Self-Love the Enemy of Egotism

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson addresses self-love and egotism as the same or different; good or bad; definitions shallow and deep; the full and leaky bucket concept; locus and focus issues; effects on others; and self-love as defeat of egotism.

Aren’t They Both the Same Thing and Bad?

From time to time people come to me saying things like, “Dr. Cookerly, I was taught self-love is a bad thing, or a sick thing, and it’s the same thing as being egotistical, narcissistic, arrogant, stuck up, conceded and very selfish.  So, if you have self-love you’ll be these things, and no one will like you.  Isn’t that true?”

My answer is an emphatic NO!  Healthy, real self-love actually is the enemy of being egotistical, conceded, etc.  Healthy, real self-love also leads away from selfishness to a greater giving, altruistic love.  It is really the lack of self-love that leads to heightened, and especially destructive selfish behavior.  If I say something more or less like that, then I usually hear something like, “Dr. Cookerly, please explain how that works”?  To do that, let’s define egotism and self-love.

Definitions Shallow and Deep

Egotism can be defined this way:
Egotism is excessively and over-positively talking, acting, and thinking about oneself so as to cause oneself and/or others to think of oneself as having high importance and significance.  Others and I posit that covertly and subconsciously, egotistical acts and thoughts are because of a secret fear and self view of oneself as being insignificant and unimportant and, therefore, unloved and unlovable.  Egotism can best be understood as belonging with the once popular, and still accurate framework of a ‘superiority complex’ which, of course, is always covertly a masked inferiority complex.

No small number of dictionary definitions of egotism omit this underlying dynamic.  In effect, the egotistical, conceited, etc. are seen to have hidden low self-esteem, are lacking in self-love and self approval at a deeper level, and they just happen to be trying hard to fix or make up for that, but are doing it in ways that don’t really work.  There is the secret hope that if others see and treat them as significant and important, that will cure the problem, and they will feel okay with themselves and finally be loved.  The problem is it never works.

Healthy, real self-love can be defined this way:
Self-Love is a healthy, real, powerful, natural process of highly valuing, desiring for, often acting for, and taking pleasure in the well-being of the self.

The Full and the Leaky Bucket

Sufficient, healthy self-love sets one free to be more loving to others.  There is not a need for others to see the self as significant or important because that need is largely met by the self via sufficient self-love and its natural components of self-respect and self honoring.  With sufficient self-love there is a kind of ‘owning’ that one is of value and, therefore, one’s essential self is consistently and sufficiently okay.  Thus, there is little need to keep proving it, or striving for outside validation from others.  If laudatory praise, admiration, compliments, etc. come from others, they can be greatly enjoyed but they are not needed.  With self-love, one’s bucket of value and okayness is sufficiently full, and tends to stay that way with extra available to give to others.  With egotism the bucket has a hole (or several holes) thus, it is continuously in need of replenishment.

Locus and Focus

With self-love, the locus of control is internal, and focused on the valuing one’s self.  With egotism, the locus of control is external and focused on the valuing by others.  With healthy self-love there can be a sort of humble awe and thankfulness about one’s own nature and adequacy.  With egotism there is the hidden fear that one either is or will soon be proven and judged as inadequate.  With healthy self-love there is a sufficiency, and from that grows an ability to appreciate many other things outside the self and value others more.

With egotism, there is a secret sense of insufficiency constantly demanding attention.  That often deprives people of the ability to appreciate others and the world about them.  With healthy self-love, bragging is brief, and attention to others and other matters is seen as worthwhile and important.  With egotism, bragging tends to be excessive in the opinion of others, and other matters are less important and less attended to.

Effects on Others

Because genuinely healthy, self-loving people are also the people who often are very good at loving others, and at projecting a confident, okay demeanor, people tend to be drawn to them.  Sometimes the envious and jealous are not.  Egotistical people tend to be avoided by others-- especially those who see deeper into people often move away from them.

Self-Love Defeats Egotism

As people grow their healthy self-love they become less egotistical.  False pride and its accompanying showy  arrogance, fades and an inner gladness for who one is and has become grows.  As that happens egotism and self-aggrandizement is defeated and is usually replaced with a more generous and loving spirit.  The ancient words “love others as you love yourself” thus become much more able to be acted upon.  To study healthy self-love more, at this site see the mini-love-lessons titled “Self-Love – What Is It?”; “Self-Love and 12 Reasons to Develop It”; and “Self-Love and Its Five Healthy Functions”.

As Always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
    How good a job are you really doing at healthy self-love – today?

Related posts:

1. Self-Love – What Is It? 

Friendship "Like" to Friendship "Love"

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts by exploring who is a friend; what is friendship to you; how to better think about friendship; it the most important thing to take away from this mini-love-lesson; much more.

Who Is a Friend?

“I know a lot of people and we call each other friends but are we really?” Avery asked this as he contemplated his life. He went on to say, “I have work friends, old school friends, club friends, casual friends and now Internet friends – a surprising lot of them. But are any of them true friends, deep friends or really close, personal friends who really love me and who I really love?

I must confess I don’t think I have any of that type and I think I really need some of those. I know others who have friends they really love but I don’t think I do. How do I make that happen?” According to many behavioral health researchers Avery had a common, growing and surprisingly important problem. He had lots of friends at the ‘like’ level but none at the ‘love’ level.

Having friends at the ‘like’ level simply means you like them and probably they like you, or at least they like something about you. You enjoy their company and they yours. That is pleasurable and usually quite good for you. Having friends at the ‘love’ level is far more significant. It can literally mean the difference between a shorter life and longer life, as well as a so-so life and a deeply enriched life.

What’s Friendship to You?

I once heard a car salesman say “Hello good friend, what’s your name?” To him I guess the word friend meant about the same thing as the word stranger. In my travels around the world researching love and love relationships, I have encountered people who explained to me that they would not use the word friend, as translated in their language, unless they had known a person at the very minimum for two years, and even then not unless it referred to someone very close and highly valued. For others, they reserve the word and the concept ‘friend’ for only those most dear to them. In one large survey I read, 92% of the people surveyed thought friendship was, or could become, a type of real love. But there are those who think of ‘friend’ mostly as just another word for acquaintance.

How to Think Better about Friendship?

Our thinking can be limited if our language doesn’t give us sufficient categories to think with. The usual continuum of categories in English are: friend, acquaintance, stranger and enemy. Some languages have several categories and terms just for ‘friend’. You may be able to think better about friendship using a few more categories like: best friend, close friend, dear friend, good friend, distant friend and friendly acquaintance. As a ‘thinking experiment’ you might want to make your own list of categories and divide up the people you ‘like’ into those categories and see what it tells you about your own important interpersonal world of friendships.

Also there is understanding your friendships by way of qualities. The category list can include: loyal friend, bad friend, warm friend, special friend, so-so friend, long-term friend, new friend, friends I truly love, ‘frenemy’, and don’t forget ‘friend with benefits’. Here too, you can make up your own categories and see who belongs in which kind of grouping.

With all that in mind, you might want to ask yourself this question. How do you use the words friend and friendship and what do both really mean to you?

Do You Want More Friends, Real Friends, Better Friends, Deeper Friends?

In some parts of the world friendships are the most important of all relationships. There they are cherished and prodigiously protected. In other parts of the world it is thought that deep and real friendships are becoming rarer and almost impossible. Often this is attributed to the highly mobile, fast-paced, rapidly changing world many modern people live in. Others think that the Internet, especially Facebook’s use of “friend” and “de- friend” is making friendship an increasingly shallow and superficial concept. The perfunctory misuse of words like friendly, friend and friendship in many businesses and corporate cultures lead one wag to say, “Watch out for any use of the word ‘friend’ because it may signify the next person targeted for sacrifice”. It can be quite important not to just consider the number of friends but rather the quality of the friendships in your life.

The Growing Good News about Friendship

Good, healthy, deep, loving friendships can save your life, increase your health, add greatly to your sense of joy and your sense of safety, help you live longer, provide you with beneficial opportunities and in just about every way enrich your life. That is the conclusion of a host of researchers in cultural anthropology, social psychology,  and even in animal comparative psychology where ape and monkey friendships have been studied. The friendships which grow into authentic and healthy love relationships can make an enormous difference in the world for those who want to live well. Even light, mild and short term friendships can do you a lot of good. Of course, friendship at the love level can be of far more and enormous benefit to all concerned.

How to Go from ‘Like’ to ‘Love’ in Friendship

When you meet a stranger and they become an acquaintance you have started on a path that might actually lead all the way to a real friendship-type of deeply enriching love. It also could lead to the romantic-type relationship because that happens too. After meeting a person it becomes an issue of ‘do you like them and do they like you’. To start on a path that could lead from the ‘like’ level all the way to the ‘love’ level of friendship here are 5 not so usual items you might want to consider:

1. Act like a buyer not a beggar. This means if you go into an encounter with a person, or a group of people, and you act like a beggar with a mindset of “Oh please, please like me, accept me, want me, include me; I’m desperate” things likely are not going to go so well. If you go with confidence that you have quality to offer and, therefore, deserve quality in return, your short-term and long-term results are likely to be far better. If your attitude is that of a careful buyer, or chooser selecting for a good fit for your personal, unique self your chances will be much improved. That is because the best people with the most real love to give, tend to gravitate toward the healthy self-loving.

2. If you like somebody help them to like themselves more. This is done by first looking for what you truly can appreciate in another instead of worrying about what are they thinking of you. You will have to study them, ask questions and really notice how they go about being themself. After you see what you truly can appreciate, follow it with brief authentic praise, genuine compliments and honest thank you statements. Don’t fake it. Keep doing that over time.

3. Brag briefly. When you make brief comments relating something about your own accomplishments, victories and other positive factors, you show you believe in yourself and your qualities and you have good things to offer. Of course, being arrogant, narcissistic and bragging too much is a ‘big no-no’, but no bragging just ‘hides your light under a bushel’. It also makes it hard and slow for anyone to get to know the best of you, and the rest of you and, therefore, impedes actually getting to love you, if that is where the friendship is heading.

4. Risk short, intimate self-disclosures. Love is much more likely to happen with emotional closeness. Closeness happens faster and better with intimate self-disclosure. When you say something that is more personal, growing a more personal relationship becomes more probable. It also shows you are sufficiently okay with your human, imperfect self, therefore, another can be the same with you.

5. Talk expressionally positive and constantly – while you quietly listen a lot. What you are saying with your facial expressions, tonal expressions when you do say something or make a sound, convey emotions by gestures, posture changes, physical touch and proximity actions (moving, standing or sitting closer than usual, etc.), almost always are more important than the words you say. Avoid attitudes and expressional language which would come across as disapproving, judgmental, condemning, disinterested, bored, superior or inferior, etc.

It is very important that you be loyal, truthful, sometimes fun, sometimes serious, be there for your friends when they need you, and a host of things like that which you can learn from other sources that tell you how to be a real loving friend.

Are You Studying Love and Applying What You Learn in Friendship?

It often has been said that to have a friend, be one. If you ask “How do I do that” I suggest that to have a friendship that grows into a deep, close, love filled friendship, study how love is conveyed and use what you learn with the people you like. It is likely that at least some of your ‘like’ friendships will grow into real ‘love’ friendships.

The most important thing you can do is to really apply yourself to learning all you can about showing, demonstrating and conveying healthy, real love. Remember, love, like food, grows naturally in the world but both love and food take a lot of skilled actions to get it to where they consistently can nourish and energize you, me and everybody else. Have love to give (?), then when it is delivered skillfully in your friendships, it is fairly likely the love bonds will grow and you will have friends who truly love you as well as you love them.

You might want to read Love and Friendship by Allen Bloom, Friends As Family by Karen Lindsey and Friendship: How to Give It, How to Get It by Dr. Joel D. Block.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
So, just how skilled are you at doing actions which convey friendship love toward those you would have as deep and true friends?

Conflict, Power and Love Success

Mini-Love-Lesson   #190

FREE over 300 Mini-Love-Lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries – worldwide!

Synopsis: How successful loving couples powerfully succeed at handling disagreements, differences, opposing views and conflicts in three surprisingly different patterns is the focus of this mini-love-lesson.

The Best Use of Power When in Conflict

Sooner or later, every love relationship has conflict.  Some relationships are destroyed by it, some survive but are damaged, others repair fully and are even better than before while still other love relationships thrive on conflict right from the start.  What makes the differences?

Sooner or later, every love relationship has power issues whether they know it or not.  That is because it takes power to get anything done.  In love relationships, especially those called couples, families and comradeships, enormous amounts of hard to do things get done.  In the doing, conflicts arise and harmonious, effective teamwork power often is not easily achieved but when it is, everything is better and everybody usually is benefited.

Sooner or later, every couple has love issues because the giving, getting, growing and cycling of love effects and is effected by every couple’s way of handling conflicts and power issues.  It is the successful ways loving couples use power to handle conflict and differences with each other that concerns us here.

The Surprising 3 Most Love Successful Ways

Couples research into what works along with clinical analysis, has discovered three main ways or patterns of successfully dealing with power issues and conflict.  They are rather different from what the experts have previously thought and taught.  The titles, descriptions and details vary from study to study and presentation to presentation.  Here these three couple patterns of successfully dealing with conflicts and power issues are introduced and synthesized, summarized and given the following descriptive names.

The first one I call the Avoid and Finesse pattern, the second is the Volatile and Confronting pattern and the third is the Validating and Affirmational pattern.  Each of these patterns has its own benefits and advantages as well as its own drawbacks and dangers.  All three patterns involve couples who have been evaluated as healthfully having real love for each other.  They also have been measured as relationally positive in various ways such as being generally happy, stable and constructively functional.

1. Avoid and Finesse  When difficulties arise the successful couples using this approach work hard at avoiding directly confronting and conflicting with each other over the issues involved in the difficulty.  They tend to bring up that which is positive about their relationship and about each other more often.  They only very indirectly address the areas of possible contention, if at all.

At first they seem to, sort of, non-verbally agree to live with whatever is the source of this dissonance or disagreement perhaps to see if time alone will help solve the problem.  However, with close observation over time they can be seen to be gently, with finesse, handling the difficulty individually and then as a couple.   It is interesting that this can be done completely nonverbally by some couples using this system.  Eventually any lasting areas of possible dissonance and discord are verbally dealt with gently, in little bit segments, often starting with the easiest parts first.

Avoiding and finessing couples tend to be quite patient, kind, very seldom rude and genuinely nice to each other.  They highly value being in harmony with each other which is far more important to them than being right, defeating or winning over the other one.

It is not that the areas of continuing disagreement are forever unattended to.  Rather they are slowly and much more indirectly, subtly and carefully handled.  Compromise and synthesis-evolving-solutions are grown rather than openly confronted and decided.  In this system there is much less strong, negative, emotional expression.  There also sometimes is more strongly expressed positive emotion leading up to, during and after dealing with areas of oppositional disagreement and dissonance.

These couples usually are very comfortable with each other and see no reason to change this Avoid & Finesse style of dealing with conflicting opinions and opposing points of view.  If one person does get negative, the other frequently empathetically listens longer and then just counterbalances the negativity by being more lovingly positive.  That usually brings the other one back to a more love-positive way of interacting.  Sometimes the more okay-feeling spouse or love mate will directly but kindly ask their beloved to start returning to a more positive state and that clear, direct request usually is accepted.

Fairly good, healthy self-love seems to underlie this process for both people in the couple’s relationship.  In areas involving personal weakness, poor functioning and low competence leading to difficulties these couples tend to be very mutually supportive and cooperative with very little blaming or demeaning.  Gentle challenging for desired improvements does occur.

One big drawback and danger to the Avoid and Finesse style has to do with dealing with difficulties demanding quick resolution.  Another has to do with intractable problems that cannot be improved on without conscious, direct, interactive discussion.  Also some unsolved or unimproved conflict areas result in individuals repressing or suppressing negative feelings for a time, which then is followed by cathartic explosion.  At such times, these couples may distance themselves overlong from each other but usually then come back together, make up and go on.  There is also the danger that some couples get stuck in just avoiding and never get to the finessing improvements and resolution part.  This can be deeply destructive if it leads to a growing lack of self-disclosure loving and the closeness that brings.

Sometimes such couples, for various other reasons, go to family or couple’s counseling and meet with a therapist who thinks direct confrontation is the only way to go.  That might result in more harm than good being done.

2. Volatile and Confronting  Successful couples prone to using this style of dealing with difficulties and disagreements quickly become intensely, persuasively and assertively emotional.  They appear to enjoy arguing, teasing and provoking each other as they each combatively argue for their own case.
However, angry sounds, looks and gestures frequently are accompanied by occasional shared laughter, clever remarks, witty comebacks and even compliments when a point is well made.  Vigorous and heated debate is treated rather like a game and sometimes leads into passionate, aggressive style sex.  To outsiders including counselors and therapists, this style can look like purposeful, harmful fighting and destructive dysfunction.

It is important to note that couples using the Volatile & Confronting style, though arguing passionately, usually are doing three very positive things.

First, they are avoiding being seriously demeaning, personally insulting or trying to tear down each other.

Second, both are doing a good job of what is sometimes called owning their own okayness.  Therefore, they are not letting a sense of personal okayness be robbed from them by anything the other one says or does.  Thus, by way of strong, healthy self-love they both remain independent and free to clash vigorously.

Individually, both count on the other to remain emotionally okay during this fight style interaction.  If anyone’s feelings do get hurt by taking something the other one said too personally, they usually quickly convert to reparative, comforting interactions.  Later they go back to vigorous, confrontive sparring rather more carefully than at first.

Third, Volatile & Confronting couples tend to occasionally punctuate even the most volatile of their arguments with love-positive messages.  Not infrequently, this is done with brief, loving smiles, gestures, touches or words of love, respect and high valuing of each other.

Surprisingly, this often results in a final synthesis of opposing views and arrival at a solution to the difficulties better than either one of them could have individually devised.  Harmony between them usually then quickly follows.

Counselors not familiar with this kind of love-successful-interaction sometimes label such couples as high risk and dysfunctional.  In truth, they usually are among the most stable, happy and generally successful of couples.  They also tend to be among the more highly romantic, sexual, playful and lively of couples.

Drawbacks include sometimes having difficulty achieving serenity, patience, tenderness and understanding people who take offense easily.  They also can be misidentified as intolerant, combative and difficult.  They also may get in trouble handling relationship rivals or threats too aggressively.

    3. Validating & Affirmational  Successful couples who deal with relational dissonance issues in the Validating & Affirming style tend to be much calmer and more easy going while handling disagreements openly and directly with each other.  They fairly frequently are prone to intersperse oppositional statements with affirmational messages delivered with positive, upbeat tones and happy, loving looks.  They are more prone to active-loving-listening to each other longer and asking interested questions for further knowledge and clarification.  They tend to do this at some length before undertaking the teamwork of attempting solution building.  It is obvious that they usually treat each other quite kindly and with mutual respect.

This style leads to them being happily comfortable with each other as they face differences and difficultly.  Praises and compliments, with an openness to each other’s ideas, helps them to be very co-functional and positive as they mutually process oppositional points of view.  Occasionally they can become rather argumentative but, even there, they are reciprocating positive looks, gestures, facial expressions , voice tones, etc..  They definitely have a democratic approach but if they do fight they make up easier and quicker with more forgiveness than do many other couples.

Couples using the Validating & Affirming system are very consensus prone.  They have an approach characterized by unless we both win, we both lose and our love relationship loses.  Seldom, if ever, is there a one of us has to win and the other loses orientation.

Good-natured humor and increasingly growing to accept each other’s influence characterizes their relational growth over time.  Like the other successful, happy and lasting couples, expressions of love-positive words and actions occur more frequently than anything that could be called anti-love or love-negative, even when conflicting with each other.

Of all styles, couples using the Validating & Affirming approach are the best at conjoint (team) functioning.  Counter-intuitively, the tendency of this joint way of operating is seen as highly contributory to both partner’s individuality and personal actualization.  Also this system seems to make such couples quite proud of each other and their union.

Couples who tend to be Validating & Affirming are the happiest and healthiest of our three kinds of successful couples but there is one big danger.  If one of them gets unusually unhappy or negative about something, the other member of the couple may also automatically get unhappy rather than remaining more emotionally-up and able to help.

That especially can occur with a lack of understanding or self-disclosure about what is wrong.  In turn, that may give rise to the growth of various suspicions and magnified fears.  This, in turn, can lead to considerable misunderstanding and discordant miscommunication along with pronounced anxiety.  Serious escalation of difficulty may result and become quite destructive.

This is a situation which Volatile and Confronting couples tend to handle quicker and best, and one which Avoiding & Finessing couples usually dodge.

Becoming  Power Usage  and Conflict Resolving Successful

With the help of arriving at a good conflict handling system, individuals and couples can change, improve, repair if needed and can go on to bigger, better, healthy real love.  This includes couples working at learning to much more successfully deal with conflicts, disagreements and discord in their relationship.  This, of course, takes well-informed conjoint (team) effort.  With such effort, couples can become conjointly, harmoniously and wonderfully powerful and, thus, successful in the ways described above.  That is the challenge facing you and all of us.

The Big Problem of Mismatches

When, in a couple’s relationship, one partner uses one of these three styles and the other uses another style, big relational problems can result.  It is like one of them is playing football, and the other basketball and both can’t understand why the other one doesn’t play right.  Both are likely to try getting the other to do it their way, but not know how to achieve that goal.  Couples counseling with love-knowledgeable counselors and therapists can help.

I recommend checking out therapists credentialed by their countries’ marriage and family therapy professional accreditation organizations, and especially those trained in the well researched Arts and Science of Love (ASL) approach created by Doctors John and Julie Gottman, and those trained in the Emotions Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) of Dr. Sue Johnson.  Information to do so can be found online via standard search engines.  The above, as well as others and my own considerable clinical experience, have contributed to the research and clinical views informing this mini-love-lesson.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question  Which of the three styles of dealing with opposing views and conflicts in a couple’s relationship (or other close relationship) may fit you best?

Related posts:

1. Communicating Better with Love
2. Listening with Love – Are You Good at It?
3. Talking Styles That Hurt and Help Love
4. Empathy – A Love Skill
5. Cycling Love for Lasting Love 

Intimate Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lessons first helps you explore your own ideas about intimate love compared to what others think about it. Then it introduces you to the fascinating world of sensorium intimacy; and ends with ideas about how you can study developing greater intimate love; more.

Your First Thoughts

What pops up in your mind when you see the words “intimate love”? Lots of people think of something sexual. Others think of something powerfully and very personally emotional. There are a good many other people who think about both ecstatic sex and various intensely pleasurable, psychological states interwoven together.

The term “intimate love” can mean a surprisingly wide range of different things to different people.
Intimacy in a love relationship can mean knowing another and being known by another in incredible ways. It also can mean a sense of wonderful closeness, fervent shared eroticism combined with a marvelous sense of loving and being loved in very personal ways.

Some people understand intimate love to mean a wondrous sense of spiritual connection and the very best of love’s many fabulous feelings. Then there are those who see intimate love as something delightfully wicked, intriguingly naughty and scrumptiously salacious. So, what are your first thoughts about intimate love? Are they similar to any of the above? And if you currently are in what you think of as an intimate love relationship, do you know what your lover’s understanding of intimate love is? Is theirs a more psychological or a more sexual understanding of what the words “intimate” love refers to? You might want to have an intimate, lover’s conversation with them about this.

Sensorium Intimacy

For many intimate love is best experienced and arrived at visually. Being seen naked and seeing another naked, viewing and allowing one’s every, intimate part to be viewed in the most up close and personal of ways, and doing this with someone you love is what achieves intimate love for the strongly visually oriented. Looking deeply into someone’s eyes while they do the same with you, sometimes called “soul” looking, and/or looking very closely at every nuance of facial expression while being only inches away from one you love are also examples of love intimacy via the visual.

For those more auditorily oriented, intimate love can come by way of soft, warm voice tones, whispers, listening to music together and spoken words expressed in deep, close emotional ways.
For a good many others the primary sensory modality of intimate love is touch. Passionate embrace, gentle stroking, cuddling, being held and hugged, holding hands, myriad kinds of kissing, the many sensations of being touched sexually, all are involved in the tactile sensations that provide a sense of intimate love.

Some people find intimacy through taste, while for others it is achieved in an olfactory way, sometimes with the help of perfumes or essential oils. There also are those that best experience intimate love via kinetics. Being joined in slow dancing, swaying rhythmically, gently rocking back and forth and other forms of moving together greatly assist the sense of feeling intimate love for those who are naturally, strongly, motion oriented.

Of course, there are many who have a combination of two or more of the above as their major sensorium modalities. It is important to know that the major way a person senses or can be assisted in sensing intimate love varies according to which of their major sensing systems has the most impact on their emotions (on their brain’s limbic system). Most people can be reached or affected, at least a little, from each of these ways of sensing but they will have a primary sense, and the other ways of sensing will be secondary or tertiary.

If you are going to help someone you love have an intimate love experience, it can be very helpful to know witch of their major ways of sensing love is primary and which is secondary, etc. Then you can use that knowledge to lovingly assist them in having great sensations of intimate love via their primary sense. While doing that you also can mix-in your own primary sensorium modalities so that you can better simultaneously share a mutual, intimate, love experience.

Communicating For Intimate Love

They both said they wanted intimacy, but one meant sex while the other meant a sharing of deep-felt emotions. Until they learned to ‘spell out’ more exactly what they meant, they miscommunicated and neither one got the love they really were seeking. The word intimacy is one of those words which is commonly misunderstood and, therefore, frequently miscommunicated. In couples love relationships few words are as important to mutually understand as the words ‘intimate’ and ‘intimacy’. Couples’ love often can be injured when one or both members of a couple does not understand accurately what is being meant when the words intimate or intimacy are used.

All too often one of a couple mistakenly assumes that the other shares the same understanding, and also shares the same ideas of what helps intimacy occur. Actually it is fairly rare for two people in a couples relationship to have the same understanding of this term, at least at the start of their relationship. Therefore, talking about this in some detail can be quite helpful to a couple’s intimate life together. Especially important in couples love development is discovering and talking about the words and actions which may create experiences of intimate love.

Intimate Love Differences

For some, intimacy means revealing one’s most personal secrets. In a similar fashion for others it is mostly about becoming vulnerable and the risk of getting very personally hurt, but in a much wider variety of ways. There are those who achieve intimate love primarily through acts of tenderness and small, gentle behaviors. Others find intimacy is the product of big, brave and bold, uninhibited actions strongly revealing themselves. For the more sexually oriented it may mean lovers letting themselves be erotically wild, acting with unbridled, shameless abandonment, being unrestrained and free to be entirely impulsive while completely accepting each other’s actions.

Acceptance and toleration love, along with being totally unafraid of negative judgment is usually a part of this picture. Awesome sweetness, treating and being treated as precious, cherishing and being cherished, and knowing that what is important and unique about you is especially valued by one who loves you, these can be of incredible importance in intimate love. Experiencing and helping a loved one experience intimate love often takes having and giving unique personal information that would be insignificant to others. What’s your favorite color, food, song, etc. are very simple examples which can be expanded in quality.

It is important for people who want to have strong, intimate, love experiences with each other that they explore and involve themselves in, and with, each other’s differences as well as their similarities. Respecting and honoring diversity and how it might contribute to a couples relationship is often a great help in laying down a groundwork for growing intimate love.

Studying Intimate Love

Discussing what you and a beloved might mean by “intimate love” and what you both might want to do to grow more, bigger and better intimate love usually is a very good thing to do. You can also learn more about intimate love at this very website. Go to the Mini-Love-Lessons listed in the Titles Index called “Intimacy Creation – a Love Skill”, and “Growing Closeness – Love Skill”. Read and discuss them with those you are close to, then of course go experiment and practice the ideas you get from what you have learned.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Can you imagine a scenario of events and actions that you and a loved one carry out, in which you could feel very intimately loving and loved?

Is Your Affirmational Love Enough?

 

Mini-Love-Lesson # 275

Synopsis:  The importance of stating and demonstrating love by way of affirmational behaviors; a three-step process for doing affirmational love; the importance of being real; 11 hints for talking affirmationally to your loved ones; and a surprisingly numerical answer to the question “how much affirmational love is enough?” are all quickly called to your attention in this valuable mini -love-lesson.

Affirmational love charges our batteries.  It is crucial for high functioning, long-lasting relationships.  Research shows couples who utilize best practices of affirmation typically stay together happily.

It also is known to strengthen love bonds.  If affirmational love is bestowed and well received, often it results in a loved one’s increased self-confidence and subsequent accomplishments.  

Affirmation is a beautiful tool to aid the cycling of love.  When we feel appreciation, it can lead to doing affirmational loving.  When affirmations are absorbed, often there is an impetus to send back an affirming response.  An affirmation is like a stamp of approval which recognizes attributes and honors them (see “Communicating Better with Love: Mini Lessons”).

Three Steps To Affirmational Love

Affirmational love just takes three simple steps.  First notice, second appreciate and third affirm.  First we notice something positive or likeable in a loved one.  These can be characteristics or behaviors that catch our attention or something we discover when purposefully looking for qualities that we genuinely appreciate.  Next we delight in this aspect of our loved one and appreciate how it is an intrinsic part of their being.  Then, that motivates us to share our appreciation in affirmational words or actions. 

Sometimes these three steps are quick and rather automatic, at other times they may be more complicated.  If what we see and appreciate is of deep significance or major importance, finding the right words or deeds to carry our affirmational love may take more time and effort.  Remember that affirmational love is one of the crucial ways to communicate our love and enhance our relationships for quality and longevity, so, it is well worth whatever time and effort we put into it.

Here is a little example.  Suppose you notice one of the people you love being kind to a child.  You pause for a short time, quietly appreciating their kindness.  Then with tender tones you say, “Watching how kind you were to that child, really touched my heart”.  You accompany those heartfelt words with a gentle hug.  By doing these simple things, you probably have helped yourself and your loved one feel good.  Incidentally, you probably have reinforced their tendency to be kind.

It also is likely they will want to be with you just a bit more.  With this positive affirmation, they may feel stronger and their self-image may get a boost.   Your heartfelt connection with your loved one likely has been nourished and bolstered.  Another boon is that you and your loved one probably will function, psycho-biologically, more healthfully – at least a tiny bit.  Had you just noticed and appreciated but not done the affirmation, you would have benefitted but your loved one would not have known of your appreciation, nor benefitted from your affirmation.  Relationships also benefit significantly when affirmational love is performed often and well.

Being Real

Affirmation rests on authenticity and sincerity.   If our affirmations are perceived as credible and realistic they will encourage trust in us and what we are asserting.  If our affirmations are perceived as genuine, they can be relied on, whether or not the recipient perceives in themselves the affirmed quality.  

When affirmations are seen as false, fake or unrealistic, they get discounted.  The person making a phony affirmation loses credibility and may be judged as untrustworthy.  Even if the motivation is to improve or advance a relationship, making false affirmations is like building a relationship on feet of clay -  it likely will topple in the first storm.  Link “Talking Styles That Hurt and Help Love”

Positive affirmational love can encourage hope, especially when someone is facing a difficult challenge.  It sends the messages, “you’re not alone”, “I’ve got your back” or “you can do it”.  Be careful not to overstate your affirmation because the affirmation is to help a person find strength in themselves.  Plus, if it is not seen as plausible, it will do little or no good. Heartfelt affirmations ring true.

Hints for Talking Affirmationally

1. Avoid lingering in the past tense, instead affirm mostly in the present and future tense.   

2. Avoid negative words like no, never, don’t, won’t, can’t and not.  

3. Avoid negative implication words and phrases like lose, quit, stop, get rid of, get away from.  

4. Avoid words that focus on or imply an absence like saying “I  want”, “I wish”, “I would like” – these can suggest that a person  lacks something.

5. Avoid drawing attention to a problem more than to a solution.  

6. Be careful with comparison words like more, greater, less, better, and worse.

7. Be careful with ambiguous words, specific words work better.

8. Use positive emotion words.

9. If possible, be pithy with brevity.

  10. Use plausible phrases and positive words.

  11. Be personal.  Use the words “I”, “I am”, “You”, “You are”, “We are” and avoid impersonal words.

How Much Affirmational Love Is Enough?

There is a host of research pointing to 5 love-positive communications to every 1 love-negative communication being optimal for keeping a spousal or heartmate love relationship well functioning (See the book, Principia Amoris: The New Science of Love by Dr. John Gottman).  Others think a 3 to1 ratio may do well enough, especially in demanding situations.  Then there are those whose studies suggest first it would be good to include evaluating the neutral communications, along with the positive and negative, before making a comparison.  There is, it seems, some evidence which suggests that more than 5 neutral to 1 positive may cause an erosion effect on a love relationship.

A question has arisen about whether a neutral message actually is a minor negative when it comes to love?  One elaboration of the 5 to 1 rule suggests both positive and negative communications must first be evaluated as to their strengths i.e. mild, moderate or strong, before comparing them.  It may be 3 mild communications equal 1 moderate, and 2 moderates make 1 strong communication, or something like that.  As you can see it can get rather complicated.

Generally the 5 to1 rule seems backed up by the most research.  7 or more positives to 1 negative may start to be too much and indicate relational devaluation of positives might occur.  If there are an equal number of negatives and positives, or if negatives outnumber the positives, that suggests that dysfunction and approaching breakup of a relationship is getting more likely.

So, now we suggest you ask yourself this question.  Do your love-positive outputs to your loved ones (praises, compliments, smiles, hugs, kisses, squeezes and so forth) outnumber your negative outputs (criticisms, scowls, gripes, growls, putdowns, complaints and the like) at the, more or less, 5 to 1 ratio?

Deeply and sincerely affirming the worth, importance and nature of those you love, definitely is a best practice of love.  Frequently sending affirmational statements and actions greatly advances the vitality and quality of love relationships.  In our experience, learning and using affirmational love nurtures and inspirits love connections.

One more little thing: are you going to talk over the ideas you have just read with someone.  If you do, it probably will enrich your to do so, at least a bit.  If you do that, please mention where they came from at this website and, thereby, spread some love knowledge around.  Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Did you grow up with enough loving affirmation of your being and doings, at whatever the amount, and what effect did it have on you?