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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s look at each of these.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Related posts:

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

Can You Talk about Sex - with Love?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

Men: Doing Well at Love !

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always, Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Virginity Surpassed and Parental Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Related posts:

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

Contemplating Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson first introduces you to the value of contemplating love by way of some mind-tickling and significant questions; then touches on a few super sources for love contemplation; next comes contemplative wisdom and trash; and ends with five starter, love-based conceptions likely to be well worth contemplating.

The Questions of Love

Do you give love much thought?  Lots of people don’t until it goes away or turns out to be false.  Perhaps you have pondered what love really is?  Or maybe you puzzled over how love works?  Do you ponder about how to tell the real thing from the false?  What do you think of love’s reported ability to heal physical and psychological illness?  Have you tried to figure out how one gets, gives, grows, loses, destroys, recaptures, sends, receives or benefits from love?  Yes, there are a great many questions when contemplating love and probably in doing so can significantly improve one’s life of love.  As might be expected, those who don’t give love much thought seem to be the ones who commonly run into all sorts of love troubles and big love failures.

You also can contemplate lots of questions concerning yourself and love.  Are you well loved?  Do you love well?  Have you ever thought about your own love skills?  Are your love skills poor, average or superior?  Are you skilled at integrating love and sex?  How about integrating love and parenting?  Then there’s integrating love and friendship?  Are you good at healthy self-love?  You have heard phrases like love of country, love of God, love of life, etc.  But do you know what actions to take to accomplish those kinds of love?  Are you a person who relies more on love luck, or are you someone who develops your own abilities to act with love?  Do others see you as a loving person, and do you see yourself as a person of love?

Contemplating love regarding others also is important.  Does she or he love me?  Do my children really love me?  Do I have friends who genuinely love me?  Do my family members love each other well or poorly?  Do you associate with people who love well, are love skilled and love oriented?  Are the people in your life mostly anti-loving and/or non-love oriented?  Contemplating these types of questions just might change your life.

What the Greats Have Said

Another way to contemplate love is to study and give consideration to the writings of philosophers, religious leaders and the great thinkers that have preceded us.  Socrates, Aristotle and especially Plato, who wrote his famous Symposium on Love, had a lot to say about love.  Teachings, concepts and ideas about love can be found in all the Scriptures of the world’s great religions.  Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, Krishna, Confucius and many other great religious masters have taught a great deal concerning love.  More contemporary great minds in a wide variety of scientific, research, human services and many other fields also have contemplated love and produced highly worthy and influential volumes on love.  So, you might want to do some reading to assist your contemplations.

Wisdom and Trash

The largest number of ideas about love contemplated by the largest number of people probably comes from songwriters, poets, novelists, playwrights and the like.  Love stories are thought by some to be the very first written works.  For ages it was only those in the arts who tried to convey understandings concerning love.  Not only writers but painters and sculptors have presented much that can produce meaningful and inspirational contemplations concerning love.  Some of this is very wise, helpful, healthy, useful and right.  Unfortunately, a great deal of it can be considered trash, wrong, stupid, misleading and downright destructive.  But that also is true of many of the ideas presented by the supposed great thinkers, writers, etc.

So, it is by contemplation that one may sort out some of the trash from the jewels of wisdom that actually can do you and your loved ones some good.  For example, consider this.  Many a love story and love song has reinforced the idea that love is jealous.  The teachers and Scriptures of several religions definitively teach “love is not jealous”.  Which one is right?  Which one is wise and which one is more likely to lead you astray, and best be considered trash?  Perhaps you will want to contemplate that!

Starter Things to Contemplate about Love

Below are some statements involving love which you may enjoy thinking about, or in other words, contemplating.  It’s perfectly all right to not believe them, disagree or agree, or to go off on some tangent.  You also might want to think them over, out loud, with someone else.  That’s another way to help contemplation, by discussion.  See what you think about these ideas.

1. Hate destroys the hater
Indifference dulls the indifferent
Love makes better the loved and the loving.

2. Healthy, real love is always about and for the benefit of the loved.

It is only false love that can turn to wanting to hurt, harm and destroy.

3. Love is the greatest of all naturally occurring phenomena, but how to do it, give it,   get it and grow it takes lots of learning.

4. Two things get better and bigger by giving them away, ideas and love.

5. How well and how much you do healthy self-love will effect how much and how well you get healthy real love from others, and how well your love relationships will do overall.

Now, I suggest you contemplate the above statements and above questions as a way to get started on practicing love contemplation, and see where it leads you.  I think you may be quite pleased with the results you get.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What is the most important, influential and significant thing ever said to you, or read by you, about love?

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Related posts:

1. How Smart Is Your Love? – A Test 

Pet Love

Synopsis: Pets who teach love; Healing with pet love; the super importance of pet love; the social good pets do; the importance of pets as love receivers; lifesaver pets; and pets showing us that to give is to receive.

Love Teachers

The fire in the middle cast a warm, friendly glow all around the tepee and on the people in it.  All were silent as the elder wise-woman in her beautiful, white, beaded, deerskin dress intoned an ancient chant.  Then she told her clan’s story of the first time the Great Spirit love-bonded wolf cubs with their ancient people.  It seems that humans did not know enough about how to love so the Great Spirit put what would become dogs into the world to teach us how to love.

As every tribe member knew, dogs know how love better than all other creatures.  So it was that dogs taught us to nuzzle, and cuddle, and caress, and do love-play, and share food and shelter, and to be patient, and to protect, and to bond, and to lick wounds for healing, and to work together for common good, and to feel joy in uniting and sadness at parting, and relief in reconnecting, and even in times of great peril how to lay down our lives for one another.  Yes, the Great Spirit put dogs into the world to teach us to love and to love well.  The wisdom teacher of the tribe went on to explain that all animals have things to teach us and most important are the lessons of the dogs.

I was only 17 when one summer through a scouting program I went to stay a couple weeks with Native American people and heard this tribal-teaching-story.  Ever since I’ve had at least one dog – sometimes five plus puppies, from time to time cats and kittens, and once a horse.  Then there was a blind squirrel, a rescued armadillo, a recovering raccoon, along with assorted small, injured birds, a clever crow, lizards, turtles, salamanders, skinks, newts and a few small, brightly colored snakes – all released when recovered.  Is it any wonder that the most beloved woman of my heart was the large-mammal-docent at our local zoo, and at her instigation we road a highly valued and well-cared-for elephant through mountain terrain in Thailand.  She is quite the love-teacher also.

Healing Pet Love

Many years later the Native American, wise woman’s story rushed back into my awareness when I was in England doing research on how love is dealt with in psychotherapy there.  That was when the English were introducing dogs into hospital, surgical, recovery wards.  They had discovered that surgery patients healed faster with fewer complications when the patients had a dog to love and be loved by.

In my own practice I often work with very lonely people.  Some have been hurt in relationships and consequently are protectively reluctant to mix with other people.  I frequently recommend getting one or more mammal-type pets.  We talk about how to find an appropriate and good animal-match.  Almost always the ones who follow through on my recommendation start rapidly improving shortly after acquiring a dog, or cat or another mammal.  Perhaps I’m prejudiced but dogs seem to get the best results in these cases but it somewhat depends on the ‘personality’ traits of the animal.  However, people with all sorts of dire conditions start getting better with various pets.  Miracles of recovery and stunning improvement from serious physical and emotional maladies especially seem to occur with horses in the picture.

In my area of Texas, and elsewhere, there are equine therapy clinic stables with patient rehabilitation riding and caring for the horses programs that get outstanding results.  Children, teens and adults, as well as the elderly, who suffer depression along with other debilitating and even deadly physical diseases and conditions are known to make surprising improvements once they bond with a loving pet.  Even criminals have less recidivism when given dogs to raise, train and love.  Good results also are attained with the smarter birds like parrots, crows and cockatoos.  As many a healer knows, love heals and the species the love comes from doesn’t seem to matter a great deal, though higher order mammals usually are the most successful.

The Super Importance of Pet Love

The importance of a pet in some people’s lives cannot be over-stated.  Repeatedly I have heard from patients, often with tears in their eyes, “Getting a pet saved my life”.  I have seen loving pets make crippled children smile for the first time in months, cause angry morose teenagers to start to be kind, the brokenhearted and isolated begin to socialize again, and the severely mentally ill start back toward reality.

The Social Good

Considerable evidence suggests people who have a close, truly loving relationship with a pet are much less likely to commit suicide, murder, violent crime, and much less likely to be destroyed by drug addiction.  Pet lovers tend to live longer and healthier, and rate themselves as happier in life than do others.  Evidence also suggests children, raised loving and being loved by pets, as adults do better at love relationships of all types.  They also tend to be much better at giving and receiving physical affection than is the general norm.

Couples who are active in loving pets together seem to have better relationships with one another and their children.  There is no doubt that pets help improve the mobility of the elderly and also the evidence suggests elderly pet owners heal faster from injuries, experience less infections, and report more joy in life than others of similar age.

The Importance of Love Receivers

Cat owners often speak of their feline pets modeling independence for them.  Of course, cats also do a good job of getting themselves petted, picked up, cuddled and otherwise loved on.  In the process they show the ‘reception of loving behavior pleasure’ by purring and often rubbing against and playing with their humans in what seems like return gestures of love.

De-scented skunks, rabbits, goats, sheep, ponies, monkeys and a host of other higher order animals have been known to do things that pretty much seem like receiving and giving behaviors of love.  The neurosciences have shown that similar areas of the brain activate, in both mammalian pets and humans, when giving and receiving love actions.  Also there is evidence to suggest ‘love-conveying actions’ in humans, mammals and certain birds, result in very similar, healthy, brain chemistry changes.  Thus, the natural, powerful process we call ‘love’ is evidenced as occurring in a good many species besides humans.  Yes, the data points to our pets being ‘creatures of love’ just like we are.

Lifesaver Pets and Others

Pets save lives.  There are countless, true stories of pets saving human lives.  Whether it’s waking the family when the house is on fire, or dragging the baby out from under a collapsed structure, or attacking the bear who is mauling its master, or finding the child lost in the woods, or swimming under and supporting a drowning man, or going for help when finding its mistress unconscious on the floor, or … well, you get the idea.  Arguably they do this out of love just as loving humans do.

Animals have been known to repeatedly experience severe, excruciating pain or physical deprivation, even unto death, in an attempt to save people who, it can be said, they are love-bonded with.  A pet dog that continues to be maimed by a lion as it stands between its wounded master and a hungry pride is but one of the many examples of this.  Skeptics say this just is instinct but is not love born of instinct?   There even are examples of animals saving strangers (consider the report of dolphins that support and push a drowning human to shore) is this ‘agape’ love or altruistic love?

To Give Is to Receive

I heard a severe, chronic pain patient say, “I’m alive today not because of all the medicine and therapy I got but because they gave me a blind cat to take care of.  The medicine and therapy helped but it was having a cat to love, and later be loved by, that made the difference as to whether I would stay alive or not.  Now I have a bunch of cats and other pets to love and be loved by.  My life is joy in spite of the pain”.  Receiving love well is ‘giving back the gift of love’.

Researchers were surprised to discover that when people give love to others the givers get healthier.  Of course, the givers need receivers, preferably appreciative receivers.  Many a pet fulfills this role quite well.  Also our pet animals need receivers too and humans can fulfill that role.  By the way, do you know about the great ape they taught sign language, when asked “what do you want” requested a kitten.  The smart, loving ape turned out to take excellent, loving care of the kitten feeding, petting, protecting and gently playing with it daily.  So it seems it is not only humans that benefit from giving and receiving pet love.

I think there must be at least a thousand other things that would be good to say about pet love and the good that it provides us.  Certainly there are at least 10,000 other wonderful and inspiring true stories exemplifying pet love and its marvels.  Space prohibits, but let me add one thought.  Take a little time to give serious attention to pet love and its importance.  Then, if you want to add more love and its benefits to your life, if you don’t already have one, get a pet.  In fact, get two so they have each other when you’re away.  If you do have a pet, go on, love it as soon as you can and over and over again – you both will benefit!

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question What actions might you take to make pet love a bit more of a joy in your life than it is now?

Listening with Love

Synopsis: This is both a mini-love-lesson and a Rating Test which aims to get you to attend to 12 important points concerning becoming a really good at listening with love; and you can use it to rate yourself, as to your love listening skills.

Rate Yourself

Listening well to those you love is one of the best ways to demonstrate that you love, care and value them.  Sometimes one of the most important ways to feel that you are loved is to experience someone who loves you doing a really good job of listening to you.  But what really constitutes good, love-filled listening?  To find out take this 12 item test, rating yourself as you go.  Each item will help you know a major way you can nourish and help improve any and all love relationships through being good at listening with loving.

Test Instructions

Carefully read each of the following tests questions.  Each question mentions one of the factors associated with quality listening with love.  As you read try seriously to think about how well you do what the test statement refers to when you are talking face-to-face with someone you love.  Then with each question look at answers A through F, and pick the one that comes closest to what you think accurately rates you on how well you listen.  Record each of your answers so you can come back later and tally your score.  Instructions for tallying your score will be given at the end of the test, along with interpretations.

Listening With Love – A Test

1. When talking with a loved one, you say fewer words than they do.
(A) Almost always (B) Frequently ( C ) Half the time (D) Seldom (E) Almost never (F) Don’t know

2. When listening to a loved one, you silence your own mind and what it is telling you to say next, so that you can attend to what they are saying more fully.

(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom (E) Almost never (F) Don’t know

3. You can repeat back to a loved one what they have just said, close to verbatim.
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

4. When a loved one is talking, you repeatedly identify in your mind what the emotions your loved one is experiencing as they talk.
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

5. When talking with a loved one you ask what they are feeling, so as to be sure you are in tune with their emotions, and to check out your own perceptions of their emotions.
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

6. When talking with the loved one you have and convey empathetic, corresponding emotions i.e. you hurt when they hurt, you’re happy when they’re happy, etc.
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

7. You listen attentively for a loved one to fully vent, express themselves, discover and think-out their own issues, solutions, concepts and feelings before offering your own thoughts, advice, possible solutions, etc.
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

8. Your facial expressions, head movements, voice tones, gestures and posture changes consistently and repeatedly show interest, attentiveness, care and other appropriate corresponding feelings to your loved ones when they are talking.
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

9. When talking with a loved one you physically touch them appropriately showing care, support, celebration, affection, etc.
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

10. When listening to a loved one you avoid listening primarily for their pauses so you can start saying what you want to say next, and while they’re talking you avoid rehearsing in your mind what you’re going to say next, plus you do not let yourself be otherwise easily distracted from giving them your full and close attention.
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

11. When talking with someone you love do you do a good job of listening with your eyes, i.e. closely watching your loved one’s face and movements in order to see your loved one’s indicators of emotion, so you can be emotionally in tune with them and respond accordingly?
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

12. When talking with a loved one do you stay aware that listening well can help your loved one feel affirmed, valued and cared about, and not listening well can result in your loved one feeling devalued and less than well loved?
(A) Almost always  (B) Frequently  ( C ) Half the time  (D) Seldom  (E) Almost never  (F) Don’t know

Scoring

Score 5 points for each (A), 4 points for each (B), 3 points for each ( C ), 2 points for each (D), 1 point for each (E) and zero points for each (F) – Don’t know response.

Interpretation

Scores  49 – 60  suggests someone who is a great loving listener, or someone who is overrating.
39 – 48  suggests someone who is a good loving listener who can still improve.
25 – 36  suggests someone who is a fair loving listener who can do quite a bit better with learning and practicing.
13 – 24  suggests someone who is rather poor at loving listening and probably is in need of a fair amount of improvement.
0 – 12  suggests that a very poor loving listening performance is frequently occurring and considerable work at improvement is recommended.
4, or more, zero (Don’t know) responses suggests considerable study of loving listening skills is probably highly desirable.

If you wish to rate another person on their loving listening skills you will need to alter the questions a little so they read in a way that indicates a loved one listening to you.  Then record the responses (A – F) that best indicates how you think they behave on each item.  Then tally the scores as before.
To learn more about this important skill go to the mini-love-lesson look in the index above for more posts under "Listening with Love".  You might use those entries to talk about listening skills with a loved one.

As always – Go and Grow with Love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who listens to you with love the best, and have you sufficiently thanked them for that?

Related posts:

1. Listening with Love
2. Listening With Love and IN and OUT Brain Functions
3. How Smart Is Your Love? – A Test
4. Alphabet Love Test
5. Intimacy Creation – A Love Skill 

Trust and Mistrust in Love

Synopsis: The case of the nude photos and what’s best to learn from it; a terrible, fascinating truth about romantic-love trust; and a self-strengthening approach to building great, dependable, love trust; more.

The Case of the Nude Photos

“I’m in shock and don’t know which way to turn.  I just discovered nude photos of my teenage daughter on a phone I didn’t know my husband had.

 “Horrible scenarios are running through my head.  Are my husband and daughter involved in incest?  I can’t bear to think about it.  Should I call the police, see a lawyer, file for divorce?  Can I have both of them committed to a psych ward?  Is my husband a sex addict, or is my daughter?  Is everything I believed about my marriage a lie?  Am I one of those parents who doesn’t know what’s really going on with their kids?   I don’t trust anybody or anything any more.  Am I going crazy?  Is nothing the way I thought it was?  Is there anything or anyone I can trust?  Will I ever trust anybody again?”

As you can see Helen was having a huge ‘trust crisis’.  Up to the discovery of a strange iPhone in her husband’s briefcase, life had seemed pretty much normal and OK.  Her adolescent daughter had been a little rebellious but nothing serious seemed to be going on, until now.  Lately her husband had been kind of distant emotionally but also lately his business work-load had been extra heavy.  She, herself, had been stressed with projects demanding overtime at her office but about that there was ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.  Since her horrified discovery life was all panic and gut-wrenching disaster.  Her whole family seemed to be descending into nightmarish chaos – or so it seemed.

Helen said she couldn’t face all this alone so with some help she quickly was able to arrange for her husband and daughter to meet with her and a talented therapist intern of mine that evening in an emergency family counseling session.  She came in looking pale and shaking and her husband and daughter entered looking quite worried.  With fear and trepidation Helen confronted them with the sequence of events that had lead her to the discovery of the nude photos.  She got excellent support, clarification, interpretation, and help with sufficiency and accuracy from my intern.

Slowly the truth emerged and something resembling normalcy began to return.  It was revealed that Kendra, Helen’s teenage daughter, had been taking sexy, nude photos of herself and had been sending them to her boyfriend and her closest girlfriends, who were doing the same thing, like so many other kids at her school.  She explained it was quite a fad.  Bill, Helen’s husband, caught Kendra doing this and confiscated her phone.  He said he didn’t want to tell Helen about this until Helen’s big project at work was over.

Furthermore, Kendra had gotten him to promise that he and she would handle it because they thought Helen tended to over-react.  Kendra admitted she’d sort of manipulated her father into that promise.  Kendra also said she wouldn’t be doing any of this again, especially because her best girlfriend had gotten into really big trouble over this and was being sent away somewhere and she didn’t want that to happen to her.

After a lot of anguished bewilderment, confusion, anger mixed with relief and disappointment this family began to show each other love.  Soon they were able to agree that they should and could be a lot more self-disclosing to one another.  Helen agreed to work on not being so prone to panic, and Bill and Kendra agreed not to keep secrets from Helen.  They all agreed they would aspire to greater, loving communication of their important truths to each other, no matter what it was about, and they set out to do just that.  They made a ‘no big secrets contact’ with each other and that seemed to help a lot.  They further agreed that trust was built on ‘truth mixed with love’ and they made that their family goal.

What do you suppose you would do if you made a discovery similar to Helen’s?  Would your trust in your loved ones be shaken?  Would you lose trust in your own judgment?  Would you do as well as they did in patching things up and recovering from this episode?

Let me suggest the best thing to learn from this example is when experiencing strong mistrust do not jump to conclusions.  Quick conclusions are your enemy.  I can’t tell you how many love relationship problems I have helped people get through that were started by, or made much worse by, people drawing premature, erroneous conclusions.  Related to this is a second, huge, common, trust issue problem.  It’s the problem of keeping secrets.  So many mistrust calamities could have been avoided had the people involved been able to get their truth out in the open and discuss it, even if it hurt.  In successful, love relationships it takes sharing truth and that builds trust.  Hiding, avoiding, denial, distortions and mis-representations of the truth, more often than not, work against ‘trust building’ even when they are done for well-meaning reasons.

Trust Issues and Their Surprising Complications

Trust and mistrust issues are among the biggest problems in love relationships.  Do I trust you to be faithful?  Do I trust myself to remain faithful?  Can I love you and not trust you?  If I forgive you does it mean I have to trust you?  Do I trust myself to keep being loving no matter what?  Do I trust myself to have enough ‘attraction power’ to hold you or should I secretly spy and pry into your life to make sure you’re not betraying me?  Do I trust you not to turn into my mother, or my father?  Do I trust us enough to make a go of it?  Do I trust that our love can be strong enough to hold us together and survive what the world throws at us?   Do I trust in trusting?  Yes, there are great many trust issues that many people give no thought to until they have occasion to experience very upsetting mistrust.

It’s not only with lovers and spouses that we have trust issues.  Shall I trust my kids do what I have taught them?  Should I trust myself to be a good parent?  Can I trust that my family will support me in a crisis?  Will my avowed, true friends be there for me when I need them?  Will I come through for them when they call on me in crisis?  With every love relationship there can be heavy-duty trust challenges.  So, let’s ask this question.  How does healthy, real love guide us in facing all these trust issues?

Understanding Trust Itself

To answer the above questions let’s first look at a few ways trust is understood to work. Here’s a concept about how trust operates considered to be a little radical.  It goes like this:
All smart trust is really self-trust.  There’s no such thing as trusting other people.  There’s only trusting yourself to handle what others may send your way.  If you do not unconsciously, sufficiently trust your own ability to handle what someone else may bring to your life then you consciously will not trust them.  All trust and mistrust is projected self-trust or the lack there of.  The highly self-trusting find it easier to forgive and try again, while those who have low self-trust don’t.  It’s hard for them to forgive because they secretly know they can’t handle what might be done to them, or so goes this understanding of trust dynamics.  There is some research to support this kind of thinking.

Those who come to re-trust a person after betrayal tend to trust their own ability to handle things well even if they are betrayed again. The more ego-weak a person is the less they trust in others.  This apparently is true of many people, but not all.  Those who have a high self-trust tend to either easily choose to trust or not trust, but they seldom spend much time in uneasy, anxious mistrust of others.  There also is some research which suggests that the most highly mistrusting people are not to be trusted.  The naïve and innocent also give trust too easily.  And the frequently traumatized, abused and misused tend to place little trust in anyone.

Another viewpoint on trust goes like this.  All trust is a gamble and should be seen as such.  In love when we trust someone we are gambling on the person we love and on the love in the relationship.  Intelligent people know that some of these love-gambles will pay off and some will not.  Some people gamble on love and win enormously and some lose enormously.  In gambling the saying goes “if you can’t afford to lose, don’t bet”.  However, in love and other great life experiences the truth is "you can’t afford not to gamble".  Consider the old wisdom teaching “it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all”.  For most people that’s probably true.

Consider this concept.  The adventures of love bring people their biggest and most meaningful life experiences, even when they don’t win at love.  Some think nothing defines or develops a person so much as their love relationships.  However, those love relationships take great gambles of trust, or they are far too limited.  Whether it be love of a spouse, a child, a family, a people, a nation, a cause or a deity, to win big takes gambling on trust big.

There are important problems and exceptions to the above thinking.  Quite sadly there are far too many people who make the gamble of love with someone who will literally destroy them one way or another.  So many murders and terrible abuse tragedies are stories of love gone wrong.  So many people who die of a substance addiction were started on that addiction path by way of a poor or false-love relationship.  So many suicides, heart attacks, strokes and other sudden health failures occur after the loss of a love.

All too frequently the trust-gamble of love poorly chosen results in tragedy.  The good news is that people who learn about love and its workings make much better gambles of trust.  They, therefore, win at love more often and far bigger.  Another good news factor is that the vast majority of people win more than they lose when they gamble on love.

Romantic love, or mate or spouse love probably is the most problematic when it comes to trust issues.  Pet love and grandparent’s love of grandchildren probably are the types of love with the fewest, trust foul-ups and the most, trust related, good results.  Still every kind of love relationship can have trust problems.  Therefore, every love relationship deserves some thinking and probably talking about trust issues.

Mistrust In Love

One view of mistrust holds that the more untrustworthy you are the more you will not trust the people you love and who you hope love you.  If you are highly prone to deception you will suspect others are likewise deceptive.  Suspicion and mistrust can ruin an otherwise good love relationship.  Here’s what Marcia said, “You tapped my phone, secretly went through my things, had me followed, read my diary when I ask you not to, and now you’re asking me to trust you.  Not a chance!  I thought we had a good thing going.  Now I see how sneaky you are.  If you can’t trust me I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.  We are through, and that’s final!”  Love often demands that we gamble ‘trust in another’ and if instead we rely too much on mistrust, and the behaviors that mistrust leads to, a love relationship can become poisoned.

Romantic Love and Trust

In romantic love there is a terrible, fascinating truth.  The more we don’t trust our own worth, value, love-ability and attraction power the more we can become insecure.  The more we are insecure the more we subconsciously believe someone better than ourselves will come along and be more desirable than we are.  That "more desirable person" will steal our loved-one away from us and we will be abandoned, alone and unloved.  Therefore, we must mistrust and guard against our loved-one looking at other attractive people, talking to them, being around them without our supervision, looking at images of attractive sexy others, etc. and generally we must keep our loved-ones ‘on a short leash’ to keep them to ourselves.

That indicates we might feel like our loved-ones are our property like a dog, or a slave, who is going to run away.  With this kind of thinking any suspicious involvement with another must be punished severely and the leash shortened.  Usually the final result of the ‘short leash approach’ is to drive our loved ones away and possibly into the arms of someone better than us.  Mistrust frequently is, in effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A Self-Strengthening Approach to Building Love Trust

The best way to build trust is to become ‘psychologically big and strong’ enough to handle being very truthful in a loving way.  To be big in healthy self-love so as to be able to own up to one’s mistakes and problematic behavior is a highly desirable part of the trust-building process.  It also is important to become big and strong enough psychologically, and especially emotionally, so as not to be destroyed or irreparably harmed when a loved one disappoints, betrays or otherwise dishonestly deals with you.

Furthermore, it is quite important to grow big enough to maturely and magnanimously handle the truth when it comes your way, no matter how much it hurts, bothers or scares you.  Trust is built on truth-telling, truth-hearing, truth-sharing and generally dealing from strength.  Mistrust is built on weakness, deception, inability to accept and compassionately, lovingly deal with truth.  So, build your psychological strengths, especially those having to do with love and you will be able to handle your trust challenges far better.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ ♥ Love Success Question Are you as love trustworthy as you want the people you love to be?

Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics - A Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love lesson explores the rule ‘heart before head’; then goes into ‘here and now’ versus ‘there and then’ talking; gender differences; talking to your loved one’s bad feelings; talking to bad feelings aimed at you by your loved ones; self-care while learning this love skill; and more.

Heart Before Head

When meeting her group of friends, with joy in her voice and with a great big smile Felicia proclaimed, “I’m so happy!  I got the job!  Now I’ve got to go shopping for the right clothes and brush up on my worker skills.”

Norman in rather ordinary tones replied, “Yeh, you better start practicing your work skills.  You’re probably really rusty”.  Josh blandly responded with, “I bet you already have clothes for the first week at least”.  Frank with a bright look on his face and an upbeat tone said, “You really look happy and I’m really glad for you”.  A couple weeks later Frank and Felicia became a couple and Norman and Josh wondered what he was doing right that they were not.

Frank had a very important love skill.  He knew that for helping a love relationship get started, or be maintained and grow, it was important to focus first and most on the feelings being felt and, if possible, to attend to those emotions before the topic being brought up is discussed.  He followed the lover’s rule ‘talk to your loved one’s feelings before you talk to your loved one’s topics’.

Felicia’s voice tones, face and words all spoke of her happiness.  Speaking to and sharing her happiness is speaking to her internal, personal self.  Speaking to her clothing and skills topics is okay but less personal.  Emotionally joining with Felicia in her feelings of happiness and success also conveys a pleasant, positive, personal connection with her and demonstrates the love skill of sharing heartfelt emotions.  Talking to a person’s topics without sufficiently speaking to their emotions may convey that the person is less important to you, and maybe that you are not very able to be personally, emotionally with them.  In a small, subtle way by talking to Felicia’s feeling of happiness Frank displayed a clue showing that perhaps he was able to do ‘emotional intercourse’.  Emotional intercourse so often is a major basis for romantic, healthy, real love development.

‘Here and Now’ Versus ‘There and Then’ Talking

By talking to Felicia’s happiness Frank showed he was emotionally with her in the ‘here and now’.  Talking about brushing up her skills and shopping topics left the emotional ‘here and now’ and went to the future, only addressing the pragmatic.  When we talk about what’s being felt in the here and now, instead of talking about the future and/or about practical matters, it gives more of a sense of emotional togetherness.  When we talk the topics first, after strong emotions have been expressed by a loved one, they may feel unattended to or develop a vague sense of being emotionally abandoned.  It may sort of indicate to them that their emotions are not important to you and only practical matters count with you.  Loving closeness is not likely to grow out of that perception.

Talking about the past can work if there is sufficient focus on the emotions that occurred in that past situation, or about the emotions that one now has about the past.  Without sufficient focus on the feelings connected to the past your loved one may develop a sense of being impersonally and non-intimately dealt with.  This is true whether you’re talking about your own feelings or the feelings of your loved one. And this feelings-absent talk is highly unlikely to help a love relationship.

Generally when a loved one is having strong feelings ‘in the present’, talking in the present tense is more powerful and more loving.  Talking in the future tense or the past tense without focusing sufficiently on the emotions involved in both may create more emotional distance than closeness.

Gender Differences

In many cultures men more than women seem to have trouble talking to their loved ones about emotions.  Some researchers think this is genetic but in some cultures men overcome this perhaps ‘genetic predisposition’ by good societal, communications training.  A major complaint from many women is about men not being able to talk to a woman about either his emotions or her emotions.  That in turn is seen as a major deterrent to healthy, love relationship development.  Interestingly women, while being better at empathetically talking to a loved one’s emotions, usually don’t know how to teach men how to do that form of much desired, personal communication.

Basic Instructions

To talk to a loved one’s emotions here is a simple procedure you might want to follow.
Step 1.  While your loved one is talking think “what emotion is my loved one feeling right now?”.  If you’re not sure, ask.  Asking shows you want to be with your loved one in what they’re feeling and, therefore, asking helps you to do that.  To ask simply say, “What are you feeling?” or “What are you feeling right now?” or “You’re feeling …(glad, sad, worried, upset, eager, etc.?”  Or just make a guess.  Guessing conveys you are trying and that counts too.  Remember, feelings usually can be ‘labeled’ and said with ‘one word’ each.  You can feel affectionate, fearful, excited, mad, serene, etc., there are hundreds of good labels for our emotions.  If your ‘emotions labeling skills’ are weak you might want to make a list.  Here’s a hint: There are emotion labels starting with every letter of the alphabet.  This is a homework exercise I often assign to those wanting to improve communications and learn to emotionally love a loved one better.

Step 2.  When you think you may know the emotion a loved one is feeling say that feeling label word.  “You’re happy”.  “You’re worried”.  “You’re upset”.  “You’re pleased”.  “You’re feeling eager” are some examples.  You can say these things with a sort of questioning sound or if you’re expressing it in written form you can put in a question mark.  This shows you are trying to get it right.  Remember, you don’t have to be right you just have to show your really trying to connect emotionally.

Step 3.  Really hear the response your loved one makes to what you have said.  Your loved one might say “No, that’s not quite what I’m feeling, it’s more like …(this other feeling)”.  Then again you might hear something like “you really understand, you’re wonderful”.

Step 4.  Now, ask yourself what you are feeling having heard your loved one is feeling and whatever thoughts they may have added.  Are you happy with your loved one’s expressed feeling, or angry, or upset, or proud, or threatened, or what?  Remember, ‘thoughts and feelings are very different from each other’.  A thought usually takes a sentence to identify and a feeling usually takes only a single word label.

Step 5.  Share the labeling word that expresses the feeling you’re experiencing having heard what your loved one feels. You may want to elaborate on it a bit.  Examples might be “joy, I am feeling joy hearing what you just told me”, or “my insecurity is going up and down”, or “now I’m feeling closer to you”, or “I’m getting angry but let’s talk about this”, or “after hearing what you said I feel a little more comforted”, or “I’m noticing I’m starting to feel more nervous thinking about what you just said”, or “I’m beginning to care more about how you feel and maybe understand you better”.  Yes, sometimes you will have to deal with their bad feelings or yours but usually that’s better than letting them fester.

As people practice this ‘talking to feelings love skill’ they can and usually do create improving emotional intercourse.  Then they usually start getting its many benefits.

Talking to Bad Feelings

When you’re beloved says, “I feel bad, mad, upset, scared” or anything we might call a bad feeling the usual best response is to care.  Therefore, quite often the best thing to say is “I care”.  You might include the feeling you heard them say and then “I care.” for example, “I care that you’re hurt”, or “you’re really feeling bad and I care about that a lot”, or “you’re feeling angry and that’s hard to hear but I love you so I care about how you’re feeling”, etc. are a few of the many ways you might lovingly demonstrate that.  When a loved one expresses bad feelings what’s usually best is a lot of really attentive, good listening which usually helps them get all their feelings out while your care comes into them.  That’s sort of like getting the poison out and the medicine in.

Common Mistakes

The biggest, most common mistake is to jump in, talking from your head instead of from your heart.  Analyzing, explaining, instructing, teaching, talking in a way that tries to ‘fix’ what caused the feelings, or in any other way tries to deal with the topics involved, before talking to your loved one’s emotions, usually doesn’t work.  In fact, sometimes it makes things far worse.  Once you talk to a loved one’s feelings there may be no need to do any of the explaining, fixing, etc. because what often ‘fixes’ the problem is being a really good listener.  When your loved ones expressing feeling bad, what they often need is well expressed, loving care.  Heart-felt messages do far more good than anything your intelligence is likely to come up with, no matter how bright it is.  Again, “heart before head” is the short way to say this.

Lots of people, especially guys, try to express their care through talking about how to fix, solve, mend, correct or cognitively understand the problem that’s causing a person’s feelings.  None of that directly deals with the feelings. That’s especially true for bad feelings.  Thus, “head talk” misses the ‘first point to be attended to’ – the emotions themselves.  After the emotions are brought into awareness and talked about, those other topics may, or may not, be relevant or need discussion.
It does not hurt to ask a person if your analysis or advice, etc. is desired and if it not, don’t give it.  Remember the adage, “don’t teach a course for which no one has signed up”.

Talking to Bad Feelings Aimed at You

“I’m so upset with you”, “I’m very angry at you”, “How could you hurt me like that”, and many other bad feeling statements may come your way from your loved ones.  What are you to do?  First, examine your habits.  Maybe your habit is to interpret such remarks as you are being attacked, judged, blamed, punished, unfairly picked on, threatened or even damaged.  If so, that probably triggers your primitive ‘fight or flee’ feelings.  If you think you’re under attack you may desire to defend yourself, perhaps with lengthy reasons and explanations, or with a powerful counterattack.

Then again, your habit might be to feel guilty, inadequate and get depressed.  Later you might decide you need revenge and to get even, so you may aggressively or passive-aggressively ambush and sabotage a loved one so they feel as bad as you feel, or worse.  Maybe it’s your habit to beg forgiveness, or fake sorrow and manipulate for forgiveness.  If you do any of these things you probably have learned that none of these habits do much good to change the dynamics of the interaction nor do they usually feel very good to do.  Mostly love relationships can be damaged by the habits just described because they are quite anti-loving.

What really is happening is probably markedly different than what you think is happening or interpret is happening.  A likely, more accurate, interpretation of your loved one’s statement usually goes like this.  My beloved is hurt or somehow upset, and needs to express it, and needs to experience my care coming in as their bad feelings flow out.  Again, it’s a case of ‘poison out, medicine in’.  To deliver the medicine my beloved also may need to be reassured that they are truly, deeply loved and are extremely important to me.  Furthermore, my beloved also may need to experience that I am really listening to how they feel and what they want, plus that I am sincerely willing to look at ways to make improvements and, if I agree, that I am willing to implement those improvements.

Self-Care

Remember the ancient admonition is to love others AS you love yourself.  Taking good care of yourself as you learn to practice this love skill is part of what is needed.  The way you do that is to ‘own your own okayness’ and remind yourself that any skill is learned by repeated practice.  If it were easy it probably wouldn’t be called a skill.  You also may need to remind yourself that usually the best defense is no defense.  That’s because your loved one’s ‘at you talk’ probably will turn into ‘with you talk’ as soon as hurt, or fear, or both are adequately expressed and enough of your loving care has come into them.  Staying emotionally OK while you do loving listening and perhaps do comforting behavior, is for most of us a pretty tall order in highly emotional times.

Surprisingly it’s even hard for many of us who were not well trained, by the families we grew up in, to talk to feelings that are happy and upbeat.  Talking any feelings may be hard for some people no matter what kind of feelings they are.  Nevertheless, working to develop any love skill pays off handsomely and, therefore, is an act of healthy self-love.  So, get busy and meet the challenge of developing this love skill.  See how it saves everybody a great deal of misery and brings a great deal of good-feeling closeness to you and your loved ones once you get the hang of it.

This love skill can be used in all kinds of relationships – with parents, children, family, friends, acquaintances, fellow workers, even with people you don’t know well.  If emotions are involved it’s best to attend to them first, then attend to the topic.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
If you learn and practice this love skill of ‘talking to feelings before topics’ and do it well, do you think your relations with love ones will get vastly improved, substantially improved, moderately improved, mildly improved, or not at all improved?  Now ask your loved ones what they think.

Related posts:

1. Many Good Feelings Brought on by Love
2. Checking It Out – As a Love Skill
3. Communicating Better With Love: Mini Lessons
4. Other Ways to Say I Love You