What is LOVE, Dr. Cookerly?: communication

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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.

Conflict, Power and Love Success

Mini-Love-Lesson #190

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

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

The Best Use of Power When in Conflict

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

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

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

The Surprising 3 Most Love Successful Ways

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Becoming Power Usage and Conflict Resolving Successful**

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

The Big Problem of Mismatches

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

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

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Is Your Affirmational Love Enough?

Mini-Love-Lesson # 275

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

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

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

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

Three Steps To Affirmational Love

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

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

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

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

Being Real

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

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

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

Hints for Talking Affirmationally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. Use positive emotion words.

9. If possible, be pithy with brevity.

10. Use plausible phrases and positive words.

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

How Much Affirmational Love Is Enough?

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Self Talk for Improving Love

Synopsis: This mini love lessons starts with the surprising importance of self talk; then goes to what is self talk; what is positive and negative self talk; some things to do about better self talk and love relationship improvement; more.

The Surprising Importance of Self Talk

Self talk is very important in all sorts of ways. It can be especially useful in improving love relationships.

Recently researchers were surprised to learn just how important self talk could be to our physical, mental, emotional and relational health. Negative self talk can lower one’s immunity, cause destructive stress hormones to flow in the body, and increase a whole lot of other physically, unhealthy things. Mental efficiency is decreased, anxiety mounts, and self confidence can take a dive, all because of negative self talk. It is thought that couples who practice negative self talk tend to fight more, and breakup more and are far less happy in their relationships. The allover happiness in families seems to decrease if there is an abundance of negative self talk. Certain kinds of positive self talk have produced the exact opposite results in individuals, and couples, and families and friendship networks.

What Is Self Talk?

Self talk has to do with how we talk out loud, or silently to ourselves about ourselves. It includes what we think about our own thinking, our feelings and our behavior past, present and future. It expresses our attitude toward who we are, how we are, and what is best and worst about ourselves. Self talk is seen as ‘setting us up’ for future success or failure. Self talking can encourage or discourage us when facing difficulties, help us feel weak or strong, and many other similar things depending on whether self talk is negative or positive.

What Is Positive and Negative Self Talk?

If the way you talk to yourself, about yourself and your life is mostly critical, judgmental, full of putdowns, punishing remarks, demeaning, derogatory, fearful, guilt ridden, hopeless, deficiency-oriented, etc. then it is negative and very likely quite unhealthy. If, on the other hand, the way you talk to yourself is realistically balanced toward the positive, affirmative, laudatory, self rewarding, encouraging, challenging; if it is toward improvement, includes recognition of limitations without bad feeling, is more proud of attributes than unhappy about shortcomings and is in awe of the many miracles that make up a self, then it is likely to be very positive and quite helpful and healthful. The inclusion of mild self depreciatory humor coupled with pride of qualities and achievements, and the ability to enjoy one’s own idiosyncratic ways also can be seen as part of the positive picture.

Where Does Our Self Talk Come From?

Originally most of our self talk comes from the way we were talked to is a child and the way we heard others around us talking when we were young. If we had a highly critical parent we are likely to talk to ourselves about ourselves in highly critical ways. If, on the other hand, our parents were more realistically prone to appreciative affirmation, praise and compliments and thankful statements, we are much more likely to talk to ourselves about ourselves in the same way. Some therapists like to explain this as ‘your incorporated copy of your parents’ or your ‘inner parent self’ talking to you from your subconscious.

Self talk can come from how you choose and teach yourself to talk to yourself about yourself. That can replace old messages with new and better messages. And, of course, this re-training takes a fair amount of work but usually it is quite worth it.

How Does Self Talk Effect Love Relationships?

Self talk has a number of important positive or negative effects on our love relationships. One of them works this way. If we are talking continuously critically and ‘down’ to ourselves, it may help us to tend to try only for love relationships with those who are less than we see ourselves to be. This can lead us to repeatedly get involved with ‘losers’. If we do achieve a love relationship with someone better than we see ourselves to be, that negative self talk can assist us in feeling insecure, suspect our love mate will find someone better than we are, and abandon us for that person. Thus, jealousy, possessiveness and fear-based relating can come to dominate our relationship instead of healthy, real love.

If you continually put yourself down in self talk, you are likely to go down emotionally, making you less fit for good, love relating. You also can make yourself very suspicious, mistrusting and unbelieving when affirmational love comes your way. That can help you end up love-starved. Those who have adequate, healthy self-love are better at being nourished by the love that does come their way. When you do realistic, positive, self-affirmation self talk, you have more to give and you are more likely to go around in your world more friendly and more loving. That generally attracts other people who want to be friendly and loving to you.

By the way, coming across egotistical, stuck up, superior, etc. does not represent a person who actually loves themselves healthfully, but rather someone who is trying too hard but in self-defeating ways. So, it is okay to brag briefly, which many people find rather charming because it shows you believe in yourself and are confident about yourself, but remember – briefly.

Self Talk for Healthy Self-Love

It turns out that realistic, positive self talk can be super important for the development of healthy self-love. Being able to encourage yourself through a challenge with “You can do it” and similar affirmations, can make a huge difference as to whether you will succeed or not. Healthy, loving self talk can help you to be proud of yourself for accomplishments, attributes, qualities, etc.. And loving, positive self talk generally can help you be more effective and happier with yourself and with your life.

Talking to yourself hatefully or in any other way negatively, or just indifferently, tends to have a weakening effect which can lead to increased anxiety and depression.

The Importance of Positive, Future-Oriented Self Talk

One of the best ways for self talk to help a love relationship improve, works like this. Imagine saying to yourself, “Hello John (or whatever your name is). I’m your inner self and I want to tell you to give a lot more physical affection and praise to your wife today. You really can make her feel especially good, like no one else can, so get busy and start right now. You want to become a more loving person and this will help you do just that, and it will keep you getting better at it.” You can talk, challenge and orient yourself to love improvements by encouraging yourself to learn and practice getting good at the major love skills taught in the mini-love-lessons found at this site. Encouraging self talk is often a big help in going forward with just about everything. Clearly, discouraging self talk has the opposite effect.

Be and Do Self Affirmation

Do you ever tell yourself you are worth loving? Do you own-up to the fact that you are a wondrous bunch of miracles and that is the nature of your being? You don’t have to do anything but recognize that, and feel good about it because it is a ‘being’ thing rather than a “doing” thing. You are a unique work of art that also can get something done. Both your being and your doing make you worthwhile, not just your doings. You can see yourself by one or both of two ways. Either your being is a wondrous work of God or of millions of years of evolution. Either way, you are a bundle of miracles – own that!

Self Love’s Relationship to Other Love and Self Talk

Have you heard it said “you have to love yourself in order for other people to love you”? That is not exactly true but it hints at an important idea. It does seem to work out that the more you healthfully love yourself the better others will love you too. A lot of love-filled self talk often seems to result in more love coming your way from others. That is probably because you become more lovable and probably more loving by that kind of self talk.

Some Things to Do for Better Self Talk and Love Relationship Improvement

Try writing down some statements you would like to hear you tell yourself. Then do it. Tell yourself statements you want someone else to tell you, and then ask them to do so as you also tell those statements to yourself. Make a list of ‘100 Good Things’ about yourself – small, medium and large things; then talk positively to yourself about how each of those things is true and be happy about it. Then get someone you love to do the same thing.

Then say things from each other’s list to each other. Give yourself praise and be glad about how you are unique and different from others, instead of being a dull, normal copy of other people’s standards. Work to be more ‘up’ on yourself than down on yourself every day, and do that with the words you say to yourself. Also you might want to get a copy of the June, 2015 issue of Psychology Today, which has as its main feature article, a rather good presentation about Your Inner Voice. It touches on recent discoveries and what is known, useful and important about self talk.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What do you think of the idea that says your self love determines how much and how well others will love you?

Anti-Love, Non-Love & Real Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson begins by addressing highly important questions concerning each of the three love action states people operate in; then goes on to describe those three love action states and their outcomes so you can evaluate yourself and others in regard to each; and ends with a discussion of quality and quantity issues related to the three states.

Three Love Action States – and Super Important Questions

How much of your life has to do with acting from love, demonstrating love and receiving love? How much of your life essentially is non-love oriented? Are there parts of your life which might be described as containing anti-love actions?

Let’s go into this a bit further by asking some related questions. If much or little of your life has to do with love (see love definition entries) what does that make your life into? If much of your life might be called non-love involved what does that do to your life? If there are important episodes in your life in which your actions are anti-love what does that turn your life into? How does all this effect those you love, or those you hope to love, and those you hope to be loved by? Do those who are important to you perceive you to be largely anti-loving, or non-loving, or quite loving and lovable?

Descriptions of the Three Love Action States

If you are, or often are seen as indifferent, uninvolved, unconcerned, apathetic about others, impersonal, perfunctory, inattentive, passive, negligent, robotic, unimpressionable, aloof, impenetrable, distracted, or unemotional – you may be living too non-love oriented.

If you are or are perceived as being deceitful, verbally or physically abusive, aggressive as opposed to assertive, offensively defensive, demeaning, degrading, deprecating, greedy, emotionally cold and rejecting, betraying, cheating, purposefully destructive, hostile, brutal, anti-caring and uncaring, hateful, negatively prejudicial, vengeful, mean-spirited, judgmental, combative, punitive, controlling and authoritarian, dogmatic and overly self-centered and selfish to the detriment of others – you may be having an anti-love impact in the way you go about at least certain aspects of your life.

On the other hand, if you are or are seen as caring, kind, compassionate, generous, friendly, personally warm, endearing, benevolent, congenial, fair and democratic, positive about and toward others, friendly, cordial, welcoming and inclusive, thankful, rejoice-full, affectionate, beneficent, of goodwill, empathetic, appropriately protective, appreciative, understanding, powerfully passionate about life in many of its aspects and about the rights and well-being of others, philanthropic, altruistic, patient, magnanimous, considerate, thoughtful, giving, merciful, as well as loving and lovable – you are likely to be going about love in your life rather well.

Outcomes Of the Three States

People who are too often anti-loving are seen as tending to destroy their love relationships. They also tend to seen as being harmful to those they would have a love relationship with.

People who too often are non-loving are seen as having their relationships slowly erode away and they are thought to often experience abandonment. They also can be seen as instrumental in the love malnourishment and love starvation of those they would have a love relationship with.

People who are sufficiently to abundantly, healthfully loving are seen as getting the happiest, healthiest and generally the most successful life and relationship results.

Quality and Quantity Issues

One way to evaluate a love relationship, be it with a lover, spouse, child, friend or family member, is to think about the quality and quantity of love experienced in the relationship. How much time is spent in actions that convey quality love? Also how much can be called non-loving and how much can be called anti-loving? Are the anti-love actions more impactful than the loving actions? Are the non-love actions more important, powerful and dramatic than the loving? These are important questions that few people seem to know to use in understanding their love relationships, including the love relationship they have with themselves. Thinking with these questions may lead to considerable improvement in how healthy love is accomplished in your life. Conversing with loved ones about these questions also may lead to “love team” improvements.

As always, Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who will give you honest, accurate feedback on how you come across as to being loving, non-loving or anti-loving?

Love Bids and Their Astounding Importance

Synopsis: How pitching and catching love bids makes an enormous difference starts our discussion; followed by what love bids are; and finally ending with the super significance of well caught and well returned bids; more.

Pitching and Catching Love Bids Makes All the Difference

Across the crowded room Michael glanced at Grace, then briefly smiled and nodded ever so slightly in her direction. Grace coyly smiled back as she gave a slow subtle return nod. Such a small, quick interaction but it made both Michael and Grace feel slightly elated and a bit more emotionally connected. Both thought about how good their love relationship was and how glad they were to have it all these many years.

They both then moved through the gathering toward each other and went happily home earlier than they had planned, enjoying each other all the way. Because Michael had ‘pitched’ Grace a little behavioral “bid” for love connecting and Grace ‘caught’ it well and pitched one back, this couple had one of their many, excellent, loving evenings together, feeling close and intimately connected.
Nan and Buck did not fare nearly as well. Buck was eating an early lunch at work when Nan called and said, “Let’s go to lunch together”.

Buck, lost in his work, said a rather abrupt, “No, I’m already eating here at my desk. Is there anything else?”. Nan feeling discounted and rebuffed mumbled a goodbye and ended the call. After work, Nan decided to get a drink with some of her fellow workers and went on to spend the evening flirting and dancing, and then got home rather late. Waiting at home, Buck felt lonely, a bit worried and then a bit angry.

When Nan came in he greeted her with a very critical, parent-like, “Where have you been. You should have called if you were going to be late”. Feeling criticized like a child, she lied saying she had to work late and she was going to bed because she was really “wiped out”. Now both of them felt lonely and rebuffed.

Had Nan pitched her bid for love connecting in a much more clear fashion like, “I really want a little personal, close, ‘us’ time together. Let’s use today’s lunch time for that. Okay?”. Had Buck been more aware and ‘caught’ and understood Nan’s ‘love bid’ for what it was, a chance for a love connection experience, they might have done as well as Michael and Grace but sadly they didn’t.
Research is showing that the ‘pitching and catching’ of love bids may be crucial to the success or failure of many love relationships. This is true not only for couples but also parents and children, family relationships, deep close friends and even with pets. There even is evidence that love bidding also may occur in the animal world, especially among mammals.

What Are Love Bids?

Simply put, a love bid is any action aimed at initiating an experience of mutual love connection. It can be as simple as a wink, an intimate tone of voice, a tender touch, a welcoming gesture or an inviting smile. It can be a bid for love connecting by way of showing and sharing humor, ideas, affection, excitement, fun, silliness, conversation, empathy, affirmation, self-disclosure, caring, support, catharsis or just time together.

Love bids often are subtle but they also can be quite clear and obvious. They are accomplished by both verbal and expressional (non-verbal) behaviors. They help fill one of love’s major purposes, that of healthful connection (see mini-love-lessons “A Functional Definition of Love”). Love bids, well pitched and well caught, and then returned again help us come together, get happy together and help bring about the best and most important of love nurturing and emotionally nourishing experiences.

Love Bids and Love Success

There is research from the pioneering and famed Gottman Institute that shows successful couples tend to connect and interact 86% or more of the time when one partner or the other makes a bid for love relationship connection; success here is defined as a couple being together six or more years. Failing couples, those who break up or divorce in less than six years, connect after a bid for connection is made, on average, only 33% of the time or less. That is only one of an increasing number of findings from a growing body of large-scale, long-range, ongoing research efforts in a wide number of fields working to discover what succeeds in love relationships.

A considerable amount of growing evidence points to this conclusion. Love bids and love connecting experiences are vital for maintaining and growing healthy, real love relationships. The maintenance of ongoing relationships, the healing of damaged relationships and living balanced and healthfully in active relationships is crucially affected by how well people in these relationships ‘pitch and catch’ their bids for love connecting.

Subtle Bids for Love Connecting

Jennifer looked up and in whispered tones said, “Aren’t the clouds beautiful”? She was making a small, subtle bid for her husband to briefly connect with her in a sharing appreciation, love experience. She was purposefully making it small and subtle because, to her, it seemed more intimate and romantic that way. Perhaps it also seemed safer protecting her from being obviously rejected if he didn’t catch it or reacted somehow negatively.

If Jennifer’s husband made absolutely no response to her bid she might see him as being insensitive, not valuing her, perhaps upset with her, or even evidence of him not loving her. If Jennifer’s husband responded with something like, “No, I actually don’t like those clouds, they look like a storm is brewing and that’s going to ruin our barbecue plans for tonight”. That would have been better than no response at all. Even though it presents disagreement, it involves replying and interacting with her about what she said, and that is more of a love connecting than not responding at all.

If he added to his disagreement statement, terms of endearment like Sweetheart or Darling, along with pleasant tones of voice, it could be considered quite loving. That might have met Jennifer’s desire to be dealt with, and connected with, as someone who is loved by her husband. It, therefore, would have been a love nourishment and bonding experience, better by far than silence.

If Jennifer’s husband responded by putting an arm around her, and pulled her closer as he also looked at the clouds and then kissed her on the cheek, that would have given her the love connection that her bid actually was aimed at producing. If he had added words like, “I feel so close to you when we see beautiful things together”, that might have made for an intimate moment of superb, love connection.
The pitching and catching of subtle love bids sometimes can be something of an art form. It may involve all sorts of intriguing and enjoyable variations. It also can be quite spontaneous and even unconsciously done. Without even knowing it, a sad look can be a bid for supportive, caring, love connecting.

Obvious Bids for Love Connection

While subtle bids for love connection are considered more romantic and safer from embarrassment, obvious bids are much more likely to be clearly understood and successfully enacted. However, when they are lovelessly rejected, the ‘ouch’ factor usually is much stronger. So, unless your self-love is quite strong, having your obvious bids for love connection turned down may result in you feeling really hurt. The healthfully, sufficiently self loving can sincerely think “their loss” and go on feeling okay. Others, not so much.

Obvious bids usually are accomplished through the use of words requesting specific behaviors. “Let’s cuddle on the couch for the next half-hour and just be close, okay?” is an example of an obvious bid for love connection. A well pitched, obvious love bid includes four elements: (1) the behavior desired – to cuddle, (2) the desired place where the behavior is to occur – on the couch, (3) the desired time – the next half-hour, and (4) the desired emotional mood – closeness. A good, obvious love bid usually is stated in loving tones of voice with loving facial expressions, gestures and perhaps some loving touch. If delivered in written form, it usually is good to add some additional words expressing love directly.

It also is good to be careful about making a clear difference between a bid for sex and a bid for love, or a bid for both together. It is important that you and your intimate love partner both be sure you have the same understanding. If you say, “I want to hug” and it means “let’s have a raunchy, good time together, miscommunication problems are highly likely.

Well Caught and Returned Love Bids

Responding to love bids is crucial for having ongoing, love success. When couples, or families, or friends reduce their pitching, catching and return pitching of their bids for love connecting, as one might expect, connection reduces. Reduced love connecting sets up a love relationship for all manner of problems. Love malnutrition and love starvation may occur. This especially is dangerous for the health and well-being of young children.

Vulnerability to couples having affair problems becomes greater. Friends and family members can grow distant with reductions of love bids. And all sorts of other maladies become more likely when bids for love connection are markedly reduced or absent.
Frequently and, if possible, artfully pitching your bids for love connection, receiving other’s bids, and responding with a return pitching leads to love cycling. This in turn tends to grow love and make it stronger, as well as healthier, not to mention more enjoyable.

To do all that requires several things. It is just like the game called “catch” when the ball is thrown back and forth. (Notice the game is not called “throw”). First you have to be aware that something is being thrown or pitched to you. Otherwise, what is pitched may fly right by you. Once you notice what is coming, you have to try to catch it. This requires some understanding of what it really is, or might be, and a receiving response, followed by an awareness of whether you got it or not.

Misinterpreting or misunderstanding is like fumbling the ball. Next you have to come up with how you are going to make a return pitch, followed by aiming and sending it. Each of these steps can be handled artfully with practice, clumsily, or not at all. The research suggests everybody totally misses some of the time, fumbles at other times, but with practice, sometimes with coaching, they can get better and better at this astonishingly important love skill. So, the more you study and practice both your pitching love bids and catching your loved one’s bids for love connection, the better the relationship likely will be.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What kind of bids for love connecting are you good at making, and what kinds are you likely to miss or misunderstand?

Intimacy Creation - A Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson covers intimacy ignorance; the two major kinds of intimacy; sexual intimacy; emotional intimacy; the cultural complications of intimacy; and then gives you a dozen ways to work toward creating and enhancing emotional intimacy in your own, personal life.

Intimacy Ignorance

Can you say “My most intimate experiences are among the very best experiences of my life!”? Can you say “The intimacy I share with those I love most provides me with my most valued, special feelings!”? Can you say “Intimacy with a loved one has been a supreme and sublime, love experience like no other!!”? Can you say “I know very well how to go about creating intimacy and intimacy experiences with those I love!”?

“She told me we just were not intimate enough, often enough. At first I thought she meant sex but that turned out to be quite wrong. So what does she mean? How in the world do I go about whatever this intimacy thing is?”

Often I hear this sort of question when I’m doing relationship counseling or coaching with men. However, there are related statements I get from females. Their statements often are something like “Isn’t he just supposed to know how to be intimate if he loves me? If he hasn’t learned how to be intimate by now doesn’t that mean something’s wrong with him and our relationship can’t work? If I have to tell him how to be intimate won’t that spoil it? ”

Sometimes I get a female’s statement like this: “I don’t know how to tell him what I mean by intimacy. He is willing to learn but I only know it when I feel it, but I can’t explain how to get there. Of course, there are females who make statements more like the males and males who make statements more like the females, so it’s not strictly a gender thing.

Another kind of statement I sometimes get in counseling concerning intimacy goes like this: “Our sex just isn’t very intimate.” Or sometimes, “ When we feel really intimate with each other it just never turns into anything sexual, and I want it to be sexual at least sometimes but we don’t know how to make that happen.”.

Two Kinds of Intimacy

I like to suggest that the first thing to get clear about is that there are two main types of intimacy – emotional and sexual. They go well together but also they can be confused with one another. When this confusion occurs people frequently end up having difficult problems with each other. It also is quite important to understand that people can have sex without emotional intimacy just as easily as they can have emotional intimacy without sex.

Sexual Intimacy

Sexual intimacy can be said to occur when people closely and personally experience each other’s activated and shared sexuality. This can occur via sight, sound, touch, scent, taste and kinetics. It also can occur via shared sexual thoughts and feelings, well shown and expressed physically and emotionally.

Sexual Intimacy often involves disclosing one’s sexual self to another, accompanied by close and extensive body exploration, and the sharing and showing of erotic responses to erotic stimuli. Sexual Intimacy may or may not involve sexual intercourse and orgasm but it often does. Some people do not seem to be able to do sexual intimacy without emotional intimacy, while others do so rather easily.

Still others mix and separate the two, at will, depending on who is involved and their own, individual, love situation. Sometimes the words intimacy or sexual intimacy are used to merely mean sexual intercourse or that some other form of sexual action has occurred. This, I suggest, is a misuse and more misleading way of using these words.

Emotional Intimacy

Emotional intimacy for most people is a little harder to identify and define. Emotional intimacy can be said to occur when someone feels an emotional, close, personal contact and connection with another. This usually is accompanied with feelings of warm, private affection and positive regard, and not infrequently with very strong, personal love of one type or another.

Emotional intimacy can be marked by a depth and breadth of knowledge of another, and a sense of emotional interweaving with the inner core or essential nature of another’s innermost, true self. It is most likely to occur when strong emotions are felt and shared. It can come with close, physical, mental, social and emotional association.

Occasionally it brings on a sense of two or more beings, at least temporarily, having a fusion of their core spirits and real personalities. Emotional intimacy frequently leads to increased love bonding, sometimes accompanied by a sense of awe and of being spiritually understood and connected. Recent evidence suggests that when emotional intimacy occurs there are strong, healthful and perhaps fairly rare neurochemical processes occurring in the limbic system of the brain.

Cultural Complications

In the larger, Western world, growing, mega-culture it seems like not a lot of people learn what emotional intimacy is, let alone how to create it. Even fewer appear to learn how to maintain and grow intimacy in ongoing relationships. In our more ‘macho’ societies emotional intimacy often is regarded by males as feminine and, thereafter, disregarded, ignored and avoided.

It’s interesting that in some societal spheres things seen as feminine are put on an ‘idealized pedestal’ in principle but devalued and psychologically trashed in actuality. Then there are those people who fake intimacy as just a way to gain something on their hidden agenda list like money, sex, marriage, etc.

After attainment of the hidden motive, the intimacy actions disappear. This seems to occur particularly often in cultures and societal groups oriented primarily to commercialism, consumerism, power, status attainment, etc. rather than love, cooperation, mutuality and having a deeper quality of life.

However, all over the world there are people longing and striving for intimate love connections, intimate romance, emotionally intimate sex, and relationships filled with intimate emotional intercourse. All over the world there is the question “How do you go about being emotionally intimate?”. It would seem most people have very few, clear answers. The good news is you can learn how to enhance and grow your intimacy-making skills and, thereby, strengthen and improve your love relationships.

A Dozen Ways to Work Toward Creating and Enhancing Emotional Intimacy

1.    Get Close As you relate to someone slowly get physically closer and closer to them if the relating seems to be going well. The closer you get physically the more likely you are to be able to be emotionally intimate. When close make lots of eye contact.

2.    Talk Quietly Intimate, personal talk is low-voiced, quiet talk, at least at first. Shouting with shared exuberance may come later but until it does almost whispering does best.

3.    Talk Emotions Learn and use the many terms for emotions. Identify emotional feelings, ask about emotional feelings, share emotional feelings, and never leave emotional feelings out.

4.    Listen Well Always be able to repeat back, nearly verbatim, what a loved one or an important other says to you. Always be able to label, describe, or ask about the emotions involved in what you heard.

5.    Touch Carefully First, softly touch the hard parts like shoulders, elbows, wrists, etc. And later softer parts. At first, hug gently but then firmly and strongly.

6.    Reveal Private Feelings Going ‘psychologically naked’, more and more, is essential for intimacy development. Revealing the emotions you have and sometimes the physical feelings, along with behaviors and thoughts, history, hopes, etc. is required.

7.    Respect and Accept Revelations and Sharings Usually with kindness and without shock judgment or criticism receive what others intimately share and reveal.

8.    Expressionally Communicate Lots Facial expression, tonal expression, gestural expression, and postural expression often are more important than verbal expressions.

9.    Show Care Have real care for what another is experiencing and show it, be it happiness, or agony, or the most mundane of things.

10.    Adventure Together Emotionally Create and seek out experiences you can jointly experience together that are likely to engender emotions be they strong, delicate, tender, inspiring, surprising, reassuring, intense, serene, ecstatic, moving or anything else.

11.    Take and Make Time Make and take the time it takes to have emotional intimacy and don’t rush it.

12.    Empathize Frequently Emotional intimacy takes joining with another by empathetically and sometimes passionately sharing their pains, and pleasures and also their mediocre times. Avoid becoming emotionally distant, distracted, absent or frequently attitudinally against those you would love and be emotionally intimate with.

Hopefully these 12 points will help you grow your intimacy-making love skills. Of course, there’s lots more to learn so probably you will need to venture into this topic more.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Can you fantasize and then analyze what would be a wonderfully, emotionally, intimate experience for you and your most beloved?

Do You Start and Part with Love?

How do you do ‘Hi’s’ and ‘Bye’s’ with those you love? To keep a love relationship healthy it is best if every (yes every) ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ experience includes at least a brief love connecting and sharing experience. Every “Hello, I’m home” event is best done with a hug, a pat, a caress, a nuzzle or a kiss. Going past each other to whatever you want to get to next without any expression of connecting love can be detrimental to your love relationships. Likewise, every “So long” is better done with similar brief expressions of love.

In some relationships the lack of such love when parting can lead to hours of vague anxiety, worrying “is anything wrong”. Starting off time together with a little demonstration of love means that the following time is more likely to go well. Ending a time together with expressed and received love actions makes your next encounter more likely to be a bit sooner, a bit better and a bit more wanted. People who start and part with love are seen as having better attitudes, better cooperation likelihood, less stress and a host of other small but significant benefits.

Many couples and many families I see in counseling for reasons of deteriorating relationships have not been greeting each other or saying goodbye to each other with any love at all. Sometimes there is no greeting or saying goodbye what so ever. Often when I get them to experiment with a little ‘start and part’ love action improvement begins. This is one of the simplest and quickest ways to start toward the repair, or enhancement, of a love relationship. Notice that this is the way most pet dogs (who were put in the world to teach us love according to an old Indian legend) do it. Actually many apparently love- connected mammals greet and part with what looks like shows of affection. So maybe love starting and parting is natural.

It is not only failing love relationships that often lack this love expression ‘start and part’ behavior. ‘Blah’ and ‘in a rut’ stagnant, and semi-functional relationships frequently exhibit this lack of love ‘start and part’ way of doing things. So, I would like to suggest you check out how well your love shows in ‘start and part’ situations. Might you do well to greet your spouse, children, friends, and maybe even yourself with an improved, more love demonstrative ‘start and part’ set of actions? Would you like to dedicate yourself to starting every encounter with a brief but sincere show of love?

Be sure to do that before you try to take care of anything else each time you encounter a loved one even if you have been away from them only for a brief amount of time. When coming together after work, going to the store , visiting with others, etc. making some action to lovingly touch, saying words of love followed by asking “How are you feeling” delivered with a loving tone of voice and loving facial expressions are usual ways to create a pleasant and caring environment.

Coming in from outside while saying a term of endearment like “Hello, Sweetheart”, giving a good morning kiss upon waking, smiling at first sight of one another, and adding a caress or pat are also quite helpful. Departing with similar sentiments and behaviors works in much the same way. If you already do these sort of things ask yourself how can you improve? If you don’t already do this sort of ‘start and part’ love might you want to dedicate yourself to making a plan to do so, and enacting it?

If when coming together you usually begin with some sort of practical ‘what’s to be done’ talk, or ‘what has been done’ inquiry a sense of low grade aggravation is likely to grow. If the last thing said on departure is something like “Remember to mail the letter, pickup the cleaning, do your homework”, etc. that person’s return to you is less likely to be happy.

If the last thing said is a message of love the reverse is true. Get the practical messages said but end with an expression of love. If the first thing said upon coming together is “Did you remember to pay the bills, do your assignment, call so-and-so”, etc. a small dose of subconscious emotional abrasion may occur. That abrasion experience could later lead to growing difficulty, or at least to fairly strong disappointment. If instead a happy “Hello, darling, it’s so good to be with you”, or something like that, starts a new encounter with each other it is much more likely to go smoothly. Usually it only takes 20 seconds or less to start or part lovingly. The return on your loving effort can yield hours of happier time together. Of course you can take longer than 20 seconds and do it even better if you want to.

If you are the recipient of loving ‘start and part’ behaviors do you soak them up, reciprocate in kind, and cycle the love being offered? Ignoring, or quickly moving away from such tokens of love deprives yourself and your loved one from the healthy, positive effects of these small important actions. Unfortunately, in our fast paced, often goal oriented and impersonal daily lives there is an insufficiency of loving behaviors, so savoring those love actions that do come your way can enrich your life.

A good love relationship takes good love teamwork. Good teamwork love takes good sending and good receiving. Being a good receiver and an equal participant when a loved one initiates a ‘start or part’ love action helps the process of good teamwork love quite a lot. So, if a love ‘start or part’ action comes your way take it in and send some back.

People sometimes say to me things like, “Dr. Cookerly, doesn’t starting and parting with love get to be an empty habit or meaningless activity”? It can if you let it but it doesn’t have to. Be creative! Also all around the world friendly, affectionate greeting and parting rituals make life work better. It’s healthy for those in all loving relationships to develop their own, informal love rituals. If you get a sense that your rituals are beginning to feel empty or meaningless that might be a message from your inner wisdom-filled subconscious to do them better.

So, here’s a simple challenge. Make an experimental ‘start and part’ with more behaviors of love action plan, and carry it out. Then see if you and those you care about like the results.

As always – grow in love!

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Are You Talking About Love Enough?

“I just realized all we ever really intimately talk about is what’s wrong! This is supposed to be a love relationship were having, so why aren’t we talking about our love and about love itself”? Darma stated this to her husband, Antonio, in a worried and perplexed way.

Antonio replied, “Sometimes we talk about sex but you know, Darma, I think you’re right except I’m not at all sure I know how to talk about love. When you talk about love what all do you talk about”? Darma responded with a pause and a sort of stammer then said, “Maybe I don’t know how to talk about it very well either but I think we need to try.”

Antonio and Darma share a common problem that afflicts and contributes to the destruction of many a couple, also some families and some friendships. They don’t talk about love enough. Because of that insufficiency the love in those relationships may go undeveloped, unrepaired, may wane, become stagnant, weaken, deteriorate and if there are other troubles – may die. Those who love each other have a much better chance of keeping their love alive, healthy and growing if they learn to talk about their love and about love itself.

Unfortunately our English-speaking heritage is particularly deficient in teaching us how to effectively talk about love. Part of this comes from a time in which the English peoples feared love meant sex, and sex meant sin, and sin was bad so they thought they shouldn’t and, therefore, wouldn’t talk about love. Consequently our English-speaking customs didn’t develop or include much of a language for love itself. Another part of our poor love-talk-ability comes from the wrong headed, destructive, macho training of men for whom love was mistakenly thought of as a weakness and a far too feminine thing. Thus, it became unmanly to be anything but silent on the topic of love.

For a time English-speaking churches talked about love but then they abandoned that for talking about faith, and correct belief, even though the New Testament clearly teaches love is greater and more important than faith. Love as a word having to do with great and powerful caring, compassion, courage , nurturing, protection and high joy was surrendered to those who wanted a ‘nicer’ synonym for sex. Sadly for some our inability to talk about love has led them to believe love does not exist, or can’t be understood, or it has led them into very mistaken, destructive understandings of love (see the entries “Love’s Definition series” in the left column, and the “False Love series” in the Site Index under ‘F’).

Many couples, families and friendships don’t do very well at the naturally needed maintenance, repair, nurturing, healing and development type of talk required to keep their love relationships healthy. So many couples talk only about love when a love relationship starts to go wrong or already is in deep trouble. Others may get some ‘love subjects’ talk done but they may not do enough love talking to really keep their love lively and growing. Some talk is better than none, but learning the wide range of important love related topics available and talking about them all is far better.

To help you with talking love and doing a good job of it here are a dozen guidance questions containing various love topics for you and those you love to practice talking about. I suggest you go to a loved one and say, “Let’s talk about one or more of these” and, thereby, see if you can work toward the highly rewarding and enjoyable goal of really being able to talk constructively about your love relationship and love itself.

1. Do you talk about how exactly those you love want to be touched, i.e. harder or softer, higher or lower, faster or slower, etc. when you’re trying to convey love to them? (See the entry “50 Varieties of Love Touch”).

2. Do you know which of the eight major groups of behavior that convey or demonstrate love is most important to you and to those closest to you? (Read Recovering Love Part Two, a book by yours truly).

3. When a loved one talks to you about a problem in their life do you know how much they want you to respond with empathy, advice, expressions of care, instructions, commiseration, reasoning, sympathy, suggestions, hugs, silence, solutions, cheerleading or anger at who or what they are angry about? (See the entry “Love Positive Talking”).

4. Do you and your loved ones talk about how affirmational you want your verbal interchanges to be, i.e. filled with praise, compliments, thanks, appreciation, and other positive remarks?
5. Can you talk to someone that loves you about how much and how well you do or don’t go about healthful self-loving self-talk?

6. With those you love do you talk about how to work together to avoid speaking in ways that harm your love relationship and then about the love words you really want to hear?

7. Can you identify, label and speak clearly about at least a dozen enjoyable emotions love can help you feel, and then can you identify and talk about the guidance messages brought to you by each of those emotions (See “Emotional Intercourse”)?

8. Do you and your romantic love interest do well at initiating and carrying on intimate, precious, tender, love talk?

9. How well and how often do you and your romantic love interest ask for what you want when it comes to showing each other love?

10. Are you doing a good job of sharing your love history, your love thinking, your love actions, your love hopes and the various emotions love causes you to feel?

11. Do you talk with those you love about love’s compassion, love’s affection, about feeling cherished, about the bravery of love, love’s preciousness, love and trust, love’s rapture, love’s healing ability, love’s spirituality, love’s kindness, along with the ways of lasting love, mature love, healthy love, protective love and enriching love (read Dr. Bell Hooks’ book All About Love)?

12. Do you and those you love talk about how you can grow your love, conquer with love, heal with love, survive with love (read Love and Survival by Dr. Dean Ornish), nurture with love, teach love, enrich life with love, worship with love, inspire with love and do sex with love (see the entry “Making Love or Having Sex?).

Hopefully that’s enough to get you started on ‘talking about love enough’ if you’re not already doing so. Let me suggest you set yourself a goal of talking about love with someone at least once a week. It’s also good to read about love at least that often. Doing that is likely to assist you and those you love in becoming far more love oriented, love empowered, love effective and life victorious (read Dr. Helen Fisher’s book Anatomy of Love and Dr. Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving).

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Are you good at enjoying talking love?

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

Heart Before Head

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

Gender Differences

Basic Instructions

Talking to Bad Feelings

Common Mistakes

Talking to Bad Feelings Aimed at You

Self-Care

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Mini-Love-Lesson #190

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

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

The Best Use of Power When in Conflict

The Surprising 3 Most Love Successful Ways

Becoming Power Usage and Conflict Resolving Successful

The Big Problem of Mismatches

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Mini-Love-Lesson # 275

Three Steps To Affirmational Love

Being Real

Hints for Talking Affirmationally

How Much Affirmational Love Is Enough?

Synopsis: This mini love lessons starts with the surprising importance of self talk; then goes to what is self talk; what is positive and negative self talk; some things to do about better self talk and love relationship improvement; more.

The Surprising Importance of Self Talk

What Is Self Talk?

What Is Positive and Negative Self Talk?

Where Does Our Self Talk Come From?

How Does Self Talk Effect Love Relationships?

Self Talk for Healthy Self-Love

The Importance of Positive, Future-Oriented Self Talk

Be and Do Self Affirmation

Self Love’s Relationship to Other Love and Self Talk

Some Things to Do for Better Self Talk and Love Relationship Improvement

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Three Love Action States – and Super Important Questions

Descriptions of the Three Love Action States

Outcomes Of the Three States

Quality and Quantity Issues

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Synopsis: How pitching and catching love bids makes an enormous difference starts our discussion; followed by what love bids are; and finally ending with the super significance of well caught and well returned bids; more.

Pitching and Catching Love Bids Makes All the Difference

What Are Love Bids?

Love Bids and Love Success

Subtle Bids for Love Connecting

Obvious Bids for Love Connection

Well Caught and Returned Love Bids

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson covers intimacy ignorance; the two major kinds of intimacy; sexual intimacy; emotional intimacy; the cultural complications of intimacy; and then gives you a dozen ways to work toward creating and enhancing emotional intimacy in your own, personal life.

Intimacy Ignorance

Two Kinds of Intimacy

Sexual Intimacy

Emotional Intimacy

Cultural Complications

A Dozen Ways to Work Toward Creating and Enhancing Emotional Intimacy

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

**Becoming Power Usage and Conflict Resolving Successful**