In Depth Affirmational Love

Mini-Love-Lesson  #281

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson covers what affirmational love is and can sometimes do; how to go deeper with affirmational love; and the need for attending to both intrinsic and productive valuing of our loved ones through affirmations. 

Affirmational love sends the intimate message that we have focused attention on a loved one and discovered worth and wonder.  Often that propels us to share our appreciation.  If well received, our affirmation can strengthen, energize and trigger happiness in those we love (see “In the Garden of Love”).

Affirmational love is expressed by words and actions that convey and affirm our high valuing and appreciation of a loved one for either, or both, their intrinsic and their productive qualities.

A sense of safety and security can be a superb consequence of first-rate, affirmational loving.  When we show our valuing of a loved one with an affirmation, they are likely to feel they are cherished by us.  As a consequence, their belief in the strength of our shared relationship can be elevated and they may feel more secure and safe in the relationship.  When we know we are valued, our anxieties reduce and our trust increases.  Well-affirmed relationships tend to be long lasting.

Affirmational love can be rendered with both words and actions.  Whether it is a statement of praise or a pat on the back, both can convey loving affirmation.  An elaborately planned experience gift or a subtle wink, both can send a message of affirmational love.  Even the simple may have a deep effect.  It is a best practice when we remember to sprinkle affirmations into our messages to friends, children, parents, family and all those we deeply love.  Link “Is Your Affirmational Love Enough?”

Jane and Sue excitedly reviewed their plans for a weekend together on the coast.  George, Sue’s fiancée, called asking Sue for a weekend date.  Overhearing that, Jane looked despondent until she heard Sue say, “Thanks I’d really like to, but Jane and I already have made plans for a beach getaway, so let’s do it the next weekend”.  George did a beautiful job of affirmation loving by saying, “I understand, I know she’s your best friend, have a wonderful time”.  There are two affirmational examples in this vignette.  The first is affirmation of the importance of a friendship.  The second is affirmation through understanding and acceptance (see “Yourself As a Great Source of Love Gifts”).

Too many people notice mostly the negatives in others.  Attending only to the negative, frequently results in destructive criticism or complaints which is neither good for individuals nor relationships.   We want people to put much more effort into noticing the positives and into forming a habit of searching for the good.  Especially is that important with loved ones.  

Do you notice what is good, admirable, precious, unique, praiseworthy, honorable or any other positive characteristics in those you care about?  If you do, do you, in words and actions, affirm these deserving traits?  

It is not enough to only feel appreciation, it must be turned into affirmational statements or acts in order to benefit the one you have appreciated.  To achieve deep results requires skill and intimacy.  How well we deliver affirmational love and how deeply it benefits, depends on our mastery of imparting affirmational love and on our knowledge of a loved one.

Appreciation and affirmations can focus on intrinsic qualities or the more superficial.  Superficial aspects spot-light things such as popularity, looks, status, wealth or incidental characteristics.  They tend to be less consequential, less significant and more temporary than intrinsic attributes.  If we want to have deep, meaningful love in our affirmations we need to look deeper and attend to the intrinsic nature of those we love.  We use the term intrinsic here, to represent what a person is and has become at a core level.  Honest, caring, loyal, courageous, kind or cooperative can speak to the intrinsic makeup of someone’s inner nature.  That is not to say that the not-so-deep factors are undeserving of affirmation.  It feels good to hear “you make that shirt you’re wearing look good”.  It feels even better to hear “I admire your honesty”.  Affirmation is an excellent way of loving. Maybe you’ll want to do some more of it with your loved ones (see “Self-Affirmation for Healthy Self-Love”).

As always – Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question:  Ask yourself,  “Am I deeply appreciating and affirming those I love –  sufficiently?”

Forgiveness - A Much-Needed Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love lesson starts with the question “why forgive?”; then goes on to forgiveness is about the future more than the past; a surprising reason we don’t forgive; sex and forgiveness; the risk of forgiveness; big love forgives, small love does not; growing forgiveness; and ends with a forgiveness challenge.

Why forgive?

“Forgiveness is so hard. Why should I try to do it?”  Often the answer is because not doing forgiveness is even harder.  Not forgiving frequently means not healing.

In my work as a relational therapist I have dealt with couples where one or both have shot, poisoned, stabbed or tried to run over their mate with a car and who have come to forgive those actions and all that led to them.  I have dealt with several hundred couples who have experienced infidelity, even repeated infidelity and all the deceit that goes with it and yet through forgiveness and healthy, real love development many are happy, successful couples today.

The most amazing examples of forgiveness I have seen came in my work with the parents and families of murdered children.  Parents who sit before the convicted murders of their own, most precious children and yet still offer forgiveness to those murders.  They love beyond my own love capabilities but not beyond my ability to be awed by them.  Intellectually I understand that those who do not forgive are likely to never heal and to be forever be more troubled.

Emotionally my heart goes out to those who cannot yet forgive and experience the healing which forgiveness brings.  When we forgive we are on the path to recovery.  When we forgive we can let go and let that which wounded us recede into our past.  Frequently forgiveness offers the one who is doing the forgiving more than what is offered to the one who is forgiven.  To not forgive is to not let a wound heal and continues the harm one has experienced.

Forgiveness Is about the Future More Than the Past

Forgiveness offers a chance for a cleaner, lighter, brighter future.  To not forgive poisons the future by carrying the past into it.  This works as much for the one doing the forgiveness as the one receiving it.  Honest to God, real love demands and requires forgiveness for both individuals and relationships so that the future of both has a chance. The future of both individuals and relationships can be especially sabotaged by seeking revenge, trying to ‘get even’, recrimination and bitter, endless judgmentalism.

Forgiveness does not have to be coupled with giving someone another chance but if another chance is to be attempted loving forgiveness is likely to be essential.  Forgiveness clears the way for making new and better things happen.  It is especially necessary in a couple’s ongoing life together.  In every couple’s relationship there are small, medium and sometimes large things to be forgiven, gotten past and left behind.  This also can be true of most deep friendships and lots of family relationships.  This also is true of self forgiveness.

A Surprising Reason for Why We Don’t Forgive

“ I can’t forgive her!  I just can’t forgive her cheating on me.  I can’t forgive or forget her adultery”.  This was Jake’s painful lament as he sat in front of me to start working on his recovery from discovering his wife in bed with another.  I said, “Yes, you were hurt tremendously by your wife’s betrayal but I have to ask you, Jake, what do you have yet to learn from this terrible experience?”  Jake replied “Why do you ask that? “ My reply was “Because in my experience sometimes we cannot forgive because we have yet to learn what we need to learn”.

Jake at first was baffled.  However, in time and with work he discovered he had had a part to play which had helped motivate his wife toward cheating.  He didn’t cause it but he contributed to it, and he needed to learn his part so he wouldn’t do it again.  He slowly came to realize he too often was far too unloving, indifferent, inattentive and uncaring.  He took his wife and his marriage for granted while mostly focusing his life on career success.

Jake also prioritized being tough, strong and authoritative far above being loving or lovable.  In human interaction “winning” was much more important to him than cooperation and collaboration.  This especially was true in the way he treated his wife and his children.  Jake remembered his troubled teenage daughter once saying to him, “There’s just no way I can win with you, Dad.  So I’m going to quit trying.”  After that they grew increasingly distant from one another.

Sex and Forgiveness

One other thing Jake learned concerned his own sexuality. He was secretly afraid other men were more potent and could sexually perform better than he.  As long as he was secretly insecure, forgiving his wife’s sexual infidelity meant facing his fear that he was sexually inadequate and that his wife had sexually experienced something better than he had to offer.  However, once he had discovered and admitted this openly in therapy he became surprisingly open to developing a new and better sexuality, forgiving his wife, and starting with her again as she had asked him to do.
This is often the way it works.

Once a person learns what they need to learn about themselves and their own areas of weakness that need strengthening, it becomes a bit easier to forgive.  This can be true even for people who have been heavily brought up to believe that sexual infidelity is unforgivable.  Is it not interesting that what is sexually unforgivable in one culture is fairly unimportant in another, and even is considered admirable in still another culture.

The Risk of Forgiveness

Another reason we don’t forgive is that unless it is done with wisdom forgiveness can set you up for repeated, painful experiences.  For many people forgiveness is not offered because they fear it makes them vulnerable and more likely to be hurt again.  When forgiveness is seen as something ‘you do in your heart’ and that it is all right to join forgiveness with adequate self protection, it becomes an easier choice (See the entry Forgiveness in Healthy Self-Love).

It is important to realize that forgiveness can put you at risk.  It is perfectly healthy to limit your risk to something you are pretty sure you can handle.  Could you say and mean something like “I forgive you but I have my own problem of being vulnerable and repeating my own mistakes, so I’m not going to return to our relationship again.  Therefore, I forgive you and wish you well.  Goodbye.”  That’s one way to deal with the risk of forgiveness.

Love often takes risking or gambling on the person you love.  That often means you do give them another chance and risk again experiencing deception, betrayal and emotional pain.  Strong and sufficient love often pushes us to forgive and risk again.  That does not mean to try in ways that enable and reward being used and misused endlessly.  Cooperatively making a clearly defined contract or agreement before starting over may help to minimize the risk and pain.

Big Love Forgives, Small Love Does Not

Some people never forgive the transgressions committed against them (real or imagined).  Some hold grudges until the day they die.  Those who are big enough and strong enough to forgive, give their love relationships a chance for renewal and new, ongoing success.  Without forgiveness many, perhaps most, love relationships deteriorate and die, or at least become comatose.  Forgiveness often takes being brave and loving in a big way.

If your own personal strengths are too weak or your love not powerful don’t forgive because you may not survive what you risk.  However, if your love is real, big and bold and you have powerful character strengths forgiveness maybe is what it will take to achieve a great, lasting, love relationship.  Sheila said, “He forgave me when no one else would.  How can I not love him more and better than anyone else and choose to spend my life with him?”  Some of the best love relationships could not come into being until there was great forgiveness – given and received.  That is the way of big love.

Growing Forgiveness

If you are having trouble forgiving someone for something there are ways to work on it  and win yourself the freedom forgiveness brings.  You can work on coming to understand why someone choose a path of action that hurt you.  If you can see through their eyes, feel their feelings and comprehend their thinking it may give you considerable assistance in the forgiving process.  Understanding is best done with compassion and empathy.  You don’t have to agree or call what they did ‘right’ to do that.  You also can work to understand how your own actions and words may have contributed to their transgressions.  Furthermore, you can work to understand your weakness which made you so vulnerable to being hurt, and from that you may find a way to grow stronger and defend against that vulnerability.

Another work you can do is to accept that you and all other humans are imperfect beings prone to making mistakes and needing forgiveness so that progress can go on.  Sometimes it helps to know that major religions the world over preach and teach forgiveness as the way of love.  If you work at it you can grow forgiveness and if you do not you may be stuck in the self poisoning of non-forgiveness.  If you are in a ongoing, love relationship with a lover, spouse, friend or family member and are not sufficiently forgiving, or they are not, see if you can both go to a good relational, love-oriented therapist who can help both of you get forgiveness to start growing.  Lasting love relationships require forgiveness skills and practices, or they don’t last.

There are books to read which can help.  May I suggest you take a look at Dare to Forgive by Dr. E.M. Hollowell, and Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope by a Dr. Worthington.  There are lots of counselors and therapists, and especially couples and family therapists, who are good at assisting two or more people with growing forgiveness and its many mutual benefits.

The Forgiveness Challenge

If you are going to do healthy, real love of anyone I suggest you develop your forgiveness skills.  Every human relationship that is ongoing will need some forgiveness, sometimes a lot of forgiveness.  The nature of love itself challenges you to be forgiving so that healing, repairing and love’s continuation can happen.  It is important that your forgiveness be done wisely so that it does not reward and reinforce dysfunction.  It often is important that your forgiveness be abundant and generous, but also wisely given.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who have you not forgiven, for what, and what effect is that having on you?

Related posts:

1. Forgiveness in Healthy Self-Love
2. Catharsis Empathy – A Love Skill
3. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
4. Infidelity and Love
5. Dining with Heart – A Love Skill 

Repairing Damaged Love, Best Guidelines

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson gives you a dozen better, and different than usual, guidelines for working to repair a wounded or damaged love relationship.

Love Wounds Can Heal

Love relationships get damaged, wounded, broken and in other ways harmed from time to time. The good news is, often with enough healthy real love, well delivered, they can be healed, fixed, repaired and frequently in the process made stronger than they ever were before. Here are a dozen guidelines that can help accomplish just that:

1. Have and show patience Don’t rush, push, or try to force a quick repair. Do some showing of kind, gentle love and then back off. Let mother nature have time to effect some healing and then do a little more. If you do too much, too often it probably will not be love you are demonstrating. It might be weakness, insecurity and dependence, or at least it’s likely to be seen that way.

2. Focus forward Put your attention into making things better. Focus on ‘Now’ and ‘Next’ more than on the past. Work to create new, better and more positive love-filled experiences more than rehashing, analyzing or endlessly bemoaning the past. Some mentioning of past, positive experiences and learning from the past are useful so long as it doesn’t get in the way of focusing forward toward making new, better and more love-filled things happen.

3. Have and show empathetic compassion It is important that you show empathetic compassion much more than trying to communicate explanations, defensiveness, logic, analysis or reasoning. None of those are likely to convey much love. Especially defensiveness and explanations usually just result in making things worse because people see everything so differently, and they frequently are interpreted as making excuses and attacking with blame. They may have a place but usually only after a show of sufficient and repeated empathetic compassion (empathy = to feel another’s feeling; Compassion = to genuinely care).
4. ‘Own’ your share of the actions needed for cure and healing If you ‘own’ the desire for it to get better, you ‘own’ the responsibility (Response + Ability) to take actions to make it better. This usually includes owning-up to your share of causing the problem. Avoid blaming yourself or others, judgmentalism, denial and dodging the hurtful truths involved. Never conclude that just one person caused all the problems or one person can effect all the cure.

5. Work toward ‘I win, you win’ joint victories Concentrate on ‘we’ and ‘us’ more than ‘I and you’ so as to build toward connection, acting as a team, cooperation, collaboration, bonding and unity. Remember that in a ‘one person wins and one loses’ encounter, their relationship loses. It is only in ‘I win and you win’ situations that the relationship wins and the problems lose.

6. Work to do, say and hear all things through and with love Remember it is all about a LOVE relationship, so aim to do it all with love. Well shown, healthy, real love is extremely healing. All things can be said with love. All messages, even the worst ones, can be heard with heart-centered love. Without love actions, love-filled communications, and love-based understandings, all else is likely to be ineffectual or worse.

7. Love assertively, not aggressively or passively Act to freely offer your love, not force it on anyone. While doing this, remember to assertively love yourself as you love another. With love assert your ideas, feelings, wants, understandings, hopes and everything important to you. Non-action and surrendering can be seen as indifference or a lack of strong vigorous love.

8. Practice affirmational love especially Affirm clearly and often, the high value and worth of your loved one, yourself and your love relationship. Minimize or avoid all that might dis-affirm such as criticism, demeaning remarks, blame, condemnation, put-downs, character attacks and devaluing statements about your loved one, yourself and your relationship.

9. Relate from self respecting strength Don’t act desperate, beg, grovel, play victim or helpless. Those may get you some pity but not love. Show you have the strength to admit and own-up to your failings and shortcomings, but not as an inadequate, infantile weakling. That garners no respect and without respect adult-to-adult love fails.

10. Deal from clear requests, not expectations Remember the ancient adage “expect nothing, want everything and say what you want”. Misinterpretation, misunderstanding, malfunctioning and disappointment are the common results of operating from expectations which usually go unsaid, poorly related and not mutually or sufficiently comprehended.

11. Learn about love Then practice what you learn. Yes, love is magical, mysterious and complicated. That is all the more reason to study it. Study what it is, how to give it, and how to get it. Study what it is not, what it is confused with, and study the many tragic mistakes people make about it when they don’t sufficiently understand it. Study the false forms of love and how to avoid them. Study what the ancient wisdom masters taught and what modern science is discovering about love. There is a great wealth of available, practical knowledge about love all of us can put to good use. There is also a great deal of useless and destructive trash to sort through. The more you know and practice the skills of love, the more likely you will succeed.

12. Get help Preferably together, but if not together then by yourself search for and go to love-knowledgeable helpers. There are counselors, therapists, personal and relational coaches, clerics of many faiths, teachers, mentors, sponsors and those who just love well who can help guide you as you work to repair a wounded love relationship. Use them.

The many mini-love-lessons found at this site exist to assist you with # 11.

In particular, those mini-love-lessons found in the Subject Index under Pain and Problems may be of special help. Also let us suggest that if you know of others suffering with a love relationship problem, you might refer them to this free, informative site.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What do you read concerning love? And by whom?

Special note:
It seems like most of the people who seriously start to learn about love, do so after a big love failure or a very painful love relationship experience. Most of them turn to self help, relationship books, some of which are wonderful and some terrible, and many useless. Readings in religion, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, the brain sciences and many related fields also are usual places where people start their search into “loveology”.

For those who want to go deeper and broader, there is Aristotle, the apostle Paul, Rumi, Montague, Fromm, Kierkegaard, Brandon, Hooks, Reik, Harlow, Siegel, Fisher, Chapman and a host of other authors from a wide variety of fields and backgrounds. They all can be profoundly instructive for the serious student of love and how to succeed at it. Seek and you shall find!

Related posts:

1. Forgiveness – A Much-Needed Love Skill
2. Competitive Niceness: A Love Skill 

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