Infidelity & The Love Messages That Block & Stop It

Love-Lesson #180

FREE over 200 Mini-Love-Lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries – worldwide.

Synopsis: This Mini-Love-Lessons presents some amazing communication research that has been found to prevent and impede infidelity in couple’s relationships.  It reveals ‘expressional love’s’ often unrealized pro and anti-love infidelity effects and how to best use this knowledge (Want to tell someone about this one?).

An Amazing Discovery

Love research is wonderful!  Loveology, or the scientific study of love, and its discoveries are starting to be such a great help to so many.  Here we present a finding that can greatly assist couples avoid the betrayal of infidelity and the agony it so often causes.  This discovery first was made in an area sometimes called ‘expressional couples communication’.  You may know this extremely important area by its other name, ‘nonverbal’ communication.  Note that extensive previous research repeatedly has showed the nonverbal to frequently be more important than the verbal in love relationships.  (See Communications section in the Subject Index of this site ).

Expressional Love and Anti-Love Message Making

Your face may be saying a lot more than your mouth.  That can be true even if you are quite verbose.  Furthermore, your gestures and posture changes may be speaking volumes that you are consciously unaware of.  Your tones of voice even may be completely contradicting the words coming out of your mouth.  These are the elements of expressional communication.  Without knowing it and entirely subconsciously, it is possible for your expressional communication to be making and sending messages that will have a very anti-love or pro-love, relationship effect.

Your words may say I love you but expressionally you may be communicating to your beloved that you are withholding giving or showing them love.  From that they could interpret that they might as well go look for more and better love somewhere else.  Sadly this happens in many couple’s relationships.

Your facial expressions, your tonal expressions and other voice modulations, your gesture and posture expressions, they all make up your expressional message-making.  Whether you consciously know it or not, your expressional message-making always is going on when you are with your beloved.  It also turns out to be extremely important to the strengthening or weakening of your love relationships and the chances for infidelity to be encouraged or discouraged (See the Infidelity and Love Info Silo - Love Dysfunction, Avoid It!).

The Huge Issue of Frequency

Also extremely important in expressional communication is how often you send what can be called love-positive messages compared to how often you send love-negative and love-neutral messages.  Note that love-neutral, expressional messages usually are interpreted, at least mildly, as love-negative.  Examples of love-positive, expressional messages are a wide range of different kinds of smiles, especially those that are very tender, accompanied by approval nodding, looks that are attentive and caring with good eye contact, friendly winks, reflective facial expressions conveying that you are emotionally congruent with a loved one, and the like.

Love-negative, expressional messages include scowling, shaking your head “no” especially while frowning, eye rolling, looks of contempt, moaning with disapproval, hate-staring, fist gestures and of course angry, demeaning voice tones.  Now, ask yourself how frequently do you think you may be sending both love-positive and love-negative, expressional messages and what effect do you suppose they are having?  (See the Communications section in Subject Index ).

The Astounding Discovery

Here is the astounding, essential and ever so useful discovery.  The ratio of expressional, love-positive to love-negative messages has been found to strongly indicate and influence whether or not infidelity will occur in a couple’s relationship.  If a couple consistently averages four or more love-positive, expressional messages to every one love-negative message, infidelity becomes highly unlikely.  Thus, it may take four loving smiles to counter an anti-loving scowl, four happy-toned, brief statements with good eye contact and a friendly look to counter the anti-love effects of a hatefully delivered sarcasm – and so forth.

The more a couple drops below the 4 to 1 ratio the more they are likely to be less happy and have more troubles, but in regard to infidelity they may still be somewhat safe.  However, if they drop below a one-to-one ratio of love-positive to love-negative, expressional communications, the chances for an infidelity occurring increase drastically.  In other words, if every smile is matched by one or more frowns, and every happy sound is matched by one or more unhappy sounds, or if every open arms welcoming gesture is matched by one or more ‘turning a cold shoulder’ actions, then one of the people in the couple’s relationship, and sometimes both, subconsciously are likely to begin looking for someone else.

How Good Was the Research?

This discovery and other closely related discoveries have been repeatedly found to be statistically significant, valid and reliable by a number of different research efforts made by various research teams.  In research and professional circles, this “four to one ratio” discovery has been called by many ‘ground breaking and highly important.  The research sample size is good and with replications it is growing.  The methodology is considered quite acceptable and the advanced statistical treatment is considered good.  If you are interested in the scientific technicalities involved here, I suggest you start by reviewing the research concerning “Precursors of Infidelity” in the professional journal, Family Process, especially Volume 47, pages 243 to 259.

How to Best Use This Knowledge

First, let us suggest you take a look at your own behaviors.  You may wish to inventory your own love-positive and love-negative, expressional messages  you are sending to your beloved and to other loved ones.  How often are you smiling and smiling back at those you love?  How often are you looking stone faced, or neutral or perhaps even like a grouch, or are sounding and appearing like a critical and judgmental parent?  Don’t forget to check out also looking bored and uninterested.

Are you sending out sighing sounds of disapproval, short clipped verbalizations that can sound angry, and what about your demeanor expressing superiority or condescension?  Do you frequently make loving eye contact and do you turn toward your beloved when they are talking.  Expressional self-study usually proves to be well worth it and often is a big aid to making improvements.

Second, we suggest you start making improvements experimentally.  Maybe start by uncrossing your arms and instead holding them open more to your loved ones.  Work to sound like you profoundly love who you love more frequently.  Remember, you are going to be helping your love relationship be stronger and more protected against infidelity and other problems by doing these sorts of expressional things.

Third, work against being phony as you take these steps.  If you feel you are being fake, pause and mentally tap into your love for your beloved.  Center your awareness in your love and see if you can come from that love-centered place toward your beloved, (See Mini-Love-Lessons “Love Centering Yourself”).

If you think it’s just not you to do more loving looks, sounds, gestures, posture changes, etc. remember this, you already could be subtly pushing someone you love toward the arms of another who may do expressional love better than you.  At least that is what the research suggests is all too likely to happen in couples situations.  So, why not live by the rule of four positive-love expressions to every love-negative action and, thereby, safeguard your relationship more (Read more about Expressional Love in the Communication section, for example : “Behaviors That Give Love – The Basic Core Four”, “Holding Hands with Love”, “How to Talk Love Without Words”, and several others listed in the Subject Index).

Fourth, talk to your beloved about both of you, purposefully examining and improving your love-positive, expressional communications to each other and perhaps to others as well.  Working as a team together to improve your love skills is another really good way to protect against infidelity.
If you do these things well, it is likely to make you happier and to make your relationship not only better but also better protected from infidelity occurring or reoccurring.

Caveats and Exceptions

Please don’t think that all there is to a good, well protected, love relationship is the 4 to 1 ratio.  This is just one factor.  It is, however, a much more important factor than many people realize.  Lots of other influences can intervene and cause exceptions to the 4 to 1 ratio rule.  But don’t count on that.  This 4:1 discovery is proving to apply to most couples and other kinds of love relationship too.
One big, important factor is the strength of both of the negative and positive, expressional communications.  One great big, loving smile may have more positive impact that a short, minor frown.  A love-filled, enthusiastic, open arms greeting may outweigh the importance of a person who only briefly turns their back on a loved one.

There are other ratio findings of considerable importance for making and creating love-positive messages and relationships.  However, the factor of expressional communication is so very often overlooked and so often subtly crucial to the blocking of infidelity and all the pain and problems it causes that it needs special attention.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: If you want more loving sounds, smiles, nods of approval, tender looks or any other expressional communications of love, can you reveal that desire to your beloved and ask for it freely and easily?  If not, can you ever so carefully reveal that desire and ask for it?

Related posts:

1. Infidelity and Love Info Silo
2. Communicating Better With Love: Mini Lessons
3. Pro-Love and Anti-Love Talking
4. Additive Talking – A Love Skill
5. Other Ways to Say I Love You 

Does “Feeling in Love” Come from Real or False Love?

Mini-Love-Lesson #179

FREE – Over 200 Mini-Love-Lessons
Touching the Lives of Thousands  In over 190 Countries-Worldwide!

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson presents ‘feeling in love’ and the lost wisdom about it; the harm that comes of relying on it; the questions of if it doesn’t come from real love where does it come from; what to do with “feeling in love”; does it always fade; what the brain does about “feeling in love” and “ being in love”; another big danger; then ends with the good news about feeling in love. (Who do you know that might benefit from mentioning mini-love-lesson?  You might mention it to them.)

Lost Wisdom about Feeling in Love

Not so long ago it was widely recognized that because you felt wonderfully “in love” it did not mean for certain you were in a state of real love.  Many instead knew it could be infatuation, or a crush or maybe just lust.  Others thought it could be that you were temporarily bewitched or merely enamored, enraptured, besotted, hart struck or, my favorite, twitterpatted.  In any case it was common wisdom that these words meant that what you were feeling might not last and, not for sure, were real love.

This was rather helpful because it assisted people in being patient and waiting long enough to see if ‘feeling in love’ would last and was real.  Two world wars seem to be what changed all that.  ‘falling’ in love quickly replaced long engagements and got much more popular.  So did quickly having sex and quickly getting married before the war or one of its horrid ancillaries killed one of you.  That seems to be the way it often works in desperate times.  The trouble with that is it set the new norm of believing that ‘feeling in love’ was all it took to mean it was the real thing.  The wisdom of “wait-and-see” was lost.

The Harm Done by Relying Only On ‘Feeling in Love’

Listen to Dolores, “I knew I loved my husband but was no longer ‘in love’ with him.  Then I met and fell head over heels in love with Chuck, had an affair with him, divorced my husband, devastated my kids, had arguments with my family and friends and generally messed up everything.  But at the time I didn’t care because I knew I was totally and passionately ‘in love’ and that was all that really mattered.  Two years later Chuck and I were done.  My ‘feeling in love’ just turned off.  So did Chuck’s and he quickly found another woman.

“With professional help, I now know what I felt for Chuck was a false form of love called “Limerence”.  I tried to go back to my husband where I now know real love existed but it was too late.  He had a new lady in his life who was busy making him and my kids happier than I had.  If only someone had taught me that ‘feeling in love’ could not be relied on.  Somewhere I had learned just the opposite that ‘feeling in love’ meant it was the real thing, but it wasn’t.”

Dolores’s story sadly is the story of countless others.  Real love lost, traumatized children, needless divorces, and much worse – these are the tragedies of relying too greatly only on ‘feeling in love’.  And this is all because so many people now believe merely ‘feeling in love’, even if intensely, means it must be the real thing (Check out the Problems and Pain section of the Subject Index.).

If It’s Not the Real Thing, What Is It?

‘Feeling in love’ can lead to the real thing but more often it does not.  ‘Feeling in love’ is frequently the result of one or another form of false love.  The false love called Limerence that Dolores identified lasts 2 to 4 years on average.  The ‘I’ phase of an IFD pattern romance seems to have a super strong ‘feeling in love’ component which also almost guarantees profound disappointment, demoralization and depression in the ‘D’ phase.  Unresolved Conflict Attraction Syndrome and Thrill and Threat Bonding frequently appear to sort of do the same thing. (For more complete descriptions and cures for these false love syndromes check out the e-book, Real Love False Love.

What to Do with ‘Feeling in Love’

When ‘feeling in love’, enjoy it fully!  Know it may lead to the real thing but no matter how good and strong the ‘feeling in love’ is, don’t rely on it as proof of real love.  It is not enough.  Learn the other signs of what is real and what is false and don’t be in a rush.  Remember, real love is patient. (See “How Love Works – 7 Basics” and “Falling Out of Love – or Was It False Love” mini-love-lessons at this site).

Does ‘Feeling in Love’ Always Fade?

So many people report that after a certain amount of time the passion, the romance, the sexuality and the intense ‘feeling in love’ experiences fades away.  They also often report those are replaced by a calmer, steadier, often deeper and more profound sense of love.  Many do not seem to know that if they purposely think and do the right set of actions they can bring back the ‘feeling in love’ experiences.  However, those feelings probably will not be constant or seemingly automatic as they once were.

In truth, you would not want them to be intensely with you all the time.  This is because there would be little room or time left for all those other wonderful feelings of ongoing, deep and profound love.  Also there is the occasional, often high sense of spiritual love that can come later in always growing, love relationships.  It sort of is like this.  You would not want a meal of your most favorite food to be your only food, day after day, after day, after day forever.  Love can be given and received in far more wonderful ways than just the passionate, romantic way.  But remember, you can bring that back too from time to time with the right love skills (See “Learning About Love – Together”, “The Three 3’s of Love” and “Is Love Ignorance the Problem?” mini-love-lessons at this site).

The Brain and Both ‘Feeling in Love’ and Being in Love

We now are beginning to have evidence about how the brain processes love.  There is evidence that suggests our brains process real love and false love differently.  This evidence also suggests that real love is very healthy for the whole body and false love usually is not or, even worse, it often is toxic.  However, we don’t have enough evidence to say these ideas are proven.  The thing we call ‘feeling in love’ by itself seems to operate like a precursor to lasting love which may or may not then follow.
Real love seems to activate certain regions of the brain, alter our brain chemistry and perhaps cause important bio-electrical changes.  Some think every cell in our body has at least a little to do with processing love and certainly is effected by love.

All these processes can go on whether you are consciously aware and feel them or not.  It is important to know that feeling something is not the thing itself.  We may sometimes feel and sometimes not feel our breathing or certain digestive processes but they are there whether we feel them or not.  Likewise, the evidence suggests real and lasting love is there all the time but we only feel it from time to time.  We, however, can develop the skill to purposefully tap into it, or become consciously aware of it whenever we wish.

Feeling in love often is quite strong and gets a lot of our attention for a while, maybe even a long while, then it changes.  It changes either into just going away or being something you temporarily can re-create from time to time in real love relationships, if people in the love relationship have the skill and know-how to do that.

Another Big Danger of ‘Feeling in Love’

‘Feeling in love’ in the brain operates in ways quite similar to certain kinds of serious drug addiction.  The evidence suggests healthy, real love doesn’t do that.  Withdrawal from ‘feeling in love’ is, in neurochemistry terms, rather similar to withdrawing from an opiate addiction.  ‘Feeling in love’ and several forms of false love sometimes trigger the brain chemistry of obsessive-compulsive disorders.  Indeed, much of the ‘feeling in love’ experiences associated with false forms of love sometimes involves destructive, obsessive-compulsive and addiction-prone behavior.  At least that is what the evidence is pointing to.

Healthy, lasting, real love, as we currently understand it, does not lead to those reactions and disorders.  This is one of the reasons that people in addiction recovery are advised to stay away from ‘falling in love’ and ‘feeling in love’ until their recovery is well established.  Otherwise relapse and its horrors become much more likely (See Recovering Love: Codependency to CoRecovery).

The Good News About ‘Feeling in Love’

Feeling in love can feel great, be part of a great life adventure, get you to do a lot of things you will be glad to have done that you never would have gotten into otherwise, can involve incredibly great sex, help you discover a lot about yourself you otherwise might never know, uninhibitedly experience another person, have incredibly intense emotions – both high and low and, best of all, just possibly might lead you into the wonders of healthy, lasting and fulfilling, real love.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Like a good chef, are you occasionally or even frequently learning new recipes for creating fresh, ‘feeling in love’ experiences?

Related posts:

1. Ever Think Seriously about Real and False Love?
2. Healthy Real Love -or- Toxic False Love
3. Interview: Real Love vs. False Love: Which One is Yours? with Dr. Richard Cookerly
4. False Forms of Love: Limerence and Its Alluring Lies
5. Can Love at First Sight Be Real Love? 

Through Heartbreak Recovery to Full and Lasting Love

Mini-Love-Lesson #178 

Synopsis: Introduction to actions that work and how we know they work starts this mini-love-lesson which is then followed by a dozen specific steps you can take that are known to have helped a great many people get through heartbreak recovery and on to full and lasting love.
(Who might you recommend this mini love lesson to?)

Heartbreak Recovery Actions That Work

Agony, misery, longing, emptiness, depression, despair, deep and profound hurt – on and on go the words that describe the pain of a broken heart.  The good news is you can hurry to ‘heartbreak recovery’ and go on to healthy, real, full and lasting love!  In fact you can go on to far better love than perhaps you ever thought possible using your heartbreak to help you get there.

To do heartbreak recovery you have to take action.  New actions which are probably rather different from what you are used to will be required.  New behaviors, new thinking and even new emotions may be involved.  To achieve heartbreak recovery and going on to full and lasting love requires some time, will, energy, learning, practice and real effort.  The only thing taking more of these things is not acting to recover.  Important: ‘if you want better results you have to  DO better actions’.   The same old actions will only get you the same old results.

We will show you actions that are known to have brought heartbreak recovery too many.  They also can help you move on to healthy, real love and its wondrous joys.  You have to take the actions which begins with reading about them here.  You already have begun.

How Do We Know These Actions Actually Work?

I know these heartbreak recovery actions work because of three big things.  First, I personally have had the profound joy of seeing literally hundreds of heartbroken, suffering individuals and couples achieve heartbreak recovery and go on to healthy, real love by using the techniques you are soon to read about.  The same is true for the counselors and therapists I have trained, coached and supervised.   Second is that many of the methods suggested here are backed by some pretty good, supporting, scientific research.  (Consult Is There Really a New Field Called Loveology?). The third is that when I was going through heartbreak and desperately in need of heartbreak recovery I used a number of these techniques and they made a world of positive difference.  They also helped me go on to my now 40 + years of grand and abiding love with my wondrous lover, Kathleen.

Actions to take for Heartbreak Recovery

We only have room to briefly describe the actions we are suggesting you take.  It is OK if you are dubious about some of them and whether or not they will work for you.  The suggested actions for heartbreak recovery and going on to full of lasting love are not things you have to believe in, though that might help some.  They just are things you have to actually do experimentally but not halfheartedly.   Trying them on for size, so to speak, will be just fine.  Also you do not have to do all of them.  We suggest you pick out some of the ones that seem to appeal to you and start with those.  Then, keep going on to others and keep repeating the ones that seem to work best until you are where you want to be.

A Dozen Actions to Take for Heartbreak Recovery

1. Vow to recover!  With power and vigor, decide and declare your decision to recover, to heal and to go on to greater love.   Do this out loud and with muscular, physical motions.  ‘Motion changes emotion’ so as you make your declaration (without self hurt) pound your fist , stomp, march or do whatever helps you feel powerful.  By doing it this way you reach much deeper into your mind/brain where simple reason and non-energized speech seldom reaches.  With determination ‘promise’ yourself you will do what it takes!

2. Start being better to your body.  Accept the fact that emotional heartbreak is biologically bad for your body and especially bad for your brain.  Heartbreak sometimes precipitates physical heart attacks, immunity problems, depression, anxiety episodes, stress reactions, stomach problems, and a lot more problems you do not want.  So, if it is healthy for you, take vitamins, eat healthy, exercise at least 20 minutes a day and consider being guided by the health professionals of your choice.

3. Hide in your safety cave, but not too long.  When wounded, most animals including us humans want to crawl in a hole and stay there.  That is a natural way to stay safe and start the healing process.  Doing this will help you survive but will not help you thrive.  So, before you feel fully ready, start venturing out a little bit at a time and then more and more.

4. Use the pain!  Hurt has purpose.  It exists to help us avoid harm.  It comes with ‘guidance messages’ and for those who learn how to hear what it is trying to say and trying to teach us, recovery comes sooner and better.  Often when we learn and start to follow the guidance from emotional pain the pain surprisingly reduces.  Denying the hurt, running away from it, ‘toughing it out’, over medicating, drowning it in alcohol and drugs, etc., in the long run, may prolong the pain, make it worse and help you experience heartbreak again because probably you didn’t learn enough from it (See Title Index ‘Dealing with Love Hurts:’alphabetically, first 4 lessons).


5. Actively release anger – nondestructively.  On at least three separate occasions scream, cuss, pound your fist, stomp around, kick pillows, chop wood, tear up stuff you were going to throw way, throw ice cubes at brick walls, cry freely and generally thrash about for no more than 20 minutes (less if physically need be, or if the anger feels diminished earlier).  Then force yourself to do something else that feels good.  Cathartic release has real value but there is a danger.

If you do it too much you may be training yourself to have more pain, anger, etc..  Be sure you do all this in ways that do not hurt or harm anyone, including yourself or damages anything of importance.  Vengeance fantasies are fine but vengeance actions lead us away from future love success, not toward it.  “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord” probably because humans can not handle it.

6. Fake it till you make it.  When you fake being okay, happy, doing well, etc. you actually trigger mechanisms in your brain that helps it become more true.  So, not just when you are around others but also when you are by yourself, smile, sing, whistle, say happy upbeat stuff to yourself about yourself, and act like your heartbreak recovery has been fully achieved.

7. Use the ‘five titles technique’.  If you are pining away, can not stop trying to restart the relationship even though you know it won’t work, torturing yourself with longing, etc., this technique is for you.  Purposely think of the five worst things that happened in that relationship.  Give each of those five things a book or movie title.  For example, “She was brought home by police, and was so drunk she was almost arrested for lewd, disorderly conduct – titled Days of Wine and Roses” or “He knocked me down and broke my wrist – titled The Abuser”  Write each title on a card you carry with you.

When you get to longing, etc., take out the card and read the first title while asking yourself “Do I really want to risk suffering through another version of that again?”  Do the same with title 2, and so forth.  Then go do something distracting possibly with a friend.

8. Emotionally diminish and detox contact with your ex.  Contact with an ex can work like an addict having another dose of heroin as they try to withdraw.  Each contact can start the addiction dynamics all over again.  If you work together or have to do parenting together, etc. it is extra hard but there is a way.  With each contact, act as emotionally blah, boring, dull and businesslike as you can.  Any show of emotion, be it positive or negative, may start the addiction-like process all over again.  No matter what your ex does, the more you do not show emotions the less negatively emotionally effected you are likely to be.

This likely also will help your ex to contact you less often and in less negative way’s.  Continue this demeanor until your breakup recovery is well established.  Later a ‘kill’em’ with kindness” approach may help.  Having zero contact can be rough and it can work like going ‘cold turkey’ but it is likely to be the quickest route to full heartbreak recovery.  Weaning yourself with less and less, and shorter and shorter contacts also can work but may take longer.  If your ex is trying to hurt or harass you, this approach often can help get your ex confused, disinterested and disengaged.

9. Learn about and practice healthy self-love a lot.  Especially is it important to make your self-talk accurately positive.  If your self-talk is too negative and critical, heartbreak recovery will probably take a lot longer.  So, start making your list of ‘one hundred good things about yourself’ – small, medium and large things.  Pick a few each day to compliment and praise yourself about.  Do this with gusto and physical motions expressive of strength.

This will help reach the limbic system of your brain and not just stay in the more shallow, unmotivating, thinking cortex; by doing that it can help a lot.  Do yourself favors, buy yourself presents, do things that help you laugh and put yourself with upbeat people.  Listen to happy music.  Do upbeat meditation and/or prayer.  Re-affirm your loveability and your ability to love as you learn more and more about love (See “Self-love and Its Five Healthy Functions”).

10. Don’t stagnate, meditate then activate.  You may need some ‘down time’, quiet time, etc.  Use it well meditating, celebrating the good that was in the last relationship and how it will be a prerequisite for what comes next.  Journal what you have yet to learn and to strengthen in yourself.  Then push yourself into new action.  Go new places and meet new, up beat and going people, avoid the old and the sad connected to your ex, envision the future you want and go after it knowing you can grow more love-skilled to get it, renounce remorse, guilt, blame and focus on being response-‘able’.  Engage in joyful and meaningful spiritual practices.  Start creating new positive memories, new positive habits and new positive goals.

11. Start flirting and then dating ‘lite’ and not just one.  You may not be ready to do this until you after you have done it.  Very important is not to center in on the first romantic love possibility and exclude others.  Go out with 2 or more, even five, but maybe after that it gets too complicated.  Don’t get serious maybe for at least a year.  The best potential romantic interest is likely to slowly rise above the others.  Don’t get in a rush or let yourself be rushed.  Remember, real love is patient and most things that grow slower grow stronger and last longer.

12. Study love and its workings, and practice what you learn.  This is the most important one of all.  You may have to break free from the old, destructive myth that teaches us to rely on magic and fate for our success at love.  It subtly teaches there is nothing to learn or work at.  Love, like everything else important done without learning and work, is extremely failure prone.  Notice that in the ancient legends the masters of magic, wizards and sorcerers spent most of their time studying and practicing.  If you are to experience the magical wonders of love, you probably will have to do the same – study and practice a lot (Read “To Win at Love Study Love”).

More and more scientific researchers are delving into the dynamics of love and what they are finding is marvelous, beautiful, fantastic and most of all is useful.  These findings show love to be even more amazing and far more important for life’s well-being than we ever thought.

In Russia, Loveology  (read “Is There Really a New Field Called Loveology” has been made an official field of study.  You already are at work studying love by reading this mini-love-lesson.  Next, I recommend you read the mini-love-lesson titled “To Win at Love Study Love”. It tells ways to study love and gives recommendations for reading that have helped millions.  Then read a few more mini-love-lessons from the index section called Definitions, Theories and Understandings. Also be sure to check out “Heartbreak Mending and the Deep, Multi-love Remedy”, “Why Love Problems Hurt So Bad” and “Loneliness and Love” in the Problems and Pain section.

But remember, you can’t just read about love, you have to do things, new and different things because love is a participation endeavor.  It is kind of like swimming, just reading and thinking about it won’t be enough.  Consequently, frequently it is the study and practice of love knowledge that can get you through heartbreak, to recovery and on to full and lasting love much faster and much more thoroughly.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Questions: Which of the above 12 steps for heartbreak recovery are you going to start experimenting with first, and exactly how soon are you going to start?

♥ And could this mini-love-lesson be of help to someone you know who is suffer from heartbreak?  If so, please tell them about it.

Related posts:

1. Heartbreak Mending and the Deep, Multi-Love Remedy
2. Trust Recovery and Love
3. Lasting Sex and Lasting Love
4. Cycling Love for Lasting Love
5. Small Love for Lasting Love 

Metaphysical Love

Mini-Love-Lesson # 289

Synopsis: Here we work to understand and make practical sense of metaphysical/spiritual love and how it may work along with how it can productively be used.  What science is discovering, modern and ancient religious suppositions, philosophical offerings and what people all over the world are doing with metaphysical/spiritual love actions are included in clear, straight forward language.

Is love itself metaphysical?  Is love the greatest of all things, as spiritual masters have proclaimed down through the ages?  Does spiritual love rely on the existence of a mind-spirit connection?  Scientific evidence supports that love heals, love connects, love protects, love nurtures, love reinforces and rewards us.  And how does it do all those things – energy forces, bio-electrically, psychically, deity intercession, … ?  It has been suspected that the collective unconscious, group intelligence, spontaneous mood emergence, superorganism cooperation and metaphysical mass influences might have something to do with metaphysical love.  The mysteries abound.    

Do We All Love - Metaphysically?

When it comes to love, almost everyone, sooner or later, behaves metaphysically.  If a loved one is critically ill and we call on a mystical source to heal them, we are behaving from love - metaphysically.  If we pray for spiritual guidance when we are in the throes of despair - we are acting metaphysically.  If we go to the grave of a loved one and talk to the loved one’s spirit - we are love-relating metaphysically.  If we send our children off to school and imagine protective love energy surrounding them - we are acting metaphysically to safeguard them.  If we fantasize sending our love energy to a distant loved one - we are projecting metaphysical love.  If we are alone and feel a love-filled presence - we may be experiencing a metaphysical love event.  It seems there are many ways metaphysical love may manifest itself and be experienced.

We need not believe in metaphysical love to do it, or at least to attempt it.  We only need to have real love in our hearts and a willingness to experiment with metaphysical love behaviors.  Exploring these manifestations of metaphysical love may lead to surprising experiences and astonishing outcomes.  

When there is nothing more we are able to do in a difficult situation, we might attempt a metaphysical love behavior.  Behaving with and from metaphysical love often can be considerably beneficial to us and to those we love.  Metaphysical love can lead to a sense of spiritual serenity and heart-filled awe.  It also might guide us to appreciate the many apparent cosmic miracles that surround and fill our existence.  Psycho-physiologically, metaphysical love participation in rituals and ceremonies can bring stress reduction, metabolic balance and feelings of energized empowerment.

Research into the healing effectiveness of metaphysical love behaviors, shows intriguing results.  When metaphysical-related actions were taken on patients’ behalf, they tended to get better more often and faster even if they were not consciously aware of the action or even if they did not believe in it.  The experimental, matched, control groups did not get metaphysical treatment and did not show similar improvement.  Some of the experiments included praying for the patient, lighting candles, doing ceremonial actions and repeating ritual words.  It was found that the mindset and emotion demeanor (serene, loving, focused) of the person carrying out a metaphysical treatment influenced the results to some degree.  It also was found that benefit accrued to the doer as well as the receiver of metaphysical actions.

Interestingly, other patients also showed significant improvements even though they were not aware of volunteers, at a considerable distance, spiritually and metaphysically acting on their behalf,.  Unrevealed, distance healing is hard to explain in other than metaphysical ways.  

Some may not want to call what we are talking about metaphysical, but rather call it by some other term like spiritual or transcendental. That’s fine! The point we want to make is that whatever it is termed, this is a class or type of love behavior which is very common worldwide. Furthermore, archaeological and anthropological evidence shows this kind of behavior presumably has been going on since very early in the development of our human species.

Right now, this very moment, out of love, millions of people are doing metaphysical, or if you prefer, spiritual practices designed to have a positive influence on the well-being of those they love. Such actions are demonstrations of real, compassionate and caring love and they deserve respect and honoring for being so.  Respect also is due for those who rigorously and methodically are searching into the many complexities and conundrums of metaphysics within the realm of love.

What Is Metaphysical Love?

Metaphysical love may seems magical, mystical, mysterious, perhaps mythical and often quite hard to fathom. This kind of love is what many people turn to in times of love troubles. Metaphysical love also is known as the love that is spiritual, transcendental, supernatural, ethereal, celestial and preternatural.

We put metaphysical and spiritual together for several reasons. One is that, behaviorally, metaphysical and spiritual love are accomplished by similar actions. Another is that both seem to operate in much the same way and obtain rather similar results. There are those who study metaphysical and spiritual phenomena and suspect they are two views of the same thing. There also are those who vehemently oppose that concept. 

We operationally define metaphysical love as a love which people attempt to access, express and communicate through the behaviors associated with the metaphysical. To love metaphysically, means to have and feel a love that seems beyond this world’s reality. It also means to transcendentally or spiritually feel a connection with who and what we love.  For example, when long-distance lovers plan to gaze at the moon on the same night at the same hour; just by knowing they are sharing the same experience, they can feel metaphysically connected.  To metaphysically love means to try to transmit our love in a way that connects with another and beneficially effects them. Metaphysical love sometimes is explained as a special form of energy that exists in and travels through the ether of the universe.  

Doing metaphysical/spiritual love is enormously popular, common and esteemed all over the world. It does have its skeptics, disbelievers and naysayers, and conversely its ardent practitioners, promoters and believers   Metaphysical and spiritual love are the focus of a great deal of research, much of which supports that it is a useful and rewarding way to do love.

Framed in this world’s reality, metaphysical love sometimes is thought of as a bioelectrical or neuro-electrical phenomenon.  It is suspected to exist in and be transmitted from the brain’s limbic system components which are associated with love. Sometimes that love transmission is conveyed through touch and sometimes may be broadcast across space much like a radio wave transmission. Some research data has been analyzed as supporting this understanding.  A great deal more investigating is required to enlighten our understanding of these suppositions.

An ecumenical, somewhat theologically grounded and spiritually focused explanation exists and roughly goes like this. There is a deity force in the universe.  This metaphysical energy is pure love. This love energy can be accessed through spiritual and religious practices and, thereby, brought to bear on the living creatures and conditions of this world. Thus, metaphysical love is the spiritual love of the deity force which can be tapped into and channeled through us to our loved ones. Probably, clerics of every religion would want to alter this explanation, one way or another. In no way is it to be considered doctrinaire.

Philosophically, metaphysical love might be said to be the love that comes through “Meta-Ta-Physika”, Greek for the reality beyond the reach of objective study but able to be, at least partially, comprehended with the help of ontology, cosmology and epistemology. Did we say metaphysical love is complicated and hard to fathom?

Hopefully, these concepts have given our readers some sense of what metaphysical love is and may be, as well as how it might be done.

A couple other mini-love-lessons to explore at this site: “Transcendental Love: Mysteries and Wonders for Your Future” and “To Win at Love, Study Love”.   

One other thing - We think this mini-love-lesson is a practical, good one to discuss with others who like to talk ideas and use them and grow with.  See if you agree.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: If, right now or before day’s end, you were going to do a set of metaphysical/spiritual actions on behalf of someone you love, what actual behaviors might you do?

Small Love for Lasting Love

Synopsis: Big impression romantic actions and their significance starts our mini-love-lesson; which then goes on to explore love action vacuums; love like food; and more.

Grand Love Gestures and Big Love Impressions

Joe was really good at making grand, romantic gestures and big, extravagant impressions on women.  He sent a stretch-limousine for his first date to pick up his first wife, a helicopter for his first date with his second wife, and before he went bankrupt he sent a large yacht for his first date with his third wife.    Obviously Joe was great with big, romantic, impression-making but not so good at lasting, real love: he was good at catching but not keeping.

Lover’s myths, stories, and histories abound with tales of grand gestures and outlandish actions which made huge impressions.  They were done for launching, conveying, solidifying or repairing love, or at least so we are told.  These giant gestures create astounding memories but, alas, they are not the stuff of which lasting love is mostly and best made.  No, the research shows lasting, healthy, real love comes from small love-conveying behaviors enacted day after day, after day.

A tender touch, a special smile, a tiny nod, some words of praise or thanks, a special little favor, a thoughtful remembrance, an extra embrace, a sweetness in the voice, or any other of thousands of different kinds of acts that can convey love – these are the things that make love lasting.  Those who give and receive love daily, through small acts meant to show love, create a kind of love cycling (see the “Cycling Love for Lasting Love” mini-love-lesson) that keeps a love relationship going on, and on and on.  This is what field, laboratory and clinical research reveals. (Check out the latest findings from the Gottman Institute).

The Love Action Vacuum

Clinical research of which I have been involved points to the most relationship-destroying factor: a deficiency in the demonstration of love in an ongoing way. This was hard to discover because discovering ‘something that is not there’, or is absent is a lot harder than discovering something that is there.  Probably that accounts for the fact that, until now, laboratory type research pointed to ‘the presence’ of derogatory and demeaning words and actions as being the most common relationship-destroying behavior.  Both are very important.

If there is an absence of regularly demonstrated love or an absence of good love reception, a love relationship is likely to wither and die.  Some relationships do live on with very sparsely shown love but they are not thought to thrive like they could.  If there is both the absence of daily actions showing love and the presence of demeaning words and actions, a really close, enriching love relationship is not likely to develop and most likely will die.

Love relationships which are not so close, like those of distant friends and family members, can do well with only occasional actions conveying love.  Also those who have previously done really well at showing each other love, but no longer have much contact, can sort of pick up where they left off to re-contact.  The participants know that their love relationship continues though it seems at times dormant.

Love As Food

Love is a psychological food.  In fact, it is probably the healthiest and most energizing psychological food there is.  Like with physical food, it helps to have daily meals.  So, with your closest loved ones, it is best to be sure you regularly feed them, preferably multiple times every day.  Also, don’t forget yourself.  Healthy self-love also nourishes best when it is done regularly.

A lack of small, daily showings of love leads to love malnutrition and love starvation (see the mini-love-lesson “Is Depression Love Starvation”).  So, don’t starve those you love – spouse, children, closest friends, or yourself.

Learn & Practice the Eight, Major, Direct Ways to Show Love

Massive, well conducted research in social psychology led to the discovery of the major ways that people show each other love.  There are eight groups of behavior that do this according to that research.  Each of these behavior categories has been found to result in different benefits.  You can learn and practice small, easily done behaviors in each category.  It is all covered in our books Recovering Love and Real Love False Love.  You also can start learning about them with the mini-love-lesson titled “Behaviors That Give Love – The Basic Core Four”.  There also are indirect ways that convey love but those are for another day.

Big and False, Small, Regular and Real

Sometimes the grand gesture comes from someone who is in one form or another of false love.  Maybe they just want to make really big impressions for boosting their own ego or something like that.  One of the signs of healthy, real love is the consistency of love actions.  This is done a little bit, but not too much, regularly and fairly frequently, but not too frequently.  Overdoing it can be just a symptom of insecurity.  That does not mean that the grand gesture or big production can not occasionally happen.  It just has to be mixed with the regular, more frequent and smaller love-conveying behaviors.

Even if the great big, amazing, romantic things never happen, be sure to count the little ones you do get from those who love you.  There are too many people who don’t notice or really receive the smaller love messages coming their way.  So, remember that receiving love well is a major way to give love.  Also regarding the occasional big gestures, remember, it is your job to ask for what you want if you are not getting it.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Who could you go show a little love to today, and what about tomorrow, and the day after that?

Related posts:

1. Lasting Sex and Lasting Love
2. Cycling Love for Lasting Love
3. Behaviors That Give Love – The Basic Core Four
4. Other Ways to Say I Love You
5. Love in the Fridge