Love Centering Yourself

Angie realized that she and her husband, Harlan, were getting into the same, old, familiar fight they had had a hundred times before.  They both were blaming each other for what was wrong and both were defending themselves in very offensive ways – like they always did.

The subject matter changed but the pattern of the fights remained the same, except the fights were getting worse and worse.  It took days to recover and their marriage was damaged a little bit more each time.

But wait.  Angie remembered a new ‘technique’ she had recently learned at a Healthy Love Workshop that she might be able to use instead of fighting.  She told Harlan she had to go to the bathroom and abruptly left the scene of their often repeated, old, marital battle.  In the bathroom she worked at remembering and reminding herself of the major aspects of what the workshop leader had called The Love Centering Technique.  Then silently she  practiced the breathing, movement and meditation behaviors she had learned at the workshop.  She did this for just three minutes.  She noticed she felt calmer and more powerful, and she was thinking differently – perhaps more clearly and far less defensively.

She then went back to Harlan who was even more angry than when she left.  She heard somehow differently what he was furiously saying.  She, herself, said far less than before and she spoke in much kinder yet firm tones of voice.  She also noticed her face was more relaxed and thought probably her facial expressions were less severe than before, perhaps occasionally she even looked softer.  When evaluating this she managed a brief, small smile.  The smile seemed to confuse Harlan and slow him down.  Then Angie became aware that, while she still felt quite firm, she was no longer angry and, even better, she was no longer feeling so hurt and vulnerable with what Harlan had been derogatorily screaming at her.  She was thinking more clearly and wanted to come up with ideas that might help to go in a positive direction.

Angie subtly continued to do the breathing, movement and calm thinking she had learned and she realized she was seeing and hearing the frustration and hurt behind her husband’s angry words, and it dawned on Angie that she was starting to feel a distinct sense of love for her husband.  Feeling sorry for him came next.  She could see he was caught up in an agonizing pattern of their terrible fight habits.  However, this time she was not.  Angie began to speak to Harlan in very kind tones of voice saying she understood he was hurting and she cared.  Harlan became befuddled and he could not quite maintain the intensity of his accusations and blaming statements, though he continued to try.  

After a while Harlan was expressing only his hurt and Angie, while accepting no blame, showed that she truly was sad that they both were often deeply hurt by this way of dealing with each other.  She reached out and softly touched Harlan and he looked even more bewildered, but then he began to be less awful and just a bit more kind.  Slowly their ‘argument’ turned into a ‘talk’ and finally in silence they held hands not knowing what else to do.  Soon they hugged and went about doing regular things, both in a much better place.

Nothing was verbally resolved, no decisions made, and no apologies delivered yet Angie and Harlan had started treating each other in a cautiously, yet distinctly, more loving way. This change happened right in the midst of Angie and Harlan’s marital difficulties and that had never happened before.  Could this be the start of something new and better, and could Angie be the catalyst for repeat performances of this new way of dealing with each other?

According to Angie’s description, by love centering herself before re-engaging her husband she had triggered both of them into a new way of responding to each another.  She repeated this love centering technique each time she and Harlan began to have difficulties with each other.  It didn’t always work perfectly but it worked far better than the old habit patterns that were destroying them as a couple.  Angie’s understanding is that sometimes one person, intelligently and purposefully, can use the power of love to change a couple’s destructive dynamics and do something constructive instead.  It is even better and faster when both people are working to make that change but, yes, one person can make a difference.

Angie and Harlan have since both learned ‘love centering’ and used it in a number of other situations.  Angie used it before having “the sex education talk” with her daughter.  Harlan used it before going into a contentious, dispute resolution conference at work.  You see, love centering is an act of self love too; it physiologically, psychologically and emotionally helps one to center in a calmer, stronger, healthier place in order to act more positively and beneficially in most situations.  Angie and Harlan together used love centering as part of a drug intervention experience with a family member.

Angie found it extremely useful before going to comfort a friend who had just lost a spouse to cancer.  Harlan and Angie say that each time they have used love centering it has helped them do a hard thing better.  Angie knows that love centering probably is a technique that will not work for everyone and that some people would find it far harder to learn and practice than others.  Nevertheless, she, and now Harlan too, are strong advocates of the love centering technique and they urge everyone to give it at least some study and consideration.

If you are interested in this technique and if you work at it you may be able to teach yourself love centering.  This technique seems to be most easily learned by those who are good with affirmations, meditation and introspection practices, and those trained in certain Eastern philosophies and disciplines.  However, a wide spectrum of people have learned and found love centering well worth their while.

The love centering technique itself is a quick, simple procedure that may make you healthier, happier and more generally effective in your interactions with others.  Love centering also may make all your love relationships go better and may make your dealings with difficult people go smoother.  And love centering has been known to be profoundly effective in helping people improve their relationship with themselves.  Even if you lose an altercation if you go into it love centered, and maintain that attitude, you are likely to lose less and come out much better.

Essentially love centering is a brief, meditation affirmation technique.  It also can be done prayerfully as a simple, short spiritual practice.  Love centering counters being ‘centered’ in self-defeating, negative emotions.  If you let yourself become centered in fear, anger, money lust, status, etc. you are likely to be sabotaging your own psychological health even when you are outwardly victorious in regard to the subject.  Love centering also has been a great help to a number of individuals seeking to bring forth their best and most able selves.

If you wish to maximize your competency, release your constructive and creative powers, and generally do life better, love centering may provide you with a very useful tool.  Love centering is suspected of being physically healthful especially when facing difficult, high pressure situations.  It appears to help deal with stressors, counters stress reactions and helps the brain produce healthful neurochemistry.  It also may influence longevity.

There are several approaches to love centering.  One works like this.  To do a full, class ‘A’, love centering exercise it is best to start by getting off to yourself so you can remain isolated from others for six minutes at the very least.  Once you are alone sit down in a straight and symmetrical posture with your arms hanging down at your sides or placed comfortably in your lap, with both feet on the ground, with your head up and looking straight forward.  Putting a sense of energy or intensity into it, slowly think silently to yourself, “I am now going to center myself in love”, then pause and take in and exhale a deep, slow breath.  Then think, “I am centering myself in love.”  Pause and take another deep, slow breath.  Now think, “I am centered in love”.

Take a third deep, slow breath and exhale it slowly.  You can repeat this three times or more to help you get into a feeling of being centered in love if needed.  If you prefer you also can say these words out loud, but remember, do everything quite slowly.  As you do this, imagine that love and its awesome, universal strength is flowing all over and through your body, from the universe toward your heart.

Imagine your heart filling up with amazingly powerful, wondrous and serene love.  As you do this continue to breathe deeply and slowly, relax your arms, open your hands and slowly raise your arms over your head.  At this point you might think, “I raise my arms to the universe to symbolically connect with a great love force in the universe.  I open myself to that love and let it flow into me.”  Then symbolically you might scoop a big handful of that love and slowly bring your hands to the center of your chest while you think, “I bring that love into my heart” as you gently press the palms of your hands to the center of your chest.

Continue to breathe deeply and slowly and imagine your heart filling with exquisite, powerful love.  Then you can think, “I center myself in love and only love”.  Repeat this three times.  Let your arms relax and go back to hanging at your sides or placed in your lap.  Repeat this entire sequence of movements and thoughts three times or more while remembering to breathe slowly and deeply.
An important next step is to bring your hands to your heart center and meditatively and purposefully say to yourself, “I center myself in love, not in fear, or anger, or worry or anything else besides love. 

I fill my heart with love and its awesome power.  I will let love radiate out from my heart to my whole being and to everyone I am soon to encounter”.  Repeat this two to five times.  Then with hands remaining at your heart, and remembering to breathe slowly, resolutely say to yourself, “I center myself in love and I will powerfully and effectively come from love for the people (or person) I am about to deal with and toward myself.  I will let love empower and inform all that I’m about to do.”  Slowly repeat that two to five times.

After doing this meditative affirmational exercise take one last deep breath and notice how you feel.  If you feel love empowered, loving and lovable, calm and confident then go forward toward what you have set yourself to do.  If you do not feel sufficiently empowered repeat the exercise again.  After that if you still do not feel sufficiently love filled and love centered to be able to act with and from love you might do one of two things.

You can admit you are not now making this exercise work for you and so it may be best to go on to something else and maybe try again later, or you could blame the exercise and say it doesn’t work and never try it again.  Do remember that nothing works for everyone and nothing works every time.  If it’s not working for you, or at least not working yet, don’t be negative to yourself about that, don’t ‘beat up’ on yourself because that would be de-powering, poor self-love, inaccurate and inappropriate.

After love centering yourself and doing whatever you have set out to do you may wish to evaluate how loving and how successful you were in your post-love centering endeavor.  In my experience a good number of people find the more they do love centering the better it works for them.  However, that is not everyone’s experience.  As we have noted before it is not expected that this sort of technique will work for everybody.  Meditative, affirmational and inner, self oriented approaches are highly useful for some, but not for all.

Becoming good at love centering usually decreases the amount of time it takes to get there and the more powerful it becomes.  It’s like exercising a muscle, use your ‘love muscle’ often and it will be there quickly and strongly when you need it.

There are many possible alterations, adaptations and differing applications to love centered approaches.  For instance Luke uses love centering in his work as a labor relations contract negotiator.  He says it helps him keep the parties involved from getting angry at each other which sabotages the negotiations.  Laura uses it as a hospice nurse dealing with grieving relatives.  Riley has found it helpful in certain difficult situations he faces as a policeman.  Suzanne and Sheila say it was love centering that got them past their decade’s old, sibling rivalry problem.

Lots of people alter the words used and that’s good because when you are saying your own words it’s often more effective.  After practicing this technique often the words can be shortened.  Jesse said all he needs to say to himself is, “I center myself in love and its great strength, and with love I will remain calm, compassionate, carrying and able to reason” before he goes in to preside over the next family court session as a judge.

Some people minimize the motions and behaviors involved in love centering.  In the midst of an argumentative difficulty Tonya takes a slightly deeper breath, and discreetly raises one hand to the middle of her heart area silently saying to herself, “I am centering myself in love now” and then carries on with her work at a complaints desk in a large corporation.

To see if love centering can work for you I suggest you ‘try it on for size’ about five times in its full form.  It usually takes that to get a sufficient feel for it.  If it’s not working by then it’s likely not a practice that fits you sufficiently.  Of course it has to be tried sincerely and with some energy.  If you think your skeptical, doubtful mind will be a difficulty as you try to do this you may be in a sort of resistant or self defeat mode and not able to experiment with this technique at this time.  That’s okay, there are lots of other things to do.

However, your skeptical mind need not fully believe in this kind of technique because it is accomplished by ‘doing’ rather than ‘believing’.  Of course, deciding it won’t work for you before you have really tried it probably will result in it not working for you because of the dynamics of self-fulfilling prophecies.  It is my suggestion that you consider it, experiment with it, and discover if you can make your life a more love empower life by using this tool called The Love Centering Technique.

As always, Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Do you have people in your life who often seem to be coming from love toward you and toward almost everyone else?  If you do are you studying and to some degree copying them?

Related posts:

1. Difficult Topics: A Love-Centered Way to Approach and Broach Them All
2. Ready or Not for Love?
3. Kissing with Love
4. Returning to a Bad Lover? – A Blocking Technique
5. Listening with Love 

Does Sexual Preference Influence Love?

To understand some of what’s involved here let’s first take a look at a few important questions and some possible, or probable, answers that have to do with sexual preference.  Then we will apply that knowledge to love.

Question 1. What causes people to have different sexual preferences?

Answer: The preponderance of scientific evidence points to all sexual preferences – homosexuality, bisexuality, heterosexuality, transsexuality, etc. as primarily being biologically predisposed, probably before birth.  There is considerable scientific evidence which shows that atypical gender identity development is influenced by variations in prenatal hormonal and neurochemical factors, which also influence the incidence of left-handedness and finger ratio measurements concordant with sexual preference development.

Furthermore, there are anatomical brain differences, especially in the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, a brain area vital to varying sexual behavior tendencies.  Then there are the genetic influences illustrated by sexual preference inheritability being high among monozygotic twins, and less strong but also high among fraternal twins.  Whatever your sexual inclination you were probably predisposed toward that inclination biologically, probably before birth according to the preponderance of the most recent scientific research.

Question 2. What is some of the other evidence that tells us biological predisposition is causal?

Answer: First, brain studies show a number of different parts of the brain of homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals and transsexuals tend to be different from each another.  Especially different are the parts of the brain known as the corpus callosum, medial pre-optic nucleus and the hypothalamus.  Brain chemistry also is somewhat different.

Second, over many decades hundreds of well conducted, psychological studies have been done trying to discover the psychological cause of homosexuality, and no psychological cause has ever been discovered and substantiated by replicated research.  A number of newer theories still are under investigation but so far nothing definitive can be said to have been discovered.

Third, about 10% of most mammals exhibit homosexual preference and another 15 to 20% exhibit bisexual behavior.  Many bird species show similar results.  Bisexual behavior is extremely common among some mammal species like the bonobo apes.  There also are brain differences in various homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual animals.  By the way, some researchers think there is evidence to support the contention that bisexuality is on the rise, especially among human females.  Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that all people are at least a little bit bisexual.

Question 3. Why do different sexual preferences exist in nature?

Answer: Nature is all about variety and keeping its options open.  We never know when a variation will turn out to help a species survive or advance in its development; for instance the bisexuality of bonobo apes seems to have contributed greatly to solving the problem of violence within that species.  Bonobos when faced with conflict literally ‘make love not war’.  Inter-species aggression so common among baboons, chimpanzees and humans is virtually nonexistent among bonobos, who are the most sexual and the most bisexual of us, who are classed as primates.

It also is to be noted that there are species that change gender, being female for a while, then male for a while, and being heterosexual part of their life, and homosexual another part of their life.  Likewise, there are species that are both genders simultaneously.  Furthermore, there is some evidence among humans that in times of war and other great stressors women give birth to more ‘bisexual and homosexual to be’ children who are then thought to become more tolerant, flexible, harmonious and generally peaceful in their adulthood than is average among heterosexuals.

Homosexuals and bisexuals also are thought to give higher than average child raising supportive and protective care to their heterosexual brother’s and sister’s children, thus, increasing the survivability of a family’s genetic line.  Consequently homosexuality and bisexuality give certain of our species a noteworthy evolutionary advantage.

Question 4. Are there other things that influence the emergence or development of different sexual preferences?

Answer: There is some evidence which would suggest that some young children may go through a critical period in which exposure to more or less equally interesting, pleasuring and loving males and females may influence the early emergence of bisexuality.  Certainly the social acceptability of various sexual preferences causes especially homosexuals not to try to suppress their emerging sexual tendencies.  In those societies which are strongly anti-homosexual much greater inner conflict and stress results, which may cause some people to be able to inactivate their natural predispositions, especially if their sex drive is not very strong.

Question 5. Are people of one sexual preference or another more likely to be mentally ill, prone to criminality or addictions, or in other ways destructive to themselves and society?

Answer: Yes is the arguable answer; and the most destructive people according to gender preference are – heterosexual.  Actually the differences are fairly negligible according to most reputable studies.  In many cultures men and women who are homosexual have had far more societal stressors than heterosexuals or bisexuals, and those stressors are causal in mental and emotional illness and other dysfunctions for many.  In societies much more accepting of people of different gender preference these problems turn out to be the same or slightly better than heterosexuals according to several authorities.

Those people who are one gender externally but another gender internally, like many transsexuals, are likely to experience even more stressors.  Unless their stress coping mechanisms are good they are more likely to experience one type of dysfunction or another.  Interestingly, highly androgynous people seem to do rather well in life in most cultures.  Hermaphroditic people who have the physiology of both genders rather equally are too rare to have had significant data gathered.

Probably not enough good, quality research has been done in this area and we have more to learn. Your sexual preference makes a difference in who you are attracted to, who you come to love and make a primary life partnership with, if you do that.  Other than that most studies seem to point to the idea that being homosexual, or bisexual or heterosexual doesn’t make much of a difference when it comes to the vast majority of other varying aspects of life.

Now let’s look at the love factor.
Question 6. Does your sexual preference make a difference in how you do love?

Answer: There is some evidence suggesting that homosexual men and women give more thought to how to do love than the average heterosexual.  Furthermore, those who have sufficient emotional maturity may do love relating rather better than many heterosexuals. Both bisexual males and bisexual females actually even may be better at love.  Contrarily, there is some evidence to suggest that homosexuals who are immature may have a harder time getting beyond romantic idealization and the many problems that accompany it.

Strongly bisexual males and females seem to have a somewhat harder time than homosexuals or heterosexuals when, and if, they attempt to be monogamous.  However, if their primary mate relationship compatibly allows for some multi-person involvement they are thought to do better than average according to several researchers who study this sort of thing.  For the most part, homosexuals, bisexuals and heterosexuals demonstrate the same range of behaviors when attempting to do a love relationship.  All do better to about the same degree when they learn more about how love is healthfully given and received.

Question 7. How do people of different sexual preferences do at family and child love?

Answer: The evidence points to homosexual couples working harder than heterosexual couples at doing family love and child love well.  Consequently they get better results in most areas measured.  Other forms of sexual preference have not been studied sufficiently but there is some evidence which suggests bisexual people do no worse and possibly a little better than the average heterosexual.

Question 8. How do people of different sexual preferences do at healthy self-love?

Answer: Because of societal condemnation, and especially judgmentalism and condemnation in religious communities homosexuals have had a terrible time developing sufficient healthy self-love.  Self-hate, self rejection, low self esteem, escapist addictions and suicide have been measured as quite high, although now with more social acceptance and more available support networks these problems are reducing.  In those cultures where different sexuality is common and accepted these problems for the most part don’t exist in larger percentages than is true of heterosexuals.  Even though bisexuals have been able to ‘hide out’ in heterosexual communities they have exhibited some of these self love problems also.

Question 9. Is there any reason to believe that people of one sexual preference or another will naturally or automatically do healthy, real love relating better or worse than people of other sexual preferences.

Answer: No!

Question 10. Do people of one sexual preference or another do spiritual love better or worse than people of other sexual preferences?

Answer: People who have more stressors, and difficulties and differences than average go looking for help and answers more than is typical.  That often includes searching into religion and spiritual matters.  Homosexuals, and bisexuals and other people with sexual differences have to cope with more stressors when they live in sexually, anti-democratic, social environments.  Therefore, it is thought a fair number of these people search for spiritual solutions and spiritual development more than the average person does.

Those who search tend to find and, therefore, grow their abilities in spirituality.  Homosexuals living in sexually anti-democratic societies especially run into lots of social and sometimes religious prejudice, rejection, hate, pseudo-love and related difficulties.  Consequently they often turn away from organized religion and toward independent spirituality.  Other than that there does not seem to be much of a spirituality difference between heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and other sexualities.

Among people who give arduous study to these sort of things there is this conclusion – the love of life, the love of nature, the love of a deity, the love of fellow humans and all other forms of love can be just as strong and done just as well by people of one sexual preference as it is of another.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Can you give and receive family love and friendship love equally to people of all different sexual persuasions?

Related posts:

1. What about “Bi” Love?
2. Sexual Love Laces
3. Other Genders Love
4. Are Love and Marriage Getting a Divorce? 

Love Affairs: Bad?, Good? and Otherwise

Will a Love Affair be Good or Bad for You?  The answer may depend on whether you usually make most things go well for you and those you love, or not.

It also may depend on your subconscious ‘self-defeating’ or ‘self winning’ ways of going about life.  Another thing it definitely could depend on concerns what and how you think about love affairs.

Some people’s thinking about love affairs is well informed, intelligent, rational and balanced.  Is yours?  There also are those whose thinking is naïve, gullible, poorly informed and vulnerable.  Is that you?  A good many tend to think romantically and sexually about love affairs, but not much past that.  Could that be you?  A large number think judgmentally and with considerable negativity, while others are caught between thinking hopefully and fearfully.  Does any of that apply to you?  There, of course, are those in both committed and uncommitted relationships who secretly think about love affairs with joyful anticipation, delicious desire, clever premeditation and scheming intrigue.  Describing you perhaps? 

Then we have those who just get a big, happy kick out of thinking, talking and maybe even doing love affairs.  And there are those who think about love affairs with sad regret and those who think about them with happy reminiscence.  So, how do you think when you think of love affairs?  If you’re going to participate in a love affair it’s probably going to make you think a whole lot about it and to consider what your love affair is all about.  To think healthfully and successfully about love affairs let’s look at things that you might need to be aware of and consider carefully.

Singles with high love desires, and singles with breaking hearts, couples who can’t stop cheating on each other, and couples joyously reunited and working at co-recovery, the wear and tear on some relationships from multiple affairs, affairs that bring both agony and ecstasy, secret pride and public shame, terrifying dilemma and soaring freedom, crushing defeat and exhilarating victory, all these and far more are encompassed in the simple term ‘love affair’.

Love affair issues are agonized over and struggled with in my counseling practice almost every week.  That consistently has been true for years and years.  This means I have worked with thousands of people in all sorts of different love, sex and other types of affairs.  As a health professional my primary goal is always to get to a healthful resolution for all concerned.  I take the side of health against pathology, dysfunction and destructiveness.  It’s sometimes pretty tricky but I don’t take the side of ‘him’ or ‘her’, of someone else, or of saving the relationship or ending it.

I am neither for or against any of those positions unless it coincides with what is healthful for all concerned.  Since illicit or secret affairs are the ones usually presenting the most difficulty we will deal mostly here with those.  Later we will deal with the ‘yeas’ and ‘nays’ involved in open affairs, uncommitted single’s affairs and other kinds of affairs.  Those too can involve great dangers and difficulties along with marvelously strengthening joys, and enriching experiences and can have extraordinarily happy outcomes.

I will brag:  In my work with affairs we usually get to the ultimate goal of a healthy resolution for all concerned.  However, getting there is, almost always, quite arduous and quite complicated.  Commonly in an illicit or secret affair there are two people in a couple relationship, one or more lovers, plus sometimes children and family, some close friends and maybe others that may be strongly affected by what happens in the love affair.  Without help seriously un-healthful outcomes unfortunately are quite common in the complicated tangle of illicit affair situations.

In the worst-case scenarios suicide, murder, substance addictions, child, spouse and lover neglect and abuse, severe physical and mental harm, career ruination, economic destitution, family dissolution and a host of other truly traumatic consequences can, and do occur in many affair situations.  More commonly, repeated experiences of severe emotional hurt, serious family, social and occupational dysfunction, along with high stress and relational chaos regularly occur.  Yes, elicit love affairs sometimes can be frighteningly destructive!  If you are contemplating an illicit affair, or already are in one, don’t undervalue or be in denial about how badly it could go for you or for others who are important to you.

Then there’s the other side which doesn’t get talked about as much.  There can be, and sometimes are, very positive experiences and outcomes involved in a large number of love affairs.  Even very problem-filled affairs sometimes produce good results.  There is an extraordinary strengthening that develops and emerges in some affair protagonists.  It is not unusual that coming out of a ‘bad’ affair people take new, and much better life directions (which is a good result).  That’s especially true when they experience the help of a good counselor or therapist.

Destructive affairs sometimes result in people beneficially overhauling their life approach and their life situation which they would not have done otherwise.  Losing a spouse or love mate to an outside lover has been known to help a neglectful mate grow a much greater understanding of how to love and treat their next major love choice.  No small number of couples report that without the affair they coped with they would never have grown as good a love relationship as they have now.  Therefore, even bad affairs can have good results although usually the process, for a time, is quite awful.

Also not talked about much are the people who have excellent, positive affair results, sometimes right from the start.  Some testimonials I have heard: “My affair made me know I was worth something”.  “If it wasn’t for my affair I never would have learned what love is and how to do it well”.  “My super secret affairs led me into all sorts of exciting adventures and the best times I have ever had, so I would not trade for them for anything”. “I had a series of affairs which finally got me to my new and far better marriage and the love I always wanted”.  “Without cheating my life just would have been too damned dull.”  “It was having an affair that saved my life because before that I was on the way to putting a bullet in my head or drinking myself to death”.  “I have to be really thankful for my affair.  I think it was God sent because, crazy as it sounds, it’s what helped my marriage and made it work.  It wasn’t until my husband caught me with my lover that we started to get real with each other, and that has made all the difference in the world.  We were okay before but we’re really good together now”. 

These real-life words give evidence that sometimes having an illicit affair turns out to be positive for some people.

Here are some types of love affair results that many people don’t know what to think of:  Marcia related she was very happy about the results of her affair.  “It was my goal to have a child by a very intelligent, highly talented man and my affair got me exactly what I wanted, plus years of ongoing contact with a remarkably interesting man.  Besides that, his wife also has been involved and quite preciously captivating”.  Dennis stated, “It was my affair with an exceptionally wise, older, married woman that gave me the courage to go after the kind of woman I really wanted but was afraid I could never be enough for.  I am profoundly indebted to her”.

Serena remarked, “My several affairs are what sustained me through the long illness of my slowly dying husband.  Those wonderful men enabled me to lovingly care for him and make his life as good as possible right through to the end”.  Here too then is evidence that affairs, commonly disapproved of, can do good in certain circumstances, although there are many who would want to deny and refute that truth.

The group you perhaps hear the least about are the ones who say things like this: “I tried having an affair and it was so so”.  “My affairs were never really very bad or good, they just were.”  “Having an affair was just something to try on for size, which I did, and that’s about all I can say about it”.  “For me affairs and illicit sex were just a hobby.  After I tried that for a while I got a boat”.  It would seem that the truth of affairs is that quite a few people have disastrous results, others have really fine results and still others have mediocre results – much like most everything else in life.

If you are contemplating or feel prone to having a ‘cheating’ type illicit affair contemplate this important truth: To accomplish an illicit love affair you likely will engage in deceit, deception and perhaps a life saturated with falsehood.  All that along with the overt and covert lying that you probably will have to do is likely to be destructive to you no matter what else happens.  If it’s a true love affair perhaps the love you give and receive in the affair will be worth the price you have to pay.  Perhaps there also will be other benefits that at least help to counterbalance the difficulties of an illicit love affair.  Then again, perhaps not.

As you review the possible occurrences and outcomes of an illicit love affair let me suggest you ask yourself a few questions.  First, are you strong enough to survive the possible and probable destructive effects involved in an illicit love affair?  You see, illicit love affairs frequently turn out to be very draining.  Second, do the likely benefits outweigh the likely deficits, difficulties and potential disasters involved?  Third, who may be harmed, and how much might they be harmed?  Fourth, what exactly are the good things you are looking for in an affair and are they really good enough to go after by way of a secretive love affair?  Fifth, is there a way you could go after these things more openly and honestly?  Last, are you willing to seek the help of a nonjudgmental counselor or therapist so that your actions have a better chance of going in a healthful direction?

If you are already engaged in an illicit, secret affair is it one where real love is being given and received?  If you’re not sure about this study the “Definition of Love series” found on this site.  Do you need help in figuring out what to do with this affair?  If so, who will you go to for help?  Be careful here because some possible helpers may have a vested interest in one outcome or another, rather than helping you get to a healthful way of going about things.

If you go about the affair carefully and with healthy, real love for yourself and others things may go well for all concerned.  This is especially true if you and perhaps the others involved get some good coaching/counseling to help you through the hard spots.  Keep watching this site for more information about love, sex and other affair issues soon to appear.

As always, Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success question
Toward yourself and the others involved how compassionate, understanding and resilient can you be concerning a love affair situation that might come your way?

Related posts:

1. Returning to a Bad Lover? – A Blocking Technique
2. Why Love Problems Hurt So Bad
3. Protecting Those You Love from Yourself
4. False Forms of Love: Shadow Side Attachments
5. Adultery And No Divorce Love

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How Love Works - 7 Basics

Synopsis: Seven major ways of understanding how love actually works and how to ‘work’ love for producing its wonders and marvels are each briefly described.

People sometimes ask me, “Dr. Cookerly, how does love really work?”.  Here is an answer that comes from recent scientific findings, discussions with learned colleagues and my own work with thousands of couples, families, individuals and lovers in various other lifestyles, plus from the work of some of the many therapists I have trained and supervised.

Those who have succeeded in various forms of love relationships can be said to have revealed at least seven basic ways showing how healthy, real love actually works.  These 7 ways can be described as follows:

1.  Healthy, Real Love Must Be Given Well and Received Well for it to fully work its wonders and marvels!
In counseling I often hear things like, “I guess my parents loved me but they never really showed it.”  (See the entry “Love in the Fridge”) Or sometimes it is said this way, “I suppose he loves me but he sure doesn’t show it very well”, Or “We are supposed to love each other but you’d never know it from the way we treat each other”.  In my practice and the practices of those I have supervised and consulted with research clearly has revealed two major reasons love relationships of all types fail.

These reasons hold especially true for couples who don’t make it.  The number one reason is ‘deficient and insufficient love communication’.  That means the people in the love relationship do not give love to or receive love from each other enough.  Love sent by verbalizations, touch, looks, tones of voice, affirmations and all the other ways love can be shown just doesn’t happen enough (For the eight major groups of behavior by which love can be conveyed see the entry “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love” ).

The number two reason is they send each other far too many anti-love messages like demeaning remarks, putdowns, criticism, hate looks, angrily intoned words, complaints, etc., compared to the number of pro-love messages they send each other such as experience gifts, hugs, praises, compliments, caresses, acts of tolerant acceptance, intimate self-disclosure, etc..  Unless actions demonstrating love and words of love are freely, frequently given and well received a love relationship is likely to weaken.  It then becomes susceptible to the stressors that may kill it, or it may just wither away and die.  Love insufficiently given and received will, at best, produce a love relationship that merely exists and does not reach anything like its full potential.

Note that Love has to not only be given well but also received well for it to best work its many miracles.  I remember Brenda who was great at giving love in all eight of the major ways love can be given directly, but she was lousy at receiving it.  She could lovingly caress her children and lover, give hugs to her friends and family, say words of love to all, give gifts, do actions of affirmation, self-disclosure, tolerance and every other form of demonstrating love.  However, if anyone tried to do those things with her she would cut it short, withdraw, discount, dodge, emotionally distance herself, deflect compliments and praises, and then later, not surprisingly, be depressed and quite love malnourished.

In childhood she had been subject to frequent, severe, phony ‘smother love’, followed by very controlling, painful abuse.  Thus, for her receiving love meant very bad things were about to happen.  It took a fair amount of therapy for her to be able to receive demonstrations of love from the many people who cared about her but she finally managed it.  Brenda exemplified someone suffered from an advanced case of poor receptional love ability.  However, there are many who block or avoid at least some of the love that is readily coming their way.  To be able to receive an expression of love without countering it with self deprecating, or fearful, suspicious or angry thoughts, or without countering it with indifference to what is happening is very hard for quite a few people. That’s almost always because love was coupled with too much pain earlier in their life.

‘Good reception’ means you focus on the love being shown to you, you purposefully appreciate and enjoy it because you’re focused on it and, if necessary, you remind yourself that it is probably real love, it’s not control, manipulation, trickery or some other negative thing that is coming your way.  Then you show that you really got it and enjoyed it so that the giver can hear and see that is really true – you really got it and it did you some good.  By doing that you give the giver the gift of good reception (See the Receptional Love Section in the entry “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”).
2.  Love Works like an Extraordinarily Marvelous, Nutritious Food
When we do a good job of receiving well-demonstrated, healthy, real love we get energized in a way that is very similar to what happens when we eat healthy, nutritious food.  When we are deprived of well-demonstrated love we show responses quite similar to malnutrition or starvation.  The research suggests this is in fact apparently true for all mammals, birds and some other species so far studied.  Receiving love probably releases energy already stored in us, but it may be an energy that nothing but receiving love will release.

The love nurturing and nutritious factor works because our brain is built for love.  Receiving acts that show us love triggers our brains into making healthful neurochemicals which then flow through our body doing all sorts of biologically beneficial things.  And this causes us to feel really good in a wide variety of ways.  Elation, serenity, a sense of well-being, a sense of safety, giddy, feeling powerful, joy, relief and strong connectedness are all among the many positive emotions that experiencing healthy, real love may bring us.

3.  Healthy, Real Love Well-Demonstrated and Well-Received Can Act like an Amazing, Widely Effective Medicine
Love in mysterious ways, not at all fully understood, facilitates healing biologically, psychologically and relationally.  At least that is what a growing body of medical, recovery and rehabilitation research evidence points to.  Given any two people with the same wound, physical or mental illness, addiction, disability or dysfunction it is the person best-loved who is most likely to survive, repair, recover and generally do well at healing.  The unloved, the lesser loved, and those who are poor at receiving love, along with those who are not good at healthy self-love are the ones who are less likely to heal and recover rapidly, thoroughly or sometimes at all, all else being equal.

Intriguingly there is evidence to suggest the terrific healing effects of love sometimes seem to occur even with people who are comatose.  Some research supports the concept that love is just as healing for sick or injured other mammals as it is for humans.  Conversely there also is evidence that points to a lack of healing or slowed healing which occurs in those people and experimental animals who do not have love showed to them.  Furthermore, the well loved seem to have better abilities for fighting off infections, a slower aging process, a tendency to recover more thoroughly and quicker physically and psychologically than do the lesser loved and the unloved.

4.  Amazingly Giving Love Also Makes You Healthier
Imagine the surprise of the researchers when they discovered that giving love to others lowered bad cholesterol, improved blood pressure and increased the anti-infection functions of the ‘givers’ of love.  It originally was thought that the ‘giver’ might be drained, which in extreme cases did occur, but mostly giving love made the giver healthier as well as the receiver.  Sometimes the giver of love is even more helped than the receiver.  Because giving love works to enhance the factors that promote a healthier, longer life for both the giver and the receiver I suggest you give lots of love to lots of people.

5.  Healthy, Real Love Works to Motivate the Most Important of All Thriving and Surviving Actions
Because of love we protect our loved ones.  Because of love we strive long and hard for the well-being of the loved.  Because of love we work to create, improve and continue relational connections.  Because of love we endeavor to live in harmony, cooperation, and in collaboration in order to constructively live life with our loved ones.  Love even may cause us to lay down our own life for those we love.  (See the entry “Is Love the Most Important Thing in the Universe?”)  Love inspires creative efforts like nothing else, makes for perseverance against all forms of difficulty, causes people to work long and hard for social improvement, and fuels our most courageous actions along with inspiring our most awesome achievements.

6.  For Love to Work Well It Must Be Worked
While love is natural the sending and receiving, the growing, the maintaining and the advancing of love requires work.  Healthy, real, well done love takes the work of learning how to do love ever better.  It also requires purposeful application of that love learning.  Much like a farm growing natural food to get a good harvest, a lot of labor is required.  To achieve the full success potential of well done love we have to ‘work’ the major ways to show and receive love, ‘work’ the how to’s of healthy self-love, ‘work’ the ways of constructively and creatively thinking about love, ‘work’ the uses of love’s many emotions and everything else having to do with love.  Sometimes love just spontaneously and naturally flows.

However, for there to be consistency of love, being able to work at it is required.  Being able to work love also is terrifically important in times of stress and difficulty when love is most needed but least likely to flow easily.  When you know how to work at love you can do it purposefully and that does not detract from doing it spontaneously.  Do know, this kind of ‘work’ has tremendous benefits and the more you work it the more it becomes an integrated part of your life.

7.  For Love Relationships to Thrive and Make Life Fulfilled Love Must Be Cycled
To make a love relationship continue, grow and be fully actualized the people in the love relationship must cycle the love.  This is true for couples, families, comrades, or any other type of love relationship.  Cycling love means that two or more people in the relationship are mutually giving and receiving actions demonstrating love in ongoing teamwork with each other.  They receive love and digest and benefit from it, and then freely send back love to those who are sending it to them.  They keep doing this cycling of love together usually in ever improving teamwork.  They give the gift of showing good receivership of love and they jointly dance the dance of love pretty much continuously.  Love can be freely given to others who do not reciprocate with love actions.

Love given this way is a form of charity, but that does not create an ongoing, love teamwork relationship.  Likewise, a person may receive love and not give love back to the sender.  The recipient is enriched but that does not make for a healthy teamwork of equals, nor does it create a lasting, fulfilling love mutuality.  Love sometimes can be put on hold for surprisingly long periods of time and then picked up and restarted later, but during the ‘on hold’ time the love relationship is not growing because it is not being actively cycled.

Love can be stored up and drawn upon later but it is best when love is constantly cycled and, therefore, freshly generated and restored.  One of the beauties of love is the more you cycle it the more you create it and have it to give it away.  The better people learn and practice love cycling teamwork the more fulfilling their love relationship becomes.  This also tends to promote and nurture healthy self-love which also produces people who have more love to freely give to others.

Hopefully these seven points will help you better consider how love works and how you may work to create more healthy, real love in your life and in the lives of those you care about.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Will you perhaps be talking over these ideas about how love works with a significant other, perhaps a mate, or lover, friend, or child you want to teach to think about love, and in so doing advance your own love thinking and, thereby, better your own love actions.

Related posts:

1. A Functional Definition Of Love

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Loving Others "As" You Love Yourself ???

Love others as you love yourself is considered by many to be one of the world’s greatest teachings.  There are several good reasons for this.

One reason has been hidden from common awareness and understanding.  In fact, in some places and times this reason even has been banned from being taught or even discussed.
This reason is that the teaching, love others as you love yourself, can be seen as speaking of a democratic (anti-authoritarian) system where everybody gets to be a winner and no one need be a loser.  It works this way.  If I love others and not myself I am the loser.  If I love myself and not others, others go unloved and are the likely losers.  If I love neither myself nor others we are all the less for that.  Only if I love you and also myself do we have an ‘I win, you win, nobody loses’ outcome.

Let’s look at the word ‘AS’.  In English it is a very small, short word.  In many languages ‘AS’ is a larger word and commands more attention.  Here the word ‘AS’ can be seen relating to several things.  ‘I love you as I love me’ can mean I love you at the same time I love me.  It also can mean I love you and me to the same degree.  It may mean I love you in the same manner or ways I love myself; in this understanding of the great teaching we both get to do healthfully well.  This understanding also suggests a system by which we both can grow stronger and become better for the world we live in.  The word ‘AS’, therefore, points to a lot of important meaning in the teaching to loving others as you love yourself.

What about sacrificial love you may ask?  Let me suggest sacrifice is good in emergencies but not so much otherwise.  If we have enough time it’s best to figure out how to love self as we love another so no one need be the loser.  Think of it this way.  If I cut off my right arm for you it makes our next hug poor.  Better that I keep both of my arms, exercise them and then for both you and me hugs, and a lot more, will be far better.  Unfortunately there is a fair amount of needless self-sacrifice in the world.  This is partly because self-sacrifice has been taught as a ‘high holy virtue’.

It’s true that sometimes it is, and that kind of sacrifice sometimes represents great loving and important, helpful action but not always.  Some people tend to be self-sacrificing about almost everything and much of that is just not healthy nor is it needed.  Then there are those who pretend to be self-sacrificing martyrs so as to obtain ‘higher holiness kudos’ and/or guilt leverage for manipulating others.

It is a bit complicated to love others while at the same time loving yourself. Consider these ramifications.  If you are loving others approximately to the same degree you are loving yourself, and in more or less the same manner, you are keeping things balanced and probably indicating to others you are deserving of good treatment.   Know that if you treat yourself sacrificially or in other ways treat yourself poorly you may be teaching others that it’s OK to sacrifice you and treat you poorly.  Not only that, you may be unknowingly influencing them to treat nearly everybody that way.  You also could be an influence for others learning to needlessly and harmfully sacrifice themselves. 

When we love others as we love ourselves we model for others an ‘I win, you win’, approach to human interaction and love relationships.  Acting to love others while modeling healthy self-love can help others, especially children, learn self-care, self-esteem and self-confidence while influencing them to act in ways that are good for others.  It also helps children learn to respect their parents because the parents are modeling self-respect which is a part of healthy self-love.  Thus, it is that this seemingly simple teaching has a great many components to contemplate.

It may help to know a little history of this teaching or concept.  Around 3000 years ago, or so, a Hebrew wisdom-master taught the revolutionary idea “love your neighbor as you love yourself”.  The question was asked who is my neighbor?  The answer evolved to be –  Everyone!  It is now understood that anyone you have anything to do with and anyone you may have some effect upon, no matter how remote or small, is your neighbor.  This understanding leads to the concept ‘our village is our planet, and our neighbors are the life forms that live with us on it’.  In the future, who knows, it may even reach out to include our solar system and far beyond.

About 2000 years ago the man called Jesus (in English) took this teaching and made it one of only two Commandments he ever pronounced.  These two commandments, according to many theologians, are what Christianity is founded upon.  In effect ‘love others as you love yourself’ is one half of the constitutional law of Christianity.

Sadly the ‘as you love yourself’ part mostly either has been ignored, purposefully avoided, downplayed, or given a de-powering interpretation.  It often also has been replaced by teachings like ‘put yourself last’ and ‘all self-love is selfish and evil’.  From a psychotherapist’s point of view these anti-self-love teachings have been disastrous for the mental health of many.  Put yourself last and see self-love as evil promotes the development of low self esteem, low self-confidence, taking poor or bad care of yourself and becoming in character weak, subservient, submissive, and vulnerable to users and abusers.  Furthermore, these anti-self-love teachings influence us toward feeling guilty for honest and accurate pride in doing things well and in our own intrinsic worth; they actually are counter teachings to “as you love yourself”.

You may ask how did this come to be?  Some think that authoritarian religionists under the influence of monarchists and royalists promoted the de-emphasizing of the ‘as you love yourself’ part of this second great Commandment.  Probably because it was seen that the ‘love yourself’ concept points to self strengthening and, thus, to dangerous, independent, self-directed living which, when carried far enough, can result in anti-monarchy democracy.  That could threatened the social advantages and control of both the religious and royal masters of pre-democratic times.

With these corruptions the teaching became something like ‘be good to others but not to yourself’ because that is the devil’s way which is sinful, selfish, uppity and against God’ unless, of course, you are high born or called to high religious orders.  Still today among some who have and want authoritarian power the ‘as you love yourself’ idea is seen as a threat to be de-emphasized or ignored.  On a personal level today many still suffer from the concept that their okayness is granted by others (parents, a man, a woman, what others think of them, etc.) instead of by their own evaluation of their intrinsic value, accomplishments, character, etc.

With that background in mind some questions are in order.  How will you deal with the idea of loving others while at the same time, and to the same degree, and in the same manner you work to love yourself ?  Are you willing to do some work to healthfully love yourself so that you can healthfully love others better?  If you have strong anti love of yourself programs in your head what will you do about those?  If when acting to healthfully love yourself and be good to yourself you feel conflict, guilt, shame or any other bad feeling who might you go to for help?  What can you actually do to balance loving others better and more as you also healthfully love yourself better and more?  How might you go about studying new, different and better ways to love others and new, different and better ways to love yourself?

As always – grow and go with love
 
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly


♥ Love Success Question If soon you were going to do an act of healthy self-love and a very similar act to show love to a chosen, special ‘other’ what exactly would you do, and when would you do it?

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Image credits: “Group Hug” image by Flickr user ms.Tea (Tracy Ducasse).

Does "Cougar" Love Work?

Synopsis: The widespread criticism of Sonia and Christopher; defiant love; ‘cougar’ defined; research surprises; what most couples can do; ageism; Jan’s wisdom.

Sonya flew into my consulting office quite upset and perplexed.  She blurted out, “Christopher and I are a perfect match and he’s my totally perfect, I mean really perfect love mate except for one big thing.  I am 12 years older than he is!  Everyone is telling me this can’t work, it’s wrong, it will never last, he will break my heart, he will cheat on me with a younger woman and a lot worse.  I bet you’re going to tell me the same sort of things aren’t you?”

Then she collapsed into a chair with a very ‘downer’ look on her face.  I softly replied, “What do you suppose you really want the truth about this to be?”  Sonya became contemplative and after a short bit said, “I want two things.  First is to know, even though I’ve been living what everyone disapprovingly calls a ‘cougar’s lifestyle’, can I have a lasting love with Christopher?  Second what can he and I do to make this a lasting love and avoid all the doomsday predictions I’m getting about this relationship?”  She then went on to tell me about him and related that he was the seventh younger man she had seduced and enjoyed but she found Christopher to be, as she called it, ‘a keeper’ if ever there was one”.

I remarked, “So you have decided to keep Christopher in your life and try really hard to make this relationship work.  Now you’re just needing to know how to best go about that, in spite of what you’re friends and family are saying.”  Sonya with a defiant look on her face replied, “You know, you’re right.  No matter what you or anybody says that’s what I’m going to do.  It’s worth it no matter what happens.  So that means I want another thing.  How do I handle my friends and family?”

That interchange was a few years back and with the help of individual, couples and some family counseling Sonya and Christopher seem to have created a really successful, love-filled, healthy, happy lifestyle together.  Their friends and family were quite difficult for awhile but now that part of their life is functioning in at least an acceptable fashion.  Interestingly both Sonya’s and Christopher’s grandparents turned out to be the most welcoming and inclusive while some of the younger family members were the most excluding and condemning.

Originally the term ‘cougar’ meant an older woman who was assertively going after having ‘flings’ with younger men or sometimes younger women.  Commonly the female was 10 or more years older than the person she was involved with.  Sometimes the term was used, and still is used in a very derogatory way.  More recently the term has come to be applied to older women who have long-term relationships, sometimes including marriage, with a person ten or more years younger than they are.

Research on ‘cougar’ relationships is a bit sparse but so far the findings indicate ‘cougar’ relationships surprisingly are a growing phenomenon.  Likewise, it seems a portion of those ‘flings’ turn into lasting, successful ‘cougar love’ relationships.  Most ‘cougars’ seem to be rather assertive, successful in their careers, often financially independent women comfortable with sexuality and fairly adept at being loving and lovable individuals.  Their lovers are thought to have less than average emotional baggage, hang-ups and difficulties and are seen to usually try harder at romance, along with being refreshingly democratic and egalitarian about gender roles.  These lovers are seen to focus on doing psychological love well and being very sexually adaptive.

From my point of view the truth is this.  Most couples who grow enough love and do the work of learning how to do their love well can succeed no matter what their differences.  ‘Cougars’ and their lovers are no exception, although there are some special difficulties to handle.  The common, big problem for ‘cougars’ and their lovers seems to be handling society’s negative, prejudicial opinions about ‘cougars’ and their younger lovers.

Some social scientists are predicting resistance to the ‘cougar’ type of relationship will fade as more and more couples engage in this type of relationship and, therefore, more and more succeed.  In the social sciences anti-cougar pressures are considered to be an outgrowth of ageism (for an in-depth review see the entry “Should Age Make a Difference – in Love?”).  Ageism which includes age segregation, age differentiation and age prejudice is thought to be a needless and even destructive social dynamic among a number of cultural critics, and that thinking seems to be spreading.

To overcome society’s, and perhaps family and friend’s resistance, it’s extremely important for a ‘cougar couple’ to learn not to be governed by ‘what others think or say’.  To respond with love to the anti-love messages some will experience is a valuable, helpful skill set.  Listen to the wisdom of Jan who said, “I learned my friend’s and family’s criticism just told me what the ‘criticizers’ were threatened by.  Their disapproval told me more about them than about me or my lover.  Once I realized that, I was able to respond with tolerance and kindness, which did more to wear down their resistance far better than any reason or argument I could have given.”

From what I’ve seen in my practice ‘cougars’ and their lovers are like all people in couples relationships.  If they work at it they can learn the major ways of showing love, receiving love, cycling love and growing love.  When they do that their chances of creating a healthful, lasting love grow dramatically, no matter what their differences.

As always Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What happens inside you when you hear or read the words ‘cougar’, ‘cougar lover’, ‘cougar lust’, ‘cougar’ approaching, ‘cougar fling’ and ‘cougar love’?

Related posts:

1. Should Age Make a Difference — In Love? 

Anti-Love Myth # 1: True Love Means You'll Know What to Do

Synopsis: Our sweet, pretty, horribly destructive, super common, love-ruining myth in example; A group’s help; Care and cure effort; Two answers for why we keep perpetuating the myth; The triggering of useless self attack; Ruining your children’s romantic future; The two brains improvement you can make; and Restaurant behavior & love relating.

With an anguished look Francine moaned, “If I have to tell him what I want that spoils it.  If he truly loves me, he just will know what to do and he’ll do it.  Won’t he?  That’s the way real love works, doesn’t it?”

Upon hearing this the other seven members of Francine’s counseling group all groaned in unison.  My trainee assistant therapist then said, “How has thinking that way been working for you so far, Francine?”  Quizzically she replied, “Maybe not so well, but perhaps I just haven’t found the right guy who really loves me yet.”  Again members of the group groaned.  Cheri, said, “I have an ex who relied on that myth and all it ever did was cause a lot of trouble and fights.  I always was having to guess and usually I guessed wrong.”  Jake spoke up and added, “Yeh, I get so frustrated with my wife never telling me what she really wants.  I really love her but she doesn’t give me a clear message that I can work with.  She expects me to ‘read her mind’ and I never can.  This could lead us to the breaking point if we don’t do something about it.”

I then asked, “Francine, what do you think the word communication means when we say we all have to learn how to really communicate with the ones we love?”  Francine replied, “I don’t know, I never really thought about it.”  I replied, “Could it mean you and your lover have to take a lot of the guesswork out of your relationship?  Maybe it means we all have to tell each other what we secretly hope for, dream about, and directly ask for what we need and want.”  With some energy Francine strongly said, “I think I get it and I’m going to work on that.”  So she did and with good results over time.

Loretta who just had been listening then made this comment, “Without asking for what I wanted, when my husband didn’t say or do just the right, loving thing I thought it meant I had done something wrong, or he was mad at me, or maybe he didn’t care or he was just being cruel.  When what I wanted didn’t come my way I’d feel guilty and try to figure out what I had done wrong and why he was punishing me.  I’m sure I seemed pathetic and whiny.  I see now I was not sending any clear message at all, just hoping he’d magically know or guess how to be nice to me.  When he ‘failed’ to come through for me I would get pouty.  When I acted like that he would get mad at me and I would feel too afraid to even talk to him, let alone tell him what I needed or wanted, so I guess he never really knew.  It never crossed my mind that he had no idea what I wanted — that he actually couldn’t know.  What a mess not asking for what I really wanted made.  It would have been so simple and I think we’d still be together today if I’d known that.”

Brandon then brought up the question “Why do so many people believe that awful myth which says ‘If you love someone you’ll know what to do, and you’ll do it, and it will turn out to be the right thing?  Why do we rely on a false myth that love makes us ‘mind readers’ when it causes a lot of pain and misery, and no doubt a lot of breakups?”

Understanding how many people come to believe this ‘love myth’ which turns out to have such an anti-love effect can help us guard against it.  There are two parts to the thinking about that.  The first part applies to when you are a baby your parents are repeatedly figuring out what you need and want, and give it to you without you asking for it because, as an infant, you can’t.  You may look distressed, or cry or look unhappy, then someone feeds you or changes your diaper or because they love you they make you feel better one way or another.  Therefore, you grow up being conditioned to think that those who love you automatically will know or figure out what you need and give it to you without you having to learn how to identify it, ask for it, or accurately inform anyone about how you feel.

All you have to do is look or sound a little unhappy and those loving people will sweep in and take care of you in a way that satisfies.  When you are a child that works because your wants and needs are mostly simple.  Adulthood is much more complicated and individualistic, so we have to learn to communicate our wants very clearly or we don’t have much of a chance of getting what we need or desire.  The dependence on loved ones being mind readers, therefore, basically is a childish way of operating and it often does enormous damage to adult love relationships.

The second part is that we in the Western world have been conditioned, at least somewhat, by childhood fairy tales.  In the fairy tales Prince and/or Princess Charming always automatically does the right thing which always leads to "happily ever after" without anyone having to really communicate.  Think of Snow White.  She is laying there in her coffin and the prince comes along and automatically does the one correct thing that brings her back to life.  He kisses her and she pops up full of hugs and kisses for him.  How did he know to do that?

It’s inferred that love gave him the immediate, perfect knowledge of what to do.  He didn’t have to research it, consult wise men or white witches, study old scrolls, remember what some wizard once said, or form a committee to study the matter.  He just immediately, automatically knew what to do and did it because that is ‘the magic of love’ according to the story.  To a large extent our romance mythology is built on this kind of understanding of how love is supposed to work.  We keep teaching this destructive myth to the detriment and destruction of many love relationships that otherwise might work out fine.

Think about it.  Notice that this way of operating can work in fairy tales and romance stories because only one brain is involved in scripting all the roles.  In real life you have at least two individual brains thinking individualistically.  For there to be joint, cooperative, successful action those two brains have to communicate with one another.  Only occasionally will both brains think enough in similar fashion for people to have pretty much the same thought simultaneously.  That phenomenon can be enjoyed but not relied upon.  Therefore, mutually communicating your feelings and especially your desires, then jointly working out what to do next is the way to go – if you want frequent cooperative success.

By the way, you might want to give some thought about whether or not you are perpetuating the "love gives magical, automatic knowledge" myth to your children and, thus, perhaps assisting them toward future romantic agonies and maybe failure.

Here’s the dilemma. You either can hold on to the sweet, pretty but false romantic myth that love magically can guide those who love you to take care of you ‘just right’, or you can go to the trouble to learn to clearly communicate your thoughts, feelings and especially your desires.  If you accurately communicate what you want you at least have a chance of getting what you want, of course, there is no guarantee.  Furthermore, if you are a decent listener you actually may come to understand what your beloved really wants or at least realize what questions to ask to find out.  If you hold on to and depend upon the myth – well, you can guess what you’re odds are of getting what you need and want.

Many of my patients have heard my analogy of restaurant behavior and love relating.  If you go to a restaurant and don’t ask for what you want, you are highly unlikely to get it.  The wait-person can’t read your mind.  If instead you say, “I’d like a steak, medium rare, with mushrooms on the side and a baked potato with sour cream and chives, and broccoli also” you have a far better chance of getting more exactly what you want.  Likewise, in a love relationship if you come home tired and worried, and just plop down and hang your head, you might not get the hug and attentive listening that you really want.  All your mate can do is guess what to do and they may guess you want to be left alone.  But if you say, “I’ve really had a rough day and I’m worried about tomorrow.  Will you give me a big hug and listen to me with love for about 5 minutes?  I think that will help us have a much nicer evening together” the chances are much better that your mate will understand what you want and hopefully help you with that.

As always – Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Are you in any way afraid to ask someone you love for what you want, and if so how are you going to get past that?

Validation Love Stamp Giveaways

Synopsis: Your stamp explained; who controlled your validation; who owns it; okayness elections; self love stamping; your giveaways and get backs; owning and self validating as an adult.

It’s like there is this stamp that validates you as OK, as loved, as good enough or maybe even as better.

When you were growing up your parents, or whoever was raising you day by day, either ‘stamped you’ as OK or not OK.  According to how you got stamped you were either lovable or not lovable, wanted or not wanted, accepted or rejected, worthy or unworthy, good or bad, etc.  Then maybe when you got to be a teenager Mother Nature influenced you to turn the stamp over to your peers, age mates, or to older teens, etc.

It could be that somewhere along the way you thought you ‘fell in love’ and you turned your okayness and love-ability validation stamp over to your boyfriend or girlfriend, along with the stamp pad and all the ink.  In a new, huge way your lover was your validator of whether you were lovable and OK, or not.  You might have been taking the beginning steps on the road to getting good at self validation – until you felt you fell in love, and then that special other person’s validation trumped your own and everybody else’s.

Then again, maybe you were one of those people who only could get okayness from those with some kind of higher or special status.  Consequently, you might have done everything you could to conform to their ‘popularity standards’ no matter whether or not those reference points were full of pressure, peculiarity or even perversity.  Maybe like so many you got stuck at one of these levels where the opinions of others count way more than your independent, self derived opinion of yourself counts.  If so, that makes you what is called outer-dependent and other-dependent instead of inner-dependent and self-dependent.  The problem with outer-dependency is that it counters healthy self-love development.  Arrested development of healthy self-love gets in the way of healthy love relationship development which is enriched by co-equality, mutuality and democratic partnership –  in other words, development of the best kind, according to many specialists in this field.

I like to go back to the great, ancient, marvelously encompassing, superbly enlightening, incredibly comprehensive, three or more thousand-year-old admonition which simply instructs us to “Love Others as You Love Yourself”.  No wonder the one we call Jesus chose that and proclaimed it to be one of his only two great commandments.  It covers and explains so very much.  I suggest loving others as you love yourself is the secret key (hidden in plain sight) to the success of love relationships in general.

This admonition strongly relates to the idea of ‘validation love stamps’.  You see, if as an adult you give away your validation stamp to others for them to certify you as OK or not OK, as lovable or not, etc. you probably are not doing a very good job of the “As You Love Yourself” part of that extremely important and applicable, wisdom teaching.

Let’s look at one way of understanding the validation stamp process.  In childhood your okayness and love-ability validation comes from your parents and those who raise you.  For your survival you are dependent on them and their validation.  As adolescence is approached your okayness and love-ability, along with acceptability for inclusion, validation begins to come from your peers.  This inclusion desire sometimes seems to become of supreme importance.  However, when achieving true adulthood your primary validation comes from yourself.  Another way to say this is to say that as a true adult you get 51% (or more) of the vote on your own okayness.  If all the world votes you as OK, and you do not, you win.  Likewise, if all the world votes you as not OK, but you vote the opposite, you win the vote but not okayness.  This is only true if you have become primarily self validating.  If you stamp yourself as OK, you are, and you feel it and you act that way.  This does not mean that you ignore the rest of the world.  A wise person takes in counsel, viewpoints, etc. of others but doesn’t give them a personal stamp of primary approval.

The history of the great contributors to the world is a history of those who retained their stamp of self approval even when it seemed like most of the world was trying to take it away from them.  Certainly your most beloved and dear family members, and your closest, trusted friends, and maybe occasionally even your enemies should get votes in your okayness election which, by the way, happens everyday.  However, in most situations it’s best if your own, independent vote on yourself out-votes everybody else’s.

This means, in regard to validation, it not only is okay for you to get back what you perhaps gave away but it’s essential to your health and well-being to be the keeper of your own validation stamp.  Every validation ‘giveaway’ can become a ‘get back’.  Those who really love you want you to have the ability to validate yourself.  Their praises and compliments, etc. often help but your self-validation will count more.  That doesn’t make you egotistical, stuck up or a snob.  It just will make you self-accurate and able to more freely do your love from a self-dependent, co-equal stance.

A few words of caution are in order.  Sometimes it is ‘the internal voter who was programmed into our head’ from our past who we give our validation stamp away to.  If we’re thinking “what would they think, or say” and none of them are in our life anymore, it’s time for an ‘inner election system redistricting’.  Concern about peer approval subconsciously may relate back to the in-group of kids from your seventh grade.  By-the-way, we still can honor and value our parents, grandparents and everybody else in family and friendship networks without giving them too many votes in our okayness and love-ability elections.

In olden times if the king, or some other ‘royal’, stamped you okay, you were.  If a royal stamped you not OK, you weren’t; and there wasn’t much you could do about it.  That sort of thing is what motivated a lot of people to come to the New World and get with this idea we call democracy.  Today you may give away your validation stamp of approval, okayness and love-ability to all sorts of groups who will be glad to take it in order to control you, get money, sex or other valuables from you, and even make you one of their minions.  This can happen in business, religion, politics, status seeking, money, the arts, sports, fashion, the professions and in just about any group you can think of.

Remember, you don’t have to let them possess your stamp or control your sense of inner self-validation.  Until quite recently, and still in many circles, being married was a validating stamp for women.  For men validation was, and still is, mostly about power and status symbols of some kind or another.  Classifications and symbols can be nice but they may not tell you much about substance.

So now, the challenge is to think this over and examine yourself as to whether or not you are unnecessarily and unhealthfully giving away your validating love stamp to others to make you OK or not OK.  Perhaps you are doing a good job of internal self-validation, in which case, what you just read will be a good reinforcement for that.  If not, I suggest you start asking yourself who you give away your stamp to, and what are you going to do about that?

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
With those you love are you influencing them to ‘own’ and ‘practice’ their own self-validating?

Is Love the Most Important Thing in the Universe?

With great perplexity George, one of my interns, moaned, “I don’t know which of my professors to side with.

One says the subject of love is to be totally ignored and everything written about love should be disregarded by all serious thinkers because the subject is too fuzzy, muddled, means too many different things to too many people and in truth actually is quite meaningless.

The other says that for 5000 years the world’s greatest sages have taught that love is the most important of all subjects and it should be a major focus for anyone trying to understand human nature, life and the universe”.

George explained that both professors were going to be on his doctoral oral exams’ panel and both had indicated they would be asking him for his understanding of love and the role it should play in his future practice as a therapist.  To him after 10 grueling years of higher education he worried that whether or not he might practice his chosen career, at his chosen level, looked like it might turn on this one question.  What was he to do?

Before we get to what George decided let me ask, “What would you do if you were George?  Where do you really stand on the issue of love and its importance, both in your life and in your understanding of what’s really important?  Do you take the position that love means too many different things to too many different people so there is no reason to bother about it?  Do you think love is a meaningless term? (See the Definition of Love series listed at left)  Do you believe love exists but is of minor importance?  Do you suspect love is of enormous importance but don’t know what to do about that?  Are you a diligent student of love, working hard to understand, give and receive it?  To help you figure out the importance of love let’s look at a few things.

According to many of the wisdom masters of old, nothing could be more important than love.  Here is what just four of them have related to us:

“Of all that is of lasting importance there are these three – faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love”.  “Put love first…” From Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (13th and 14th chapters) – almost 2000 years ago

“Love is a moving energy which causes us to travel toward wisdom, goodness and the beautiful.  Love is the primeval cosmic desire, the spirit which moves between the gods and people linking us all and giving birth to that which becomes ultimate and eternal.  Love is that which transcends from the individual to the universal bringing us spiritual inspiration and the great motivation of divine madness”. From the teachings of Socrates as seen in the Symposium and the Phaedo by Plato – approximately 2400 years ago

“I have this treasure… first is love… love is victorious in attack, secure in defense.  Heaven arms with love those it would not see destroyed”. From the Tao Te Ching of  Lao  Tzu – Chinese wisdom teaching of perhaps 2500 years ago

“Let the disciple cultivate love without measure toward all beings… the world, above, below, and around having a heart of love unstinted… for in all the world this state of a loving heart is best”. From the teachings of Buddha, The Hymn of Divine Love – approximately 2500 years ago

Very similar teachings emphasizing the incredible importance of love are to be found in the timeless works of the major religions, and philosophies of the ancient world and the writings of a hundred other wisdom masters of old.

You may ask what do more modern sages and especially scientists have to say about the importance of love.  If you are one of those who see love as one of the most incredibly important, if not the most important, factors in the universe take heart because you are in good company.  If you go to the trouble to look it up you will discover that there is a growing and great similarity to wisdom masters of old in the findings and teachings of those who recently have been looking into the nature and dynamics of love.

From A to Z, or in other words from fields as diverse as anthropology to zoology, research is looking into love and finding astounding things.  New understandings of the workings of love are emerging especially in the brain sciences of neurobiology, neurochemistry and psychoneurology.  Likewise, practical applications of the new knowledge about love and its importance are being discovered in a number of medical and medically related fields.

When a famous oncologist said, “If I can teach my patients to love their survival rate goes up” medicine rather seriously started taking notice of love.  When a famous laboratory-oriented, experimental psychologist titled his most important research book Learning to Love the many fields of behavioral research took note. When modern fields as complicated as psychoneuroimmunology have symposiums oriented to love, scientists of many types begin to focus on love and its importance.  Studies in the relatively recent past in experimental comparative psychology, cultural anthropology, social biology, ethology, primatology and even in behavioral economics have confirmed, substantiated and, thus, laid down a strong scientific research base for an understanding of what love is and how it works.

New conceptualizations and understandings concerning love are being worked on in contemporary theology, modern philosophy, linguistics, evolutional spirituality, political science, historical analysis and in a plethora of other creative, intelligent, thoughtful endeavors.  This, I think, gives considerable evidence and emphasis to just how important love is being seen in the modern world.  If you run into nay-sayers who don’t have much regard for love you might want to inform them of these love facts.

So, dear reader, with all that in mind let me ask just how important are you making love in your life? Is it the most important thing in the universe for you?  Because you are reading this blog about love I suspect you’re doing pretty well.  Let me ask another question.  Would you do well to be talking to others about making love more important in their lives?  Reading about love, talking about love and most of all practicing the behaviors of love are things we all can be doing to help make our personal world a more loving place.

George, by the way, did fine in his oral exams having found a way to adroitly reply that both professors’ viewpoints needed vigorous, further exploration.  It was then that they told him he had done an excellent job on his oral exams and they were just ‘messing with him’ to see how he handled a ‘double bind’ situation and because that’s just what professors sometimes do, all in the spirit of loving friendship of course.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Which of these things might you soon do concerning growing your love knowledge and love ability?

1. Go to the library or a large bookstore and in the psychology and self-help sections look at a number of the books you find with the word ‘love’ in the title.  (How many will really be about sex, or religion or something else?)

2. Ask some of the people you are closest with to come to your place on a specific evening and have a group discussion about love and how to learn more about it.  3. Decide on and then enact a new way to demonstrate or communicate love to at least three people in your life who you perhaps have not recently shown much love to.  Then will you evaluate how well you have done and how to improve?

Related posts:

1. Touching Back – A Surprisingly Important Love Skill
2. How Smart Is Your Love? – A Test
3. Contemplating Love
4. Virginity Surpassed and Parental Love