Cycling Love for Lasting Love

Synopsis: Here you learn the ‘why’ of love cycling; how thinking about love cycling takes a different kind of thinking; what love cycling really is; the benefits of love cycling; what can go wrong; and what to do next with this knowledge.

Why Love Cycling

Do you want your love relationships to last?  Couple’s love, parent-child love, family love, friendship love and even healthy self-love all become much more likely to be long lasting if you, and your love ones, become good at cycling love.  Not only that, but those who are good at love cycling are likely to enjoy more love, and get more of love’s many emotional and physical health making benefits.  Without love cycling, love relationships tend to be either puny, compared to what they might become, or they are more likely to wither and die.

Thinking about Love Cycling Takes a Different Kind of Thinking

Many people aren’t very good about thinking systemically.  They know how to think about individuals but have trouble wrapping their minds around the systems people operate in.  Here some examples to help you think this different way.  Five mediocre basketball players, who have a really good system of fine teamwork, often can defeat five star players whose teamwork system is poor.  It is the system of interacting that makes the better team, rather than individual ability.  This became abundantly clear to me when I was involved in some research that discovered psychologically healthy, okay individuals could have bad marriages, and people with certain kinds of mental health problems could have good marriages.

Coaches, of every kind of team, have to know how to think systemically about their teams, as a whole, and not just about its individuals, though that too is important.  People suffering from addictions, criminal pasts and certain kinds of mental health problems, who move back to old neighborhoods or their old family, often get sucked into the toxic system that continues to exist in those environments.   That, in turn, triggers their old problems to recur and again they become part of the old system.  Going to live in new and different living situations, with new and different interaction systems, often works far better.

Couples joint counseling and family therapy are much better at getting interaction systems to improve than is individual therapy.  Especially in couples therapy, those who cannot think and operate systemically may not improve.  Listen to Alexander.  “For the longest time I could only think, if my wife would just make a few improvements everything would become okay.  Then I decided it was only me who needed to make the changes.  But both ways of thinking, (she needs to change) (no, I need to change), never helped.  Then I learned that when one of us got unhappy it almost immediately triggered the other one into unhappiness.  It was simultaneously, therefore, both of us in a bad joint system”.

He continued with, “Our system started triggering each other’s frustration, upsetness, anger, fear and mutual defensive dysfunction.  We were, in unison, making an ever escalating, circular system which was destroying our relationship and spiraling us down into failure.

It wasn’t until we replaced that bad, old circular system with ‘love cycling’, that we together created a new system spiraling us up into the happy love we have now.  Whatever either one of us did individually to try to fix our relationship problems, did not work.  It wasn’t until both of us were trying, at the same time, and in the same way, that we worked as a cooperating team.  It wasn’t until we both jointly were using the same, better system, that things improved.  That’s what fixed us”.

Think of a football team and a ballet troupe.  If half the team are running one play and the other half is running some other play; or half a ballet troupe are dancing one dance and the other half a different dance, dysfunctional chaos and confusion will result.  In both, the team and the troupe, one half is likely to be telling the other half that they should be doing things their way, and arguing about it.  The members of the team and the troupe are all doing what they think is the right thing to do, and in fact they are right, from their own perspective.  None of them are doing anything really wrong or bad.

They can be running the play or dancing the dance they think they should be running or dancing quite well, but not in coordination with the other half of their own team or troupe.  That is what so often happens in couples and families when they are not all interacting in the same system.  No matter how well they do individually, until they are in a mutual successful system, the best they can do may not be good enough.

Now, let’s see if we can use this kind of systemic thinking to understand love cycling.

What Is Love Cycling?

In its simplest form, love cycling means this systemic process.  Person number one says or does something that conveys some love to person number two, who then sends love back to person number one.  Then they keep doing that, which forms a circular, feedback loop of giving and getting love actions.  But there’s more to it than that.  Person number two has to notice the incoming love action and actively take it in, and then let themselves feel at least somewhat loved.  Person number two must let, or choose to let, themselves feel loving back toward person number one.  Person number two then has to choose to do some action or words conveying love in return to person number one.

After that they actually have to do what they choose to do.  The two of them, together, have then created one complete turn of a love cycle.  If person number one and two repeatedly keep operating in this receiving and sending, circular fashion, they can be said to be ‘love cycling’.  If this becomes their common way of operating and interacting, they will have created their joint, love cycling, systemic pattern of interacting with mutual interacting love.


What Are the Benefits of Love Cycling?
The existence of that circulating pattern of loving interaction, tends to have a very bonding together influence on couples.  This then frequently results in a lasting love relationship.  Not only that, but the cycle tends to wonderfully generate increasing and more powerful, growing love.  Think of an electric motor going round and round, generating more and more power.

That is how love cycling often works.  Then if a couple adds occasional doses of pleasant surprises, playful variety, exciting sexuality, comforting tenderness and the many other ways of giving love, they are, in effect, feeding each other a rich, healthy diet of nurturing love in an ongoing cycling system.  That cycling pattern is likely to keep them healthfully functioning as a couple for a very long time in spite of whatever adversities may come their way.

What Can Go Wrong

All sorts of things can get in the way of cycling love.  Here are just a few of the major ‘monkey wrenches’ that can be thrown into the love cycling machinery.  If either one of a couple thinks, or has been brought up to subconsciously think, that it is the other one’s job to take care of the love in the relationship, failure is likely.  That is like half a team expecting the other half to do all the work.  Almost as bad, is one person thinking that they themselves must do all the work.  That means they never get around to the essential teamwork of couples love.  Both partners in a couples love relationship have to communicate what they want the next ‘play’ or ‘dance’ to be, and have a way of mutually choosing a joint course of action, and then carrying it out, with each doing their part.  When one, or both, just expect the other one to know what to do, according to how they themselves think, it is likely to go awry.

Some couples are like two performers attempting to sing a duet but they are singing different songs, so all they make is noise.  Until they are using the same song, i.e. system, it is not going to work.  There are hundreds of other things that can go wrong, and about those I suggest you are going to want to read the mini-love-lessons listed in the Subject Index under the “Pain and Problems” heading at this site.  I also, egotistically but truly, highly recommend our new e-book Real Love, False Love, exclusively available at this site, and our older, but still proving to be super useful to couples, book Recovering Love.  That one is especially useful for couples who face addiction issues and is available at www.amazon.com .

What to Do Next

The next thing to do probably is start thinking about how what you do, or say, may trigger someone you love into saying, or doing, what you don’t want them to do or say.  Then also think, how you let what they say, or do, trigger you into doing things, or saying things, they do not want you to say or do.  Add to that, thinking about what you do, or say, that also triggers them into doing saying things you do like, and vice versa.  By doing that, you will begin to have some ideas about your ‘joint system’ with that person you love.  Just about every couple has both negative and positive cycling going on, but they don’t know to think of it as a ‘joint interactive system’.

After that thinking exercise, it might be very good to talk to a beloved of yours about all this, and perhaps get them to read the same things you are reading.  Then start talking about how you want to work as a team in joint, coordinated action.  There is a mini-love-lesson at this site called ‘Competitive Niceness’.  I recently heard from the couple who invented that ‘game’ (or positive interactive system).  Going toward retirement, they moved both their offices into their home, which has accelerated their competitive niceness rivalry, and made for all kinds of new, happy, loving, competitive niceness events in their life together – to the point of each trying to sneak into the kitchen first to do the dishes, to surprise the other, and other hilarious and loving behaviors. Maybe you and yours can do the same.

Hopefully this will help you have a good, starter understanding of love cycling and how to use it in your life.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Do you ever think with the question “What am I doing, that triggers you into doing, what I do not want you to do”, or the question “What am I doing, that triggers you into doing, what I do want you to do”?

Related posts:

1. Listening With Love – Are You Good At It?
2. Listening with Love
3. Wall and Catapult Love Destruction & How To Avoid It
4. Learning About Love – Together
5. Anti-Love, Non-Love & Real Love 

Removing Your Hidden Blocks to Receiving Love Fully

Synopsis: Your hidden blocks, need to unblock; love block defined; an example; many kinds of reception blocking; where the blocks come from; and what to do about it are all covered here.

Your Hidden Blocks

You have love blocks!  They get in the way of receiving love when love comes your way.

They once did you some good but now they are just preventing you from feeling the energizing, warm, safe joy of feeling well loved.  Your love blocks also probably are sabotaging your chances for experiencing love more fully.  Why do we think this is true?  Because having blocks to receiving love is almost inevitable and universal in most of the world’s cultures and most of the world’s families.  No one starting life as an infant and experiencing childhood is thought to escape developing some hidden, subconscious blocks to receiving love.

Actually you might not have survived without them protecting you in your early life.  Now they are in the way.  The good news is you can get them out of the way and go on to a much greater, empowering and more abundant love.  Furthermore, remember that receiving love well is extremely important for giving love well.  It also is very important for doing your share of ‘cycling love’ in a love relationship which is what keeps a love relationship going.  (See the mini-love-lessons on Receiving Love at this site)

Why You Need to Unblock

We now have an abundance of scientific research pointing to a great fact.  If you don’t have healthy, real love in your life, your biological and psychological health systems start to malfunction.  Quite commonly after that, your life may malfunction in one major way or another.  It therefore, is to everyone’s benefit that you discover and remove your major blocks to receiving love fully.

What Is a Love Block?

A love block is anything that repeatedly gets in the way of getting love, when it there to get.  Here we are most concerned with your own, internal blocks to receiving love well and fully, which thereby interferes with you doing healthy, Receptional Love.  Your love blocks likely are too deeply ingrained, non-conscious habit patterns  preventing you from being able to perceive or experience yourself as loved and valued, when love conveying behaviors are being sent to you.  There is research which suggests as much as 75% of the love conveying actions that comes to an average person is missed and, therefore, not received.  A large part of what does get received is not received fully or well.  Could it be that if we all got good at love reception, and got our blocks out of the way, the world would be 75% more love nourished?

An All Too Common Example

After making love, Cato with a big smile, sincerely said to Lacey “I really enjoy the looks you have when you’re in ecstasy, and the sounds you make are a big turn-on too”.  He meant it as a loving affirmation and hoped it would help her feel intimately good, as well as it was sharing of his own, intimate, good feelings.  However, his statement ran into Lacey’s love blocks.  She took it as he was trying to embarrass her by making fun of her, and that he was actually being critical of her in a sort of sarcastic way.  That is how she was taught to interpret straight-forward, complimentary statements in the neighborhood and family she grew up in.

She also learned to react with self-defensive, pulling away while steeling herself with cold indifference.  She further acted to get out of that situation as fast as possible because it had become so negative to her.  Cato took her defensiveness as rejection, which activated his own love blocks.  He was sure he once again had failed with a woman, probably because he was an inadequate lover although he didn’t know how he had failed.  He also once again was thinking he probably was unlovable and would never find the love he really longed for, so he concluded, why try.  He certainly would not call Lacey or try to see her again.  Lacey also decided she would not try again with Cato either because once again she thought she had run into a real, unloving jerk.

It could have turned out much better had either Cato or Lacey, or both of them, been brought up in such a way as to instead regularly think something like this.  Compliments were just compliments, and they themselves were lovable and valued.  So sincere compliments would naturally come their way, and were to be enjoyed.  It also would have helped for them not to quickly think with blame, and consider themselves okay, lovable people who can continue working together on a probable glitch in communication, or mis-perception.  But no, their conditioning and programming made sure their first conclusion was that something negative was coming toward them, and blame and guilt had to be part of it.  Therefore, they should fight or flee from the person sending the perceived negative.

So long as Cato subconsciously and secretly believes women will find him sexually inadequate and basically unlovable, he will view something that goes a bit awry in a relationship as proof that he is failing.  He will then defend himself with counterattack or withdrawal, cutting off his chances to receive love or start a love relationship.  So long as Lacey has a habit of perceiving compliments, praises, thank you’s, and affirmations as not being real or containing some hidden negative meaning, she will effectively block genuine affection, respect and the love she so desperately wants.

The Many Faces of Love Reception Blocking

Blocking love coming your way usually occurs without you consciously knowing it, and in a great variety of different ways.  Here are clues to some of them.  If you think things like the following, you may be blocking your own reception of love.

“If I have to ask him for what I want, that spoils it because if he loves me he is supposed to know and then give me what I want”.

“I’m really not important or special in any way, so no one could really want me.”

“If anybody is nice to you, nine chances out of 10 they are after something, and you’re going to get hurt in the long run if you get taken-in by them”.

“I’m too (fat, skinny, ugly, poor, dumb, etc. etc.) for anyone to ever love me”.

“I’m such a bad person I don’t deserve love”.

“I don’t know how to know or share what I’m feeling and I don’t want to”.

“Love just makes me vulnerable and gets in the way of my success”.

“I missed my one great chance at love and I know I’ll never get another.”

“Whoever I get close to, ends up hurting me”.

“It’s a lot more important to me to be powerful.  Love just makes you weak”.

“It’s too late for me”.

“Love is just a pretty word for sex”.

“When they say they love you, it’s just a manipulation”.

“If you don’t love me just the way I want you to, you don’t really love me”.

“Love means you put yourself last and everybody else first”.

“Aren’t we supposed to be humble, and self effacing, and doesn’t enjoying getting love get in the way of that”.

There are lots more, but maybe this helps you understand the basic ideas about how love blocks get you to think and act against your own best interests.

Where Do Your Love Blocks Come From?

The culture you grew up in, and also whatever subculture you are a part of, can have a lot to do with where your love blocks come from.  For instance, if you were taught that anything having to do with love may have something sexual in it, and everything sexual is bad, you may subconsciously dodge anything loving so as not to be bad.  Many girls, on having their first period, stopped being hugged and kissed by her father, and all other males in the family or neighborhood.  So, ever after, she dodges love with males because she is subconsciously sure it will end in very painful rejection. 

Many boys gets teased, laughed at, shamed and embarrassed by their peers for doing something loving.  In many subculture groups, boys get criticized when they do something loving and chastised for not being strong, cruel and tough; then they never gets over it.  In other cultural groups many girls and boys learn that loving actions are used as a phony mask to manipulate others, and so they never trust or learn to do anything real concerning love.

Families and parenting are where, accidentally, lots of mistakes are made and malfunctioning ways are unknowingly passed on, generation to generation.  In some families they still believe in the, now much disproved, concept that parents who are too loving to their children turn them into weaklings.  Back before real research taught us better, the US and other governments sent out pamphlets to new mothers saying just that, and advising mothers not to cuddle, hug or lovingly touch their children, especially when they cry.  Tough soldiers for the future seemed to be the goal.  Lots of families around the world treat children with cruelty, indifference and neglect when they need love, and so subconsciously program them to be afraid of love and its many manifestations.

Addictions are especially a big problem.  For the child growing up with an alcoholic parent, half the time they do something nice to the sober parent and get a loving response.  The same thing done to the drunk parent brings agony.  This actively, but unknowingly, trains a child to connect love with frustration, confusion, anger, resentment, guilt, pain, contradiction and failure.  Then in their later relationships, all this gets in the way when they attempt relating in love.

What Can Be Done To Unblock and Go On To Good Receptional Love?

I like to suggest that the first thing to do is start learning and practicing the behaviors of healthy, receptional love.  It is amazing how well the “fake it, till you make it” approach works for many things, and this may be a key to one them for you.  You do not have to wait until you have discovered and countered your love blocks.  The very act of trying to accomplish good, receptional love will, in fact, do some of that for you.  As is taught in some forms of Buddhism, right action will lead you to right feeling and right-thinking and thereafter more right action.  However, that might not get the whole job done.  To learn the behaviors and thinking of receiving love well, I recommend you start with the mini-love-lessons at this site that have to do with receiving love or Receptional Love and then get busy.

Then it’s usually good to add more learning about your blocks.  To do that I like to recommend an older, but great, book by Dr. William Ryan and Mary Ellen Donovan called Love Blocks.  It is super for raising into consciousness what your blocks to receiving love may be.  Another ‘red flag’ may be when you experience dysfunction in a relationship.  You might ask yourself, “Might this be caused by one of my love reception blocks”?

Working on improving your healthy, self-love often proves crucial and intricately interwoven with developing good receptional love ability.  Again start with the healthy self-love mini-love-lessons at this site and go from there.

Getting more knowledge about receiving love and the processes that may be involved for you, also can be facilitated by reading Receiving Love by doctors Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt.  My book, Recovering Love, also has very practical sections helpful to this issue.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
The next time somebody says a loving statement to you, or gives you a loving touch or look, how do you want to see yourself respond internally and externally?

Related posts:

1. How Receiving Love Well Gives Love Better 

Lying to Protect Those You Love ???

Synopsis: Understanding ‘protection lying’ starts this mini-love-lesson; which flows into the usual destruction issue; then a fundamental principle; the question of good lies; two kinds of lie; how lies cause distancing; lying as an act against yourself; and then ends with the good news.

Protection – Really?

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings”.  In my work with couples and families I think I must have heard this 1000 times.  Once in a while it is totally true, but usually there is more to it than that.  “I did not tell you because I wanted to save us both from the horrible feelings we would have to go through once you knew the truth”.

That kind of statement is often more real.  “I lied because you would punish me and I hoped to escape that punishment”,  “You would not let do what I wanted to do, so lying to you was the only way to get to do it”, “If I told you the truth, you’d think it meant I didn’t love you”, “You would not love me anymore, so I had to lie to you”, “You would leave me if I told you the truth, so I had to lie”, “I was afraid you’d hate me forever, and I wasn’t brave enough to risk that, so I lied to you a lot”.  These are often deeper truths that sadly often go unsaid, until it is too late.

So often the protection is mostly, or only, for the one telling the lie, and not really for the loved one, but that is not always true.  Sometimes it is for both.  When we think of telling a lie to protect a loved one, making sure it is not a lie we are telling ourselves gets to be very important.  So, be honest enough with yourself to check that out with yourself.

The Usual Destruction

Jesse angrily said, “Why did you lie to me about your smoking again?”.  Robin replied, “I’ll stop and never do it again; I promise”.  With dismay Jesse said, “That’s not the point.  Smoke if you must, but don’t lie to me about it.  Your lying makes me think you’re not going to be able to be truthful to me about – about anything, for all I know.  Maybe you don’t even mean it when you say you love me.  Is that a lie too, or is it that you just don’t have the guts to be real with me?  Maybe you’re just a coward, or a fake, and not the person I thought you were!”.

In this interchange between Jesse and Robin, you can see their whole relationship is starting to be undermined and perhaps destroyed, and all because of a fairly unimportant lie.  Lying, not the smoking, is the far bigger, destructive issue.  That is so often the destructive problem in so many love relationships.

A Fundamental Principle

Telling the truth may indeed cause trouble, and lying might dodge that, but lying often risks much greater trouble.  Deceit, deception, things left out, minimizing parts, magnifying other parts, purposeful distortions, and out-and-out lies, all risk damage being done to the relationship that exists between the one attempting deception and the possibly deceived.  All forms of deception may harm the love and the love relationships you have, sometimes irreparably.

Are There Good Lies?

The agonized and sobbing mother stated, “If only I had lied to him.  I told him our daughter was pregnant by her boyfriend, and he flew into a rage; I know he didn’t really mean to kill her, but he did.  If only I had lied”.  Yes, if it would have saved her daughter’s life, she should have lied, but under the intense stress and threat of the situation she did the only thing she knew to do, tell the truth.  Lying to protect life and avoid serious danger is sometimes the only safe thing people can figure out to do.

If you are dealing with a person prone to violence and inflicting serious damage to others, safeguarding health and well-being, even with deception, is the greater good.  However, if the only thing that is likely to happen is a lot of emotional discomfort and dissonance, truth can be the upsetting but safer thing to present.  Now, if you’re lying to pull off a surprise birthday party, or something like that, sure, that’s OK.  But if you are lying just to avoid your own discomfort or disadvantage, lying probably is not OK, and it can be dangerous to your relationship.

Two Kinds of Lies

There is lying or deceiving to avoid, and lying to acquire.  Each can be harmful to a love relationship.  The avoiding kind of lying seems to be more common.  Lying to avoid hurt (i.e. harm, displeasure, getting caught, punishment, restriction, deprivation, time consumption, struggle, stress, etc.) probably is the most common type in love relationships.  Lying to acquire advantage (i.e. illicit pleasure, forbidden fruit, unequal treatment, undue privilege, secrecy, manipulation of others to their disadvantage, ego boosting, unearned respect, envy, status, undeserved position or wealth, etc.) can be just as disastrous, and sometimes even more harmful than lying to avoid.  Some lies and deceptions are simultaneously both ‘lying to avoid’ and ‘lying to acquire’.  Here is an example.

Geraldine didn’t want to be caught cheating on her husband because she feared a divorce would result, their children would be harmed, and her lifestyle substantially reversed.  So she lied and practiced all sorts of other deceptions.  At the same time, she wanted the feelings of being loved more and better, she also wanted the wilder and kinkier sex, a greater sense of adventure, and the more frequent ego boosts she experienced with her lover.  So her lies and deceptions were both to avoid and to acquire.  However, the cost was great.

Stress and stress illness, anxiety, guilt, secret shame and sheer time consumption increasingly ruined her life.  After her stress-induced stroke she entered self-examination counseling and discovered that keeping up the lies, telling more lies to cover the old ones, keeping everything straight, constantly having to create new ways of deceiving were what really caused the most stress, and did her in.  In couples and family therapy she learned her husband was willing to do much more in those areas and eventually all was fixed.  With truthful living she recovered into a real and loving marriage.  However, it took years.

How Lies Cause Distance

‘Making love naked is usually making love more and better than making love with clothes on’ is both a physical and a psychological truth.  When you lie you make part of you covered, disguised and unavailable for intimate knowing.  Therefore, that part of you is unavailable for love.  It goes love-starved and divided off from the rest of you and from those who love you.  Do that a lot, or in really big ways, and you may find the real you is not even there anymore.  You have so ‘covered the you’ that needs love the most, and it is all alone, and maybe someone you love is very alone too.

Lies tend to distance us from one another, and an otherwise workable love relationship becomes a role-played fake.  That does not always happen, and some people manage to pull it off pretty well, but never without some damage.  The distancing caused by lying and deceiving can lead to love starvation which brings on a great deal of depression and anxiety, even when one gets away with the deceptions.  Relapses into addictions are also common.

Lying As an Act Against Yourself

We lie to do or get something we want, or that we do not want to experience.  Maybe what we want is, indeed, to protect a loved one from some hurt or harm.  If the lie repeatedly succeeds that can bring on a habit to deceive.  Maybe our deceptions keep working but then later we know we are lying to someone we love.  That can cause us to dislike and demean ourselves.  In doing so, we can grow a sense of unworthiness and self disgust which in turn becomes self-destructive, as well as relationship destructive.  Lessening your self-respect and healthy self love does not help anyone or help any love relationship.

The Good News

The good news is you can make amends.  Now, it may be that your lies if revealed will do more harm than good.  Be careful there.  It is so easy for that to be a lie we tell ourselves.  But if it is true you can figure out a way to make amends in some alternate, unrevealing fashion, then you can work to grow your inner strength to the point of being able to live truthfully.  Lying, even to protect others, can weaken us.  Grow strong with healthy self-love and you can be brave enough to live in truth.  Truth and love work together so much better than do love and lies.
As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
When you lie to a loved one, if you do, what are you most usually trying to avoid or to acquire?  And do you truly need those things whatever they are.  And could you be brave enough to handle some unpleasantness instead of lying to someone you love?

Related posts:

1. Lies And Love
2. Respect – As a Love Skill 

LOVE As Your Word Guide

Free Mini-Love-Lesson #282

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson gives a way to remember a little listening-well formula using a meaning for each letter of the word LOVE.

Listening With Your Heart

It has been said that listening is the first duty of love. To listen to another person, with love, is an action-filled event. It is a mistake to think of it as a passive or non-moving thing. No, listening with love means constantly communicating you are with the person who is talking and letting them know your emotional feelings about what they have just said. You do this through expressional (nonverbal) communication -- good eye contact, nodding your head, making small arm and hand gestures, smiling, frowning, sad looks, looks of curiosity, interest and care, wide-eyed, leaning forward and sometimes touching.

Small sounds of care, surprise, interest and the like, and once in a while giving a single, affirmative word like "yes" are all involved.  Showing expressions on your face and with your hands and tones of voice that demonstrate you are emotionally in-tune with the emotions of the person you are listening to and that you are feeling care for that person is crucial.

Observing Through Another’s Eyes

Really try to see what they see and understand what they understand in the way they understand it.  Suspending your own ideas, evaluations and judgment; just see what they see as much as you possibly can -- that is part of loving them.  You can add yourself later.  Be able to reflect back to them anything they say at any given point.  That also helps you not to do rehearsal thinking about what you are going to say next instead of really hearing them.

Valuing The Positives

As you listen, look for what is positive about this person and what might be positive in anything they are saying.  Don't ignore the negative but rather focus more on the positives.  From time to time as you listen, you may include some brief comment on a positive.  Later you can say more.  If you say things about anything negative, make it shorter than what you say about the positives.  Be sure to put more energy into your tone of voice when you are talking about the positives than the energy you put in saying something about a negative.

Enact Love with Empathy and Energy

Empathy is the skill of having similar or corresponding feelings to the emotions someone else is experiencing.  It establishes heartfelt connection and communicates you are, at a heart level, more deeply and truly WITH another.  To enact your empathy is to show it as well as state it.  If you cry for the pain of someone you love as they cry, if you laugh for the happiness of someone you love who is laughing and if you frown or look puzzled when someone you love is struggling with a puzzle of their life, you are enacting your empathy.  If your voice tones contain the sound of care when you say you care, then your voice tones empathetically communicate probably more than your words. 

Vigorously, tenderly, serenely, lovingly and with every other corresponding emotion they experience, be actively with those you love.  Then maybe add some hugs or any other action that conveys your feelings are similarly connected with their feelings.

Remember, feeling love is only part of the love experience.  Doing love is the rest.  So, the next time you are with someone you love, you might want to remember the word LOVE and do what each of the letters stands for, according to this word guide.  Then, sequentially do them and see what happens.

One more thing

If you talk-over the ideas in this mini-love-lesson with another, it will help to implant them in your own head and maybe in their's which is a good thing, we think. If you do that, please mention our site as the source of a whole lot of ways love can be done and done better. Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success question: Are you a student of good listening skills?

Replacement Fear in Love Relationships

Synopsis: We start with the case of the off-target surgeon; and then go on to what replacement fear really is; three places it comes from; and we end with what can be done about it.

The Case of the Off-Target Surgeon

With confused anger and dismay the surgeon told me how his wife had insisted he rid himself of his best nurse because she was just too personal with him.

She also insisted that he get a male massage therapist to replace the female one he had been getting massages from for years.  Not only that, but his wife had begun to complain about his female accountant who had been doing a great job with his rather complicated financial situation.

All this had led to several big fights and one really hysterical episode where his screaming and crying wife threatened to leave him.  He emphatically stated nothing had been going on that was inappropriate with other women, and he had tried with much logic and reason to explain that his relationships with these women were entirely professional, and though friendly were not at all intimate or personal.  The evidence, logic and reason he presented, along with copious explanations he attempted, only seemed to make things worse.

Exploring the surgeon’s view of his marriage, led to his conclusion that for quite some time he had not paid much attention to his wife’s emotions or shared much of his own feelings with her.  He admitted romance had faded from their relationship, and their sex life was declining and perfunctory.  Sheepishly he confessed he had forgotten her last birthday and their previous wedding anniversary.   He said he did try to make up for those ‘misses’ by belatedly getting her several very expensive presents.  That did not seem to help either.  I asked and was not surprised to hear that the birthday he missed was her 50th.

It was then that I shared with the surgeon my guess that his wife was suffering from replacement fear, and a lack of empathetic love-based emotional intercourse (see “Emotional Intercourse”).

What Is Replacement Fear?

Replacement fear in love relationships is the fear of being replaced in a loved one’s heart and life by someone else, often someone new and possibly in some important ways better.  Some older siblings experience this when a new baby or adopted child comes into the family.  It can occur in the life of a youth when a single parent seriously dates or marries someone new.  It sometimes occurs more with men, but also some women, experiencing physical disability, vocational identity setbacks, sexual dysfunction and severe financial loss.  It sometimes occurs in women, but also some men, as they get older, especially if their self-valuing depends on looks and being young.  Replacement fear is thought to be most severe among those who have poor self love and those who have highly dependent false love relationships.

Replacement fear can trigger big problems with anxiety, depression, jealousy, possessiveness becoming critical, negative, easily agitated and irrational, and also with addiction relapses.  Replacement fear also can be very bad for love relationships.  Strong replacement fear can cause a person to push a loved one away and into the arms of someone else.  Therefore, it can be a very tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy fear.

Where Does Replacement Fear Come From?

Replacement fear has at least three, big, main sources or origins.  First of all, it can come as a reaction when love is not actively and frequently enough sent to a loved one. (see Definitions of Love, “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”).  If you do not feed love to a loved one often enough, they may become love malnourished or even love starved.  They then may began to suspect you don’t really love them and that you might want to replace them with someone else.  The surgeon I mentioned before readily came to admit this was true in his case, before he began to do something about it. He saw that he had for too long taken his wife for granted, neglected actively loving her, and operated on the concept that love somehow would take care of it without his participation. (see Love in the Fridge).  He immediately set out to learn and show his love more actively and more often, with good results.

A second common cause of replacement fear comes from a lack of healthy self-love.  If you do not sufficiently love yourself, and have confidence in yourself, and at least have the suspicion that you are rather lovable, you perhaps subconsciously will suspect you are not good enough to hold your beloved in a relationship.  Therefore, you may begin to suspect that your beloved will be looking to replace you with someone better.  This too can cause you to act in ways that psychologically push your beloved away and maybe toward someone else.

Many an otherwise okay love relationship has been ruined just this way.  Some people feeling this way, test and punish their beloved irrationally and severely by acting as difficult as possible.  Becoming unresponsive, judgmental, controlling, passive/aggressive, dictatorial, etc. only serves to usually make things worse.  Until a person has sufficient healthy self-love, it is very hard for them to believe someone can see them as wonderful, desirable and of great worth.

A third way that replacement fear happens is when a love relationship or marriage is grounded in a false love.  She professed her love for him but secretly married him for his money.  He professed great love for her but actually married her for her high ‘trophy wife’ attributes.  He feared being replaced by someone richer and she feared being replaced by a younger ‘trophy wife’ type than her.  Both were right.  Both went on to repeat these patterns with new spouses, followed by new divorces.  Someday they may discover what healthy, real love is all about, but then again maybe not.

What Can Be Done about Replacement Fear

To do something about replacement fear in yourself ask yourself these three questions.

1.    Do I, or are we, actually and frequently showing our love for one another in varied and quality ways?

2.    Do I, and we both, healthfully love ourselves, and see ourselves as being of high quality, and our essence being worthy of being loved and receiving real and abundant love?

3.    Is our love real and healthy for us both, or are there parts of it that may be false, sick and destructive?

Naturally, those questions are not to be easily and deeply answered without good self honesty and strong work.  You also can study what you find at this site concerning healthy real love, and read some of the really good things available concerning real love.  Let me egotistical recommend Part Two of my book, Recovering Love, our e-book Real Love, False Love, what Paul says about love in first Corinthians, the Buddha’s teachings on compassionate love, Rumi’s love poetry, The Five Love Languages, and The Anatomy of Love, for starters.

Talking with loved ones in depth about all these things, journaling your own love learning, and meeting with love-oriented others all can be of great help.  If you are suffering from fear of being replaced in the heart and life of a loved one, ask, talk and request reassurance in exactly the way you would want them to demonstrate and talk that reassurance to you; be specific.Then work at accepting the reassurance.  If problems persist see a love-oriented, experienced counselor or therapist.

If someone you love or care about seems to be suffering from replacement fear, remember empathy well expressed is more reassuring than explanation, logic, reason, arguing the past, or defensiveness.  Patient listening and showing care for the person struggling with replacement fear also is very much in order.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
When feeling insecure, are you good at directly and clearly asking for reassurance that you are loved, wanted, highly valued, etc. or do you beat around the bush, hint and just hope that the reassurance you desire will come your way?

Related posts:

1. Destroyers of Love – The 7 Big “Ds” Most Likely to Ruin Your Love Relationships