hand as you lay back and relax after making love, holding hands as you pray or meditate together, holding hands at times of mutual excitement and exultation, holding hands at times of sorrow, holding hands at times of celebration, holding hands when one is in pain, and holding hands during day-to-day ordinary life: all these, and many more, can be times of hand holding with love.  Each of those times can be moments of cherished, precious nurturing and united loving by way of holding hands.

The Importance of Place and Situation

Frequently holding hands in special places and situations enhances the sharing and connecting of those who love each other.  Hand holding also assists in generating more love and more lasting love.  When needed, hand holding also can be very helpful to love’s healing influence.  This healing effect often can facilitate the repair of a wounded relationship, or aid a troubled person, or even be assistive to physical healing.

Holding hands while looking at awesomely beautiful, natural wonders frequently is said to double the pleasure of the viewing experience.  Also often reported, hand holding assists the people who are holding each other’s hands to connect, not only to each other but to the transcendental, the universal and the divine.  Whether they are holding hands while looking at the natural wonder of a gorgeous mountain range, or a newborn baby, or are looking into each other’s eyes, this metaphysical or spiritual sense of connection is enhanced by their hands connecting.

Holding hands in the hospital, in a place of worship and reverence, at a funeral, in a court room, at a graduation, in a place of danger, or in any other place or situation of special significance, hand holding has been known to make major differences in how people feel in those experiences.  So, if you are going to make good use of holding hands to give, receive and generate love, give some thought to place and situation.

Examining Your Holding Hands’ Program

Around the world people grow up with different hand holding customs and cultural training.  In some countries, societies, cultures and subcultures, and also in some families, there are strong social rules governing the do’s and don’t’s of holding hands.  In some, the rule is ‘no public showing of physical affection’.  In others, the rule is ‘no public male with female physical contact’, including the holding of hands; but in some of those female with female public hand holding is acceptable, and in some not.

In some communities it is quite common and acceptable for men to hold hands and in others it is forbidden.  In still others, men holding hands is considered homosexual and okay, and in others it is just friendly.  Then there are those places where any signs of affection between men is forbidden, and in a few countries even illegal and could lead to imprisonment, public flogging and even execution.

Almost everywhere these rules are under attack and are slowly changing.  These changes, however, are meeting with a great deal of resistance in various localities.  Anyone holding hands, other than a child’s hands, may be scolded by local elders and authorities in some places.  Fathers and grandfathers holding teenager’s hands is considered quite inappropriate and suspicious in some lands.  The more conservative religious leaders of a number of faiths preach and teach against holding hands, except with one’s legitimate spouse and only in private.  In other religious settings holding hands is accepted, or encouraged, or actually is part of certain ceremonies.

In many places, a sort of new rule seems to be being offered.  It is something like ‘holding hands, and lots of other physical affection between any two or more people, in any place is a good thing because it helps make our world a more loving world’.  All of these rules, standards, customs, etc. have a programming effect in the subconscious of many people, perhaps including you.

If you have not already, we urge you to raise into your conscious awareness, the training or programming effects of your own upbringing and cultural influences.  Then see if you are unknowingly abiding by that programming and, if so, do you consciously wish to alter it?  Will making some changes regarding holding hands improve the giving, getting and generating of love in your love relationships?  That is how you might use this knowledge.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Are you now going to experiment with more holding hands with someone you love?

Habit Action, Love and You?

     

Mini-Love-Lesson  # 263

Synopsis:  The necessity and value of developing love action habits for expressing love and for accomplishing improvements in well-being are introduced.  A quick, simple, starter aid usefully presents 10 intriguing habit, love questions to ponder; some problems to avoid in being habitually loving and how to obtaining regular love actions you would like to have come your way are all helpfully related.

Love in Actions Not Just in Feelings

Love, healthy real love that is, motivates love action.  Love actions are of two main types -- those behaviors that express love and those actions done to benefit the well-being of the loved.  Love actions that express love are those that show, demonstrate, give evidence of, convey, communicate, and directly give love.  Additionally, and extremely important are the many love actions that are done to contribute to the benefit and well-being of the loved.  Included here are actions which are caring, nurturing, healing, protective, rescuing, supportive, steadfast, strengthening, cooperative and anything aimed at advancing the well-being of the loved.

Arguably, our species and perhaps all higher orders species depend heavily for their survival and thriving largely on love-motivated, contributing actions.  From the love motivated care parents give their children to the love-motivated struggles for freedom, equality, and universal human improvement, love actions carry us forward.

Culturally, love feelings seem to get the most attention.  Love without at least attempts at achieving contribution to well-being is much less emphasized.  Historically, love feelings mistakenly have been taught to include jealousy, possessiveness, madness and a great deal of noncontributory and destructive action.  Those factors, in my view, more accurately are linked to various forms of toxic, false love and lack of love syndromes (see our book Real Love False Love).

Love must be done not just felt.  It has long been taught in various love oriented religions and philosophies that love feelings are good but not adequate until they result in contributory action.  Many have concluded that love without action is insufficient love and probably destined to fade and fail.

Relying on love feelings without a sufficient emphasis on the doing part of love, according to some thinking, is the main reason for many love relationship’s frailty and floundering (see “Love Active Enough?”).

Action Habits of Love

Habits are behaviors that we keep doing over and over, rather automatically.  Habits can be good, bad or neutral.  Love habit actions can be good, in fact, very good for ourselves, for others and for love relationships.  Some people, but not enough, grow up in families where the action habits of love are plentiful and effective.  Here are some examples. 

• With Nurturing Love, bedtime stories get read to children almost every night.
• With Protective Love, the doors get locked and windows secured time after time.
• With Affirmational Love, well merited praise and compliments flow.
• And with Tactile Love, hugs and caresses are are freely and abundantly given.

In families with good love habits, children observe, benefit and copy these habits for themselves in adulthood.  Many kids, however, are not so lucky to grow up in such love-skillful homes and so they have to consciously and purposefully give attention to learning and developing these and other kinds of love action habits.

Reportedly,  the great philosopher, Voltaire, taught that the most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.  According to both Hindu and Buddhist teachings about real love, the most important love action you can take daily in ordinary life is to be in a good mood and give that as a gift to those you love, to those you encounter and to yourself.  This practice is part of doing what is called "Mudita" love, one of The Four Immeasurable Mindsets of Real Love.

Choosing to habitually yet sincerely have a countenance that is appreciative, happy and loving in everyday life is likely to be the best gift of love you can give, over and over again for the rest of your life.  It also probably is one of the most psychologically and relationally healthy things you can do – regularly.  So, why not make it a habit to look for what you genuinely can appreciate and enjoy, get yourself happy with that appreciation, and then lovingly express and/or share that appreciation and joy with whoever you can – on each and every usual, ordinary day.  On extraordinary days, there may be a need for compassionate love, or adamant love, or serene love and, of course, for other things like work, duties, rest, etc. (book reference Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh).

A STARTER’S AID TO DEVELOPING AND IMPROVING LOVE ACTION HABITS

Below are 16 questions aimed at helping you start your own survey of love habits you might want to consider developing.  Each question introduces an action that can be related to a habit for expressing or doing love.  These questions can be more for pondering than for definitive answering, if you wish to use them that way.

1. When greeting loved ones, do you commonly, lovingly touch them and, if so, how might you improve that love-giving experience?

2. When starting to talk with someone you love, do you quickly make and maintain good eye contact and have a loving, interested look on your face?

3. As you talk with someone you love, are your tones of voice usually pleasant and/or caring?

4. If a person you care about is upset, do you almost always listen with care more than you talk?

5. On most days, do you gift your loved ones with a countenance of positivity, pleasantness and joy?

6. Do you regularly and readily give experience gifts, do favors and act to assist friends and others you care about?

7. Is it your habit to show up and stay with loved ones in their times of crisis, difficulty and stress, as well as during their times of celebration and/or victory?

8. Frequently, do your words often offer sincere affirmation of the worth and quality of those you care about, uncontaminated with criticism or laudatory self-reference?

9. Do you often spend time thinking about how to show or do your love, learning about love and/or discussing love relationship improvement issues?

10. Do you linger in times of closeness and extend your time with loved ones, enjoying just being with them and listening to whatever they want to talk about?

There are literally thousands of other similar questions to the ones you just read.  Those 10 are just to get you started thinking on developing your habits broadly.  You might want to make up some more love action habit questions of your own.

Some Love Habit Problems

Nothing is perfect and so it is with love habits.  One issue is, can you be okay with the knowledge that no matter what love actions you do there are some people who can see them negatively?  They may misperceive, misunderstand, misinterpret, be of a generally critical mindset, or just be having a bad day and be making everything negative.  It helps to remember that whatever negative reaction others may have, that likely tells you more about them than you.  Your job, with the help of healthy self-love, is to stay okay and give a balanced critique of their criticism or reaction to see if it might have any use.  It is healthy self-love to not give your power away to other’s negations and that also is an action that can be done habitually (see “Self-Love -- What Is It?”).

Another problem with love habits can be that we may do them so automatically that we do not consciously think much about them once the are established.  Therefore, it is good to purposefully re-examine them every so often to see if they need some adjustments, improvements, etc.

Insincerity, perceived or real, is another issue with things done habitually.  With that, can come loss of love-action-impact or effect.  Even love, when done habitually for too long, can seem just perfunctory.  For that reason, putting in variations of love-habit behavior can help a lot.  Examples are longer/shorter, softer or more vigorous hugs, cuddling with differing caresses, or just stillness and closeness, kisses delivered where they have not been delivered recently, words of love said more intensely or whispered, etc.  Almost all love habit actions can be infinitely varied and still habitually delivered.

Getting the Love Habit Actions You Want?

Are there love actions you want consistently and repeatedly given to you?  Perhaps you hunger for more regular I love you statements, or kisses on the back of the neck, or laudatory statements made about you in front of your family, or … whatever.  What you want may indeed be something you need for full and healthful functioning.  In our wants are often hidden our needs.  So, we must ask the question “what are you doing to get your wants/needs for love action habits to be in your life more”?  Is there something in the way of your straight-forwardly asking for what you want?  Perhaps you were taught it is too selfish to directly ask for love, or love is somehow spoiled if you have to ask for it, or some other of the anti-love and love sabotaging trainings in the world.

There are many of them.  If so, please work to ignore them.  It is honest and efficient to take the guesswork out and just ask for what you want.  It is best if the way you ask is clear, exact, behaviorally descriptive and requested in loving, cheerful, self-confident tones.  It is good to add that you are willing and wishing to hear whatever the person you are talking to might also want (see “Asking For What You Want -- with Love!”).

One More Thing Please

Some of those who talk over these mini –love-lessons with others, report getting additional benefit out of them.  Maybe you will too.  If so, please remember to mention this site and our many free mini-love-lessons, and thus, maybe spread some healthy, love knowledge around.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable question:  Are not actions and achievements that contribute, far more worthy than actions and achievements that don't?

Pro-Love and Anti-Love Talking

Is your way of talking to your loved ones (mate, children, siblings, etc.) more pro-love or more anti-love?

Have you ever examined your habits of speech and speech style for their effect on your loved ones?  Do you know the three big factors determining pro-love and anti-love talking effects?


Factor I    Love Destroyer Words versus Love Builder Words
Below you will find 25 examples of words and phrases which tend to have an anti-love effect.  Following each of these is an example of a pro-love effective way to state a similar thing.  Check your speech habits against these to determine if perhaps you are using love destroyer words and phrases and might need to practice a more pro-love style to have a love building effect through words and phrases.

1.    You should …
You could …
2.    You shouldn’t …
I would like you not to …
3.    You always  …
I’d like that to happen less …
4.    You never …
Really soon I really would like you to …
5.    Why don’t you ever …
I want you to ………………, maybe by tomorrow if that’s OK?
6.    You’re wrong.
I see that differently.
7.    You’re lying.  That’s absolutely not the way it happened.
We remember that differently.
8.    How could you have been so stupid!
In the future I really want you to do that better.
9.    Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again!
How can I help you not to do that again?
10.  You’re terrible!
You can improve!
11.  I hate you!
Right now I’m really mad at you.
12.  You’re an idiot!
Part of me would really like to call you a lot of names right now.
13.  I can’t stand you!
I’m having trouble dealing with you right now, so let’s take a break.
14.  Why did you do such an awful thing?
Let’s look at what we can do to improve that.
15.  I can’t love you when you act that way.
I always love you, and what you’re doing really upsets me.
16.  But … 
And …
17.  Never say that again!
I don’t want to censor you so can we talk about that later and nicer?
18.  I’ve asked you time and again, so when are you going do what I say!
Honey, so that you’re clear, this is not a request, it’s something I have to insist on.
19.  You crazy freak!  Don’t you know any better than that!
In some ways we are really different.
20.  Can’t you ever get it right!
Sweetheart, we don’t seem to be making progress in this area.
21.  That’s all your fault!
Honey, how can we learn to go about that differently?
22.  I blame you for that, and you know you deserve it!
The critical part of me really wants to lay a guilt trip on you for that.
23.  No, not ever, and that’s final!
Sweetheart, right now I am firmly against that so please bear with me and be tolerant.
24.  We are never going to …
So far we haven’t and I really want us to, so this time how can we get to it?
25.  If you really loved me you’d know what I need and you would have done it already!
I probably have not made a clear enough request so let me see if I can be specific
and tell you more exactly what I want.

Factor II    Destroyer Voice Tones versus Love Builder Voice Tones
Did you know that 35 to 37% of what you are communicating in a personal interaction is delivered by your voice tones?  Have you given much thought to what your voice sounds are telling your loved ones when you talk to them?  Below are 10 words describing voice tones which frequently tend to have an anti-love effect and 10 words describing voice sounds that might have a more love positive effect.

Check and see which you think are most common to your own voice tone expressions:
1.  Indifferent    2.  Businesslike    3.  Bored    4.  Harsh    5.  Unfriendly
     Interested         Personal              Intrigued    Gentle        Friendly
6.  Hard    7.  Mean    8.  Condescending    9.Condemning     10. Angry
     Soft          Kind           Respectful               Forgiving          Understanding 

Factor III    Pro Love and Anti-Love Face and Body Communication
Did you know that in person-to-person talk it is not unusual for as much as 55% of the value of what is being communicated to be carried by face and body language factors?  Did you know that in a person-to-person talk your subconscious mind may be interpreting as much as 300 bits of information per minute having to do with face and body language communication?  Have you given much thought to what you’re face and body language messages are to your loved ones?  Here are 10 words that can be used to describe face and body language expressions which can have an anti-love effect.  Under each of these words is another word for a face and body language expression which might have a more pro-love effect.

1.  Uncaring       2.  Judgmental    3.  Rejecting       4.  Bland        5.  Egotistical
     Caring               Forgiving             Accepting            Involved        Sharing
6.  Tough    7.  Superior    8.  Irritated    9.  Impatient     10.  Prudish              Tender            Democratic      Tranquil         Patient                Flirtatious      

Now we suggest you examine what your own, more frequent face and body communications are when you are talking with your loved ones.  Then examine your voice tone communications and see how you might improve them.  After that take a look at the words you are commonly using and see if you want to make some changes so that you can have a greater love-positive effect.  You also might want to lovingly ask a loved one to follow your example and do the same.

As always, Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Will you ask one, two or three people who know you pretty well what is the best and the worst or how you come across in regard to the above 3 Factors?

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Image credits: “[last remnants of autumn]” image by Flickr user lempel_ziv (Tanya Zagumenov) .
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Related posts:

1. Love Positive Talking
2. Are You Talking About Love Enough?
3. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
4. Say It With Love
5. Additive Talking – A Love Skill