Power or Love or Both

Synopsis: Raising into awareness our common confusions about power and love; power and love gender issues; the Warrior Princess and her love and power problem; looking at growing your powers and integrating your powers with love; and more.

A Common Confusion

“I don’t want love.  I want power.  Love is for the weak.  It makes you soft and vulnerable.  I don’t ever want to be vulnerable.  The strong don’t care about love.  They care about dominance, and control and getting their own way.  Love makes you surrender and do what other people want.  I will never surrender to anybody, for any reason, about anything.  When you love somebody it just gives them a way to control you.  Love turns people into other people’s slaves.  I am always the one in control.  No one controls me.  You can be my slave but I won’t be yours.  Do everything my way and I’ll keep you around for a while but don’t be surprised when I dump you.  I’d rather make people fear me than love me because that way they know I have the power and they don’t.  That’s the way I like it!  Power is everything.  Love is nothing compared to power.”

The person who said this was confronted by several people saying different things about love being the greatest power there is.  That sparked a vigorous debate.  Some agreed with the speaker, some disagreed and some just were confused.  Some who agreed with the speaker said they keep that secret, around others.  They admitted they say all the ‘socially correct things’ about love being great but they really believe power is more important and love is a wimpy thing.  Some said being vulnerable, becoming powerless and surrendering is a good thing about love, unless perhaps it gets you destroyed. There were those who argued that love gave you the power to survive and conquer all manner of things, and others who said to truly love and be loved you must give up all power.  So where are you on the issue of power versus love?

Gender Issues

Here is a gender question for you.  When you read the opening statement from the person wanting power instead of love do you think it was a statement made by a male or female?  The gender was not indicated.  You can check to make sure.  Whichever gender you thought, what do you suspect that says about you when it comes to your mind-set about power, love and gender?

Males are supposed to be all about power and females all about love.  That’s nature’s way according to some.  And then others can see that the idea that males are power-oriented and females love-oriented could be seen as paradoxical.  That’s because if love is the greatest of all powers, as is religiously attested, love is what males should be all about.  Then what about the ideas that ‘men are afraid of love’ and ‘women can’t handle power’ so they have to turn to love?  Of course, there are a good many who hold that all these gender ideas are just cultural teachings and have nothing to do with innate female or male nature.

Fathers, husbands and male lovers who primarily are focused on power may make good protectors and providers, but otherwise lousy parents and spouses.  Mothers, wives and female lovers who focus on love without enough concern for power and its use are suspected of mating with losers and raising weaklings, or so some think.

When it comes to males and females what do you think the differences are in regard to love and power?  Do you think differences exist between heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals regarding love and power?  How much does your own gender influence your mind-set regarding the uses of power and the uses of love?  How much does your culture’s teachings on what is feminine and what is masculine guide your thinking about love and power and what you should do with both.  Does your religion, or your ethnicity, or the socioeconomic status you were raised in guide you to think differently concerning how men and women are to go about love and go about dealing with powerfulness?

As you can see there are many gender issues affecting our mind-sets concerning love and power.  How powerful you are in your own life and how powerfully you succeed at love may be affected by these issues, so raising them into conscious awareness may prove quite freeing and advantageous to you.

The Warrior Princess

“I was so powerful they called me Xena, the Warrior Princess, you never want to cross.  In our multimillion dollar school system I rose to be the number two, most important ‘go to’ person in the administration when you wanted to get something done.  I made really big things happen for the betterment of kids, teachers, staff – everybody actually.  The way huge sums of money got spent, how careers fared and how public policies were made road on what I decided.  The trouble was that all that power went to my head and I neglected love.  You see power intoxicated me.  I believed myself to be invincible.

“I had a passionate, erotic affair with one of our district’s sexiest coaches just because I could.  Not only that, I manipulated myself into having all sorts of special perks and privileges, and got away with it.  I out-maneuvered my competitors and gloated over defeating my rivals.  It all came crashing down when my much neglected husband left me for another, much more loving woman, and my kids told me they wanted to live with their dad and her.  It was then that I discovered I had no real friends but only ‘power pals’ who would disappear the minute I lost power. 

“It was my loving brother and sister who saved me in spite of all the times I had ignored and discounted them.  They got me to come to counseling where I learned the real significance of love and its incredible, and far more important kind of power.  Now I’m rebuilding my life and doing it with love as the number one priority because that’s what’s really working for me now.  The other day my daughter asked if she could spend the summer with me.  I never was so happy as when I heard her say that.”

Consider this.  Power devoid of love tends toward destruction.  To be constructive all human powers are best mixed with compassionate love, and without love all human powers bend toward evil.  Whether it is in a single individual’s life or in a whole society, culture or civilization, ‘power must be mixed with love’ and ‘love with power’ if good is to be achieved.  Do you disagree?  Do you agree?  If you do, how will you apply this to your life?

Power Positive or Power Negative

The mere mention of the word ‘power’ is off-putting to some.  They see power only in light of its misuse for destruction and dictatorial dominance over others.  Some people exist who seem to want power just to have it without any concept of power’s positive or negative usage.  Many want power because they were once powerless and much pain and suffering resulted.  Those of us who lack sufficient, healthy self-love sometimes want power so they can ‘get even’, ‘wreak vengeance’, or just see themselves as better than others.  Still others want power so that people will envy and fear them.  No small number of people want power so they can acquire money, status and have various advantages.  The question here is, will they do this in a constructive ‘I win, you win, nobody loses’ fashion or will they disadvantage others and be more destructive than constructive?

More healthful are those who want power so they can affect positive change.  That’s where love comes into play.  A passionate, altruistic love of people is the motivation behind so many of the world’s improvements.  The invention of hospitals, the abolition of legalized slavery, freedom movements of many kinds, democracy itself, medicines, cures and treatment methods galore, and so much more has come into existence because love was wed with power and a significant advancement was the result.

At the more personal level, parental love of offspring finds the power to send them to college, friendship love powerfully rescues comrades in distress, family love grows the power to bring relatives out of harms way, and mate love creates the powerful team it takes to cope with and surmount life’s challenges and obstacles, to name but a few ways that power and love work together for human improvement.

There are powers we can see as negative.  The powers of hate and greed are examples.  They are seen mostly as causing destruction even though once in a while they may actually do some good.  Some people have kept themselves alive and surviving by hating an enemy.  Greed occasionally starts a business empire which employs many people in some sort of constructive endeavor.  Powerful and much maligned ‘Lust’ has helped some couples have a really excellent sex life (see the entry “Sexual Love Laces”), and almost no one questions ‘lust for life’ being a good thing.

Some powers are questionable.  A powerful religion may bring about feeding starving children or it can bring us an inquisition or a jihad that slaughters innocents.  A powerful political party can bring needed reform or it can negate the rights of minorities and suppress justice.  Once again the trick is to put ‘power with healthy, real love’ and ‘healthy, real love with power’.  That way the chances of a primarily, healthful, constructive result is not guaranteed but is much more likely.

Neutral Power

Most power can be seen as neutral, not good or bad.  Electric power can light our world but also can electrocute someone.  Economic power can be used to achieve higher standards of living for some while bankrupting others.  Charismatic power can lead armies in both just and unjust causes.  Power may be used for the health and well-being of people, animals and our whole planet but it can be used for death and destruction as well.  Also it can be used for exceedingly useless endeavors.

How you use your power is up to you.  By the way, you have power whether you know it or not.  You have the power to influence, at least a minor way, everyone you encounter.  Your frown, or your smile or your neutral look influences everyone who sees you.  You register in the subconscious of everyone passing by and at least in a tiny way you have your influence.

Grow Your Power, Integrate Your Power

Do you know how you are powerful?  Do you have a powerful personality, powerful charm, powerful leadership ability, powerful kindness, economic power, organizational power, powerful empathy, powerful reasoning ability, powerful friendship, high-quality teaching ability, potent emotional energy, strong listening ability, business acumen, competency in the arts, music, etc., talent for guiding your family, ability to make people laugh and be happy, or any one of at least a thousand other power possibilities?  You do have power, and you do have the power to develop your power.  You also have the power to integrate your power with love.  Examine this thought, “All good things can be said and done with love and be better for it” (see the entry “Say it with Love”.

I like to recommend that if you’re going to make healthy, real love a high priority in your life you might as well also learn to be quite powerful.  That way you will empower your love and likely will be much more effective in your own life and the lives you touch.  Integrate your love with your power and your power with your love and a lot of good things are likely.  Some people don’t do that.  All day at work they are trying to be powerful.  Then they come home and try to be about love. Why not be about love done powerfully all day long?  You can work to grow your power integrated with your love to affect positive change every, healthy way you can.

To do that means you’re probably going to have to think about power and how you mix it with love.  It seems we have an awful lot of people on the planet who are thinking about growing their power but not in connection with love.  Others are thinking about how they hunger for love but not about being powerful in the giving of it.  Whatever ways you can be a love-empowered force for the health and well-being of anyone, including yourself, I suggest, is a very good thing.

Hopefully this mini-lesson will start you thinking about your own power, how to integrate it with your love and grow both together.  There’s lots more to be said about power and love, and in future entries more will be covered.  Until then, do yourself a favor and give some thought to how you go about dealing with love and power – okay?

As always, Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Can you list the ways you are and can become more powerful, and can you imagine yourself doing those ways with love?

Difficult Topics: A Love-Centered Way to Approach and Broach Them All

Suppose you had a difficult topic to bring up with a loved one.  It could be anything from forgetting to pick up some bread at the store like you said you would, to confessing you’re having an affair.  There is a love-centered way to approach and broach all difficult topics that maximizes the possibilities for an OK outcome, or at least a less bad outcome.

This method handles just about everything that’s hard to talk about and can be used for small, medium, large, and even huge, difficult topics.

The Love-Centered Approach to the Topic
To begin it is helpful, before you start talking, to first stop and meditate just a bit on being centered in your love for both the person you are going to be talking to and for yourself.

Remember, the great teaching “Love others as you love yourself”.  By becoming love-centered you are more likely to talk with better and more loving voice tones, more pleasant facial expressions, more loving gestures and more friendly posture changes.  All this helps a bunch to facilitate good interaction.  Love-centering is likely to help you communicate more love, more willingness to work toward harmony, and more all over OK-ness when you bring up your difficult topic.

It also can help you to more lovingly listen to your loved one’s emotions and thoughts as they reply to what you have said.  If you center yourself in love you are much less likely to be centered in fear.  When you’re centered in fear you are much more likely to become, and to be perceived, as deceitful, defensive and in disagreeable denial.  Those three things usually lead to destructive fights and relationship damage.  So, meditate on how love-centered you will be toward your loved one and toward yourself as you talk about the difficult topic, whatever it is.

The Four Subject Review
After meditating on being love-centered mentally review this four step system.  This system indicates that if you have a difficult topic to talk about you actually have four subjects to talk about, (1) the difficult topic itself, (2) your fear that the talk will go badly or have bad results, (3) your desire for it to go well, and (4) timing.

Let’s look at each of these.

(1) There is the difficult topic itself.  Consider how you will accurately, clearly, sufficiently and truthfully describe your difficult topic.  What words will you use and what words will you avoid.  What words will help you convey love as you talk about the difficult topic.  What emotions will you convey as you talk about the topic and what emotions will you seek to avoid.

(2)  Next you have your fears to think about.  Because the topic is difficult it gives rise to fear, or to fear’s cousins – apprehension, anxiety, nervousness, etc..  Therefore, you have your fear to talk about.  You will do best to be able to describe what you’re afraid of, or apprehensive or anxious or nervous about what might happen.  Are you afraid your loved one will be mad at you, or you will hurt their feelings, or make them afraid, or you will have a fight, or the relationship will end, or what?

Then, of course, the thing to do will be to ask your loved one for assistance in avoiding what you fear.  Again what words, tones of voice, looks and emotions will you want to use to communicate when you request your loved one’s assistance in avoiding what you fear.  The idea here is to become a team working together against the problem and the things that could go wrong, and not to end up working against each other.

(3)  Fear gives rise to a desire that things go well. Therefore, this is the third issue to talk about.  Think about how you can best ask your loved one to work with you to go after the desired goal of a ‘mutually good’ talk outcome. Get clear and be precise about what you want.  Do you want tolerance, for them to hear you out, forgiveness, cooperation, a lack of judgmentalism, harmony, teamwork, kindness, or what?  Your job here is to clearly present a goal you can both work toward together.

Think about how you will ask for what you want for yourself, and what you want in the way of an outcome to this talk for both of you.  Do this in as straight forward a way as possible, and ask if your loved one will work with you to arrive at a mutually good outcome.  If they can’t do that consider talking about this difficult topic at another time.  This too works to avoid attacking each other and instead together mutually attacking the issues you are facing.

(4)  Timing is the final consideration.  It’s best not to bring up difficult topics when people are tired, hassled, distracted with various other stressors, short on available time, sick, hungry, or experiencing something they are enjoying a lot. Many difficulties are made much worse because someone just blurted out the difficult topic with no consideration for timing.  Good timing is an act of good loving.  Let me suggest that  indifference to timing is indifference to a loved one’s state of being and that can be anti-loving.

Once you have conducted this mental review of these 4 points it’s time to be courageous and talk about the difficult topic with your loved one.

Broaching the Difficult Topic
When you’re using this system all these considerations are to be brought up ‘in reverse order’.  It goes something like this.  After meditating, and centering yourself in love, and conducting your mental review you would start with:

Timing – “Is this a good time to talk”?  “If not now, when?”  Then...

Desire – “I want you to work with me discussing something that’s difficult for me to talk to you about.  Please be extra loving and help me, and us, be OK.  Can you pledge you will do that?  (If the answer is “No” choose a later time to talk).  Next...

Fear – “I’m afraid you will be angry and we will have a fight, and I want us to work together as a team on this, and let’s not criticize let’s just focus on how we can get through this and do better.  Will you do that with me, please?”  Then finally bring up...

The Difficult Topic – Remembered to talk clearly, accurately, sufficiently and truthfully about your topic.  It’s also very helpful to be truthful about the emotions you are having dealing with the topic, with the person you are talking to and with anything else related to the topic.  This is where you now say, “I didn’t pick up your cleaning like I said I would.”  “I accidentally broke your favorite vase.”  “I ended up spending way more money than we budgeted for.”  “I’m not going to go with you to your mother’s house this Christmas.”  “I’m having an affair with your best friend.”, or whatever the difficult topic is.

It may seem like this is a lot to go through just to talk about something difficult with someone you love.  However, if a difficult topic is talked about without loving teamwork, like this system aims for, what do you think will happen?  If talking about the difficult topic goes badly it is likely to take far more time, and energy, and be far more complicated than this approach usually arrives at.  It also may be destructive in the extreme.  Don’t expect perfect results, especially at first, as you learn to use this 6 step system.

This approach usually helps people, especially couples, but also parents, children, other family members and friends avoid the destructiveness that is so common when difficult topics are broached.  So, I would urge you to earnestly explore and experiment with this system. It’s not perfect and there are no guarantees, however, improvement is likely.  I know many couples and others in relationships who practiced using this technique to the point it became a habit; they used to spend enormous amounts of time and energy struggling and miserably failing when attempting to deal with difficult topics before learning a love-centered way of dealing with difficult topics.

It tends to work even better if you and the loved one you’re talking with both agree to study and practice the system together.  I have seen whole families use this system to great advantage, along with many couples who were nearly ruined before they learned this way of approaching and broaching a difficult topic.  It takes some work but it takes a whole lot less work than the destructive, dysfunctional way many people try to deal with difficult topics.

Remember, the difficult topic gives rise to fear of things going badly when talking about the difficult topic, which gives rise to a desire for things go well when talking about the difficult topic, and that gives rise to a need for thinking and talking about the timing of talking about the difficult topic.

Review:
First – meditate and center in love
Second – mentally review the system
Third – choose and co-arrange the timing of the talk carefully
Fourth – describe your desires for how the talk goes and the outcome.  Then ask your loved one for help in achieving that outcome.
Fifth – describe your fears and ask for help to avoid them
Sixth – bring up your hard to talk about topic

Let me suggest you go to a loved one and both of you talk over using this system in the future.  This system has been used by hundreds of people with the report of great results happening again and again.  However, it does take practice and it’s best done when the people talking both know how to use this approach.  It does work when only one is aware of the approach, but it’s usually emotionally bumpier that way.

Also be aware that it’s probably going to be a bit awkward at first, but with enough practice it flows more easily.  This approach is designed to help people become synchronized with one another before a hard topic is broached, and that provides quite a great advantage over just bringing up difficult topics ‘out of the blue’ or creeping into it with confusing hints and innuendos.  It’s also designed to make difficult topic talk a more loving process, and in love relationships that’s always an advantage over an unloving process.  Remember, all things can be said with love (see the entry “Say It With Love”).

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
In your love life network who is most difficult to talk to, about what?  Can you imagine using this approach with that person concerning whatever is difficult to talk to them about?

Related posts:

1. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
2. Love Centered Ethics
3. Are You Talking About Love Enough?
4. Listening with Love
5. How to Talk Love Without Words

Can You Talk about Sex - with Love?

Talking about sex with love is known to work wonders for both the sex lives and love lives of many people.  Unfortunately there still are many others who don’t know how to do this very well.  In fact there are quite a few who don’t seem to be able to do this at all.

Some people can talk with love about sex to a close, intimate friend but not to a spouse or lover.  Many parents trying to instruct their children about sex do it in very loveless ways.  For others talking to a teenager concerning sex in ways that are love-filled is almost impossible.  Many people can’t talk to their family members about sex at all, let alone in ways that convey love.  Many people long to have more love in their sex lives but they don’t know how to talk about or ask for that very well.

Others want more sex in their love lives but they sure don’t know how to lovingly converse about that.  And then there are some who are vaguely aware that something is missing, which if they talked about it would probably turn out to be communications of love that are missing.  Sadly they don’t know how to talk about that so this important missing element is never discovered or dealt with.

For so many people learning how to talk about ways to grow and mix healthy real love with sexuality would lead to satisfying unmet desires and greatly, even profoundly, enrich their lives.  Regrettably that is something they mostly are unaware of so that way of talking probably won’t happen.  You may ask, how did these blocks or inabilities come to be?  Let’s look and see if one or more of these causes and initiating factors happened to you.

Lots of people grew up in homes where no one talked about sex.  If that happened to you you were probably being subconsciously programmed not to talk about sex at all or to have a very hard time talking about it.  Other people grew up in families that talked about sex only in negative ways of one type or another.  If in your family sex was talked about with heavy emotional tones of guilt, disgust, revulsion, judgmentalism, fear, nastiness or any other negative mood or mindset you could have been programmed to talk about sex in similar negative ways and perhaps not even realize it.

Some of us were raised in homes where adults talked about sex in flat, matter-of-fact ways or in puzzling, unclear ways.  When sex is mentioned today we may talk in that same matter-of-fact or puzzling, unclear way.  For a great many others any mention of sex was embarrassing, shameful, sinful, and something God was against; and as adults it still is.  There is another group when growing up perceived talking about sex as a naughty pleasure.  Everything referring to sex resulted in a delicious tasting of forbidden fruit. Thus, sex talk was fun but love was not a part of it.  Love, therefore, still may be absent or minimal when communicating about sex for people raised this way.

Another common background for many has to do with a conflicted subconscious programming.  Parents taught talking about sex was “bad” but siblings and friends taught sex talk was “good” in that it was exciting, powerful, independent, and more adult.  This especially seemed true if sex talk was sufficiently shocking, nasty, dirty, raunchy, filthy, salacious, etc..  Such talk was ‘socially forbidden’, therefore, it was filled with the raptures of secret rebellion. This too had a subconscious programming effect which lingers in the minds of many adults today.  All this means that too few of today’s adults who were raised in the Western world (and in some other parts of the world) grew up hearing sex talked about with loving words and tones of voice, coupled with loving looks and a general atmosphere of simple, loving okayness.  Love and sex effectively often have been uncoupled, divided and set apart from each other, at least as far as talk is concerned.

Let’s look at what you can do to make this better.

Ask yourself these three questions.  Can you converse about sex with a mate, lover, friends, family members, a child you’re raising, a teenager or even with yourself with love?  Do you talk or avoid talking about sex in a way that avoids being loving?  Can you do a good job of mixing the words, sounds and looks of love with the words, sounds and looks of sexuality and the erotic?  If you can, be proud and happy, but also know that some of those you talk to in more personal ways may need some help in learning to do the same.

To talk about sex with love consider these words which sometimes are used to describe talking with love:
 
>>>Kind, caring, sweet, happy, tender, joyful, intimate, fun, affirming, praising, thankful, nonjudgmental, accepting, gentle, reassuring, challenging, honest, appreciative, celebratory, laudatory, passionate, reverent, zestful, precious, heartfelt, inspiring, adoring, close, delightful<<<

Can you talk about sex with yourself and others you love in the moods indicated by each of the above words?  If not, it might be good for you, and maybe for those who are closest to you, to work on learning how to speak about sex, sexiness and the erotic in at least a few of those loving moods.

Remember, doing a good job of talking together is not just about the words we use.  It also is about how well we listen and about the manner in which we receive and deliver messages.  A wink, a subtle smile, a whisper, a tonal change, the use of an innuendo and a great many other behaviors can empower or de-power our message, shape interpretation, convey emotions and deliver the ‘between the lines’ message.  All this especially is important when talking together about sex with someone you love.

The mood or manner in which we talk about sexuality often is far more important than the words spoken.  Mixing highly seductive intonations and strongly suggestive looks, postures and gestures with the sounds, looks and words of love can be enormously impactful in a personal relationship.  Happily and lovingly explaining sex to a child mixed with a certain amount of matter-of-factness can have a very positive effect in guiding a child toward a healthy, happy understanding of sexuality.  Being kind and caring while discussing a sexual difficulty may be crucial to overcoming the difficulty.  Being enthusiastically sexual with loving overtones can produce more superb, erotic love experiences.  Speaking intimately naughty but ever so lovingly friendly is another way to shape mood and manner in a positive fashion.

Sex talk with loving laughter, smiles and caresses can work to attain an atmosphere of intimate, relaxed, happy eroticism in which love with sex easily flows.  For many the success or failure of asking a love mate to try something new sexually depends on how lovingly the request is made.  Sweet, tender,  gentle, reassuring, and above all else love-filled talk about a sex conflict often is essential for the conflict’s resolution.  Heading into a new sex adventure together is frequently best started with strong, solid expressions of love for one another.

Another way to make talking about sex a love experience has to do with stating appreciation, thankfulness, praise, compliments and generally speaking in a laudatory fashion to and about your love mate.  Likewise, talking about sex and listening to someone else talk about sex with tolerance, open-mindedness, affirmation and kindness also can help make the talk a love-filled event.  And, of course, using terms of loving endearment like sweetheart, darling, honey, etc. can add quite a lot of love to sex talk.

For most couples doing well at talking about sex with one another is very important.  It may determine not only how well their sex life goes but influence a great deal more in their all over relationship.  How generally open, honest, intimate and real people can come to be with each other is frequently guided by how well they lovingly talk about sex with one another.  This can be true not only for couples but for close, intimate friends as well.  How lovingly people treat their love mate’s sex questions, requests and desires often determines how honest and self disclosing a person feels they can be in a relationship.

So crucial to a couple’s sexual development is the ability to hear ‘with love’ what turns on a love mate, what sex fantasies are imagined, what taboo explorations are secretly hoped for, what’s hard to talk about and, most of all, what’s desired.  Without demonstrations and expressions of love mixed into a couple’s sex communications there is a likelihood that censorship, inhibition, deception, intolerance, judgmentalism, boredom, emotional distancing and simple discomfort will grow.

Another part of mixing love and sex together in talk has to do with your healthy self-love and how you talk to yourself about your own sexuality.  In your internal dialogue can you speak with love to yourself about the erotic you?  Can you affirm the natural goodness and healthfulness of the sexuality you were born to experience?  Are you able to praise and give thanks for your sexual system and all the many good feelings it gives you?  Have you freed yourself of the unhealthy, anti-sexual and anti-self-loving influences that may have impacted you?  Are you able to love your own sexuality as a precious part of the bundle of miracles that you are?  Is your self talk increasingly loving and positive when it comes to your own sexuality?

It takes a bit of doing to overcome our subconscious programs from childhood that influence how we speak and don’t speak about love and sex.  To get a sense of this difficulty imagine you are talking, teaching and answering the questions of teen boys and girls concerning erections, vaginal lubrication, sexual intercourse, menstrual cramps, ejaculate, yeast infections, masturbation, orgasm, the G spot, birth control, STD’s, foreplay, condoms, oral sex, bi-sexuality  homosexuality, hypo- and hyper-sexuality and polygamous sex; and imagine you are doing it in a way that connects it all with reassuring love.  This is the challenge facing parents who have decided to do a thorough job of sexually educating their offspring.  Many would have some problems talking about these things coupled with love to their closest adult friends because of their childhood programs to be embarrassed, ashamed, etc.  Yet, the better we frankly can talk with love the better we can solve problems, avoid difficulties, achieve advancement and make growth occur in being lovingly sexual and sexually loving.

To overcome our subconscious programs that work against talking in a sex with love way often takes dedication and perseverance.  Those who practice it find the effort highly worthwhile.
Communicating with love and sex mixed together may be a primary way most couples build a sense of deep connectedness.  Without the love included a more limited, more narrow, more reserved and more distancing way of relating may be the result.  Experiencing the love your love mate has in their heart for you makes everything you do sexually together better.  It is the love that empowers sex to be dealt with in ways that enable sexual explorations, adventures, advancements, creativity, freedom, abandonment of inhibitions, and mutual attainment of erotic spiritual heights.  When love and sex are mixed together and well communicated awesome, oceanic, transcendental experiences of Eros may result.  Traveling together toward such incredible shared ecstasy can begin with developing your ability to talk about sex with love.

As always, grow in love
 
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question With whom are you actually going to talk to about mixing love and sex and the ideas in this blog entry; and how might that be for you?

Related posts:

1. How to Talk Love Without Words
2. Lasting Sex and Lasting Love
3. Sexual Love Laces
4. Emotional Intercourse
5. Are You Talking About Love Enough? 

Men: Doing Well at Love !

There are men who do very well at love and there are men who could do well but don’t – yet.  Love of a special other, love of children, family, friends, comrades, love of a cause, one’s higher power, love of country, the weave of sex and love, love of the arts, love of knowledge, healthy real love of self – they all count.  They all can be the focus of men doing well at love.

More and more research shows that men typically go about some things rather differently than most women.  These differences can be used by men to help them go about love powerfully, competently and quite successfully.  A fair percentage of men, along with not a small number of women, rather naturally think in pragmatic, functional terms.  This leads a great many men to think in questions like the following: What is it? What is it for? How does it work? How do you use it? How do you maintain it? How much is the right amount? Can you fix it if it breaks? How do you improve it? Can it be fun?  All these questions are very applicable to men doing well with love and with love relationships.  In working to love well all these somewhat male oriented cognitions and puzzlements have good workable answers.

The men who focus on love learning can arrive at practical answers to the above questions and then apply themselves to practicing those answers.  They then are likely to do well at love.  I know this because throughout all of my years of practicing counseling and therapy slightly more males than females have consistently come to me for help in solving their love life problems.  Most of the men learn to do quite well at love, be it with a mate, children, family, comrades, spiritual concerns, or self, etc..

Perhaps you are a man needing or wanting to do well at love, or perhaps you know a man who could stand to learn how to do better at love.  Vast numbers of women seem to wish their men would learn how to be more love oriented and generally do better at love.  However, these same women often do not sufficiently seem to know how to successfully tell a man the ways of making improvements in their love understanding, skills or actions.  Perhaps that has its origins in the neurological and cultural influenced ways men and women operate differently.

Sadly recent Western cultural influences have sort of taught men to think of love as a woman’s thing, and that to be focused on love is somehow unmanly.  This is in spite of the fact that many of the world’s great teachers and theoreticians focusing on love have been men.  Buddha,  Jesus, Socrates, Plato, and Rumi of the ancient world, and Stendhal, Erich Fromm, Kierkegaard, Harry Harlow, Ashley Montagu of more recent times are but a few of the many good male examples available.

For men to get directed and motivated toward doing well or better at love they usually have to see that there are clear advantages and benefits to doing so.  They also need to have clear and fairly precise things to learn and practice, ways to think clearly concerning love and its many dynamics, and recognize ‘manly’ things they may feel when working to improve their love ability.  Fortunately all this is doable for men who apply themselves to the task of looking into and practicing healthy real love.

The first question a man may ask himself is, “Will I go to the trouble to really look into love as something to do well at?”  After that comes the question, “Will I do what it takes to really do well at love?”  If both answers are yes incredible benefits are likely!  If the answer to either is no, missing out on life’s most important involvements, most useful powers, and most pleasurable adventures is predictable.

As always, Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success questions
Have you read the rather male oriented, scientifically based, and quite practical book Love & Survival by Dean Ornish, M.D., published by Harper Collins?  Or have you read the rather couple-oriented, highly practical, and also rather scientifically based book Recovering Love (although comfortable reading for most men, by all means oriented to both men and women) written by, I shall add perhaps egotistically, yours truly, Dr. J. Richard Cookerly, hardback published by McGraw-Hill, paperback by Authors Choice of  iUniverse?

Virginity Surpassed and Parental Love

Synopsis: A daughter’s startling declaration and loving request; Parent readiness; Big questions; A different example; Handling it all with the power of love.

“Mother, father, I would like you to just sit and really work at hearing me with love because I have what I think is a good thing to share with you.

Last night I did something really special.  I surpassed my virginity.  That’s what my group calls it instead of seeing it as something lost.”

This shy and gently stated declaration came from a beautiful, super smart, nearly perfect, not quite 17-year-old daughter, as her mother reported it.  She continued, “At first neither my husband nor I understood so my daughter repeated herself,  ‘Surpassed my virginity, not lost my virginity’.  Suddenly I was flooded with cascading, conflicting and confusing emotions washing over me – chaos, disbelief, shock, fear, sadness, empathy, guilt, worry, and a strange sense of pride that she was able to tell us this startling fact.

"Then I heard my husband stammering, ‘What the hell!  You mean you’ve already had…, already …, you mean …, you’re telling me, my little girl’s not a virgin anymore?  Is that what you mean?’  Our daughter calmly and kindly replied, ‘Yes, Daddy, and we did it the safe way with a condom and spermicide, and we did it with lots of love so I want you to be happy for me’."

This mother admitted her next words were a tearful, “But you’re only 16."  Her daughter’s well researched response was, “Mom, do you know around the world 16 is the average age where most girls ‘surpass their virginity’ so I’m just being normal.  Please don’t cry unless those are tears of happiness for me.  It was a really good experience and besides I think I’m the last girl in my group to do this.”

She said her husband, somewhat angrily, replied, “That doesn’t make it right, safe, healthy, or good.  Their daughter’s further response was, “Daddy did you know that in ancient Egypt, whose civilization lasted longer than anybody else’s and whose family life stability was legendary, girls commonly surpassed their virginity between the ages of 12 and 14 and were married by 15.  Not only that but sometimes marriage was to one of their brothers”.

“That’s not what we are talking about,” was this frustrated father’s reply.  This mom reported she then said, “Well, Sweetheart, you have shocked and amazed us, and you are going to have to give your father and I some time to process this because we certainly weren’t ready for it, like we probably should have been.  I do want to thank you for telling us and not keeping it secret like we had to do when we were growing up.  Let’s take a break while you’re father and I talk and then we’ll all talk some more”.

Their daughter replied in a very adult and kind tone, “I know this is hard for you given the way you were brought up so, yes, let’s take a break but first can we all hug?”  She said they did hug and they said they loved each other; then she and her husband shared their confusion and many different feelings.  All this is what the mother of a rather precocious adolescent reported to me in a quickly scheduled parent/guidance counseling session before asking, “Now what do we do?”.

Well, dear parents, are you ready for the day you find out an offspring of yours has “surpassed their virginity”?  Do you think you will be able to handle it with wisdom and love?  Maybe you will try to stay in denial and act like it hasn’t happened.  If that is so it may lead your youngster to feel and think that they shouldn’t or can’t share this kind of big, important fact with you.  If that’s the case they perhaps will try to handle the health, relational and psychological issues without your input, support and guidance.  Please consider that.

Perhaps you feel sure your teenagers will stay virginal until after marriage, and they may.  However, the majority of adolescents in a majority of cultures around the world do not.  As you probably know all around our planet both biology and modern world, cultural influences seem to be pressing youth toward becoming sexually interactive in middle or younger adolescence.  I think it is wise for parents not to be in denial and to prepare ahead of time for dealing with this bio-social ‘pressure’.

Let’s look at this: Concerning sex, especially virginity, do you have different hopes and standards for the males and females you are raising?  I have counseled no small number of parents, mostly fathers but some mothers also, who are secretly or openly proud of their sons but upset with their daughters when they first start having sex.  In this day and age ‘double standards’ more and more lead to destructive family conflict.  This especially seems to be a hard problem for families moving into the modern, westernized world from other cultures.  It also frequently is a devastating difficulty for religious conservative parents of many faiths who find their offspring gravitating toward more contemporary, secularly influenced lifestyles.

The big question for parents, from this family therapist’s point of view, is this.  Are you going to deal with the ‘surpassing virginity’ issue with sufficient healthy, real love?  No matter what your belief system is regarding ethics, morals, mores, propriety, etc., I suggest a powerful love-centered approach will work best.  From my experience with so many parents discovering that their offspring have become sexually interactive, ‘well expressed love’ is the primary thing that makes the outcome constructive.  Without love your mind seems closed and destructive dissonance grows.  Anger, condemnation, guilt tripping, manipulation, disgust, rejection, control efforts, abandonment, expulsion, lack of care, being overly nonchalant and indulgent, punishment, reasoning without compassion, hyper-religiosity etc.  usually lead to far less than desirable results.

Let me suggest that the parents who handle this issue best are also the ones who, with love and some study, prepare for it ahead of time.  Some years ago I worked with a couple who was attempting to deal with this issue responsibly and sanely.  They talked with each other saying, “It is likely our children will become sexually active in their teenage years, because we did, and that’s the way the world seems to work these days.  So, how do we want to prepare for that?”

After some research they decided to follow a parenting approach popular in certain circles in northern Europe, parts of South America and very recently urban China.   They gave their children a far better than average sex education involving not only the biology but also the psychology of sexuality.  There were those in their extended family who said they were just setting up their children for promiscuity and tragedy, but they rejected that after looking at the good results data from various other countries.

When their youngsters were in their early adolescence they openly discussed how and when they might choose to enter into sexual relations.  Each of their children became able to talk quite frankly about all this with their parents.  Both of their boys and girls chose ages later than their parents had worried they would.  Healthy self-love and others were a major focus in their discussions.  When older each of their offspring carried out their plans similar to those they had designed with reasoned modifications when needed.  A loving acceptance and even a family celebratory atmosphere prevailed as the plans came to fruition.

Recently I learned that their children, who are now entering adulthood, plan to do much the same thing when they have children because the results have been far better than the bad and chaotic experiences of many others.  No one got pregnant, no one got any sexually transmitted diseases and no one experienced any great emotional upheaval.  All of them agree that because love was made so much more important than sex the sexual issues got dealt with quite fully and constructively.

It is important to know that following this pattern might not lead to such good results for you. 
Because of all sorts of individual differences and possible other intervening variables disasters might yet occur.  There are no guarantees but the above example is, at least, a different example than many parents have been exposed to.  I suggest you study many examples and possible ways to go about facing this issue.  Then as parents you might want to make your plans regarding ‘virginity surpassed’, preferably with a ‘ big, powerful, love focus’ as a big part of them.

For a start on these deliberations let me remind you what that fellow we call Paul said about love over 2000 years ago: Love is patient, kind, not jealous, overbearing, arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way, is not mean-spirited or resentful, and love bears all things, for real love never ends.

As always Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success question How similar or different from your parents do you want to be concerning your dealing lovingly with your children’s sexuality?

Related posts:

1. Parenting Series: Paul’s Points On Love For Parents
2. Better Parenting Through Love Series
3. Parenting Series: Love Motivating Your Child (& Every One) Toward Good Behavior
4. Parenting Series: How To Love Your Child Better