Synopsis: A note on ongoing love; then getting a grasp of what is good and bad love reception starts our mini-love-lesson; leading to how to really receive love – part one having to do love mindfulness and really getting it, which is followed by part two on how to give love back by showing you truly got it.
Ongoing Love Is a Game of Pitch, Catch and Throw Back
First you have to notice love is coming your way, then you have to react to really catch it well and not let it go by or drop it, then you have to accomplish a good return pitch.Good and Bad Love Reception
When love comes your way, do you do a good job of receiving it? Some people are so bad at receiving love they unknowingly get themselves love-starved. They also unknowingly may be turning off people from trying to love them. That can ruin a love relationship. Those who are really good at love reception are better nourished and more energized by the love they receive. In the act of good love reception, someone good at love reception sends love back to the previous love sender. This greatly helps to form and maintain a love-generating, love-bonding, and love-cycling love relationship.Poor receivers dishearten and disappoint the people they love, and even may cause them to feel rejected and futile in their attempts to give love. Poor receivers also model and, therefore, program or unintentionally may teach their children to become poor receivers. Good receivers do exactly the opposite. Those who are good at love reception generally are much more liked, befriended, included and assisted than are those who are poor at love reception.
It turns out that receiving love well is an excellent way to actually send love to someone. It is one of the eight major types of behavior by which a person can directly help another person thrive on love. (See “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love” mini-love-lessons at this site). It is for that reason that it can be called Receptional Love and can be listed along with the other seven major types of behavior that convey love discovered by the massive research efforts in social psychology to understand love started by the eminent Dr. Clifford Swensen.
How to Receive Love Well: Part One
If someone sends you a statement of love, a gift of love, a loving
touch, a loving look or any of the other ways that show and convey love,
what do you do with it? First, of course, you have to notice it.
Sadly many people are very poor at noticing the love that is coming
their way. They have been programmed, even self-trained to be so
focused on a great many other things that they totally miss the love
that actually is there for them. Next, they have to count it. Once a
love action is noticed it is important to value it.Here is an example. A child, in an act of love toward a parent, goes to the trouble of making a picture. Maybe they go to a lot of trouble making the picture, really taking time with it. Then they present it to their parent as a gift of love. If the parent is busy with something else, like talking to someone, and the parent takes the picture but does not look at it and instead places it aside on a pile of other papers, where soon it will be buried by other papers; this parent has sent a message which says to the child, your gift of love is of no value.
If that or similar things happen at crucial times, and far too often, the child may learn not to behave with love. This child also may learn to feel unworthy, insignificant and even unlovable since loving behavior did not came back. Someday the parent may be asking, why don’t my children want to visit me, contact me, or show any signs that they love me? The parent also may wonder why their children have so much trouble with their own love relationships.
All was not lost. If the parent later were to come back to the child holding the picture, and with warm tones of voice and a smile say they have been looking at the picture, and soaking up what a fine gift of love the picture is, and how they will cherish it, and give it a place of honor in a scrapbook, they may have amended sufficiently their former poor love reception, and turned it into an act of good receptional love.
Love Mindfulness
It is the same with adults, only with complications. First notice, then take time to value or ‘count’ the demonstrations of love coming your way. Maybe you say to yourself, “He (or she) is holding my hand and that’s showing me some love, so I will let myself fully notice it and value it”. The next step is to let yourself more fully feel it. Don’t let your mind go off somewhere else. Stick with the fact that your hand is being held and that means some love can come in. Maybe you tell yourself, with a bit of a deeper breath, “I feel it; I’m being loved and I feel it, I am letting myself fully feel that this person holding my hand is loving me right now; I digest it; I absorb it and I let it nourish me”.I have heard people who are learning this mindfulness technique say, “I don’t have time for all that”. Sometimes I reply, “You don’t have maybe 15 seconds, even the 20 or 30 seconds it will take to do that? You don’t have time to feel loved? What will that do to you in the long run”? Usually they then begin to try what I’m suggesting they do, to absorb and digest the love that comes their way. You can do the same. Bear in mind, it does take practice and repetition to do it well.
Lots of love comes to us through statements. Those statements of love often are accompanied by loving looks and loving tones of voice. There may be a loving gesture or posture change (known as expressional love) like opening arms to us or leaning forward toward us. It is important we become mindful of all that, along with the words. In this way you get the whole behavioral love gift and not just part of it. If your beloved says “I love you” and all you do is snap back with “I love you too”, that is nice but usually it is not deep or nearly all you could be experiencing. If you take a couple of seconds to look into your beloved’s face and say to yourself something like “I’m being told ‘you’ ‘love’ ‘me’, and that’s important. I am taking it in, and I am absorbing it,. I am letting myself fully feel it and know it”. It is when we learn to do things like that, that we can much more fully receive love in a deep way and really be nourished by it.
Sometimes love comes to us through much bigger actions which take longer than a simple statement or an act like holding your hand. It is appropriate to take a lot longer to focus on, strongly value, and more deeply absorb those demonstrations of love. To feel precious and cherished by ongoing actions of love, to let ourselves feel honored by the day-to-day ways we are loved, to let ourselves feel highly valued by loving thoughtfulness, kindness, assistance, support and the many other ways we are loved also is highly important. By doing so, we help our loved ones succeed at loving us. Healthy, real love partly comes our way from those who truly love us, so that love accomplishes its goal of benefiting us, because this is what love does. Letting love do exactly that by absorbing it well, lets those who love us achieve one of love’s great goals. Anything that depletes good, full reception, helps inhibit love.
Training your mind not to let anything interfere with taking some time to really feel and absorb the love coming of your way helps. You can train yourself to do a good job of part one of receptional love. At first it may take more practice that you might think but like anything if you keep practicing you get better at it, and you begin to notice the good feelings and many other benefits that result. It may feel odd, strange, or unusual if you have not been doing this sort of thing. With repeated work, you can join the happy people who know how to receive love well and let it nourish them.
How to Receive Love Well: Part Two
Now, as you work on really noticing, valuing, absorbing, and
therefore, letting yourself fully feel loved, there is another big,
important thing to do. This is to do a good job of showing that you are
getting the love being sent your way. If somebody hands you a ‘love
gift’ and you just say “thanks”, and put it down, and you don’t do much
more, that is not very good reception. If you take it for granted, that
shows you do not sincerely and honestly notice, value and absorb it
which may also show that you are not giving back the gift of good
receiving.If someone says words of love to you and you act as if nothing happened, or you only return some perfunctory politeness, that probably will not do the job of good love reception either. Being truthful also is important. The truth best be that you have really noticed with appreciation (valued) and felt (absorbed) the love demonstration that came your way. Even if the ‘love action’ coming your way is not really ‘your thing’, you can appreciate the loving gesture behind it and absorb the love itself that is being delivered.
Love Behaviors That Give Love Back
If you are with someone who loves you, and they say or do something loving towards you, and you absorb it, your expressional reaction immediately can give love back. Expressional love is given by your facial expression – usually a smile, your tonal expression – usually warm and happy tones of voice, a gestural expression – maybe open arms, and a postural expression – leaning in or moving toward the person. In some situations these may be done in minimal ways like a small nod of the head with just a tiny momentary grin, but usually it is better if the expressional behavior is bigger and more robust.Tactile behavior such as hugs and kisses, hand and arm squeezes, pats on legs, arms, backs, etc., all can be added to the expressional reaction and all can show you really noticed, value and have absorbed with appreciation the other person’s love action.
Words of thanks and appreciation are great ways to show you got the love sent, and you are sending love back. There are many love getting and giving situations that can be well done with words, both verbally and in written form. But be careful not to sound like you are being only dutifully polite.
Gifting, both tangible gifts and experiential gifts, also can be terrifically good in showing someone you truly got their gift of love. Thank you cards, flowers, and other tangible gifts are great. Doing someone a return favor, or surprising them in some happy-making way is often the experiential gift that shows you really got and appreciated their gift of love.
Sometimes opening up to a person who has shown you love, returns the love by your self disclosure. Various ways to show affirmation of a person’s value in your life is especially good for demonstrating receptional love. Even tolerational love can be tied in with reception love.
More to Learn
This mini-love-lesson is aimed at getting you started toward new and
better receptional love behaviors. There is more to learn about
reception love, and especially about how it is key to maintaining
lasting love relationships. To do that learning, you may wish to read
other mini-love-lessons at this site having to do with the behaviors of
love. You also can read the section on Receptional Love in my book, Recovering Love,
which I am proud to say has especially helped a lot of people with this
and related issues. Another good source is Dr. Harville Hendrix and
Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt’s book Receiving Love which covers quite a few, in depth factors often involved in this very important topic.As always – Go and Grow in Love
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