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Behaviors That Make And Grow Friendship Love

Mini-Love-Lesson  # 204

One of over 300 FREE mini-love-lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries -worldwide!

Synopsis: Discover Core, Critical, and Cardinal types of behavior which make friendship happen at all levels from mild to profound.  Then explore the extremely important and highly useful research revealed 12 major subcategories of friendship actions.  A recommendation for usage and furthering your friendship life, plus a few resources for learning more are also given.


Without Action Nothing Happens

Friendships, like love, require actions backed by emotions and thought.  Without certain kinds of behavior occurring, friendships cannot be started, grown, maintained, re-established or repaired.  Thanks mostly to research in social psychology and what is starting to be known as loveology “Is There Really A New Field Called Loveology?”, we know a fair amount about what those behaviors are.  Interestingly, they turn out to be rather similar to the behaviors associated with the getting and giving of healthy, real love.  What follows is a summarization of the behaviors that make friendship happen stemming from some of that growing body of research.

Understanding Friendship at Three Levels

Friendship can be seen to occur at different levels.  Some researchers use the three categories scale starting with mild or light or just beginning friendship, then go to medium but significant friendship, and then on to deep and/or profound friendship love “Understanding Friendship, From Mild Geniality to Profound Love”.

It is suggested that the behaviors that bring about each level are best viewed and understood in ways that are rather different in each of the three levels.  Keeping this in mind helps to understand friendship and friendship actions more fully, accurately and more than superficially.  Like love, friendship does not turn out to be simple.  However, with a little concentrated work, clarity, usefulness and ways to make abundant friendship improvements can become easily evident.  So, to gain the valuable benefits of Friendship and Friendship Love and reap those rewards, we suggest you may want to apply yourself to what follows.

The Three Major Groups of Friendship Behavior

Friendship behaviors have been classified in three major groups. Here they are called
Group I, The Core Behaviors of Friendship
Group II, The Crucial Behaviors of Friendship
Group III, The Cardinal Behaviors of Friendship
All three groups contain four more exact and highly important subcategories. These subcategories are quite similar to a research approach used for categorizing the many behaviors that have been seen to convey and result in healthy real, love and improved love relationships.

I.   CORE BEHAVIORS OF FRIENDSHIP
These are the behaviors best focused on for starting friendships, maintaining mild or light friendships and for generally being friendly and available for forming new friendships.  These behaviors continue to be important in categories II and III and in the subcategories of more comprehensive and advanced friendship behaviors.

1.  Expressional Friendliness  Includes: Facial Expression (smiles, looks of interest, caring attentiveness, etc.), Voice Expression (tone, speed, upbeat, volume, positiveness, etc.), Gestural Expression (open arms, waving, thumbs up, etc.), Postural and Stance Expression (moving toward, standing beside, leaning toward, etc.).  Note that all forms of expression by motion, (face, body, etc.) have been found to manifest about 55% of the communication value in informal, personal conversations.  Voice expression carries about 35% of the communication value (words only 7%).

2.  Tactile (Touch) Friendliness  Includes tap touches (especially good in beginning friendships), pats, buddy hugs, hand holding, upper body hugs and later full body hugs, etc.).  Such touches are best begun mildly, lightly, quickly, non-invasively, non-romantically and non-sexually and have been known to frequently and rapidly accelerate the development of friendship.

3.  Verbal Friendliness  Includes using friendly, positive words like “good, fine, okay, yes”, polite words like “thank you, you’re welcome, first names”, asking friendly questions, assistive statements like “can I help, can I assist you with that”, supportive words like “I agree”, I am so glad you told me that, I see it that way too” etc.  Note: Do not be phony but do go out of your way to look for sincere reasons to say such things.  Words, by the way, have been found to be only about 7% of the communication value in typical, informal, personal interactions.

4.  Gifting Friendliness  Giving both object gifts and experience gifts can be quite helpful in friendship development so long as the gifting is not overdone, overly expensive, overly frequent or, at first, overly personal.  Giving someone a book is an object gift and taking someone to a movie they want to see is an experience gift.  Experience gifts and symbolic object gifts usually are more impactful than practical gifts.

II.  CRUCIAL BEHAVIORS OF FRIENDSHIP
Here you find the behaviors to focus on for having deeper and more significant friendships.  These behaviors are seen as crucial for growing a friendship from mild to significant and with lasting meaningfulness.

1.  Affirmational Friendship  Included here are honest praises, compliments, statements of personal appreciation, approval, respect and validation along with actions like sharing emotional experiences together, taking a friend’s side in a dispute, coming to a friend’s aid, just being there ready to help, celebrating a friend’s victories and special occasions, etc. and any other action which affirms the worth and importance of an individual to you personally.

2.  Self-Disclosure Friendship  Included here is revealing, by both word and action, your personal and more private idiosyncrasies, foibles, preferences, personal problems, failures, victories, peculiarities, embarrassments, enjoyments, items of pride and joy, and anything else that lets yourself be both more intimately known and vulnerable.  Also included is the willingness to empathetically and nonjudgmentally hear the same kind of disclosures from another.  It is by this process that friendship becomes intimate and usually more powerfully bonded.

3.  Tolerational Friendship  As friendships continue and grow, friends run into each other’s less than pleasant aspects.  That is where friendships encounter the challenge of toleration.  However, some things are not to be tolerated or tolerated only temporarily.  For many, anything which is demonstrably harmful or destructive to anyone’s life, health or well-being fits in this category. 

Notwithstanding that caution, issues of fairness, freedom, truth, compassion, altruism and love also are to be considered here.  Lesser issues of intolerance especially for minor irritations, aggravations and annoyances suggest the possibility of a kind of mental self torturing occurring that correlates with secret or subconscious low self love on the part of the one who feels intolerance for these things.

4.  Receptional Friendship  It is a gift of friendship, and possibly of love, to receive well the actions of friendship and love which come from others.  It is receptionally loving to sincerely focus on those actions and who they come from, to purposefully appreciate them and then, more than perfunctorily, show that appreciation.  It is important to spend time truly appreciating the friendly and positive treatment you get from others, and not fake it.  When you fake it or pass it off too quickly, you do not really receive it or let it do you good.  That, in turn, reduces real friendship connecting.

III.  CARDINAL BEHAVIORS OF FRIENDSHIP
For growing deep, profound and lasting friendship love, the following subcategories are best focused on because they are seen to be of Cardinal Importance in this more profound process.  They encompass and are supported by the two groups and eight subcategories of behavior already described, plus they go deeper, broader and higher in their focus.  Thus, they yield a substantially deeper, broader and higher experience, more comprehension and sensing of friendship and the actions involved in creating profound friendship.

1.  Nurturing Friendship  Included here are all the behaviors that help people grow and become more than they were.  Nurturing friendship actions are supportive, encouraging, challenging, comforting, difficult truth telling, rewarding, understanding, valuing, sharing, honoring, appreciating, affirming and everything else which helps a person become more of the good things they can become.  Also included are the actions which help someone find and develop their own potentials, better meet their own challenges and better fulfill their own aspirations.

Nurturing means to assist in ways that strengthen, assists in making more effective, more complete, more accurately self honoring and more healthfully self loving.  It also means to do nurturing in ways that are in accord with another’s nature and ways of being their own unique self.  Some examples might be helping someone fulfill a lifelong dream, discover and actualize a hidden talent, improve general life skills and coping abilities, win at love or find ways to enjoy life more fully.

2.  Protectional Friendship  Real friends and true comrades are protective of each other’s safety and well-being and that protection often extends to their friends, family and important others.  Such friends stand together in facing adversity, are allies against enemies and in overcoming destructive occurrences.  They are often on the alert to warn of approaching damage, hurt and harm and are sensitive to and on guard about not being overprotective.  The phrase “I’ve got your back” typifies this aspect of friendship and the behaviors it brings forth.

3.  Healing Friendship  The research shows that friendships are very helpful in healing many maladies and injuries.  If someone you are close to in friendship is injured or ill you tend to act in whatever ways you can to help them get better.  In doing that, your assistive healing influence is practical and obvious.  But just being there with them or even close by, has been discovered to often have a surprising and mysterious healing and healthful effect.

This is true among the physically sick, injured and debilitated and even those undergoing various normal medical procedures like pregnancy and birth.  This is even more true among those psychologically in need of healing.  Just going through a difficulty knowing someone who cares is there for you has a more than is completely understood, healthful effect on many.  In the area of relationship healing, such friendship has been known to save lives, children’s mental health and whole family’s existence.

4.  Metaphysical Friendship  Praying for a friend is the most common metaphysical behavior of friendship but around the world there are many others done in various cultures and societies.  Lighting a candle at an altar, flying a prayer flag, creating a blessing-type sand painting, doing liturgical dancing for spiritually honoring of a loved one or deep friend, the reverential reading of sacred texts, spiritual chanting, singing spirituals, envisioning white and gold light exercises, ritual washing and baptizing and a host of greatly varying religious and spiritual rituals, all constitute metaphysical behaviors that are sometimes done by friends on behalf of friends.

It is hard to prove scientifically but there are well conducted studies showing surprisingly positive and supporting results for doing all of these kinds of metaphysical behaviors.  For certain, they often are beneficial to those who do the behaviors and for the target people who are aware of the behaviors being done on their behalf.  But what about those in deep unconscious states, those unaware that such actions are being conducted and aimed at them, those geographically far away and especially what about the loved dogs, horses, cows and other animals for which such metaphysical actions seem to benefit.  One of the things we do know is that metaphysical, or spiritual if you will, behaviors are enacted often with intense emotional energy, great sincerity and profound love by and for friends.  They, therefore, constitute this separate category of Cardinal Friendship behavior.

Recommendation: To improve your life’s friendship situation, give special attention to the 12 subcategories above and choose which ones you want to make improvements in.  Then set to work on doing so, as you also work to do so from deep inside your heart self.

For further friendship understanding link to mini-love-lessons Friendship and Its Extraordinary Importance, Friendship ‘Like’ to Friendship ‘Love’”, and Understanding Friendship, From Mild Geniality to Profound Love.

Some books you might want to read: Love and Friendship by Allan Bloom, Friends As Family by Karen Lindsey, Friendship: How to Give It, How to Get It by Dr. Joel D. Block, The Friendship Factor by Alan Loy McGinnis, Friendship by Martin E. Marty, The Meaning of Friendship by Dr. & Sufi Master Nurbakhsh and How to Make Friends As an Introvert by Nate Nicholson.

As always – Go and Grow with love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly


PS: Help spread love knowledge.  Tell somebody about this site – okay?

Love Success Question: Are you going to evaluate your own friendship actions using the 12 kinds of behavior described above? (By the way, with just a few adaptations you also can use the same 12 behaviors for evaluating your love behaviors in each type of love relationship – parent, mate, self, etc.).


Re-Sparking Your Love

Synopsis: ‘Sparking’ is first explained, then ascending, leveling off and sinking love relationships; and those in need of re-sparking are discussed; and finally 10 not so usual how-to’s for re-sparking a love relationship 


Sparking

In years gone by couples talked about sparking, or sparking up their romantic or love-mated relationships.

Sparking could be anything from suggestive flirting to writing and reading love poems, to passionate kissing and erotic fondling. Sparking up could be returning to dating actions, dancing, being seductive and engaging in more than usual sexual action. All this was aimed at causing “sparky” or enlivened, desirable feelings together. Today in our busy world lots of couples could use some sparking or re-sparking.

Ascending, Leveling off or Sinking?

What do you think of the idea that says ‘if you’re love life isn’t growing’ its dying’? A great many couples don’t consciously know it but they have been subconsciously programmed to think that in the early stages of a love relationship it’s all exciting and automatically growing, but then it levels off, and if all goes well it just stays leveled off and ongoing. Sort of like a mesa (a flat top mountain), there’s the climbing up, and you reach the flat place, and you walk on the flat place from then on, until the end and you fall off or have to climb down. Others think that at least some romantic relationships are more like a another type of mountain, one you can keep going higher and higher on.

Then of course there are those who think of romantic relationships more like a swamp, but we will not deal with that right now. In your love relationships, not only with a romantic love partner, but with children and family, with friends, etc. do you think you are going about it in a way that is ascending, i.e. getting better and better, or leveling off, or slowly perhaps, sinking?

Some think there is no such thing as leveling off, there is only very slow deterioration or declining slope. That is the ‘you are growing, or you are dying’ point of view. It is true that lots of spouse-type love relationships do level off and become dull, emotionally flat or bland, and that can lead to stagnation and deterioration without people noticing it soon enough. That is when ‘re-sparking’ your love relationship is likely to help in more ways than you might imagine.

Re-Sparking How to’s and Science

Here are some suggestions, backed up by some scientific evidence as to what they might accomplish:
1. Kiss more, longer and with more variety. Studies at Arizona State University found that couples instructed to kiss more often, reduce their stress hormones and cholesterol levels, along with increasing their happiness.

2. Touch more, especially more lovingly and intimately. Don’t just have perfunctory sex, or if sex has become difficult, do much more caressing, intimate cuddling, and tender erotic and affectionate stroking.

3. Look with love. While mentally focusing on how you love each other, look lengthily into each other’s eyes when talking, don’t just glance, really look with appreciation. The University of California researchers discovered that couples who have good eye contact, and especially with affectionate touching, were a lot happier and felt a lot more appreciated than others.

4. Talk nice. Remember your voice tones can send very different messages than the words you say. Also remember ‘The 5to1 Ratio’. Replicated research at several institutions has shown that couples who average ‘five positive, affirming comments’ to ‘every negative remark’ do the best in happiness and successful, lasting love relating. So praise, compliment and voice thanks frequently. Couples who get ‘5 negatives’ to ‘every positive’ end, or go on in misery endlessly.

5. Sleep close. In Britain researchers discovered that couples who touch as they go to sleep, while they sleep, and when they wake up, and couples who snuggle a lot, and are usually within an inch or less of each other at night are happiest. It seems ‘the further apart physically, the further apart emotionally’. If there are medical reasons not to sleep together, cuddle more before and after sleep.

6. Do new things together. Go new places, take a class together, volunteer, work together for a cause you both are for, learn a new kind of dancing and meet new people. If you want to add new sparks to your heart-life, do new things together that require some learning together. That comes from studies done at the Marital Studies Lab, University of North Carolina.

7. Play with sex toys together. Research done at Indiana University revealed that both males and females who play with sex toys together, and especially vibrators are sexually more satisfied, and interestingly enough they more frequently get regular medical checkups and do better self exams physically.

8. Use visual reminders. Couples who put up pictures from their previous years together, and have mementos around, and have other visual reminders of vacations and other good times together, help to reconnect and inspire them, or in other words ‘re-spark’ their relationship better and more often, plus they plan more good events to put in their life together. That comes from the Couples Lab at the University of Wisconsin.

9. Co-write your love story. According to the University of Pennsylvania, Center for Couples and Adult Families, it will do you and yours a lot of good to write the narrative history of your love relationship. That can start you talking about future hopes and dreams, and help you feel more bonded together and generally ‘re-sparked’.

10. Study Love and It’s How to’s. Clinical evidence points to the couples who really, consciously work to learn more about how to show, receive, grow and make healthy their expressions of healthy, real love do far better than those who do not, and they do better than those who only do this kind of study in a more minor way.

Thanks to AARP for research guidance on these studies.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly



Love Success Question: Are there signs that your major love relationship(s) could use some re-sparking?

Transcendental Love: Mysteries and Wonders for Your Future?

FREE Love Lesson #176


Synopsis: Pondering the many, yet rare, profound experiences of transcendental love (TL) introduces this mini-love-lesson; what Russian Loveology tells us about TL; and then what you and yours might do to experience the wonders and marvels of TL; more.


What Do You Know about Transcendental Love?

Do you know that there are several million people who deeply and sincerely tell of transcendental love (TL) experiences mysteriously and wonderfully changing their lives?

Sometimes they speak of the experience making their lives marvelously more meaningful, giving them new and better life purpose and a fresh life path, and also TL deeply bonding them with others in ways seemingly beyond explanation?  Others tell of those experiences giving them great comfort, astounding inspiration, a sense of cosmic understanding and that they were the very most important experiences of their lives.

Have you heard of the couples who report awesome, intimate connecting and uniting experiences by way of what can be well categorized as a transcendental love events?  Then there are the almost mystical incidences which have momentous, positive effect on whole families, deep friendships and strong comrade alliances.  Upon inspection these too may be legitimately described as transcendental love happenings.

Are you aware that many civilization’s best contributors and progress creators had what can be seen as a profound, transcendental love experience prior to producing the influence they came to be known for?

Common, Uncommon Transcendental Love Experiences

You are awake and alert in the middle of the night.  For unknown reasons you take a long, lingering look at someone you dearly love who is laying nearby in a deep, peaceful sleep.  It could be your spouse, child, new baby, dearly beloved grandparent or anyone you have strong love for.  Suddenly you feel a most profound and abiding surge of magnificent, intimate and abiding love for that person.  Your sense of awesome love is so great it is almost painful.  You experience your love of, for and with that person in a way that transcends anything you have ever known before.

It is beyond comprehension, beyond explanation and far beyond your normal ways of perceiving reality.  Somehow you feel more intimately united, not only with this sleeping beloved but simultaneously with the life force itself and with the whole universe.  You weep quietly, and then an amazing sense of you know not what gives you a serene feeling of great, personal peace.
Something akin to that description has been given by countless others; it perhaps can be classified as the most common type of transcendental love experience by different people all around the world, although this experience cannot be called ‘common’ at all.

Other Ways of Transcendental Love

A very loving couple was sexually making love.  Suddenly they simultaneously were inundated by an ecstasy-filled sense of oceanic, spiritual connectedness.  This feeling of union was not only with each other but also with what they identify as a universal, loving deity.  This was far beyond their previous, climactic experiences.  Later they describe an awareness of the exploding and mingling of their spirits with all that is good and holy in existence.  Slowly, as they related it, their scattered, atoms of spirit seemed to drift back together and they became joyously rejoined.  When they left that altered state and reentered common reality they had a sense that they were now strangely changed and mysteriously linked.

Now, ponder this statement.  “I suddenly became intensely aware of something being wrong with my twin sister who was miles away.  She and I are so close and so heart connected we often intuit things about each another.  I immediately tried to call her and got no answer.  In a near panic I drove to her house and found her unconscious and bleeding from a fall she had taken in a home accident.  The ambulance got there in time but had I not sensed her emergency need she would have died.  I only can conclude our love bond transcends space, and maybe time too, and that is what saved her life.”
Now, contemplate this.  Someone, with a sense of serenity, sacrifices their own life for someone they dearly love transcending their own survival instinct and the evolutionary imperatives of genetic continuance.  It is thought that somewhere in the world this kind of love-motivated action happens almost everyday.

A prayer circle of loving family and friends gathers around a deathly ill loved one.  The circle offers prayers, perhaps chants, sways and makes ritualistic gestures while going into a mutual, deeply meditative state.  From that moment on the observable symptoms of the deadly disease begin to alleviate.  Later evidence of the disease can no longer be found in the loved one’s body.

Countless, well-documented examples like these exist around the world and have existed throughout history.  Are these also examples of transcendental love at work?

What Is Transcendental Love?

First, let us be sure we are understanding the words ‘transcendent’ and ‘transcendental’. Both simply mean and refer to that which is happening beyond the range of normal or merely physical, human experience and that which surpasses ordinary, usual comprehension.  Transcendental often carries with it the connotation of being ‘higher’, more profound, greater, deeper, wider, more magnificent, universal and cosmically connected.  Transcendent can refer to that which passes beyond our understanding of space, time and the physical universe.

Words and concepts sometimes associated with transcendental are metaphysical, mystical, beyond human understanding, miraculous, extra sensorial, cosmic, poly-dimensional, infinite, eternal, spiritual, omnipresent, indescribable and ethereal.

Transcendental love is a term referring to a love or love experience that is so strong and/or so awesome that it goes well beyond the range of usual and normal, human experience, comprehension or control.  This love also is described with all the words that apply to ‘transcendental or transcendent’

What Russian Loveology Tells Us

In 2013 Russian scientists began officially establishing “loveology” as a separate, independent branch of the natural sciences.  As published in the European Journal Of Natural History (No2) they proffered three major areas of focus for the study of love.  One was biological love phenomena (includes physiological, brain science, physical medicine, etc.) another was what they called social-philosophic love phenomena (includes philosophy, psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, etc.) and the third was “transcendent” love phenomena (includes, metaphysical, historical, theological, spiritual, esoteric, etc.) and their interrelationship with one another.

They reasoned there was plenty of research evidence in all three areas concerning love, and that combined with the accumulation of science-based research led to the conclusionary pronouncement “We think that the time for loveology has come!”, including its emphasis on transcendent love.  Since then, more research projects into love have been launched and conducted, and a good many more are on the way including those into transcendental love phenomena.

Can You Have (Experience) Transcendental Love?

The simple answer is yes.  However, the statistical answer is probably not.  That is because, it appears, that the majority of people do not ever experience transcendental love, or if they do experience it at all, it only is minor episodes of it.  You, however, can do things to enhance your chances of having what many consider to be the most wonderful and miraculous form of love experience possible – that of transcendental love.

Here are some things you can do.  For an ongoing time, inundate yourself with the study of the transcendental experience and its tenants.  While doing so, engage in deep introspection, cosmic extraspection, and both seeing and connecting with others at their core, heart level.  For couples, creating and engaging in intimate, joint, spiritual practices has been known to be a very good way to seek the transcendental love experience.

Transcendental and other types of meditation, going on a vision quest, doing yoga mind, body and heart exercises, engaging in Sufi whirling dancing and chanting, following Hindu, Buddhist, Zen, Sufi Islamic, Taoist, Tantric, Judaic or esoteric Christian teachings and practices, along with any other spiritual/religious approach involving the transcendental, going to humanistic and positivistic psychology experiential workshops, retreats and classes, and doing the vast host of things similar to those just listed.

Also, inundating yourself with the study of love and continuously practicing what you learn as best you can tends to strengthen one’s transcendental love potential.  Also known to be helpful is immersing yourself in nature and its beauty-filled wonders, doing selfless altruistic service, doing personal growth therapy, doing pilgrimages to the shrines and places you personally find important and inspiring, and frequently engaging in deep meditation and prayer.  Couples, families and friends sometimes can do these things together and that, indeed, may enhance the transcendent love experience when and if it happens.

The message here is, for the transcendental love to happen, you may have to do love-oriented or love-possible things earnestly and with some expenditure of time and energy.  It probably will not work to just play around or toy with these endeavors.  However, the transcendental love experience may surprisingly just come to you one day for no known reason because that also is what is frequently reported.  The transcendental love experience is seen to be profoundly deep, astonishingly high and wondrously wide but not at all guaranteed or certain.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly



Love Success Question: Will you actually and actively explore one pathway or another toward transcendental love?

Where Does Love Rank in Your Life – Today?


Mini-Love-Lesson  # 273


Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson is about exploring where love ranks in your life with a number of different, intriguing questions and the significance of those explorations being more valuable than the answers you arrive at, although they are good too.


Why Care About How You Rank Love?

Let me suggested that exploring questions about yourself and love is likely to help you get more love balanced, love satisfied and love potent even if you do not get final answers to the questions.  Once it was said that “the unexamined life is not worth living”.  While that may be a bit extreme, the concept applies to love and to yourself.  One of the best ways to explore yourself and a topic is with the use of relevant questions.  So, let’s play around with some self-exploration questions concerning love and you (see “Thinking Love to Improve Love”).

How Can You Tell What’s Most Important?

Most people agree that love is important but how important?  Is it identified and measured by what you spend the most time on or apply the most energy into?  For lots of people that would mean something like work, business, making money, wealth, economic power, and that sort of thing, would be the most important thing in their life.  Another standard that we use for what is important is what makes you happy?  For some it could be making others envious, status, popularity, fame and the like.  For still others it might be sports, art, music, nature, etc.

Then there are those who value most being productive, creative, or contributory.  For many, ranking highest in importance are a heartmate, their family, their children and/or their deeply loved friends.  Doing good, justice, democracy, peace, freedom, equality, ecology, and universal well-being all rank extremely high.  Then there is love itself. In relation to all these things just mentioned where does love rank with you? (see “Thinking about Love, How Good Can Yours Get?”).

Some think that the real measure of what is important to you is what will hurt the most to lose.  Others think that it is not until you start to lose that which is most important that you, that you begin to value it much more highly.  Health or a dearly beloved one are examples.  Lately, a vast number of people the world over have been re-evaluating what actually is important. That is because they have lost, or nearly lost, someone due to the pandemic.  Whatever they were putting their life energy into has become ranked rather lower than it was before the virus.  Lots of those now see love and love relationships ranking quite a bit higher. Link “Is Love the Most Important Thing in the Universe?

Lip Service Love

In several philosophies, quite a few religions and a number of approaches to mental health, the high importance of love is stressed.  Unfortunately, no small number of those disciplines do not seem to accurately have much to say or do concerning the actual how-to’s of love.  They seem only to give it a fair amount of lip service.  I have often wondered why seminaries have so much to teach about faith and so little to teach about love.  That also is true of most of the behavioral sciences even though really good research is mounting concerning love.  I am heartened to say that Russia, somewhat surprisingly, is now the only country I know of in which some of the universities have degree programs in Loveology (see “Is There Really a New Field Call Loveology?”).

There are organizations providing courses, seminars and workshops focusing on love.  However, many are not relying on the new, well researched, wonderful and exciting knowledge about love.  They are often really about sex, or just improving bad communications or parroting the same old same old myths and hunches about love, and/or are just giving love lip service.  However, there are others that are quite good.

So, now please ask yourself this question.  Do you give the importance of love lip service and not too much else?  I suspect because you are reading this, the answer is no.  You are really delving into the subject of love by reading this and perhaps by reading other mini-love-lesson at this site.  If I am right – good for you!

Ranking the Kinds of Importance...

There are different kinds of importance.  There is immediate importance, pervasive importance, circumstantial importance and others.  Different things rise and sink in importance as life goes on.  For many people, if love is important at all, it is in the pervasive category that is taking somewhat of a backseat to the things of immediate importance.  It becomes of immediate and even extreme importance only when something goes very wrong in a love relationship. Unfortunately for many, then it is too late.

Love disasters and catastrophes are best handled like other emergencies before they arise.  Those who learn a lot about the how-to’s of doing love healthfully tend to be the ones who best avoid the love tragedies that afflict so many couples, families, parent/child relationships, friendships and the positive relationship with oneself.

For you personally, is it more important to love or be loved?  Is love something you hope to get around to later, after you handle X, Y or Z?  For you, does love have a spiritual importance?  Who or what do you love that might be important enough to give your life for?  Who or what is important enough to spend your life loving them or it?  Are you important enough to yourself to spend your life loving yourself as you love others?  Is it important to you to not only love but to love well?  For you and your life  – which kinds of importance are involved in each of those questions?

Are Some Aspects of Love More Important to You Than Others?

Which aspects of love are most important to you is another question worth considering.  Is feeling love, lovable or loving the more important aspect to you?  Is doing love or feeling love of more major importance?  In your life, what do you think is the significance of this statement, “Feeling love comes to us naturally. Doing love takes learning, practicing and then learning some more – always.”.  How about this statement, “Love is not an emotion but it can cause at least 100 different emotions.  Do you know them?”

Here is a big question.  Are you really ranking love important enough to learn how to do love well, practicing it to constantly improve and strengthen it, so as to take care of life’s big love challenges when they arrive in your life?

Well, there are a bunch of the questions you can explore and work with to understand where you are with love in your life and then, perhaps, even re-explore.  I suggest, it is the exploring that likely does you more good than finding the answers.

One More Thing

Who might you ask these questions to and talk them over with?  Doing that sort of thing can lead to amazing mutual explorations.  Discussion may add quite a bit to what you understand, can use and also enjoy talking about.  If you do that with one or more others, please mention this site and its many mini-love-lessons. Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Love Success Question: Are you having fun pondering the many puzzlements of love?

Fatal Attraction Syndrome - A False Form of Love

Synopsis: This mini love lesson first explorers a real life example of this false form of love’s deadly attack possibility; then answers what is a fatal attraction; and what is a fatal attraction syndrome; is there a difference between men and women with this syndrome; and what can be done.


A Deadly Attack

Dark was just falling and she slowly pulled her car deep into the shadows of the overhanging trees, across the street from her lover’s house.  She looked into a large bay window where his dining table was set for the evening meal.  Her furor grew as she watched her lover and his wife and their three children laugh and cheerfully sit down to enjoy a time of family love together.  She kept thinking “kill the mother, kill children and he will have to turn to me.”

When she saw her lover reach over and kiss his wife on the cheek she put the car in forward gear.  His wife kissed him back and he obviously enjoyed it.  Her foot stamped down on the accelerator and she took aim with the car.  Then at full power and with insane rage she raced full speed at the bay window. Her last thought was “Even if I kill all of us, I will have him with me in eternity”.  This is what she later related sitting in a women’s prison convicted of attempted murder.

Due to very good house construction no one died but all sustained serious injuries , one child crippled for life.  More than a year of family, individual and couple’s counseling brought the family through the ordeal that followed.  Expert testimony presented the perpetrator of this tragedy as suffering from the most dangerous of all ‘false forms of love’, that of the Fatal Attraction Syndrome.  That diagnosis, however, did not qualify her for an ‘innocent by reason of insanity verdict’ as her lawyer’s psychiatrists recommended.

This is but one of a number of traumatic and tragic fatal attraction cases I have dealt with in my work with the families of murdered victims, and as an expert witness.  Let me say that I also have worked with a number of people trying to escape from being the victim of a fatal attraction syndrome and with those suffering this affliction, and with that perspective I can tell you – it is not easy work.

What Is A Fatal Attraction?

A fatal attraction is simply defined as an attraction that can and sometimes does lead to death. Think ‘moth to candle flame’.

The fatality may be of the one who is attracted, as in the case of the moth.  The targets of the attraction also are in danger of dying via murder when the full, fatal attraction syndrome is at work.  Sometimes both die, as all too often happens in a murder-suicide termination of a fatal attraction relationship.  Whoever stands in the way of a person suffering a fatal attraction syndrome, and various innocent bystanders, also can be in serious danger of being the victims of fatal attraction syndrome dynamics.  In other words, no one dealing with a person in a severe fatal attraction syndrome dynamic should consider themselves safe.

What Is a Fatal Attraction Syndrome?

A fatal attraction syndrome is a fairly complicated, false love phenomenon involving a very destructive, obsessive and compulsive pattern of relational behavior.  It begins when a person first finds themselves, sometimes suddenly, very strongly psychosexually attracted to another person.
Quite commonly there grows up a delusional, fantasy conviction that the target of their attraction is, or certainly will become equally attracted to them.  The person afflicted with this syndrome then becomes increasingly, sometimes rapidly obsessed with seeking a possessive, controlling, intimate, exclusive, love-getting relationship with the targeted person.

Increasingly little or nothing else matters but the growing, consuming drive to have the targeted person become and be constantly available, and when that person is present for them to be fully focused on satisfying the desires of the one suffering this affliction.

This consuming drive eventually obliterates healthful, normal, interpersonal functioning though sometimes a semblance of outward normality superficially can be maintained.  In one fashion or another the behavior becomes more and more abnormal and extreme, and the emotional needs of the person experiencing the syndrome become increasingly impossible to satisfy.  When that happens truly crazy thinking mixed with horrible to experience emotions dominate and all too frequently lead to deadly behavior.

This syndrome is a form of False Love because it is not motivated by a desire and drive for the well being of the loved one, as is healthy, real love.  Instead, it is motivated only by a desire to get love.  People afflicted by this syndrome easily move toward harming the supposed loved one while real love is healthfully protective of the loved one (See “The Definition of Love” at this site).

How Does A Fatal Attraction Syndrome Work?

No one knows for sure how fatal attraction syndrome works because doing research on it, as you might imagine, is quite difficult.  Psycho-dynamically the thinking goes something like this.  A person encounters someone who sub-consciously reminds them very strongly of the mother they had when they were an infant, or father they had as a young child.

This sets off an infantile need to obtain the targeted person’s caring attention, focused nurturance and other behaviors indicative of love.  This grows into a regressive drive to have all needs satisfied by this one other person, which of course is impossible.  Thus, this insatiable drive becomes infuriatingly frustrated, which in turn triggers infantile rage.  Sometimes in uncontrolled fits of anger, and sometimes in diabolical well-planned and carried out actions destruction results.

Another theory is that there is a neuro-physiological or neuro-chemical maladaptive occurrence in the brain which is triggered into malfunctioning when psychosexual attraction mechanisms are activated.  It is hypothesized that this brain process may be a primitive mechanism going slowly out of existence but once was helpful in acquiring and retaining mating partners.

Since it so commonly is unsuccessful and so frequently results in the death of those who cannot escape it and in the death or incarceration of those who perpetrate this syndrome, it is speculated by some that it could be a way to wipe out the weak.  Thus, it would represent a ‘survival of the fittest’, evolution mechanism favoring those who go about love in a more loving, adult way.

Still others think that if ‘obsessive/compulsive disorder’ brain chemistry and ‘mate attraction’ brain chemistry mix with each other they may make a monstrous neuro-chemical mess in a person’s brain causing this syndrome.  This especially is likely if there is the added complication of severe ‘parent/child attachment insecurity’ in the background of the afflicted person.  All these explanations are hypothetical, educated guesses; no one knows for sure.

What About Sexuality in a Fatal Attraction Syndrome?

Sexuality usually plays a big role in this syndrome, but not always.  Quite frequently the sexual desires of the one experiencing the syndrome are part of the ‘need package’ they want satisfied by the person they have fixated on.  It frequently seems that the sex desires of the afflicted grow more peculiar, then bizarre and extreme, and finally dangerous.  When the sex desires get to a level where they cannot be satiated, violent sexuality may result.  This is where death sometimes occurs.

Does Loving a Person with This Syndrome Make a Difference?

So far the evidence available would suggest that in the long run, even with lots of healthy, real love being showered on the fixated person, it probably won’t have a sufficient, curative effect.   Certainly there may be cases where love has made a sufficient difference, and that probably especially is true in the early stages of this difficulty.

Some people who suffer from this syndrome become stalkers and in other ways keep invading the privacy and personal lives of their targets.  They never get close enough to be loved but in the process they can cause lots of fear and misery in their target.  The love of family and friends may help somewhat.  Also putting stalkers, privacy invaders, etc. (especially the scary, threatening ones) in prison long enough that they may mature, seems to help some.

With other people the syndrome seems to start after a relationship has been going for awhile, and they indeed could be loved by the one who becomes their obsessional target.  Once the syndrome takes hold, the love given to the obsessed person becomes ‘never good enough’, ‘big enough’ or ‘right enough’, or so it seems.

I consulted on a case that involved what seemed like a quite romantic and erotic relationship, that was doing well for more than a year.  However, when she wanted a little more time to herself he became compulsively domineering, insisting that her career be put aside along with her family and her friends, and that he be the only person in her life.

This led to a violent breakup.  He then followed her, bugged her house and all sorts of similar invasive things.  Physically violent fights erupted in public.  Restraining orders, and injunctions, arrests and other legal and police actions only seemed to make it worse.  It ended when he smashed down her front door with an ax, and then smashed through the bathroom in which she was hiding, and at the last possible second she brought out the gun the police had advised her to carry, and when he still raised the ax and advanced on her she shot him through the heart, killing him instantly.

Is There a Difference between Men and Women with This Syndrome?

No, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference.  Both men and women are susceptible to becoming dominated by fatal attraction syndrome.  Some people think that females who had more difficulty being loved by their fathers and males by their mothers experience this syndrome, but no one knows that I’m aware of.  One group that some people think is less susceptible to being afflicted by this syndrome are those who seem to be fairly strongly bisexual.  Another resistant group is made up of both the men and women who become strongly, healthfully self-loving.

What can be done?

For those men and women who suspect they may be in the destructive throes of this syndrome, seek therapy with a psychotherapist who is experienced and works deeply and powerfully.  If medicines are prescribed, take them.  If hospitalization is recommended, go.  This is a serious condition that all too often only gets worse without help.

For the friends and family of people they think might be caught up in a Fatal Attraction Syndrome get them to therapy.  If they are violently acting out already, get the police involved.  Then love them a lot, and if requested to go to family therapy to help also.

For those who are targeted, if you are being stalked or if you are experiencing other invasions like your computer being hacked or phone being tapped, seek the aid of police and possibly an attorney, then go to counseling for yourself.  Also take lots of safety precautions like double locking doors and windows and obtaining a good burglar alarm.  As much as possible be with people who can protect you.

If things are going from bad to worse, in spite of those safety actions, I’m sorry to advise doing what so many end up having to do to save their lives.  That is disappear.  Many people only have survived this severe syndrome by moving to another city, out-of-state or even out of the country.
A fatal attraction syndrome can involve incredibly powerful obsessions and compulsions, and in an especially bright person can be extremely difficult to escape.

I’m aware of a case in which he searched for her for three years and found her in another nation, forced her to put on scuba equipment, took her down deep in a lake, tied her to a sunken log, cut off her air supply, tied himself to a log and cut his own throat, so they died together in the only peaceful place he had ever known.
I’m also aware of a woman who after eight years found her targeted person and managed to secretly poison him, though he did survive and she’s in prison now, still writing him passionate letters.  The extremes to which fatal attraction syndrome afflicted people sometimes go can be both intensely frightening and quite astonishing.

For everyone else, watch out for people who are overtly domineering, perfectionistic and controlling, covertly needy and insecure, obsessional, compulsive, idealistic about romance, have few or no true close friends, are sometimes violent and have outbreaks of rage, who are actively substance addicted, false love addicted, are easily jealous, can’t hear criticism or negatives about themselves, and who were likely either ignored a lot or suffocatingly parented.

Again, arming yourself with real, love knowledge in order to identify false love behaviors and syndromes is self-loving protection and could save your life.  Good luck and beware.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly


Love Success Question Do you love yourself enough to stay away from a person who might seem to be prone to fatal attraction syndrome, even though otherwise they seem to offer you everything you ever wanted in a love relationship?  If you suspect you may be afflicted with this syndrome do you love yourself enough to immediately go get deep, strong help from a loving but powerful therapist?