Critiquing without Criticizing

Synopsis: This mini love lesson presents attracting or repulsing speech; critiquing and criticizing differences; headed toward bonding or breaking up; and what’s coming at you.

Attracting or Repulsing Speech

Which of these statements will you be more likely to make to a loved one:

1. “That was really dumb of you.  How could you have been so stupid?  You never learn do you!  If you just weren’t such an idiot.”
Or 2. “I could’ve made that same mistake.  That just proves were both human and we don’t always get it right.  Do you want to figure out how to fix it on your own?  Or, do you want some help?  By the way we can use this slip-up to learn from so we can avoid this problem in the future.”

The first statement ‘puts down’ both of you psychologically and the speaker probably creates emotional distancing and probably projects a sense of the listener being alone with the problem.  In the second statement the speaker emotionally works to join with listener and to avoid giving a put down message, yet acknowledges a mistake has been made and a want to fix it. You might want to examine which of those two statements is closer to how you learned to talk growing up.  You also might want to think about the people in your life who talk more like the first statement and those who talk more like the second and what influences they might have had.

Here are a couple more statements to examine:

1. “Let’s look at what’s best and worst about what you just did.  Then let’s look at how to improve it.”
Or 2. What you just did is all crap!  There are so many things wrong with it I’m not even going to bother trying to tell you how to correct it.”

Which of these two statements would you rather receive?  Which would be more typical of the way you communicate, especially to loved ones?  The first statement has to do with the speaker and the listener together critiquing something that was done.  By acknowledging that what was done has both ‘a best’ and ‘a worst’ it offers what can be regarded as a critique instead of a criticism.

Critique and Criticism Differences

Criticism is a word with a connotation of tearing down self-concept, personally attacking, searching for and pointing out what’s wrong, and paying no attention to what might be right.  Modern dictionaries now define criticism as fault-finding, disapproving, and unfavorably evaluating.  Criticism at one time just meant analyzing with knowledge.  In some circles that definition still holds true.  Relationally ‘connotation’ often is more important than definition.

Critiquing means to examine with a view to determining something’s nature and qualities. A critique used to be defined as an act of criticism.  However, critique is coming to have the connotation of giving a balanced evaluation without likelihood of emotional dissonance.  Of course, some people can take anything badly and feel wronged by the statement, no matter what.  This is where saying things with a loving tone of voice and loving facial expressions and gestures usually helps to carry a connotation of critique instead of criticism.

Critiquing is evaluating with knowledge, hopefully without the negatives of criticism.  It’s not enough just to change your style from criticizing to critiquing, you also need to make an attitudinal change from blame to one that can be a benefit to both people in a love relationship (this includes to children, family, friends and other love relationships).

Heading toward Bonding Or Breaking up?

Being demeaning with putdowns, complaints, fault-finding, derogatory remarks, etc. is increasingly taken to mean a person is criticizing.  This is the number two reason for couple’s breakups (the number one reason is insufficiently loving) according to some research.  Criticism helps love relationships break apart. Critiquing, as a rule, helps love relationships address issues in a balanced, positive way.

There are some exceptions. There are people who have grown up thinking all positive speech is sugar-coating and only negative, critical speech can be trusted.  There is a type of masochism in which a person feels very uncomfortable hearing anything positive.  Barring things like that, critiquing works a whole lot better with loved ones than does criticism.

If you find it a lot easier talking about what’s wrong rather than what’s right with someone you supposedly love, something may be amiss in your way of going about love.. It just can be that you grew up around people programming you to talk more negative than positive.  In any case, there’s a whole lot of research saying focusing on and talking about the positive more than the negative helps you stay physically and psychologically healthy and is good for love relationships.

What’s Coming at You?

Do you hear lots of criticism coming at you?  There are several possibilities about that. One is ‘you have been programmed to filter out the positive and only hear the negative’ and you possibly may give negative interpretations to neutral and positive statements coming your way.  Another is you are encountering  too many people who would rather talk about the ‘weeds’ rather than the ‘flowers’ in everybody’s psychological garden.

Both of these possibilities can be true.  Then there is the possibility that you are way too much of a noxious influence on others and, therefore, what’s coming at you is appropriate. That too can be fixed with the help of a good counselor or therapist.  If nothing negative ever comes at you suspect that you are surrounded by people who give ‘false positives’ or everybody’s too afraid of you to give you their truth.

If you hear more critical than critiquing talk, it may be time to change some things.  Ask yourself, are the people in your life more negative or positive?  Do some really love you and, if so, do they know how to love well?  Are you unknowingly rewarding them for criticizing you and, thus, reinforcing their tendencies to do criticism more than critique?  Is your interpretation system in need of improvement?   Are you really counting the positive things that are said to you, or are you discounting them, or even not really hearing them at all?  Most important, are you figuring out what to do about these things?

If you let criticism come your way more than critiquing, it can do you and your love relationships a lot of harm.  Are you going to help your loved ones who criticize a bit too much change to a more critiquing style?  With some work, anyone can make critiquing with love a most effective and rewarding love skill.  You might want to read related topics at this site in the Subject Index under the Communication heading: “Communicating Better with Love”, “Love Complaints versus Love Requests”, “Love Positive Talking” and others.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Which are you better at saying to yourself and others: putdowns or praises, compliments or complaints, criticizing or congratulating?

Catharsis Empathy - A Love Skill

Synopsis: Hank on alert; confrontation and bafflement; a wife and sister’s explanation; preventing fighting; catharsis empathy unraveled; and the benefits are all parts of this very important love skills, mini-lesson.

Hank On Alert

Hank went on alert when he overheard his wife and sister sounding mad and nasty in the kitchen.  Cautiously he eavesdropped more.  He figured out they were not mad at each other or at him, but rather at someone else they both knew, and that brought him some relief.  As he listened he was appalled at all the putdowns and criticism they were viciously leveling at this acquaintance.  Then he heard mean-spirited sounding laughter and got anxious again.

He worried maybe this negativity he was hearing eventually would spill over onto him.  Their talk sounded unreasonably one-sided, irrational and illogical.  Hank really wished his wife and sister would be more balanced in their appraisal of this person.  Surely, the unfortunate, targeted person they were talking about wasn’t all bad and maybe even had some good traits.  Besides, being so negative and mean-spirited was bound to be bad for them too.  He wanted the women in his life to be pleasant and kind, and what they were doing sounded so sour and ungenerous.  He screwed up his courage and decided to confront them about their negativity.

Confrontation and Bafflement

Hank bravely walked into the kitchen ready to argue and cajole, but he was caught entirely off guard.  His wife saw him and lit up with a big smile saying, “Hi Hank, come join us.  Your sister and I are having a great talk.  I just love chatting with her.” Everything seemed cheerful and Hank was baffled.  Slowly he diplomatically got around to bringing up his great puzzlement over what was really going on between them.

A Wife and Sisters Explanation

Hank’s wife explained it this way, “We’re helping each other blow off steam, or maybe more accurately, we’re bonding with each other as together we vented out our toxic, bad feelings.  It helps us get clear and feel better.  It’s a lot like what you do at a football game.  You scream and holler insults at the other team or at the referee, and pretend to hate them.  In doing so you bond with your buddies there with you.  We just were doing the same thing more personally.  If anyone ‘really meant’ what they were saying when you are screaming about how awful the other team is, you’d think they were stupid or maybe crazy.”

Then Hank’s sister added, “It’s also like going to a rock concert.  You’re mostly there for the feelings brought on by instrumental music, not the ideas and information in the lyrics. You’re there sharing your emotions and your feelings, and because there’s a like-minded crowd you can do it bigger and better.”

Preventing Fighting

Hank’s wife then thoughtfully added, “I just realized a lot of our fights happen when I want you to be my ‘cheerleader’, and I want to feel like you’re on my side but you start playing devil’s advocate and reasoning with me and trying to calm me down.  When that happens I feel you are not on my side, and even sometimes like you’re my enemy, and I want to get away from you and find somebody who will treat me with empathy, and feel what I feel whether I’m right or wrong.  Besides, that right or wrong stuff that has nothing to do with it”.

Hank replied, “This is a whole different way for me to think and it’s going to take me a while to wrap my mind around it.  I think you’ll have to tell me when you want me to be your cheerleader or to just listen with empathy and not try to reasoned it out.” His wife replied, “Okay, I know you get worried when I cathart, so I’ll try to remember to ask you to be my care companion and not my instructor or fixer or debater.  Thanks for hearing my point of view and being willing to try to be empathetic when I have to vent.”

Catharsis Empathy Unraveled

What Hank ran into and misidentified can be called “catharsis empathy”.  It refers to a time in which one or more people need to vent, or let various emotions out, and have the feeling that the person they are venting with is right there with them, on their side, is joining with them without criticism, and is helping bad feelings come out.

Often when there are pent-up, negative feelings and the dam breaks to let them out, lots of things get said that make no real sense unless you understand the words just help the feelings get vented or experienced better.  It’s like when you tell your kids “It’s time to go to bed” and a kid replies “I hate you, Mommy”.  You know they don’t really hate you.  They are just venting frustration.  It’s not to be taken seriously, but instead understood with empathy.

The Benefits

Cathartic empathy helps people unburden themselves and at the same time helps them become bonded with one another.  When done intimately and personally, it helps us grow more love-bonded.  Receiving empathy and the ‘comradery’ feeling that comes with it while venting helps clean out psychological toxicity.  That, in turn, leads to the ability to think much more clearly afterward.  When one person wants cathartic empathy and not intelligent discourse, it useful for them to say something like Hank and his wife and sister talked about.  An example would be “I just want you to be my cheerleader ,not my coach; just hear me and feel with me, okay?”

It useful to ask loved ones “Is this one of those ‘be your caring cheerleader’ times, or is it something else?”.  Getting good at identifying such times, and showing empathy when catharsis or when any emotional expression occurs is a ‘super important’ love skill. Thousands of arguments and fights, and even breakups might be prevented by showing empathy to a catharting, venting loved one – instead of that ‘blowing off steam’ leading to destructive conflict which so often happens.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
So, how good are you at asking for and giving empathy when emotional catharsis is needed?

Related posts:

1. Listening With Love and IN and OUT Brain Functions
2. Emotional Intercourse
3. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
4. Connection Matching – A Love Skill
5. Intercourse Absent Lovemaking – a Love Skill 

Lies And Love

Synopsis: This mini love lesson covers Lying for Us-ness; Lies and Breakups; How to Get Yourself Lied to A Lot (A Baker’s Dozen Ways); Sabotaging Truth-Sharing Sabotages Love; How Lies Limit Love; When Love with Truth Is Not Allowed; and What to Do.

Lying For “Us-ness”

“I lie to save my marriage.  I’m pretty sure sooner or later I will get caught and our marriage will be over.  Until then, lies are the only way to keep my marriage going.”  So said Benson who was working hard at trying to learn how to live authentically.

He freely admitted that his career and personal life was saturated with falsehood but he vehemently testified that, nevertheless, he did love his wife.

Jolene stated, “I lie a lot to my husband just like my mother and grandmother did to their husbands and so taught me.  I really don’t know any other way that could possibly have a chance of working with my husband. Truth be told, I don’t know how any spouse can not lie a lot if they want to make their marriage work.”  Ginny and Josh in couples counseling were trying to figure out if their relationship could survive if both of them told each other several difficult truths. They had confessed that to keep their marriage going smoothly there had been a lot of deceit, both by the commission of out-and-out lies and even more by omissions of the full truth about a lot of things.

What is to be done about the lies, deceptions, half-truths, distortions, concoctions, perjury, beguilements, exaggerations, misrepresentations, evasions and out-and-out fraudulent deceit which occurs in a great many love relationships.  Some answer “nothing can be done” because all the lies are protective, softening, palliative and in one way or another useful in keeping a love relationship going.  Others say love needs the truth and without the truth real love will die.  Still others recommended that it’s okay to lie about some smaller things but not the big stuff.  However, people can vary on what they call ‘big stuff’.

There are those who comment that our culture and our love mythology especially teaches everybody to tell a lot of lies in love relationships.  “Don’t risk your relationships by telling the truth about anything that would hurt someone’s feelings” is something I once over heard an aging, Southern Bell tell her granddaughter. Of course there are those who want to know all the truth from others but they aren’t about to give anyone their own full truth.

Then there are the people who lie about love itself.  Tatiana said, “I admit I live a very two-faced life.  One face is for my husband and that face lies to him that I love him.  Another face is for my lover and that face tells the same lie but in different ways.  Since I don’t really believe love exists everything I say about love to men is a lie.  But they say it too.  They tell you they love you but all they want is sex.  But men are easily fooled.  They want to believe women are all about love.  I’m about wealthy pleasure and men are very useful for attaining that”.

So, what do you think?  How do you operate when it comes to telling lies, small, medium and large lies in a love relationship?  Do you want the truth no matter what it is?  Can you handle the truth no matter what it might be?  Before you decide for sure let’s look at some different things.

Lies And Breakups

“If he just hadn’t lied to me we might have made it”.  “She was just too deceitful. I never knew what to believe.”  “I thought I didn’t want to know the truth but in the end it was all the deceptions that destroyed us.” “Now I know I really did lie by what I didn’t tell and that is definitely what sank our ship.  I kept telling myself a lie, that omitting the truth wasn’t really lying.  If only I had admitted to myself that that was complete bullshit then I might not have lost the love of my life.”  “I really did not expect she would stop seeing me or even talking to me just because I told another lie”.  “We lied to each other a lot and in doing so we never faced our real issues.”

Every week I hear things like the above quotes when doing post-divorce and breakup recovery counseling.  The truth, at least as I see it, is that lying usually is more dangerous, or just as dangerous, to love relationships as is telling difficult truths.  At least for the strong of heart, truth (even very tough truth) is likely to give you the healthiest, long-range outcome.

It is true that some people cannot or will not work with certain truths that may arise in a love relationship.  It also is true that some love relationships are not strong enough and the love not healthy enough to enable the people to deal with certain truths.  In those cases breaking up or divorce may be painful but best in the long run.

These things not only are true for couples but also are true for all other kinds of love relationship also.  Time and again I have heard someone scream at a family member in family counseling “you lied to me”.  Often the “because” of why the lie was told doesn’t seem to matter.  Usually the wound caused by the lie and whatever the lie is about can be healed with enough love, and with the guidance of good family therapy.  Friendships, even deep and long-lasting friendships, may be killed by the telling of lies.  It seems that every type of love relationship can be endangered by lies.

How to Get Yourself Lied to A Lot

How do you help get yourself lied to?  Notice in this question I did not use the word cause’ but instead the word ‘help’.  As I see it, the person who tells the lie causes it.  However, we all can set things up so people will frequently choose to avoid telling us the truth if they can.  Here are a ‘baker’s dozen’ ways you can be pretty sure to assist yourself not getting told the truth or certainly not told the whole truth.  Each of these ways also can be quite destructive to the development of a healthy, real, love relationship.

1.  Be very condemning and judgmental when you hear a truth you don’t like, so people learn that telling you the truth is far too costly emotionally, and in energy and time consumed.

2.  Be so sure you’re right that no other view could possibly have validity, so your loved ones learn there is no use in even trying to tell you there truth.

3.  Come across very weak, fragile and delicate, so no one dares telling you a tough truth for fear you will break or be crushed.

4.  Play ‘overt victim /covert persecutor’ by showing that you feel supremely agonized at being blamed, or full of suffering martyr guilt, or you feel excessively at fault every time there’s a possibility of an unpleasant truth to be dealt with, so everyone will either dodge dealing with you or do anything to placate you, instead of just working at dealing with unpleasant truths.

5.  Become quickly and strongly upset, hysterical, incoherent, irrational and emotionally overwhelmed, so loved ones are busy trying to sooth you and their truth telling gets postponed, perhaps indefinitely.

6.  Demand and then deny evidence, insist your version of historical events is the only accurate one, and try to overwhelm with logic and oratory much like an aggressive lawyer in court, so that unpleasant truths get bulldozed and lost in the fray.

7.  Lash out with rage, personal attacks, putdowns, criticisms and personal negations of loved ones without mercy, and as you do so clutter the discussion with angrily stated irrelevant, unconnected to the original topic accusations, and miscellaneous material, so there isn’t a chance for a person’s truth to get a real hearing.

8.  Subtly, or overtly by your behavior, threaten loved ones who tell you uncomfortable truths, helping them fear that your vengeance will fall upon them and consequently cause them to protect themselves by hiding truth from you.

9.  Become unlovingly cold, distant and uncaring with elements of silent dismissal and attitudinal demeaning or condescension which is covertly obvious and, thereby, making yourself be seen as pretty much unapproachable.  If that doesn’t work withdraw and go into mysteriously hiding, so truth can not reach you.

10.  ‘Awfulize’ (make it far worse than it is) everything a loved one says, jump to all sorts of awful conclusions, and prove that telling you the truth blows everything out of proportion, so truth telling will always be a long ordeal to be avoided.

11.  Act indifferent by not listening carefully or showing any emotional care or concern, and project that you regard what you’re being told as irrelevant and unimportant. (This is particularly good for getting deceptions of omission to come your way).

12.  Use the truth a loved one shares with you against them later on, thus, punishing them for sharing their truth with you, and teaching them to avoid the risk from now on.

13. Ignoring the truth being shared and firing back or countering with something negative about the person telling you their truth, thus, devaluing their truth and deflecting dealing with it.

Sabotaging Truth-Sharing Sabotages Love

Each of the above 13 ways and a number of others act to sabotage both the telling of truth and the growth of love.  Lots of people do not realize that they get lied to partly because they make telling the truth have really bad outcomes.  Yes, it’s true we all should have the courage to tell the truth anyway, but that often is not the case.  Yes, we all should have sufficient love to be dedicated to giving our loved ones nothing but the truth, but that too is often not the case.

If you can lovingly hear the truth people are ever so much more likely to tell you there truth.  That often takes a good amount of healthy, self-love and the ability to do what is called ‘owning your okayness’ and ‘not giving away your power’.  See the entry “Healthy Self-Love and Not Giving Your Power Away”.

How Lies Limit Love

If I lie to you I do not present you with the real me.  If you send love to that false me it does not reach the real me.  I either know or doubt you would send your love if you knew the truth I am withholding.  Therefore, I am not reached and I’m not nourished by your love.  My lie may help me, or you, or both of us escape a painful conflict but by lying I also escape the chance of the real me being loved by the real you.  Thus, I cause us to elude the chance of sharing and experiencing intimate, real and perhaps healing love together.

When Love with Truth Is Not Allowed

She said, “If I ever find out you even think of having sex with another woman I will divorce you!”  He secretly and silently interpreted this as “I can never share with you the truth of my real sexuality. Therefore, I had best begin to look for someone else I can be real with”.

He said, “You know I’m right and I refuse to hear you say another word about this subject!  So, eventually she was in the arms of another who could and would listen to anything and everything she had to say.

If you cannot accept my truth how can I feel you accept me?  If you cannot accept me, flaws and all, how can I believe you truly can love the real me?  Please do not condemn or deny my messages of myself, and do not falsely agree with me either.  Please be willing to hear the real me as best as I can present it today.  Then tomorrow I may grow to have a better message and certainly a greater love for you!

What To Do

If you lie a lot, or perhaps you help yourself get lied to a lot, or if you are living some big lie, I like to suggest this.  By small, exact steps you can get to where you live authentically, without lies, or without being much lied to, and in the process you do no harm to anyone.

I like to suggest that for your own health and well-being, as well as for those you care about, cautiously working your way into a life of truth almost always is achievable and by far is preferable.  One reason for that is lies usually cause a lot of psycho-physiological stress, not to mention relational diminishment and danger.  Coaching by a good counselor often is just about invaluable whenever love is being sabotaged by lies.  Finally consider an old teaching question.  Can you build something real out of something false?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Is your self-love sometimes too-weak for you to be able to hear the truth?

Related posts:

1. False Forms of Love: Limerence and Its Alluring Lies 

Spirituality And Love Great and Grand

Synopsis: This mini love lesson starts with love’s spiritual mystery; then explores central questions by surveying what the wisdom masters of old taught; the spiritual goodness of love; religion, spirituality and love; erotic spiritual love; and more.

Love’s Spiritual Mystery

On the beach a couple with arms around each other, under a full moon, looking out over the vastness of the ocean’s rolling waves feels they are awesomely, spiritually connected in love with each other and the universe.

A family surrounding the mother and the just born, new member of their family feel much the same, wondrous effect.  Dear, close friends also experience this standing together at the edge of the Grand Canyon as the sun sets magnificently behind the cliffs.  High atop a mountain, a lone individual looks out over a vastness of snow capped peaks and the mountain hiker feels spiritually and superbly loved by an unknown something he or she does not care or need to define.  What is this mysterious, yet great and grand, sense of the ‘spiritual’ that sometimes comes with a sense that one is permeated by a high and wondrous love?

Essential Questions

Do you see love as spiritual?

Many people around the world and throughout history have described love as a spiritual phenomenon.  For many love is the spiritual force in the universe.  It is proclaimed that whether it be love of a newborn baby, a mate, a family, a people, love of country, or art, or music, or nature, or humanity, or life itself, or even existence, love is a mystical, grand, and glorious spiritual thing inspiring individuals and relationships to the best of what they can become.  Do you see it this way?
Some say that because love is a spiritual force it, more than anything else, inspires our best and greatest actions.  Especially might this be true for actions involving connection, cooperation, collaboration and unified effort.

Others suggest that the spiritual force of love is what makes it able to inspire great individual acts of risk, protection, dedication, loyalty and courage.  That it is the spiritual force of love that’s behind the great acts of compassion and kindness in the universe is also a common teaching.  Is that your view?  Is love for you a great and grand, spiritual thing? If so, are all your love relationships spiritual?  Are all love relationships in the world spiritual?  Do we best deal with love by seeing it as essentially spiritual?

What The Wisdom Masters of Old Teach

There is an ancient Hindu teaching that says before there was anything there was just love.  Love because of its nature had to create, so in an incredible, explosive burst love gave birth to all that exists, the heavenly spheres, time, space, everything.  From that came life itself and all beings both heavenly and earth bound.  From that Hindu teaching flows the concept that all that exists flows with love and we, therefore, best flow with love in all that we do.

Buddhism teaches that our life is to sing the song of compassionate love divine.  Judaism, and later Jesus taught that we are to love God and love others as we love ourselves.  John of the Epistles simply proclaimed “God is love”.  Taoism puts forth erotic love as a supreme, spiritual love.  Rumi, the great Sufi master of Islam, taught the ways of love are the ways of Allah and, therefore, are above and beyond all else.  Furthermore, each and every form of true love is in fact but a manifestations of Allah’s love.  Therefore, all true love is spiritual in its essential nature.

The ancient Egyptian Scriptures of Hathor and Isis, the Great Mother spiritual teachings of the Fertile Crescent and beyond, all hold love to be the greatest spiritual existence, practice and blessing.  Again and again  all the way back to the dawn of history  love is exalted as a phenomenon of spirituality.  In philosophy Plato’s great Symposium on Love speaks to love’s mysterious, mystical and metaphysical essence, as do philosophers in many ages and from many lands.

What is Spirituality?

Explaining spirituality is not the easiest thing to do.  To help your understanding and my comprehension of what spirituality is, let’s look at some different and some similar ideas.

1. Spirituality is that which connects you to both your essential, innermost, core self and at the same time to the awesome ‘all’ that is beyond all of us.

2. Spirituality is a way of relating and living with that which is greater than ourselves and ultimately with the greatest of all that is.

3. Spirituality is that which enables you to have some knowledge of the unknowable.

4. Spirituality is a mysterious awareness bringing us into connection, harmony and unity with that which is both serenely awesome and intimately colossal.

5. Spirituality is that which makes us feel safe at home in a frighteningly infinite universe.
6. Spirituality is our way of connecting with divine love.

Technically spirituality has to do with that which is of the spirit, i.e. the breath of life.  Originally spirituality meant something more or less like being in-spirited or inspired by the breath of life which was the spiritual force and a gift of the gods or God.  To be spiritually inspired was to commune with the eternal and universal or to be filled with the active essence of Divine love. Spirituality has commonly been seen as the way to be in connection with divinity, one’s higher power, the great spirit, the Saints, the jinns or spirit world, the great Goddess or the omnipresent, omniscient, great God – depending on one’s personal theology.

Non-Religious Spiritual Love

It is important to note that philosophically one can be spiritual and at the same time agnostic or even atheist.  In this case, spirituality is not seen as being dependent on religious belief but rather on having a reverential appreciation of anything more grand and greater than the one’s self, such as life, or existence, or beauty or love itself, etc.  With this understanding one’s love can be seen as a highly spiritual entity or phenomenon no matter what one’s religious belief system is.

Understanding Love

To find answers to the question “What is Love?”, I want to refer you back to the Definitions and discussions, and especially the Working Definition of Love already available at this site.

What Is Spiritual Love and What Does It Do for Us?

If you haven’t already perceived or experienced it, imagine feeling loved by the cosmos, the life force, the universe, some great, transcendental, metaphysical entity, or by whatever so many people call God.  That experience can be magnificently empowering, healing, motivating and for many, most of all, inspiring.  It also can be enormously reassuring, comforting, caring and intimately, personally inspiring in a whole different way than anything else.  Now imagine that the love connection you have with anyone and everyone you love, is linked to and saturated with a great and grand spiritual, power of love.

With a sense of that can you also then think that through love you are or you can be spiritually united with yourself and feel amazingly whole? For many people that seems to be their truth.  Furthermore, through the spiritual force in love can you have a sense of being connected to all people, and creatures and spirits who genuinely love?

Spirituality and its essential love-based nature often is the lifeline that keeps people alive when nothing else would.  Spirituality also is something that helps people let go of their biological life when staying physically alive is no longer tenable.  Love, when recognized and sensed as a spiritual force, brings us what some call the Konos experience.   That is when two or more people are gathered together in the spirit of love; they also can be united with something far greater and grander than the sum of their collected selves.  This is reported to be experienced as awesome beyond imagination.

The Spiritual Goodness of Love

By seeing a spiritual dimension to love, any healthy, real, love relationship can be seen, as at least partially if not wholly, a true goodness.  By identifying love as a spiritual entity or phenomenon one can associate it with goodness and distance it from the purely selfish, or the destructive mentality that promotes ideas like “all’s fair in love and war” and the unethical corrupting mindset that proclaims “winning is the only thing that counts”.  By comprehending love as a great, spiritual marvel one conceptually takes love to a higher plane, removing it from the trivial, the mundane and the lesser important factors in life.

Compassionate love, as the Buddhists teach, especially works against crass commercialism, common dishonesty and deception, against the power for power’s sake mindset, money hungry forces and the “dog eat dog” approach to business practices.  The spiritual nature of love is seen to inspire higher order behavior, bring out empathetic and altruistic action, inspire  lifelong dedication, and move people to great cooperative action in the service of all sorts of humanitarian and democratic causes.  The spiritual component in love also  sometimes is given credit for helping us move toward beauty and away from spiritless ugliness, toward natural wonder and away from lifeless, impersonal mechanization.

Love lived as a spiritual blessing can help lead to soaring actualization, improved lives and saved lives, and can help lead to the defeat of anti-human and anti-natural destructive forces.

Religion, Spirituality and Love

Great numbers of people find their lessons about love and spirituality via religion and they benefit from doing so.  Also unfortunately a lot of religion seems to get in the way of spirituality and, as sometimes practiced, leads away from healthy, real love.  While some religions are quite healthfully love-centered and love-focused, sadly, there are others that seem to operate just the opposite.
See if you think this is true. “Spirituality without love does not exist.  If this is true it proves ‘loveless religion’ to be ‘false religion’ because it is devoid of true spirituality”.

Some people’s religion primarily is guilt and shame dominated.  Other people’s religion mostly is about escaping damnation (‘fire insurance religion’).  For a great many people religion is just a great big “I’m okay  you’re not” game (unless, of course, you are in my religion and behaving ever so correctly, as I think you should).  For others it’s just a pleasant way of socializing or achieving status, or living in the safety of conformity.

I suggest none of this is spiritually love-focused.  I like to recommend to people I counsel that when they are looking for a religious or spiritual involvement with others, check out the amount of love emphasis actually going on with those others.  If the love emphasis is high it may be mentally healthy and if not, probably not.

Erotic Spiritual Love

A couple silently lays naked together after lovemaking and feels mystically, spiritually united with one another and with all space and time, and with all who have ever felt deep, spiritual love.  Have you had this experience or something like it?

For many in the world spirituality and sex are seen as each other’s enemy.  But this is not true for a great many others.  For the Taoist many of the ways of being sexual are the ways of being spiritual.  For Tantric practicing Buddhists, and Hindus, and certain branches of Wicca, along with particular Eastern Orthodox sects sexual ecstasy weaves together with spiritual ecstasy quite well.

It is thought that at the dawn of history, in the worship of the Great Mother, sexual feelings were considered her sacred, inspiring gift to humans and were, therefore, spiritual and sacred.  This made rape and many other less than healthy forms of sexual behavior greatly chastised and to be avoided or one might be cursed by the Great Mother and have to live a life of sexless agony.

So with these thoughts in mind, might you live in a way that integrates your love, your sexuality and your spirituality?

What To Do

Perhaps you would like to worshipfully pray or meditate on these matters.  A lively discussion with others may be a desirable possibility.  Reading about love and spirituality can be an option. Taking classes, going to workshops and seminars, and diligently studying the issues involved might be a way of productively dealing with all this.  Deciding to approach all love relationships with a certain amount of spirituality may yield good results.  Letting all this germinate in your subconscious and waiting to see what may unfold or emerge is another good possibility.  What do you suppose will be your way?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Is healthy self-love a spiritual practice and if you see it as such how will you practice it?

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