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?

Related posts:

1. Can You Talk about Sex – with Love?
2. Listening With Love – Are You Good At It?
3. Additive Talking – A Love Skill
4. Critiquing without Criticizing 

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?

Related posts:

1. Anti-Love Myth # 1: True Love Means You’ll Know What to Do
2. The Anti-Love Forces Are Out to Get You
3. Pro-Love and Anti-Love Talking
4. Touch Only with Love: an Anti-Violence Tool
5. It Might Be Healthy, Real Love … 

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?

Related posts:

1. Lying to Protect Those You Love ???
2. Connection Matching – A Love Skill
3. Wall and Catapult Love Destruction & How To Avoid It
4. Anti-Love, Non-Love & Real Love
5. Cycling Love for Lasting Love 

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?

Related posts:

1. Growing Closeness – A Love Skill
2. Touching Back – A Surprisingly Important Love Skill
3. Checking It Out – As a Love Skill
4. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
5. Catharsis Empathy – A Love Skill 

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

Related posts:

1. Listening with Love

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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Related posts:

1. Love Positive Talking
2. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
3. Pro-Love and Anti-Love Talking
4. Additive Talking – A Love Skill
5. Talking Styles That Hurt and Help Love 

Do You Want To Say 'Love' When You Mean 'Sex'?

Did you know that using the word love when sex is meant leads to children not being sufficiently told they are loved in certain families?  When parents are vaguely aware the word ‘love’ can sometimes mean ‘sex’ they are less prone to use the word love with their children according to some.

This is not just a problem with children.  Sadly in family therapy I have often heard adult children say to their older parents, “You never told me you loved me”.  Their parent’s reply usually includes something like ‘the word love is too intimate, or personal, or uncomfortably sort of sexual’ if they can articulate their inner prohibition.

Then there is the situation with certain couples where using the word love can lead to marital mis-communication and disharmony.  This can happen when he says, “I love you” and means to convey a message of heartfelt love for her but she interprets it like “He doesn’t really love me, he is just after sex again”.  Are you aware that if certain people hear or speak the word ‘love’ to each other enough they may convince themselves that having both unprotected sex and sex that lacks love is okay?  That’s where the urban folk saying “to get someone to have sex with you just use the word love a lot” comes from.

Sex and love are two very different things, although they mix well.  For some years now it has been popular to use the word love when sex is the real subject matter.  Lots of people say “let’s make love” when “let’s have sex” is what is really meant.  Many books have been published with the word love in the title when the book is really only about sex.  Somewhat sex phobic people find the word love less offensive or more a polite term to use when needing to say something about sex.  You may think, “Why not use the word love when talking or writing about sex”?  Here are some of the main possible ‘why’s’.

Using the word love when meaning sex brings about a mental detour from clearly and precisely seeing love as a unique, extremely significant, and an entirely different subject than sex.  It also has the effect of subtly diminishing our understanding of love’s extraordinary importance.  Furthermore, it causes love to be less attended to in its own right, thus, subtly decreasing how much we think, act, and center on love in our lives.

Another issue is that saying the word love when meaning sex is just inaccurate.  Inaccuracy causes confused thinking and leads to mistakes, some of which may be serious.  Also using the word love for sex is frequently deceptive and manipulative.  If when we hear the word love we are conditioned to focus on sexuality we are diverted from thinking of all the other important types, aspects and factors involved with love itself.  Certainly sexual love is an important topic but it’s not the only, or the first topic one might think of when hearing the word love.

Did it ever cross your mind that the two groups that seem to use the word love the most are the promoters of religion and the promoters of pornography?  Spiritual love and sexual love are strongly related in the theology of many religions but using the word love for sex only seems to blind us from seeing that relationship.

From this therapist’s point of view our world just might come to be a bit more loving and a little less love-starved if whenever we said the word love we meant the real thing and not sexuality, or anything else for that matter.  So, let me suggest you consider your own use of these two words and give some thought to how you really want to deal with them in your life and in your relationships.

Always – Grow in love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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Image credits: “Hotel beds at 9am” by Flickr user .guilty.
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Related posts:

1. Can You Talk about Sex – with Love?
2. Making Love OR Having Sex?
3. Listening with Love
4. Sex Fears Mastered with Love
5. Monogamy for Love & Monogamy for Sex 

Can Love the Second Time Around Be Better Than the First?

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson is all about people making a second marriage (or love-mated relationship) and later attempts at couple’s love to succeed better than most people do.  It introduces the concept of “team love” as crucial to second and later effort success, and presents what are NOT the right answers times seven.

Second Failures and Second Successes

Second marriages, second marriages to the same person, try again relationships, re-contacts after breakups, joining up after years apart, living together again with an ex – they all start with the danger of the past repeating itself.  They also face a statistical worse chance of staying together than does a first time, committed relationship.  Even so, all these second attempts are on the rise throughout the developed world.

The good news is there is a growing group of couples (maybe up to about 30+ percent ?) who are making second goes at love, marriage, etc work and, not only that, but making them work far better than their first attempts.  Another good news factor is we are beginning to have some ideas, some understandings, some research and some new and apparently more helpful concepts about what makes second goes at couple’s love work and what makes them fail.

It is still true that most second, third, fourth, etc. marriages and other couple’s unions fail at greater rates than do first time marriages, etc. but it does not have to be that way.  This is demonstrated by a number of second marriage couples exhibiting their second-time-around as far more successful, more healthy, more happy and more lasting than their first.

I literally have worked with hundreds of second time couples.  On follow-up survey research, most of them report getting better and better at being a loving couple.  I heard from one of them just yesterday. They told about how they were before and after they came to do love-centered, team oriented, couple’s counseling. Collectively they had previously made five marriage type attempts, all ending in agonizing failure.  That was years ago before they got together and started learning what it really takes to make a second attempt, couple’s love have lasting success (defined as 10 or more years).  Furthermore, I personally know this because I am in such a second relationship which Kathleen which we have made work better and better for over 40 years.

What Is NOT the Answer Times 7!

Before we look at what does work, let’s look at some of what we can learn from second attempt failures.

1.    Relying on doing a love relationship the same way you did it before likely will not work any better the second time than it did the first.  You must do different to get different results.  Those who succeed at a second go at couple’s love usually learn to do the second relationship very differently than they did their first.  There are some exceptions but not many.

2.    Relying on finding the perfect mate who treats you just right, just about guarantees failure.  One reason is because that puts almost all the pressure and weight of succeeding on your love-mate and little or none on yourself, or on your joint team love system which often turns out to be a crucial factor.

3.    Relying on the magic of love to make every thing work right this second time is like a farmer relying on the magic of nature alone to produce a healthy, abundant harvest.  No, it is going to take a lot of new love knowledge and team work along with the magical nature of love.

For example think of acrobats and their incredible teamwork to keep each other tumbling and sailing through the air safely.  Then think of any well coordinated team artfully running plays and patterns in cooperation and harmony, so as to make scores and win the game.  Now think of couple’s love like a team sport; you don’t know yet how to play very well.  So, it is going to take a lot of joint learning and joint practicing to get good at it together.  Love’s magical nature may get you started but from there on its sheer conjoint team effort and increasing love skill that wins the day.

4.    Do NOT rely on falling in love, feeling like you are in love, or being sure you are in love now that you think you have found the single, right person for you because several forms of false love can give you pretty much the very same initial feelings.

5.    Do NOT rely on manipulation games, relating by deceptions, relational trickery, other people’s rules for romance, hiding your less pleasant truths, phoniness or any other lack of realness because while those things might get you married falsehood, likely will not keep you mated that way or get you into healthy, real love.

6.    Do NOT rely on blaming of your ex, or of yourself or anything else to help you know how to go on to second love success.  And while you are thinking about past failures do not spend too much time on what went wrong because usually that will not lead you to what you must do right or what you must skillfully learn to do well.  Remember, knowing 3 is not the answer to 2+2 does not tell you the answer is 4.  Plus, it leaves you open to the mistakes of answering 5, 6, 7, etc.  However, it usually is useful to study what and how you could have done better.

7.    Do NOT rush into your next, heavy duty relationship.  Start light and don’t specialize in any one person too soon.  Sample broadly, let the best emerge and grow into it slowly.  Take a year and preferably two, once you think something is working really well.  As Paul told us, “ love is patient”.  It usually is false love that is in a hurry.

A New Understanding of Second Love Success

Second attempts at spousal love may go better, even much better than first marriages, non-marriages, unions, etc. because the couple learns to work at doing love itself better as a team.  Team love, much like any teamwork, requires a coordinated interaction of sending love and receiving love more skillfully and more completely than might have occurred in first marriages and other love attempts.  It appears that is because successful second marriage couples jointly tend to go looking for the how-to’s of doing love better than they did before.  They may not consciously know they are doing this, then again sometimes they do.  Also being aware that they can fail appears to help them be much more careful right from the start of a new relationship.

Those who succeed seem to interact in cooperative coordination using the behaviors of love much more often and much more readily than in previous relationships.  In doing so, they continually develop and hone their team love skills.  Such couples become increasingly better at working together in unison and jointly uniting to produce positive effects.  They learn to act in much more loving concert with each other pulling together, acting side-by-side, joining their forces together and siding with each other when facing opposition or difficulty.

These couples make efforts jointly and concurrently, growing their common love connection and with it a strengthening team spirit.  Their approach is exemplified by the statement “when I win you win, and when either of us loses so does the other and so does our relationship”.  They assist each other to be individuals but that too they do with team harmony.  Sometimes they do fall into disharmony and dissonance.  When that happens it is not long before they are trying to come back together in the teamwork of healing and conjointly reconnecting.  With their success, comes a joint shared joy and motivation to succeed again together even better.

More technically, successful second time couples are thought to build a much better systemic, love-active series of positive and jointly developed interaction patterns.  When one makes a little bid for a love connection with a glance, a sound, a gesture or anything, the other one picks up on it and smoothly and quickly acts in kind.  When one directly asks for any particular show of love, the other one also smoothly and quickly is responsive in kind.  The teamwork truly is a duet of love-responsive-interaction.

Much like superb, well practiced dancers, their actions, even when very different from one another, integrate with each other to produce a synergetic, singular whole.  Their support is mutual as is their respect for one another and their affirmation is solid and frequently freely evident as is a tolerance when things do not go well.  They do sometimes clash, sometimes quite vehemently, but never nearly as much as they harmonize and demonstrate how much they value one another and the importance of their coupleness.

It is important to know that this systemic team love concept for many people is hard to understand and also not easily researched.  It is hard enough for a lot of people to comprehend the ways of an individual let alone the interaction patterns of a couple acting in loving concert with one another.
To help you with that, here is a double example.  Al stays at the office later and later because he knows that when he gets home he will be met with his angry, disappointed, complaining wife, Barb.  So, Al stays later and later to avoid that.  He secretly hopes that Barb will get the idea that being nice would get him home sooner.  Barb waiting at home gets angrier, increasingly disappointed and prone to intense complaining the longer and longer it takes for Al to get home.  She secretly hopes her demonstrable unhappiness will get her husband to start coming home sooner.

Both Al and Barb’s actions are having the opposite of the desired effect.  Neither of them sees that what they are doing, trying to make it better, makes it worse; nor do they see that it is a cyclical pattern they both jointly are creating.  Next-door, Carl works to get home as quickly as he can because his wife, Debbie, is so pleasant to come home to.  Debbie is pleasant because Carl always arrives home greeting her with happy love.  They too are creating a joint interaction, cyclical pattern but one that has a positive, team love effect instead of an anti-love, negative one. Might it be that Al and Barb are in a first marriage and Carl and Debbie in a second, having learned better from their first?

In or Going toward a Second, Big, Committed Effort at Love?

If you are already in or going toward a second, big, committed effort at couple’s love, let me suggest you get a really strong TEAM focus.  As a team, together study, discuss and practice the behaviors of love  “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”, the understandings of love’s workings, the things that are known to help couple’s teamwork and those that do not help.  Learn how to avoid the traps of false love and the skills it takes to grow healthy, real love also can be part of your team focus.  Of course, we recommend this website and its 200+ mini-love-lessons, the books mentioned here, along with everything else you can find that looks like it might be worthy of your joint attention.  Classes, workshops, retreats, and being around loving people, especially loving couples, often can do wonders.  There is lots more but that will have to do for now.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success question: When, where and with whom have you done your best teamwork, and can you see how to apply what you did there to growing a couple’s team love?

Related posts:

1. What Makes Love Last?
2. Trust Recovery and Love
3. Yellow Love: Are You Suffering from It and Don’t Know It?
4. Anti-Love, Non-Love & Real Love
5. Cycling Love for Lasting Love 

An Alphabet of Love's Good Feelings

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with a little introduction to love and feelings; then gives you more than 150 positive emotions that can be brought on by love; and ends with some things you can do to use this list to enhance a love relationship.

Love and Feelings

Love causes, triggers and brings about a vast array of various good or pleasurable emotions.  It also can stimulate a number of positive, physical feelings.  Knowing the names of the emotions of love can greatly help people who love each other communicate their love, improve their love and better experience their love.  Remember, love itself is not an emotion but a vital, powerful, natural process of which the feelings are only a part.  Getting familiar with love’s many good feelings can help you assist those you love to experience those good feelings and have them yourself.

150+ Positive Emotions That Can Be Brought on by Love

A.      Affection, Awe, Attractive, Astonished, Assured, Ascendant
B.      Benevolent, Brave, Blithe, Blessed, Blossoming, Buoyant
C.      Compassion, Care, Concern, Connection, Complete, Capable, Carefree
D.      Devotion, Desire, Desirable, Determined, Dreamy, Dutiful
E.      Excited, Extraordinary, Empathy, Earnest, Enhanced, Ecstatic
F.       Friendship, Fondness, Forgiven, Free, Fulfilled, Fruitful
G.      Grand, Giddy, Genial, Gleeful, Gallant, Game, Generous
H.      Happy, Huggable, Hope, Honor, Humorous, Harmonious
I.      Intrigued, Ideal, Idolized, Impish, Important, Irresistible
J.       Joy, Jaunty, Joined, Jubilant, Juicy, Justified
K.      Kind, Keen, Kinky, Known, Kinship, Kissable
L.      Loving, Lovable, Lively, Likable, Liberated, Loyalty
M.      Merry, Magical, Magnificent, Mated, Meaningful, Masterful
N.      Naughty, Nice, Nurturing, Nourished, New, Notable
O.      Open, OK, Opulent, Obliging, Optimistic, Oceanic
P.      Protected, Private, Passion, Patient, Perky, Purposeful
Q.      Quiet, Qualified, Quickened, Quivery, Quizzical, Quirky
R.      Racy, Radiant, Rapture, Reassured, Receptive, Romantic
S.      Sacred, Sexy, Safe, Self confident, Sensational, Seen
T.      Tender, Teasing, Tenacious, Touched, Thrilled, Together
U.      Unbeatable, Union, Unity, Universal, Up-lifted, Useful
V.      Validated, Valiant, Valid, Victorious, Vivacious, Venerating
W.     Warm, Well, Worthwhile, Wonderful, Worthy, Wonderful
X.      Xenophilic, X-rated, Xenial,
Y.      Youthful, Yearning, Yielding, Yummy, Yenful
Z.      Zany, Zestful, Zippy, Zealous, Zooming, Zenithal

Some Things You Can Do with This List

With someone you love, pick out 20 of the named emotions from the list and talk with each other about how you could lovingly do things together that would produce the feelings you soon want to have.

With someone you love, pick out one named emotion from each letter of the alphabet and ask, “Before you met me, tell me about a time in your life when you felt this emotion?”.  (This can help both of you share your positive, personal, emotion histories).

With someone you love, talk about which emotions in the list you most want to experience more of, and which you think are the most important in your relationship.

Now, create some other things you can do with this list to enhance your love relationships.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Have you shared with someone you love the most emotionally moving events of your life?

Related posts:

1. Many Good Feelings Brought on by Love
2. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
3. Loves Ultimate Measure
4. Alphabet Love Test
5. Emotional Intercourse 

Self-Disclosure Love

 

Mini-Love-Lesson  #282

Synopsis: How emotional intimacy is achieved and closeness improved through self-disclosure of our inner and most private self; the importance of verbal and behavioral self-revealing for going psychologically naked together; the heartmate satisfaction that can result from sharing our deepest feelings; the best of our selves and the worst of our secret selves are required for profound and close love to grow.

A major pathway to intimate love is disclosing to another who we really are.  Self-disclosure may involve letting another honestly know our thoughts, our emotions, our body and our behavior.  It also can entail relating our private and personal history as well as who we are in the existential now.  

If we do not disclose our true self to our loved ones, they deal with a phony us.  If our phony self is given love, our true self can go love-malnourished or even love-starved.  In some manner, we probably sense the love coming toward us is for our act and not for our essence.

A best practice to getting really close to one another is to become naked.  To become physically or psychologically naked one must take off one’s wraps.  We also must be willing to deal with another’s nakedness.  The psychologically naked may be seen with warts, scars or unhealed wounds.  To show these elements of oneself, is a vulnerable and brave act.  To accept such elements without personal negation, rejection or attack, is a fine act of love.  To uninhibitedly show one’s emotions through expressions, words and touch, are potent ways to self-disclose.  To reveal our true thoughts, our moods, our fears, hang-ups, shame, joy, self-worth, or childlike qualities often are what is hungered for in intimate love relationships.  

Loving Self-Disclosure As A Key To Relationship Fulfillment

Research reveals that self-disclosure is a major key in forming strong relationships, in increasing cooperation and in the growth of mutual emotional intimacy.  When we self-disclose, we often cultivate a sense of bonded closeness.  An imperative for long-lasting and enduring relationships appears to be the inclusion of honest, loving self-disclosures.    

The lack of self-disclosure has been found to highly contribute to agony-filled breakups.  Infrequent self-disclose can impede relational growth.  Relational stagnation, consequently, is too likely a consequence.  Deterioration of a relationship when self-disclosures are absent, or too few and far between, may produce loneliness, isolation and a sense of futility. 

Self-disclosure tends to correlate with high couple and heartmate satisfaction and relational health and functioning. Because self-disclosure helps us know each other more fully and more accurately, trust is enhanced and teamwork is smoother and more effective.  Through self-disclosure, those who love each other often experience a greater sense of unity and contentment (see “Catharsis Empathy - A Love Skill”).

Behavioral Self-Disclosure

In ongoing love relationships, behaviorally showing how you are and who you are is a fundamental necessity.  Revealing your private and personal behaviors may be more important than what you tell about yourself. For instance, the behavior of crying at a sad story may garner more empathetic intimacy and closeness than merely telling about feeling sad for a story’s protagonist. Likewise, actually dancing for joy over something is more potently revealing and sharing of yourself than just announcing that you are happy about the same thing.

In intimate, sexual loving and relating, sharing your body behaviorally usually is vastly, emotionally more important than just talking about it.  Behaviorally demonstrating your love shows a great deal about you that words may never be able to express.  The look on your face, the kindness in your caress, the tender tones of your voice, your playful movements all can give disclosure to the special ways you do love (see “Difficult Topics: A Love-Centered Way To Approach and Broach Them All”).

Positive Feelings and Self-Disclosing Love 

Relational research is beginning to shine a light on the positive feelings involved in emotional relating, especially those having to do with love.  Recently Positive Psychology has contributed a focus on positive feelings like joy, ecstasy, serenity, awe, tenderness and the like. When positive feelings like those are divulged, love relationships tend to be strengthened and deepened.  If I say, “I feel so safe with you” or “Wow, I feel our connection just went up a notch”, or “When we cuddle, I feel truly cherished”, I potently act to reinforce our bonds.  Sharing our significant feelings often can be the glue that holds relationships together (see “Say It With Love”).

As always – Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: What might you not bear to share or bear to hear shared and what if you could?

Other Ways to Say I Love You

Synopsis: Why say “I love you” in different ways; a dozen other ways to say the “I love you” message; creating and improving your own love expressions.

Why say “I love you” different ways?

The simple words “I love you” are wonderful and in love relationships it’s great if they get said quite often, even daily.

However, variety can be the spice of both love and life.  Having some different ways to get this basic love message across can add that bit of spice or variation that makes expressing your love a bit more artistic and impactful.  Verbally conveying love well is a good skill to develop and having variations helps that.  Having lots of different ways to say “I love you” can help those you love feel extra special and better loved.  It can show that you have given them extra thought and when it comes to love skills you may have more interesting things to offer.  So, I suggest you study the following list and add your own special ways of conveying the “ I love you” message.

A Dozen Other Ways to Say the “I Love You” Message

    1.   I love you sooooooooooo much!
2.   Every day I love you more!
3.   I could not, not love you!
4.   Loving you is the most joyous thing I do!
5.   My whole being loves your whole being!
6.   I love you is my grandest and most glorious truth!
7.   The very core of my being loves you so incredibly much!
8.   I know I will love you even more tomorrow than I do today!
9.   Loving you is such a fabulous blessing!
10. I am in amazing, fantastic, marvelous love with you!
11. Every time I see you I love you bigger!
12. I can’t find big enough words to tell you how much I love you!

Creating and Improving Your Own Love Expressions

With a little work you can create your own, improved “I love you” messages.  One way to do this is to use the name of the person you’re talking or writing to.  Another is to use terms of endearment like sweetheart, darling, honey, beloved, dearest, etc..  Still another way is to use special nicknames.  One caution here, be sure that nicknames don’t have any negative or put-down quality to the person you’re saying them to.  Some couples go through the meditation exercise of discovering what is known as their special, spirit names and using them with each other, which is said to add great power to one’s “I love you” messages.

Alliteration is sometimes helpful. “ Loving you, Barbara, is beautiful” and “I am crazy in love with you Carol” are examples.  Of course if you can be poetic that helps too.  In any case why not see if you can vary the way you get your “I love you” messages across and, thereby, make your love expressions a little more interesting and able to have a little more impact.

As always –Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Have  you given thought to and expressed to your loved ones how they might best tell you of their love or you?

Related posts:

1. How to Talk Love Without Words