Is "I Can't Live without You" Real Love?

When a person says “I need you, I can’t live without you” does that mean they really love you?  The simple answer is NO!  This statement more likely represents someone in a dependency state of one kind or another.  It even may reveal someone experiencing the rather extreme state of infantile dependency and mistakenly thinking it’s love.  Infants cannot survive without the real love and care of adults.  Adults can.

Unfortunately in romance some people emotionally regress into a more infantile dependency-like state.  They literally feel they need and cannot live without a certain other person.  That person is to be their devoted, emotional caretaker – much like a loving mother with an infant.

If you hear someone seriously tell you “I need you.  I can’t live without you.” they actually may be subconsciously asking you to become their parent and to let them become your child emotionally.  This is not, and is not likely to become healthy adult-to-adult love.  In adult love I do not addictively and regressively ‘need’ you.  Rather, as an adult, I can live without you, and instead of needing you I choose to ‘want’ you in my life.  It’s a free will choice instead of a dependency-based compulsion.

Let me suggest that for adults being wanted is much better than being needed.  Mature adults are self-dependent, unless they are disabled or otherwise debilitated.  Adults can use help but are not dependently needy of it.  Mature adults form mutually equality-based, interdependent unions, not addictive co-dependent or infantile, dependency-based, parasitical-like relationships.

If you are an able-bodied and able-minded adult the hard but good truth is you can survive, you can take care of yourself, and if you lose a loved one you eventually can recover, and if you wish you can find another to love and to be loved by.  Yes, you may hurt enormously without a particular person you love, and you may hurt for quite a long while.  However, you also can go on to recover and get back to a state of healthful okayness even though it is extremely difficult, especially at first.  Thus, for functioning adults “I can’t live without you” is false.

Now, it must be noted that someone simply saying “I need you and can’t live without you” is not enough evidence upon which to make a judgment.  However, it may be a clue to take into account along with other evidence when evaluating a relationship.

Many suicides seem to happen in the more extreme “I can’t live without you” mind-set. These occur when the person they think they love rejects them, probably because of expanding dependency and its usual accompanying dysfunctional, obsessive possessiveness.  Evidence suggests that most of these suicides would not happen with the right kind of therapy.  Most also would not happen with greater maturity and self-love development.  Also, there is evidence that points to the fact that most of these suicides probably would not occur if people just were able to stay alive for another six to eight weeks.

However, the pain of rejection and what feels like parental abandonment can be so intense as to seem unbearable.  The person experiencing this often can be saved by the love of friends and family, by experiencing strong spiritual love, and by the unique love relationship that sometimes grows in certain kinds of psychotherapy. Additionally there are medications that can be helpful.

Most people saying the “I can’t live without you” statement probably are just trying to emphasize how much they feel love for someone.  They, therefore, are not to be taken as speaking literal truth.  They might be saying it lightheartedly or just because it seems like the romantic thing to say.  Of course, some might say it as a seduction or manipulation effort.  Usually only when said with serious literal meaning does it becomes something to worry about.

Severe “I can’t live without you” mental states can be dangerous, sometimes to the point of physical abuse or even homicide if the person who is depended upon threatens or tries to leave.  So, be careful and get professional advise if you find yourself wanting to leave a relationship with a severely needy, co-dependent person.  When there is infantile dependency in a person with an adult body there can be a danger of physical violence.

The infantile mind-set in an adult body can inflict on others very destructive temper tantrum behavior.  If alcohol, drugs or even some medicines which lower self-regulation are added to the infantile dependence mind-set the danger potential can be quite high.  With infantile dependency, misidentified as romantic love, there also can be obsessive compulsive behavior which sometimes results in stalking which sometimes ends with violence.

Therefore, if the “I love you and can’t live without you” theme is predominant extreme care is recommended.  It is important to know that what has just been described is fairly rare in adult relationships but rather more common when dealing with youth and the chronically immature.  In smaller and shorter doses it sometimes may be seen in those who have been taught to think of romantic love as something of an obsessive, possessive, insane state.

If you find yourself saying “I love you, and I can’t live without you” please examine why you want to say such a thing.  Is it just stylistic?  Is it a way to sound romantic?  Or does it represent how you really, strongly and consistently feel?  If it does you might want to consider making some changes and while you’re at it consider therapy.

Now, consider what this would mean.  Suppose you were to hear a lover say “I do not need you.  I just super, incredibly, fantastically want you!”  Or “Of course I don’t need you; I can take care of myself quite well.  I just happen to choose you above absolutely everyone else to be in my life, to share life with you, and to bring you as much joy as I can for as long as I can”.  Let me suggest that these represent healthier, and stronger, and more likely to be real, as well as healthful forms of love. 

The “I can’t live without you” statement may represent weakness, a possible destructive addiction to a person, and a general psychopathological state devoid of any true real love.  The “I choose you and I want you” rather than “I need you” kinds of statements, from this mental health professional’s viewpoint are far more desirable.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What do you think of the ancient, love lore teaching that says “If you love someone set them free much as you would a bird held in your hand.  If they return to you your togetherness is meant to be.  If they do not return to you that too is meant to be.”?

Related posts:

1. Getting Healthy, Real Love in Your Life
2. False Forms of Love: Shadow Side Attachments
3. False Forms of Love: Relational Dependencies
4. False Forms of Love: Unresolved Conflict Attraction Syndrome
5. False Forms of Love: Limerence and Its Alluring Lies

Returning to a Bad Lover? - A Blocking Technique

Synopsis: Alicia’s return to pain; her escape; And her favorite, most powerful, love destruction-blocking technique in seven easily learned step.

With tears running down her cheeks Alicia sobbed,  “How can I stop myself from going back to him?  Every time I do it’s worse than the time before!  When am I ever going to learn?  It can never work.  I don’t even like him anymore.  If I keep going back to him I know it will destroy me.  After I’m away from him for a while I get to a point where I keep remembering the early days when everything felt good.  Then I do it all over again, except each time I’m getting hurt worse and I’m hating myself more for doing this to myself”.

That was Alicia before she learned in counseling how to escape her destructive cycle and do a lot of healthy, self-love techniques which greatly empowered that escape.  Alicia also learned how to block the things inside her that pushed her back toward that kind of false, destructive and addicting love relationship which repeatedly caused her so much agony.  She typified a lot of men and women who attempt going back to the love nourishment that they once so enjoyed, only to discover there was no nourishment and instead only poison there now.

False and addictive romantic love relationships which can destroy people’s lives abound, and they’re just as hard to overcome and recover from as any serious illness or addiction.  To help with that here is one of the techniques that Alicia and many others have found especially useful in blocking a return to a false and destructive lover.  It goes like this:

Step One Purposefully, but briefly, remember one of the most painful and destructive episodes in the relationship history you have with the destructive, bad lover you need to stay away from.  Remember the behaviors, the events – especially the pain, and anything else that made that experience bad.  Let yourself be fully aware of everything that was awful during that time; don’t deny, or dodge, or make light of any of it.  Briefly feel the agony of that awful episode.

Step Two Now think up a good, brief title for that bad experience.  Not a funny title, not a nostalgic title, not a sweet title nor a title that is in any way at all enjoyable.  It needs to be like a movie or book title that sums up or clearly points to the total, bad experience.  Here are a few examples that I am familiar with: “Raped Again”, “Broken Heart and Broken Body”, “Even When I Am with, I’m Alone”, “The Night I Found Him in Her”, “Nowhere Lower to Sink”, “Then Nothingness”, “Lost a Wife, Lost a Child, Lost Myself”, “When Death Became My Option”, “The Night of a Thousand Humiliations”.

Step Three In large, bold, dark print write this title at the top of a card that you are going to carry with you.

Step Four Repeat this process with four more of the other worst, most painful experiences you have had with the bad lover you have decided you need to stay away from.  This will give you five, impactful titles on a card.  It also will give you five titles summarizing the worst of your experiences with that person which are likely to, in some form or another, be re-experienced if you continue to go back.  Under the titles you might want to write down labels for the horrible emotions you felt in each experience.  Some examples are: agony, anxiety, betrayed, cheated, depressed, drained, empty, fake, ground down, hate, inadequate, jealous, loveless, mangled, oppressed, prideless, etc. – you get the idea.

Step Five Make several copies of this card, putting them close at hand wherever you have a phone, by your bed, at work, in your car, in your billfold and anywhere else you commonly look.

Step Six Any time you start to think about your bad lover, anytime you have any thought about contacting or returning to that lover, any contacts you receive from that bad lover, and any time anything reminds you of that bad lover take out your card and start reading those titles.  Remember the pain and ask yourself, “Am I on my way to having that agony, and probably worse, all over again?”.  If you think, “This time it will be different” remind yourself of the agony you experienced after the last time you thought that, and read the title most appropriate to those thoughts.

Step Seven Now go do a healthy act of upbeat self-love, preferably including some fairly active body movement.  Remember, motions help to change emotions.  Calling or otherwise connecting with someone who cares about you and getting some of their love would be a good idea.  Taking yourself somewhere pleasant, listening to happy upbeat music, buying yourself a self-love gift, doing something fun erotically or otherwise, and giving thanks for the fact that you are not now, right this minute, in the deepest depths of the agony you once were suffering, like in the number one titled experience, and number two titled experience, etc.

Many people have found this technique to be an excellent assistance in not going back to bad and false love situations.  However, this is only an assistance technique and other work will probably be necessary.  This technique is only one of many that may be useful to you and that you can learn for helping yourself.  Working with a good, love knowledgeable counselor or therapist is likely to get you to a healthy outcome and on the road to a new, far healthier, romantic love life when you’re ready for that.  Handling these difficulties all by yourself might not be your best way to deal with this kind of recurring difficulty.  If trying by yourself was going to work you would have succeeded already, don’t you think?

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
If you are hungry for new and better love are you taking the risk of going to truly new and different places where those who have and grow love are likely to be circulating?

(Hint: places where people are working to help others, working for the advancement or improvements of living and related things, and places where people are learning about those things might be the kind of places to consider for taking such risks).

Related posts:

1. Love Affairs: Bad?, Good? and Otherwise
2. Why Love Problems Hurt So Bad
3. Could You Be a LAT Lover and Succeed at It?
4. Are You A "Challenge" Lover ?
5. Self-Love, a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? 

Kissing with Love

Synopsis: We start with a kiss puzzle; then address a kiss learning question and give steps you might want to take along with some important things to consider about love-filled kissing; then we go on to great kiss reception; and some thoughts about what could get in the way; then we end with a personal challenge question.

A Kissing Puzzle

“His kisses are so filled with love,” Angela sighed.  “There’s something about the way she kisses me that makes me feel like I am really loved and really special,” Brad affirmed.  “The way he kisses me is totally hot and sexy, and it really turns me on.  But I don’t feel any love in it,” Claire protested. 

Donald moaned, “My lover is such a romantic kisser.  The trouble is it’s just romance.  I don’t feel any love in it”.  “Evelyn sighed and said, “I wish when I kiss or get kissed there was something more to it.  It’s nice but it’s always kind of blah; no sex, no romance and nothing I’d call kissing with love feelings”.

What is going on or not going on for the people who made those statements about kissing?  Is there a problem in the way they kiss or the way their partners kiss?  Is it that love’s magic is sometimes in the kiss and sometimes not?  Does it have something to do with the way they saw kisses done in the families they grew up in?   Does it have something to do with the mood or attitude at the time of kissing?  Is the answer in their neurochemistry?  Were they, as children, somehow traumatized with kissing?  Do some people have good kissing teachers and some not?  Are all of them in some type of false love and so they just can’t feel any real love?

The answer to the above questions is – maybe all of these things and other answers too. Biochemistry is likely to be part of it because the saliva in people who are feeling love and the people who are not feeling love is perhaps rather different.  There also may be tiny neuro-electrical differences sensed only in the non-conscious mind.  Definitive research on this has yet to be done.

Can We Learn to Make Our Kisses More Love Filled?

I think the answer to this is probably yes, and you really have to put your heart into it.  Here are three ways and some additional things to think about that may help you do the giving, the getting and the growing of real love through kissing.

∙    First, before you do anything else, take a few seconds to center yourself in your love for the person you are about to kiss. (See mini-love-lesson “Love Centering Yourself”).  You might want to use mental imaging, or something similar, and fantasize your love pouring up from your heart and across to your loved one through your kiss.

∙    Along with love centering yourself, mentally see yourself putting everything else out of your mind except your love.

∙    As a you start to kiss purposefully, tell yourself you are opening yourself to letting your love out and your loved one’s love in.  You are filling with love and pouring love into your beloved.  You both are wonderfully saturated with love.  Focus on those or similar thoughts as you begin the kiss.  Then just feel what you feel.

Here are some additional things you might want to give thought to.
Kissing with love often begins with the eyes and the facial expressions of love. Sometimes looking at someone with love, especially if they are looking back with love, is done at some distance and sometimes it starts just inches away from each other.  These looks may be of tenderness, may be intense, may be caring, or may be a sweet happy smile.

∙    How you move toward someone to kiss them is important too.  The movement toward starting a love-filled kiss often is a bit slow but very direct.  The slowness helps the other person mentally and emotionally start to psychologically connect with you before the physical kiss actually happens.  The directness helps them mentally and emotionally feel that energized intimacy is starting to happen with you.  Fast surprise kisses also can convey love but usually not with the precious, cherishing feelings of the kisses that are approached more slowly and directly.

∙    Closing the eyes first on the part of the recipient, and then the initiator, often helps.  This allows a fuller focus on the feeling of the kiss and the emotions that come with it, without visual distraction or interference.

∙    Touching with hands, arms and body are also important to creating a love-filled kiss.  With a loving embrace, the kiss becomes a total body experience.  Caresses, so long as they are not too sexual, holding hands, and light fingertip gliding touches on the back, neck, cheeks, arms, etc. can assist a person feeling this really is about being loved.

∙    The length of time the kiss takes also has importance.  Usually lingering a bit, and truly savoring the experience, and not darting away too soon helps to both convey love and receive love feelings.
∙    Be aware of lip pressure and movement.  Kissing can be very light and tender, or more firm and passionate.  It kind of depends on what a person likes and wants to feel.  In the love-filled kiss, there may be some lip movement but again it is important for it not to be too sexual so that it can be really about love first and most.

∙    Parting from the kiss is the next important part.  After lips part, it usually is important to keep looking into the eyes of the person you have just kissed and continuing to lovingly touch them with your hands for a bit, then slowly pull apart while really savoring the experience.  That often is very enhancing to the love feelings possible.

Those are pretty specific instructions.  What I want to convey is for you to make kissing a love-filled art.  You may prefer eyes open – fine.  Your partner may not like the face touched much, that is OK.  Talk about your kisses, then give and ask for what you really like, as long as ‘love’ is the main ingredient.

Receiving a Love-Filled Kiss

How well do you think you receive a love-filled kiss?  Do you respond in kind?  Do you really focus on opening to the love coming in?  Do you let yourself feel fully and really loved?  Do you think things like “I’m really being loved at this moment”?  Do you think you really savor, digest, absorb and let yourself intensely experience the kissing with love you are receiving?  Are you able to be ‘in the here and now’, and nowhere else as you are kissed and kiss back?  Remember, receiving love well is a major way to give love.

What Can Get in the Way

Lots and lots of things can get in the way and block love being given, received and generated in a kiss.  Fear and its cousins, apprehension and anxiety, can do it.  Self-doubt, self-consciousness, feeling unworthy, insecurity and allowing distraction can operate to deprive you of the love experience in a kiss.  Coming from habit instead of love may dilute the kiss for both of you.  Worry about anything, trying to impress, focusing in the future or the past, guilt, duty, work, embarrassment, shame connected to anything, feeling clumsy, awkward, inferior or superior, all can take you away from fully experiencing the kiss and the love that may be coming with it.

Letting any of these things occur can crowd your mind and prevent you from fully feeling a love-filled kiss.  That can make the experience far less than you both might want it to be.  It also can have a negative effect on the person you are being kissed by.  Any of these things might make you pull away too soon, or make you move in some less than loving way.  Such movements can be interpreted as rejection, repulsion, discomfort with intimacy, valuing the person kissing you as relatively unimportant, or in some other way sending an anti-love message.

So, as you think about these things, how are you doing at giving, getting and growing love through love-filled kissing?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who are you going to kiss next, and how are you perhaps going to make it a truly love-filled kiss?

Power or Love or Both

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

A Common Confusion

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

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

Gender Issues

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

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

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

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

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

The Warrior Princess

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

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

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

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

Power Positive or Power Negative

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

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

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

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

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

Neutral Power

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

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

Grow Your Power, Integrate Your Power

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

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

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

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

As always, Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s look at each of these.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Related posts:

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