Could You Be a LAT Lover and Succeed at It?

Synopsis: How and why Georgia and Harrison do togetherness better apart; LAT– the new coupleness category; Far apart and next door apart closeness examples; Challenges; 10 ways to do LAT well; Plus the ‘not single and not married’  lifestyle look; The big, new question or solution for troubled couples.

Georgia and Harrison loved each other a lot but they weren’t even close to becoming compatible at living together.  They had married with high hopes but Harrison was a jumpy night person, a neat-nick who always had to have loud Jazz playing, and his decorator tastes were decidedly industrial.  Georgia was a calm, slow-moving, morning person, an admitted slob, and quietness is what she liked to listen to most, while frills, doilies and doodads cluttered up her living space.

After several unsuccessful attempts at weaving their lives together under the same roof they came to couples counseling.  They both were positively shocked when the idea came up that they could live apart and still be a successful couple.  It took some getting used to, a fair amount of counseling work, coordination, and tolerating their family and friends thinking they were really odd.  But now they live about a mile apart and call their way of relating a “very compatible, romantic arrangement” which Georgia says “is kind of like being perpetually engaged and married at the same time”.

More couples for all sorts of different reasons are working at their adult love relationships while living apart.  So many in fact that demographers with the US Census Bureau have invented the new category called “LAT” which stands for “Living Apart Together”.  Consider Marvin, who lives in Vancouver B.C. on the Pacific, who loves Marion, who lives in Charleston near the Atlantic, with almost a whole continent between them.  They have a home in Dallas where their pet iguana gets taken care of by a housekeeper, except when they get together for a weekend about once a month.

Then there is Sergei who gets home to Terri about once every three months from his ocean liner job.  Ella and Frank won’t even consider living together until they get their children, by former relationships, raised separately because it works better that way, although they are very much a committed couple who love each other.  And then there’s Deb and Don who occupy different sides of a duplex.  They say they find that their duplex living provides just the right degree of closeness and apartness for their relationship to succeed.

Living apart together, sometimes at great distances apart and sometimes closer, presents a fair number of the special challenges.  However, remember all love relationships have challenges but if the relationship does not work out it’s usually not so much because of the challenges.  It’s more often because the love in the relationship wasn’t strong enough or being done well enough.  LAT love relationships though sometimes do present very different and puzzling challenges needing close study and creative solutions.

LAT relating frequently is quite difficult even to think about for those raised on the standard ‘under the same roof’ couples lifestyle programmed into so many of us.  Yet, a fair number of people are doing LAT and learning to succeed at it, and some like it even better than living together.  Others do LAT out of necessity and plan to live together eventually, but in the meantime they still need to learn LAT skills.  So, here are some of the actions a number of LAT couples are taking to ensure their LAT love is successful.

1.  Calendarize everything. LAT lovers often discover they have to write just about everything on the calendar or in their PDA pertaining to their relationship – way more than do most couples.  They have to work at putting the exact times they will be contacting and connecting with each other, and exactly how that connection will be made, and what they exactly will be doing for how long during that time of connecting.  Ending times for various activities are often as important as start times.

2.  Make contact daily. LAT couples, especially those who live a great distance from one another, make great frequent use of all methods of electronically relating.  Skype connecting so they can see as well as hear each other is especially useful, but e-mail, texting, phoning each other and even being surprised with snail mail cards, packages and love letters are also to be considered.

3.  Make psychologically intimate contact. LAT couples, especially those living long distances from one another, can have many romantic and erotic encounters with one another electronically.  A Skype facilitated, candle light dinner shared over the Internet, phone sex, when talking on the phone using pet names and terms of endearment, ‘sexting’, romantic and even poetic e-mails and e-cards, shared Skype sex experiences, etc. can be common with LAT couples.  Some LAT couples even are having their “avatars” make love with each other in Second Life and other cyber locations.

4.  Use pictures. LAT couples are thought to keep more pictures of each other around, send each other more pictures including sexy ones (properly secured), and create or acquire more things that pictorially symbolized their love relationship.

5.  Read together. LAT couples often are reading the same books and articles, and then call each other up and talk about what they think and feel about what they’ve been reading.  Knowing that your beloved is reading the same thing you are can have its own special good feelings.

6.  Mini vacation together. LAT couples can add to their success by planning more vacation-like, short experiences together.  Of course, longer times also count.  A weekend at a Bed and Breakfast, meeting together in a different location, an overnight or a day long car trip together, even at one home or the other disconnecting electronics – ordering dinner delivered – putting on special music – and enjoying each other like you’re on vacation, and things like that can work wonders.

7.  Take a course together. Take an online course together or actually meet somewhere for a conference or seminar is another thing some LAT couples do together and sort of cover two bases with the same action.

8.  Engage in “I.T.” counseling. LAT couples who are having relationship troubles can by phone conference call, Skype, etc. engage in couples counseling together and the counselor or therapist can join you in cyberspace.  This doesn’t seem to work as well as face-to-face counseling but it will do tolerably well if mutual face-to-face work is too difficult to arrange.

9.  Prioritize dating. LAT couples living close, or at a distance from one another, do best if they give the highest priority to their dating times and other joint activity times together.

10.  Send lots of love messages. All couples, but especially LAT couples, can benefit from lots of different kinds of love messages frequently sent.  Naturally, it’s very important to respond with love to love messages which creates “love cycling”.

One of the big questions some troubled couples are learning to ask each other is “would we be better living as an LAT couple?”.  Along with that goes questions like: “would we do our love more healthfully, constructively and enjoyably if we didn’t live under the same roof”?  For troubled couples it’s helpful to know there’s another option to the age-old dilemma of either to get divorced or to stay married.  A surprising number of couples have gotten a divorce and then slowly gotten back together, followed by successfully becoming LAT couples, but not living as ‘under the same roof’ standard lifestyle, married couples.

It comes as something of a surprise for some people to learn there are whole societies in which couples don’t live together, though they are regarded as married and quite committed to their relationship.  In the Western world culture it seems that a number of people are choosing to be ongoing, committed to the relationship, but not living together couples.  Some are sort of forced into this arrangement such as military couples or those who have jobs in different locations.  But sometimes even after being discharged or finding jobs in the same city, a few decide to continue in a more LAT style.  A great many couples where one of them has a job with a lot of traveling live at least partially as LAT couples.  Health problems, old age infirmities, and sundry legal problems sometimes force loving couples into LAT living.  Whatever the reason, it is important to know people can succeed at a LAT lifestyle.

The biggest issue for LAT couples actually is the same one that exists for all couples, though for LAT lovers it may be bigger.  That issue is ‘how well will you actually do your love’ as a couple.  Love must be demonstrated, received and enacted, not just felt or thought about for it to succeed.  Insufficiently done love results in unsuccessful love and that is ruinous to love relationships.

Corollary questions are: ‘how well and how often will you show your love in each of the eight major groups of behavior by which love can be demonstrated’ (see the entry “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love” and the other related entries); ‘how well will you receive the love shown to you and be nurtured by that love’; ‘how well will you learn and practice the ways of love and how much work will you put into doing love well’?  For all those questions and more, let me suggest checking out all the entries at this site – especially ones about communicating love.

Now, I have a request.  If you know of anyone who is in or may be facing the issue of being in a LAT lifestyle, please refer them to this site and especially this entry so they have at least a little help in dealing with all this.

As always, Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Have you ever given serious thought to how well you might live and love in different lifestyles and could a LAT lifestyle suit you well?

Related posts:

1. Are You A "Challenge" Lover ?
2. Returning to a Bad Lover? – A Blocking Technique
3. Does “Cougar” Love Work?
4. Say It With Love
5. Are Love and Marriage Getting a Divorce? 

Is Love Winning?

Mini-Love Lesson  #265

Synopsis: Introduction to the unheralded and poorly heralded positive, world trends of adamant and compassionate love; criticism of the news media's imbalanced negativity and how you may be letting it affect you negatively; and benefiting yourself by joining those on the love causes bandwagon.

Take heart !

Has the news media convinced you that just about everything everywhere is getting worse and worse?  Have they gotten you used to thinking that the world's corruptions, crises and conflicts far outweigh and outnumber the advances, achievements and progress?  Have the naysayers and fear mongers got you wondering if humans largely may be a declining, mean, stupid, selfish and destructive lot with far too few exceptions?

Well take heart!  There is a preponderance of growing evidence that it is a lot better than the news media and the doom and gloom folk would have you believe.  Certainly, there are big problems and frightening challenges in abundance.  However, the good, the positive, the healthful and the improvement trends of the human condition all far outweigh the negative.  Let's glance at just some of the evidence that this is the accurate, reliable truth.

Proof positive!

A huge collection of scientific evidence gathered from the world's leading social scientists, contemporary historians, behavioral economists and behavioral neuroscientists shows most, but not all, of the bad stuff is in decline and the good stuff is on the rise.  All long-term measurements of the world’s violence, starvation, poverty, active warfare, major crime, illness and a host of other maladies and negatives are slowly and erratically reducing.  That has been true since World War II ended.  Actually some of the worldwide reduction in negatives trends goes back to at least the early 1700s.

Of course, there are major setbacks from time to time and the data graphs show serious peaks and valleys.  However, the trend lines are all in the desired direction with only a few rare exceptions.  The evidence is mounting that the human race culturally and perhaps even biologically slowly is becoming less cruel, more kind, more empathetic, less indifferent to other’s suffering, less conflict prone, more cooperative, less selfish and more compassionate.

Just a short 300 hundred years ago we still were burning witches at the stake, crucifying heretics, hanging minor crime offenders like pickpockets and starving bread thieves, and it was okay to beat your slave to death for just about any reason.  Much more recently, circa mid to late 1800s+, over 90% of the infants placed in orphanages died of absence of love behavior treatment/failure to thrive causes, hundreds more children suffered death or became maimed in mines and factories during six days a week 14+ hour work days, it was legal for husbands to beat and rape a wife regularly, you could spend years in jail for having not paid your debts, and offending a person of royal privilege might get you publicly flogged and deported to a colony.

It is with the rise of the humanitarian revolution and various subsequent rights movements that all that began to change for the better.  Still today because of corporate greed and anti-democratic politicians, people are made ill or die, poor children are breathing and drinking pollution, government-sponsored child separation trauma is causing brain damage, the elderly are being cheated out of retirement savings, pockets of starvation and abject poverty continue to exist, the mentally ill are imprisoned rather than treated, weaponized  violent acts are common, minorities are discriminated against -- and on and on goes the list of grievances that need the champions of humanitarian and altruistic adamant love.  Nevertheless, victories are being won, new and better trends established and the human condition in area after area made better, or at least, less bad (see “Adamant Love – And How It Wins For All of Us All”).

Search For Better Sources

While you can't much trust the regular media to cover the positive news very well or very much, there are a number of books, Internet sites and other sources giving more accurate and more balanced accounts on how the human race is really doing.  Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature is a great place to start.  It gives a massive array of research results, from a host of valid and reliable sources accompanied by some pretty fascinating reading.  It also can lead you to other good sources for the more positive side of things.

Don't Overdose on Negative News

Do you know that a number of counselors, therapists and personal improvement coaches advise against watching much TV news.  That is because so much of that news is so negatively focused.  After watching the news, clinical reports abound telling of people becoming more depressed, more anxiety ridden, more defeatist in attitude, more afraid of going out, traveling into new areas and even just going shopping locally.

Why is so much of the news media biased toward reporting mostly the negative?  Some suggest they mostly are largely mystified and muddled about how to report the positive.  Another reason seems to be that it always has been this way in journalism.  It is almost a religious doctrine that it is bad news that sells, draws interest and captivates while good news does not.  There also is the idea that news people lag far behind in the knowledge of how to even think about the positive let alone on how to report it and make it exciting.  Bad news focus has been practiced and perfected repeatedly so that is what reporters know how to do.  It follows that reporters want crises, conflicts, crime and disasters to report on.  Without those they might not  know what to do.  The thinking is all good news days are slow news days.  For good news to make it into the headlines, it has to be spectacular, not just good, or so it seems.

Another thing is to get to the top, in the news reporters and commentators world, you have to be lucky enough to get stories of the really awful stuff first.  They want to get a scoop of the breaking (the latest tragedy, crime, crisis or conflict).  Their training is to apply as many aggression and destruction descriptive adjectives as possible.  Have you ever noticed how news givers like to talk with words like fight, hostilities, battle, combat, attack, feud, punch, hit, strike, aggression, assault, etc.  This usage especially is common when reporting about politics.

Local news programs especially are bad about mostly reporting murders, auto accidents, burning houses and other news you really cannot use in your regular life except, perhaps for getting you used to staying home and being afraid or upset.

Now, to be an appropriately informed citizen, a certain amount of ongoing news is required.  Due to the growth of fake and biased, or one-sided news, it is important to listen to opposing sources.  Also, since the world at large increasingly influences everyone's local life, world news, good and bad, is important.  Actually, there usually are some pretty positive, funny and exciting things going  on out in the world you may want to seek out and enjoy if you do not already.

Warnings

If after watching or reading the news, you notice you feel vaguely or decidedly worse, cutback on the news and see if that helps.  If you notice family disagreements and all-over level of family positive interactions are diminishing, cutback on your news consumption.  If you notice a tendency to increasingly stay home and not go out into your outside world, cutback.  If you notice you more easily are angered, irritated, anxious, annoyed and frustrated, cutback.  Then as you make a news cutback, you might seek out some positive, funny and/or inspiring things on the Internet or you might talk more with upbeat friends and family.

Getting on the Love Victory Bandwagon

Love, healthy real love that is, is about highly valuing and when possible benefiting the health and well-being of the loved.  While the indicators of love winning in more and more places and ways, the enemies of love (hate, indifference, greed, bigotry, authoritarianism, cruelty, parochialism, destructive addictions, false love, proneness to violence, etc.) are all too active in our world today.  Those destructive forces work to defeat the valuing, the benefiting, the health and the well-being of the loved and potentially of the yet to be loved.  Only the perpetrators of those forces are benefiting.

Although the evidence is that love is more and more winning, the anti-love forces in the world still can win and destroy us all.  So, if you already are not, I urge you to join the forces of adamant and compassionate love.  The way you do that is to love everybody you love as well as you can and keep learning how to do that even more.  Then expand your range, if you already have not, by joining with those wonderful people involved in the many causes of love.  There are at least a 1000 of those, all with many marvelous people involved, all working to advance love-based goals, causes, efforts and movements all over the world.

That will very likely and perhaps profoundly benefit your own personal world of healthy, real love in both surprising and fulfilling ways.

One more thing:  Think about getting in a good, friendly argument with someone over whether or not love is winning in the world.  Be sure to keep it lovingly friendly and see where it leads.  If you do that, please be sure to mention this site and its many mini-love-lessons.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable questions:  If I only act with love toward those who already love me, am I not drastically limiting my life experience?  AND, If I only act with love toward those who are quite similar to me, might I not be drastically reducing my possibilities for life enrichment as well as my life’s adventures of love?

Love Against Bigotry

Mini-Love-Lesson  #233

Synopsis: The dangers of bigotry for its targets, practitioners and those who fight it; personal questions to face; bigotry more deeply defined with a deeper psychological understanding of its dynamics and causes; Adamant Love as bigotry’s best enemy; the survival necessity of fighting bigotry and three major ways to fight bigotry with love are well and succinctly presented in this mini-love-lesson.

Tough Love May Be Required

Bigotry is dangerous!  Not only does bigotry cause harm to others but eventually it becomes self-destructive to those who obsessively practice it.  It works much like a dangerous, contagious disease often subtly spreading and becoming more virulent and resistant to cure as it infects more and more of the vulnerable.  That is when the hate and fear-based core of toxic bigotry can come to dominate the entire life of the bigot destroying everything even connection to other bigots which is thought to be the last thing to go.  Family life, social life, physical and mental health, self-care and everything constructive usually eventually suffers due to bigotry’s pathological effects.  Physical disease susceptibility tends to grow and bring about a final demise of the profoundly bigoted.  That is part of what research into bigotry is revealing.  Research also gives evidence to bigotry being a serious and dangerous, pathological psychodynamic for all concerned (Check out The Violence of Hate, 3ed. by Jack Levine and Jim Nolan).

Of course, in many people bigotry appears in milder and more restricted forms.  Even there, research suggests it has a corrosive effect on its practitioners, on their healthier relationships and on the people they effect.  Even in its milder forms, bigotry retards progress and advancement by merit, and thus, it works to limit societal improvement.

There is one good thing about bigotry.  Paradoxically throughout history, bigotry has been a great help to the countries who welcome the refugees of bigotry.  Many countries’s best and highest achievers in countless fields were once escapees from persecutory bigotry.

Combating bigotry can also can be quite dangerous at times.  Done unwisely and without sufficient self-care, bigotry can get you and yours hurt, harmed and, although rarely, may even get you or yours killed.  However, not fighting bigotry can arrive at very similar results, but perhaps for different victims.  Often it is the innocent, uninformed and the unaware who fall victim to bigotry’s most dangerous acting-out manifestations.

Love (not reason or facts) is bigotry’s most successful enemy.  But because of bigotry’s considerable danger, opposition is best accomplished through tough love, or more accurately, love’s strongest most powerful form known as Adamant Love (see “Adamant Love – and How It Wins for Us All”).  Softer forms of love, such as compassionate love, usually are treated by bigots as only contemptible weakness.  Reason and facts have their place but they only treat, if at all, the surface symptoms of bigotry (fallacious thinking) not even touching the profound hate-undergirding fear and bigotry’s deep roots in personal love deprivation.

Know Your Enemy

What exactly is bigotry?  What causes bigotry?  Who becomes a bigot?  Are you or those you care about perhaps unknowingly infected with the seeds of pathological bigotry?  Most importantly what can be done that works to prevent and defeat bigotry?  To effectively go against bigotry, it helps to have good answers to these and similar questions.  For all that, here is a bit of assistance.

Bigotry More Deeply Defined

Overtly and at the surface symptom level, bigotry simply can be defined as stubborn and intense intolerance of any opinion, belief, creed, policy, tenant or lifestyle differing from one’s own.  More completely, bigotry is also obstinate intolerant, blind devotion to one’s own opinions, prejudice, viewpoints, lifestyle and one’s own identity tribe’s myths, mores, customs, values, hatreds, conceptualized enemies and hierarchies done to the defensive exclusion of the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of outside other identity groups or tribes.

A Psychological Understanding of Bigotry

A deeper more psychological understanding suggests that bigotry is a deep-seated, unconscious fear and insecurity about being replaced and reduced in importance, and not having the qualities and attributes necessary to maintain one’s level of importance, status and general sense of okayness.  Hate-filled bigotry seems to be most strongly activated when the bigoted perceive or sense they are in danger of having their own inadequacies exposed and social standing reduced.  This is especially onerous to bigots when it involves being compared to what they consider to be lower status identity groups which might gain higher status over their own.

Such inadequacy fears activate the brain’s defensive emergency power systems of anger, hatred, rejection and tendencies for exclusionary and/or destructive action taking.  Cognitively, the resulting symptomatic thought process is one of self-justifying rationalization rather than real reasoning, dodging, denial and distortion of facts coupled with irrational protective blaming.

This is well revealed in the white nationalist’s marching chant, “Jews will not take our jobs”.  Exposed in this chant is the secret, underlying fear that jews have what it takes to take their jobs away from them.  Furthermore, the secret fear is the white nationalists do not have sufficient adequacy to hold on to their jobs in the face of the  Jewish competition which is seen as unfair and perverse.

What Causes Bigotry

“You have to teach them to hate before they are six, or seven or eight” so goes, the once banned, line from the musical South Pacific.  This expresses the simple truth that in many families children are raised to be hate-filled and secretly fear-filled offspring of their likewise-minded parents and relatives.  Add exclusionary hate-filled religion, authoritarian sociopolitical thinking, autocratic charismatic leaders and a simple lack of education delineating the superior advantages of healthy, real love and democracy and you have the social milieu ethos that breeds bigotry.

Another cause seems to have to do with erratic and inefficient love in infancy and childhood.  Research indicates certain patterns of erratic and inconsistent love behaviors occurring in the raising of infants and children cause long-lasting insecurities as well as certain deficiencies in normal physical growth.  Both human children and laboratory animals raised with these love deprivation behavioral patterns develop larger fear-based reactions to new and different things and others entering their environment.  In children, this sometimes takes the form of obvious bigotry type reactions.  In laboratory animals especially monkeys, more primitive withdrawal, fear and angry attack behaviors toward the new and different occur.  Behaviorally, consistently well loved lab animals show mostly friendly curiosity toward the new and different.

Some developmental researchers suspect that in the above situation of inconsistent, reassuring love which occurs during certain critical periods of brain development, the amygdala (a brain part having to do with processing fear) may be damaged and become lifelong prone to producing stronger and more frequent fear feelings, interpretations and resulting fear-based behaviors.  Such children are suspected of becoming more highly susceptible to developing bigotry-filled outlooks on life and especially toward anything or anyone new and different.

Similarly, certain research results in the neurosciences and genetics suggests some people inherit amygdalas that easily overproduce, and too frequently produce, strong fear and resulting defensive anger reactions when encountering new and different others.  Other brains, especially those of children securely loved in their infancy, tend to produce happy curiosity on encountering the same new and different others.  The genetic neuroscience results posit that between 10% and 40% of bigotry may be attributable to genetics.

The highly healthfully, self loving and those who live in happy, healthful, love-interactive, inclusive and not isolationistic networks tend to be those least prone to developing bigotry.

Likewise, those who have the most frequent personal contact with people of varying identity groups tend to be the most comfortable and appreciative of people differing from themselves.  Those who have the least contact with people of identity groups different than their own tend to exhibit the most fear of differing others.  Basically, more contact equals more comfort and less bigotry.

Adamant Love Can Defeat Bigotry

Love naturally opposes bigotry.  Healthy, real love is kind, compassionate, not easily threatened, inclusive not exclusive, prone to seek the well-being of all, brave and much more – just as Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Rumi and the Scriptures of the major religions of the world have taught us.  Bigotry is fear-based, hate empowered, exclusionary, unkind, easily threatened, defensively aggressive and prone to seek only the well-being of the similarly bigoted.

Adamant love is the type of love which is strong, determined, steadfast, powerful in face of adversity and in the service of the well-being of the loved (see “Adamant Love – and How It Wins for Us All”).  It, therefore, is likely the form of love best able to powerfully combat the fear and hate of militant bigotry.  Other forms of love such as compassionate love and serene love also have a roles to play.

Working and Fighting for Love Victories Is the Best Option!
Let me suggest, it is good but not enough to be against bigotry, hate, prejudice, inequality, etc.  It works better to also be for what needs to go in place of those things, or in other words, fill the vacuum that defeating bigotry leaves.  Otherwise, like weeds, they return.  Growing evidence points to humanitarian, altruistic and inclusive, healthy, real love being the best, strongest and most positive vacuum filler.

Wherever love loses, and bigotry, hate and/or indifference wins, history shows disintegration, destruction and demise become the eventual outcome.  This proves true for couples, families, societies, nations, cultures and even empires.  You can read all about that in A New Reality by Drs Jonas and Jonathan Salk and in several of Jonas Salk’s previous works.  This is also well backed by the work of Dr. Reuben Fine in The Meaning of Love in Human Experience and also in Love and Survival by Dr. Dean Ornish.

Three Ways to Fight Bigotry with Love!

First arm yourself with knowledge about the behaviors that convey healthy, real love.  That knowledge and those behaviors become your primary tools or, if you prefer, weapons by which you can fight for and with love and against bigotry (see “Behaviors that Give Love – The Basic Core Four” and Link “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”).

Now for a little personal example.  At an interfaith conference, I once had the privilege of seeing the theologian, Nels Ferre, lovingly handle being confronted by two very angry and accusatory Palestinian graduate students.  Through the sincere use of love listening techniques, friendly facial expressions, kind tones of voice, open arm gestures and non-combative questions, he literally loved them into receptiveness.  The next day they were all walking to breakfast together laughing and acting like long-standing comrades.  Best of all, the Palestinians were now very interested in listening to Dr. Ferre’s input, where before, interruptive attack statements were all they seemed capable of.

You might want to review what your own religious tradition teaches about love.  Most major religions have very important, healthy, positive things to say about how we are to love one another – which turns out to be in surprising agreement with each other.

If and when you encounter anyone talking or acting in bigoted ways, think about not arguing with them or being silent but rather with kind, expressional love (see “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”) asking them a few questions and perhaps later getting around to a short, positive, personal testimony, laudatory statement about the people they seem to be against.  Imagine saying something like “what you’re saying about them could be true, I suppose, but my own personal experience with them has been mostly quite positive.  Why do you suppose that is?”  In this way you use some of your behaviors of love tools, usually avoid the wasted energy of combativeness, and just possibly get your positive message actually heard a bit.

Second, Live Social Diversity!  The research is clear.  The more people personally experience those of other identity groups the more bigotry, negative bias and prejudice diminish and feelings of fraternity grow.  There are exceptions but not nearly as many as researchers once thought likely.  Those people who have the least contact with any outside identity group tend to exhibit the most fear, disapproval, intolerance, and bigotry toward that group.  It has long been noted that, for the most part, it is not the people who live along a peaceful border who are intolerant of those on the other side but those who live further in-land away from that border, and out of contact with those people across the border.

So, though it is sometimes complicated and difficult work to seek contact with those who are different and diverse from yourself and your own identity group, I bet it will prove well worth it.  In your own environment, ponder who are the most likely targets of bigotry, exclusionary treatment, negative bias and derogatory opinions.  Seek some of them out.  Start with the concept that if you get to know some of them you probably will be considerably enriched by interacting with them.  And you probably have a lot to learn from them that will be ever so good for you to learn.  Not only that, you will increasingly enjoy it and, who knows, you may make a truly loving friendship or two.

Almost everywhere there are both informal and organized groups of people made up of those who interact with and/or support people who are more different from you but who are open to your inclusion.  It takes a little social bravery and doing a bit of homework but you can find and start befriending some of them.  They may be a little protectively standoffish at first but keep being friendly and you can put them in your life and be better for it and likely so will they.

Third, join and become active in one or more groups that actively fight for or work for positive social diversity interaction and democratic equality/inclusiveness.  You also can join and be active in groups that fight against hate, bigotry and various forms of destructive prejudice and authoritarian anti-democratic movements (Check out the prevention programs of the International Network for Hate Studies and the Counter Bigotry Action Report of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee).

You can do these things both locally and in much wider ways.  For instance, both globally and locally and also for an easy start you might want to join up with Friendship Force International where you get to fairly inexpensively travel to and live briefly with people in other countries all over the world.  Then you get to host some of them in your home if you wish.  Remember, Mark Twain told us “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness”.

So, the challenge is be a part of those who fight for the ways of healthy, real love and against the anti-love forces of bigotry, hatred, prejudice, etc.  Part of that challenge is to not live inactive or indifferent about love.  Both inaction and indifference assist the anti-love forces which would and could destroy us all.

One More Little Thing.  How about talking all this over with somebody and in the process tell them about our FREE mini-love-lessons and our FREE subscriptions.  We would appreciate that.

As always – Go and Grow with Love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question:  Could the human race lose the race for human survival because enough humans didn’t fight hard enough for treating one another with the ways of love?

A Sexy Halloween Love Story

Jack and Jill (not their real names, of course) were both in their 90’s and starting to celebrate their 50th Halloween together.  In their first year together as a couple they hosted a very sexy, Halloween party inviting all their friends to come costumed ‘as their favorite sexy character from history or literature’.

Jill had read about Winston Churchill’s mother, Jenny, shocking Victorian London society by going to a big, Royal, costume affair as the prostitute who rose to become Theodora, Empress of the world’s grandest and most glorious Empire, Byzantium.  So, copying Jenny, Jill created her risqué costume, one made up entirely of strings of fake jewels (glass beads) including a totally glorious crown.  Jack went as a sexy sorcerer from a fantasy novel.  The party was a great success, pictures were taken and, thus, the first entry into their Halloween scrapbook was soon thereafter created.

Now, Jack got out the large, old-fashioned, leather bound, orange and black scrapbook and placed it in front of Jill.  Jill poured a glass of their special celebration wine, and they began to look at the pictures from 50 naughty, intimate and ever so love-bonding experiences which they had so happily experienced and created together over the years.

There were pictures from the Halloween, midnight, Goth wedding and party of their best friend’s child, where almost everyone was dressed in weird, black, Goth garb.  They reminisced about the Wicca ceremony which had been surprisingly spiritual and how everyone had cheered as the couple left for their honeymoon in a hearse.  Jack and Jill laughed and smiled knowingly at each other as they turned the pages and paused at a picture of one Halloween night that showed them so very together in their bedroom, lighted only with five, very saucy, carved jack-o’-lanterns which cast amazing, wanton, leering shadows on the walls turning their skin a mischievous orange color.

Other photos were from a nearby city’s gay pride organization’s costume party for everybody, which had been attended by thousands of gays and straights in costumes both ‘beyond the pale’ and beyond belief.  Some pictures were taken at the restaurant which every year held an after Halloween party, 2 AM breakfast reminded of them of the time they arrived and everyone from other parties stood up and clapped because their costumes and those of their friends were so sexy, elaborate and amazing.
Jack and Jill recalled with sadness as they viewed pictures of costumed close friends they had loved but who had since passed away.  They still were amazed by the New Orleans, French Quarter Halloween party where they had seen a woman dressed only in boots, a cat mask and holding two, live leopards on leashes.

The wildest pictures came from the time friends invited them to a nudist colony, costume party where they both went festooned in ribbons as elves. (Let your imagination work on a ‘nude, costume party’).  Jack and Jill hugged each other remembering the time in New England where they attended the telling of Halloween ghost stories at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Many other pictures showed them dancing into the wee hours at a costume ball; carving jack-o’-lanterns with their grandchildren and the friends of grandchildren; other super sexy times, in super sexy costumes, with dear super sexy friends; the Halloween hospital staff party were a nurse won the best costume prize by wearing only very skimpy orange and black bandages; the Boo-at-the-Zoo Halloween party for disadvantaged children where quite a few little tiny Darth Vaders were observed flashing their light sabers.

Then there was the long ago time they, with other Americans in Germany, gave a Halloween party with hand-made cardboard bats, skulls and skeletons everywhere.  Their European guests were very puzzled about this seemingly macabre holiday celebration; they thought it must all have some strange, religious significance, and couldn’t believe all the fun the Americans were having but joined in once they got past their shock.

Jill and Jack got a big laugh viewing the pictures of a dear friend who had come to their party looking extremely ordinary, until you realized he had three arms, one arm which mechanically stretched out stealthily to pinch bottoms and lift skirts at quite a distance.  Jack, once again, expressed his great appreciation for Jill going to the trouble to make a marvelous wizard’s cloak costume for him and one for herself as Queen of the Autumn fairies.  Even more amazing was the costume she had made for him as the Greek god, Pan, and for herself as a woodland sprite.

Pictures of another party where their blackest, dear friend came in a safari outfit explaining he, of course, was “the great white hunter”.  Then there was the time at a Halloween party where Jack and Jill sneaked into a closet to make out, only to find a unicorn getting it on with a fairy princess already there.  Other times of passion, after the guests left their parties were recalled, and they smiled at each other in the most intimate way.

As Jack and Jill went back through the many pages of their scrapbook, they cried together, they laughed often, they talked seriously, and they shared and re-lived great times of spicy and sweet love with one another and with those most dear to them.  Then they went to their special toy chest — where we will leave them now in this little Halloween story of ours.

So, dear reader, are you and yours doing as well at creating love experiences and using things like Halloween to help in that endeavor?  You can, you know!  You can weave together love, sex, intimacy and fun and in doing so grow your love-bonds and love-memories together most magically.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
If your next Halloween was a lover’s Halloween, what would you want it to consist of?

Work With and Without Love

Synopsis: Intriguing concepts; Successful failure; Sacrifice and imbalance, Four factors most don’t know to think about; Healthy self-love; and Asking good questions for happy, healthy, work success via love.

How do these ideas strike you? 1.  Work is to serve life, not life to serve work.
2.  To love your work and work your love is to make much of life ‘play’.
3.  The best work is ‘love made manifest’.
4.  One of the healthiest acts of self-love is to find work that you would pay to do if someone wasn’t paying you to do it.
5.  With work, love and play in balance we succeed at life.  Without all three in balance we fail at life.

Harlan told me his story which, sad to say, I’d often heard before.  His version went like this.  “I did what my upbringing taught me to do.  I put almost all my time and effort into succeeding in business.  To accomplish this success I put my wife and kids ‘on the shelf’, so to speak.  I thought I would get back to them once I had climbed high enough on the ladder of success and made enough money.  I lied to myself saying I was doing it all for my loved ones.  The trouble was my loved ones did not stay on the shelf.  "My wife ran off with a guy who doesn’t even make half of what I do.  My kids treat me like the stranger I am to them, and I only have business friends or, in other words, no real friends at all.  I enjoyed my business success so much I neglected learning how to enjoy the rest of life.  Now I am rich in money and status but concerning love and joy I live in poverty.  Please help me.” 

Well of course, I and those who work with me went to work helping Harlan learn to help himself in all his neglected areas.  After some rather intense therapy and a lot of ‘practice work’ putting concepts and realizations into healthy actions I’m pleased to say Harlan now lives a much more balanced and far happier life.

Work is such an enormous part of most people’s life.  Work is also an enormously important factor influencing how well one does healthy self-love and healthy relational love.  Yet many people do not give these aspects of their work-life much thought.  There are those who sacrifice their emotional and their relational life for work.  There also are those who sacrifice their physical health for their work.  Some people actually do work themselves to death.  Like Harlan there are many people who, perhaps unknowingly, sacrifice their love relationships for success, money, status and other work related goals.  There also are work related problems that sabotage love which hardly anyone thinks about.

Here are just four:
*    Succeeding at the wrong thing Here are some examples:  Dean is a very well-off, successful, corporate attorney but he longs to be a camp director – he loved scouting as a boy.  He dreams of this almost nightly and his anti-depression medicine seems to be working less and less.  Janet just wants to raise her kids which is what she both loves and is super good at.  However, being a high dollar, traveling, medical equipment rep just has too many payoffs, even though it takes her away from her family for weeks at a time.  Next year John swears he’s going to stop selling real estate and start back to school to become a veterinarian, but will he?  This is the fourth year he has made this proclamation.

Sarah is a rising project manager in an upscale, big-city, healthcare company but her doodles and daydreams are all about being back on a Navajo reservation working with children where her life felt most fulfilled.  Each of these people do not love their work even though they are good at it.  Sadly, they are more likely than the average person to develop stress related illnesses, damaging alcohol or prescription drug abuse, love relationship deterioration, and an existential crisis resulting in what most people call a complete breakdown.  Hopefully none of those will happen.  Each of these people just may live unfulfilled, unhappy lives being successful at the wrong occupation.

*    Loving only work It’s wonderfully healthful to love your work, enjoy your labors, revel in succeeding, be passionate about the challenges and so forth but only if you balance it with other things to love like healthy self-love, healthy relationship love, healthy love of life, healthy spiritual love, etc..  There is much more to life than work, even highly meaningful work.  People working for important causes, people manifesting their talents in the arts, professions, etc., people doing fascinating research into the great mysteries, and people just enjoying doing a really good job at something they are good at — all can be in danger of imbalanced living because their work is so rewarding and enjoyable.

*    Only tolerating your work Do you ‘love’ your work?  If you don’t do you suspect you ever will?  Many people will leave a job or occupation they hate but will stay in a vocational situation they only can tolerate.  This often is referred to as being “stuck in a dead-end job”.  It is true that a great many people’s life situation does not provide for much more than a vocational situation which is merely tolerable.  However, as an act of healthy self-love searching for better than that and risking a change can mean you will have a longer and happier life, and everybody you love and care about probably will enjoy you more.

It’s always a joy when I get to help a person find the kind of work for which they can get decent pay and be passionate about.  It’s surprising how often this leads to improved financial success.  I once helped a couple who had been saving for years to change occupations from being well-paid engineers to metal sculptors but they just were not brave enough to make the transition.  Finally they worked up their courage to go ahead and become ‘starving artists’ devoted to their passion.  However, it didn’t pan out that way because in their second year they were making twice as much money with their art as they ever had in engineering.  Sometimes it works out like this and sometimes not, but usually the life happiness level is greatly improved.

*    Poor self-love makes for a lousy work life Let me suggest that people who are high in healthy self-love tend to manifest that self-love partly by going after work that actualizes their talents and in which they find enjoyment or even great enjoyment.  Conversely, people with poor self-love and its accompanying low self-esteem and low self-confidence often put up with low satisfaction types of work and less than desirable work settings.

People with high, healthy self-love know they are worthy of good treatment and they won’t tolerate for long people or conditions that are too negative for them.  Those who grow a healthier self love seem, almost invariably, to keep making work-life improvements of one kind or another.  People weak in self-love are seldom proud of the work they do even when they do a pretty good or better job at it and often they don’t go after promotions or improved placement.  At least that is my experience with the many people I have counseled concerning these issues.

Let’s look at some questions concerning love and work.  For you, are love and work two different things or are they integrated?  Do you put love into your work?  Do you love yourself through your work?  Do you love the people you work with?  Does the way you go about work influence the way you go about love away from work?  Does the way you go about love influence the way you go about work?

Now look at a bigger question.  Are you succeeding at the big three i.e. Work, Love and Play?    Are you keeping the big three in a fair amount of balance with each other?  Will it be good for you to give some thought to your work and its influence on your healthy self-love and on your love relationships?  Hopefully this will help you examine the enormous part of life we call work.

As always – Grow and Go in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Does the word ‘work’ elicit an emotion in you that you like to feel, or an emotion you don’t like to feel, or a neutral feeling, and what do you suppose that means about you?

Related posts:

1. Does “Cougar” Love Work? 

Virginity Surpassed and Parental Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Related posts:

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

Pro-Love and Anti-Love Talking

Is your way of talking to your loved ones (mate, children, siblings, etc.) more pro-love or more anti-love?

Have you ever examined your habits of speech and speech style for their effect on your loved ones?  Do you know the three big factors determining pro-love and anti-love talking effects?


Factor I    Love Destroyer Words versus Love Builder Words
Below you will find 25 examples of words and phrases which tend to have an anti-love effect.  Following each of these is an example of a pro-love effective way to state a similar thing.  Check your speech habits against these to determine if perhaps you are using love destroyer words and phrases and might need to practice a more pro-love style to have a love building effect through words and phrases.

1.    You should …
You could …
2.    You shouldn’t …
I would like you not to …
3.    You always  …
I’d like that to happen less …
4.    You never …
Really soon I really would like you to …
5.    Why don’t you ever …
I want you to ………………, maybe by tomorrow if that’s OK?
6.    You’re wrong.
I see that differently.
7.    You’re lying.  That’s absolutely not the way it happened.
We remember that differently.
8.    How could you have been so stupid!
In the future I really want you to do that better.
9.    Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again!
How can I help you not to do that again?
10.  You’re terrible!
You can improve!
11.  I hate you!
Right now I’m really mad at you.
12.  You’re an idiot!
Part of me would really like to call you a lot of names right now.
13.  I can’t stand you!
I’m having trouble dealing with you right now, so let’s take a break.
14.  Why did you do such an awful thing?
Let’s look at what we can do to improve that.
15.  I can’t love you when you act that way.
I always love you, and what you’re doing really upsets me.
16.  But … 
And …
17.  Never say that again!
I don’t want to censor you so can we talk about that later and nicer?
18.  I’ve asked you time and again, so when are you going do what I say!
Honey, so that you’re clear, this is not a request, it’s something I have to insist on.
19.  You crazy freak!  Don’t you know any better than that!
In some ways we are really different.
20.  Can’t you ever get it right!
Sweetheart, we don’t seem to be making progress in this area.
21.  That’s all your fault!
Honey, how can we learn to go about that differently?
22.  I blame you for that, and you know you deserve it!
The critical part of me really wants to lay a guilt trip on you for that.
23.  No, not ever, and that’s final!
Sweetheart, right now I am firmly against that so please bear with me and be tolerant.
24.  We are never going to …
So far we haven’t and I really want us to, so this time how can we get to it?
25.  If you really loved me you’d know what I need and you would have done it already!
I probably have not made a clear enough request so let me see if I can be specific
and tell you more exactly what I want.

Factor II    Destroyer Voice Tones versus Love Builder Voice Tones
Did you know that 35 to 37% of what you are communicating in a personal interaction is delivered by your voice tones?  Have you given much thought to what your voice sounds are telling your loved ones when you talk to them?  Below are 10 words describing voice tones which frequently tend to have an anti-love effect and 10 words describing voice sounds that might have a more love positive effect.

Check and see which you think are most common to your own voice tone expressions:
1.  Indifferent    2.  Businesslike    3.  Bored    4.  Harsh    5.  Unfriendly
     Interested         Personal              Intrigued    Gentle        Friendly
6.  Hard    7.  Mean    8.  Condescending    9.Condemning     10. Angry
     Soft          Kind           Respectful               Forgiving          Understanding 

Factor III    Pro Love and Anti-Love Face and Body Communication
Did you know that in person-to-person talk it is not unusual for as much as 55% of the value of what is being communicated to be carried by face and body language factors?  Did you know that in a person-to-person talk your subconscious mind may be interpreting as much as 300 bits of information per minute having to do with face and body language communication?  Have you given much thought to what you’re face and body language messages are to your loved ones?  Here are 10 words that can be used to describe face and body language expressions which can have an anti-love effect.  Under each of these words is another word for a face and body language expression which might have a more pro-love effect.

1.  Uncaring       2.  Judgmental    3.  Rejecting       4.  Bland        5.  Egotistical
     Caring               Forgiving             Accepting            Involved        Sharing
6.  Tough    7.  Superior    8.  Irritated    9.  Impatient     10.  Prudish              Tender            Democratic      Tranquil         Patient                Flirtatious      

Now we suggest you examine what your own, more frequent face and body communications are when you are talking with your loved ones.  Then examine your voice tone communications and see how you might improve them.  After that take a look at the words you are commonly using and see if you want to make some changes so that you can have a greater love-positive effect.  You also might want to lovingly ask a loved one to follow your example and do the same.

As always, Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Will you ask one, two or three people who know you pretty well what is the best and the worst or how you come across in regard to the above 3 Factors?

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Image credits: “[last remnants of autumn]” image by Flickr user lempel_ziv (Tanya Zagumenov) .
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Related posts:

1. Love Positive Talking
2. Are You Talking About Love Enough?
3. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
4. Say It With Love
5. Additive Talking – A Love Skill 

Power or Love or Both

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

A Common Confusion

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

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

Gender Issues

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

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

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

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

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

The Warrior Princess

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

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

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

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

Power Positive or Power Negative

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

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

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

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

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

Neutral Power

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

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

Grow Your Power, Integrate Your Power

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

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

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

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

As always, Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Other Genders Love

Synopsis: Here we address these troubling yet intriguing questions: Are there more than two genders; What are other genders; Why does nature make more than just male and female; This mini-love-lesson ends with a list of the words and terms now used in the new understandings of gender; more.

Are There More Than Two Genders?

Yes, according to science there are more than just male and female.  Biology, physiology and especially the brain sciences, along with a good many other scientific fields show us this truth which is so troubling to many.  Nature makes humans and a host of other animals with other genders than just the standard two – those distinctly male and those distinctly female.  It is true, at least among humans, that most are easily identified as pretty much male or pretty much female.  However, though in minority, there are others.

What Are “Other” Genders?

We have known for a long time that nature occasionally produces people with the genitalia of both males and females.  More recently, the brain sciences have discovered nature makes a lot more people with the brain chemistry of both males and females.  Not only that, we now know that just about everyone has at least a little bit of both male and female neurochemistry and dual gender brain functioning.  We also have more people, than was originally thought, who are neuropsychologically one gender but their overt biology is that of the other gender.  Thus, in simple terms we have males in female bodies and females in male bodies.

We also may have people whose brain functioning and neurochemistry goes back and forth between being male and female.  Some other species do this biologically whenever there are too many females or males and gender rebalancing a population is in order.  Then of course we have those who seem pretty much male overtly except that they are naturally built to be attracted to other males and those who are pretty much overtly female who are naturally attracted to other females.  And then there are the bisexuals, many of whom can be pretty much equally naturally attracted to both.  Those varieties also occur among other species a lot.  The preponderance of scientific evidence shows all this variety to be natural and not at all unhealthy.

Why Does Nature Make More Than Just Straight Males and Straight Females?

One answer is that nature loves variety.  Variety has great survival value.  You never know when conditions are going to change and a life form variation is going to turn out to better cope with that change in conditions.  Seldom does nature make just one or two varieties of anything.  Think of leaves.  They all do pretty much the same thing yet they come in endless variations of shape.  A small minority are not even green but rather several other colors.  Other leaves are green part of the time but then change to a variety of other often vivid colors.  It seems nature is always making new variations and some of them have advantages in dealing with whatever the changing conditions are at the time.

Another answer is that there are unrecognized species survival contribution and advancement advantages brought to us by those having a not strictly male or female psychobiology.  For instance, it is thought by some that those people who are more androgynous (mentally and emotionally both male and female balanced) may be better at diplomacy, cooperation skills, democratic leadership, mentoring, mediation, counseling, personality assessment, cognition flexibility and altruistic achievement.

Previously and still in certain circles, androgynous people were/are negatively viewed as having what was seen to be the typical weaknesses of both males and females.  Consequently, they often were rejected and excluded as not being male enough or female enough depending on their overt gender identity.  Thus, the Renaissance Man was seen as a “sissy” and the Renaissance Woman as a “pushy broad”.  Both were “freaks”and “misfits” in times and places of high social conformity.

Do the People of “Other” Genders Have Different Love Problems?

Do you agree with these ideas?  Everybody needs love no matter what their difference is from the supposed norm.  Everybody who is different from the norm is in danger of rejection and worse from those who fear difference and desire continuance of the perceived and “correct” norm.  If you see it this way, then you can see how those who have “other” than the usual male and female ways may need extra love, acceptance and inclusion experiences to counter the anti-love events they may experience while they are trying to figure out and adjust to their own differences from the perceived norm.

Healthy self-love development is often an extra tough problem for those growing up or starting to live “other”.  Valuing, appreciating, accepting and honoring oneself can get really tough when faced with exclusion, rejection, criticism and demeaning messages coming from others.  Especially is that true if those anti- love messages are coming from people who are supposed to love you, like parents and family.

Romantic love often presents some very perplexing problems.  If a she loves a he and transgenders into a he, does that make them homosexual lovers and does that matter?  When a bisexual or bi-amore person is loved by both a male and a female can they all three live successfully married together?  If they do, does that mean they are illegally practicing polygamy?  Could you romantically successfully love a transgendered person who used to be the same gender you are?  ‘Is it real love or a form of false love’ is a question that is extra confounding for those who live in the various “other” categories.

Loving family and friends who may experience culture shock and/or strong religious values dissonance because someone is in an “other” category, also is a common but big love problem.  Experiencing being put down, shunned, damned, pitied, preached at or even ‘prayed for’ because you naturally are different is frequently quite tough.

Not hating but instead continuing to love the person or persons sending judgmental rejection messages, also is a love challenge and issue for those who are in some way “other”.  Sometimes in self-love, withdrawing contact from the judgmental and condemning is at first necessary for sufficient self protection.  Family counseling with a good love-oriented therapist is what helps the most, as I see it.

Strengthening oneself through therapy and healthy self-love development so that a love based re-approachment of those who condemn usually is the eventual best solution, from my experience.  Never making such a re-approachment can mean having a wound that never heals and a disturbing lack of closure.  Attempting the re-approachment too soon before your strong enough to be unaffected by the ‘arrows’ that may be fired at you can be disastrous.  So, great care is in order.

Love of children when there are gender issues presents a whole special set of challenges.  How does a parent deal with a child who is exhibiting a tendency towards some form of “other” gender orientation?  How does a parent best explain to a child that parent changing genders or not being of the standard male or female identity?  How can parental or family love best help children struggling with peer rejection because of some “other” gender factor?

Loving the Angry & Threatened

A fair number of people seem to be quite threatened, upset, in denial, and angry concerning all these new “other” ideas, discoveries and social changes concerning gender.

They want all of us to regress to the old understandings that there are only males and females.  The trouble is that science is showing those understandings to be inaccurate, inadequate and quite destructive for a considerable number of people..  Abuses of those who are “other gendered” are abundant.  Anxiety, stress, depression, family breakups, suicide and even murder are sometimes the result of the more extreme abuses enacted by the regressives.  With love must we not therefore embrace the progressive and constructively use the new knowledge concerning gender?  Those who are threatened and angry can, with careful love, decrease their fear and be brought along into a world where difference is so often a good thing.

Do You Know the New Language of Gender?

Recent research has discovered a lot in this area of gender and that has resulted in quite a few new terms.  These terms can help a lot for comprehending more fully, becoming more knowledgeable, thinking more clearly, talking productively, and interacting knowledgeably concerning gender issues.

To help you with that, here is a partial list of words and terms you may wish to familiarize yourself with and be sure you understand.  Affirmed gender, alternating gender neurochemistry, androgyny, asexual, assigned gender, bi-amore, bi-gender, bisexual, cisgender, cross-dresser, dual identity, gender dysphoria, gender expression, gender fluidity, gender identity, gender continuum, gender spectrum, gender predominance, gender web, homo-amore, hermaphodite, hrm, hir, medical gender transition, pansexual, polyAmore , social gender transition, “they” (singular), trans-amore , transgender, transsexual, transman, transwoman, ze.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: How much of yourself do you suppose is both male and female, and how okay (self loving) are you with that?

Related posts:

1. What about “Bi” Love?
2. Power or Love or Both
3. Men: Doing Well at Love !
4. What Makes Love Last?
5. Attraction or Love or What?