What is LOVE, Dr. Cookerly?: myths

Showing posts with label myths. Show all posts

A Romantic Myth That Kills Love

Synopsis: This mini-love–lesson first focuses on your danger; gives examples of the problem; looks at the sabotaging myth’s dynamics; views the “pretty poison fairytale”; touches on the problem of conflicting gender training; and gets you to the avoidance answers which usually work.

Are You in Danger?

Is a romantic myth hurting your chances at a happier and healthier relationship life, full of real love, and you don’t even know it? That is what seems to happen to millions, sometimes even to the point of destroying an otherwise possibly good, love relationship. Romantic myths can be so lovely and at the same time so “anti-love” in their effects. How does that happen?

Romantic myths get into our subconscious as we grow up, and then they may guide us later in life without us consciously knowing it. Sometimes they guide us into relationship disaster. More times they just steal chances for happiness and make for a lot of difficult and miserable relational experiences.

Four Examples, One Problem

Abbey angrily said, “If I have to tell him what I want, that spoils it. If he really loved me he would know, wouldn’t he? When I told him exactly that, we had the worst fight ever! I don’t know if it’s worth it for us to go on.”

In considerable frustration Fred related, “My lover plays this stupid guessing game, making me figure out what I’m supposed to do next, to show love I guess. I almost never get it right and then I get punished with cold rejection. But what I don’t get, and really need, is information about what exactly is wanted. Once in a while I get some vague clues but even if I figure them out it doesn’t help for the next time it happens. I’m at such a loss. I’m about to give up trying it’s so frustrating.

In despair Jessica told of her guy breaking up with her, after she, as gently as possible, had told him he had gotten her the wrong birthday present, and not only that, but he had given it to her in the most unromantic way, and at the worst time and place. How could he have gotten it so wrong? And she lamented, “By now I would’ve thought he knew me well enough to know how to love me without me having to tell him”.

After a disappointing sexual episode Harvey reported he had asked Misty what exactly she wanted, and what was the right way to make love to her. Misty then haughtily proclaimed that telling him answers to questions like that was such a total turn off. Furthermore, telling him things he was supposed to already know made her feel unfeminine and like she was forcing him, and that would never work. It was then that Harvey decided to go back to his old flame, Sarah Jean, because there was no guesswork there, and they had the best sex together ever anyway.

As you can see, this myth can kill many special moments of love, make people feel pressure instead of love, spoil loving occurrences, and entrap people in love-dysfunctional assumptions and expectations.

The Sabotaging Myth

In each of the above cases the underlying, destructive myth goes something like this. If you have to tell or ask for what you want from someone, who is supposed to love you, it spoils the giving and receiving of that love. And your lover should know what to do without communication just because they love you. After all, your mother knew what to do when you were an infant and unable to ask. Doesn’t that prove that love just knows?” This myth also teaches that ‘clearly asked for love actions’ are to be discounted and rejected. It implies that true love gives the right knowledge and if you truly love me you’ll know what to do without me asking you, informing you, or Lord forbid, teaching you how and what works best for me. However, sometimes I can give you a little glimpse of a clue. But that’s all. Thus, dream and crystal ball gazing are required.

So many couples in my couples counseling get immensely happier and far more functional as a couple when they give up that myth and start asking clearly for what they want from each other. Some are unhappy about giving up the myth but they get so much more when asking that it ends up not mattering after all. Others are unhappy because they have to go to the trouble to actually identify what they themselves do want and then communicate it clearly. But that too is the adult way that actually works, as I see it.

I like to suggest, and perhaps you’ve heard me say before, love and restaurants work the same. No matter how great they are, they both require people to do a clear job of asking for what they want. Try going to a nice restaurant and do not ask for what you want, then see what happens. About the same thing that happens with many couples who don’t ask– not much.

A Very Pretty Poison

This lovely, poisonous myth started getting into our heads when we were little children by way of fairytales. Consider the fairytale scenario. Prince Charming always, and usually immediately, does exactly the right thing without having to ask the advice of a wizard, wise elf or anyone else. Nor does he go get a consultation from a White Witch, ask other princes what they did, or find a magic manuscript that will tell him what to do. He just knows and he knows instantaneously. In Snow White, he suddenly opens Snow’s casket and kisses her dead body, and lo and behold, she pops to life. Love’s magic know how got him to do that.

It is pretty much the same story in Sleeping Beauty except for the adult version where she needs a spanking to wake up in a fit of pleasure – pain ecstasy? In Rapunzel the right prince is the only one that figures out to tell her to let down her extremely long hair so he can climb up and save her. So, we learn that true love means you will do exactly the right thing when you need to. If you don’t, it either means your love is not real, or you are too ignorant, or you are being mean.

Jump to modern romance novels where the main hero automatically knows just how to romance and make love to the main heroine without her having to tell him anything about what she likes. It must be real love because he is the one who knows. No talking is necessary. Sometimes in the modern versions it is the gal who automatically does the right romantic thing.

You might ask, why does this work in fiction and not in real life? The answer is that in the ‘love and romance stories’ one brain, the author’s, writes all the scenarios. In real life relationships two brains are involved and that necessitates communication because no two brains think all that much alike. With years of knowing each other, better guesses can be made, but even there changes and surprises sometimes occur.

Our Conflicting Gender Training

Part of the problem is our conflicting gender training. For ages, as kids, most of us guys avoided the romantic scenes while many of you gals were paying rapt attention. You learned what romance was supposed to look like, and we did too to some extent, but mostly we were interested in things like football and making gadgets work. Culture is changing now but the changes are nowhere near complete. About sex, love and romance the guys and gals still are not learning the same stuff and the old romantic myths still have a lot of power. That sets us up for many disappointments, brings on much misunderstanding, and results in a lot of couples being unhappy and sometimes breaking up.

Where Do We Get the Right Know-How?

The often unseen or avoided answer to this question is – from each other! It can start with using the adult viewpoint that tells us to take responsibility for learning and identifying what we ourselves want, then clearly ask for it. Know that you ‘own’ your desires because they are in you and, therefore, it is your responsibility to do your part about satisfying them which is also the adult way, is it not? If you want a soft, tender kiss or a big, passionate bear hug, make it simple and ask for it directly. That is the most likely, successful thing you can do in most relationships. And then, of course, enjoy it fully.

What If Asking Still Spoils It for Me?

In simple terms the answer is, work at getting over it and giving it up. Work on learning to enjoy the marvels of getting more exactly what you want, more often and sooner because that is what usually starts to happen in the good, functional, couple’s life where people identify and ask for what they want. If it does not happen that way, then it is time for a bunch more communicating. Remember, to also ask with love. That means with loving words, loving tones of voice, maybe a loving touch, and any other way you can make your request an act of love itself. Be sure you are not ‘anti-love’ asking, like “You never hug me anymore, never take me anywhere, don’t fix my favorite meal”, etc. Those are gripes, not requests. It is surprising how many people don’t seem to know the difference, and the different effects they may bring.

Clearly ask for what you want and you just may get it. Don’t let this old, love-destroying, romantic myth kill your relationship.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Have you ever examined what you take for granted (? subconscious programs maybe?) regarding the way love, sex, romance and marriage are supposed to go?

Is a False Love Divorce A Good Thing?

Synopsis: We start with a case of happiness guilt; go on to the many differing ways marriage, breakups and divorce are seen; religious issues; and end with the quest for real love and its great importance.

A Case of Happiness Guilt

Lorenz and Selah both felt a bit guilty and wondered if they should feel a lot worse than they did. Both felt relief and a wonderful sense of relaxed freedom they had not felt for the three years of their unsuccessful marriage.

In couples counseling they jointly had come to the conclusion that their relationship could not work, that they were in no way right for each other, and that they should give up trying to make something that was harming both them and their two-year-old daughter. After searching deeply and broadly, they came to the conclusion that the underlying problem was they did not have a real love for one another.

What they did have was two forms of false love. Examining major forms of false love, Selah saw that she had been fooled and trapped in the False Love Syndrome known as an IFD Pattern. Before she discovered this, the false love marriage nearly had ruined her life.

Lorenz knew as soon as he read a paragraph describing the False Love Syndrome called Spouse Acquirement Syndrome that this indeed was exactly what he had done and he had fooled him into believing that he really was in love with Selah. He saw he wanted to believe it was real love but in truth subconsciously he knew he had to acquire a spouse because that is what men in high success careers are supposed to do. He admitted to himself that success was all that mattered to him at that time and so he found an acceptable woman and did what it took to ‘catch’ her, then he married her.

This couple decided that ending a falsehood actually felt good and in doing so they were giving themselves a chance to find new, real love. They were quite relieved because this decision ended their incompatibility fights, their mutual growing sense of hopelessness, and all their fake and phony efforts to pretend they had real spouse-type love for each other. In the process they became much better, cooperating parents. They then were relieved to see that their daughter was growing happier now that they were happier.

They both came to suspect that maybe their marriage had done what it was meant to do – produce a marvelous child and maybe help them grow up and better understand love itself. They came to think that they never really had a real marriage because they had never been in real love with anything like a loving psychological and spiritual unity. Divorcing, they put their energies and time to better use not only for their daughter but for themselves and other family and friends also.

For Lorenz and Selah getting a divorce basically was correcting a serious, life path mistake giving them the opportunity to find a more real and healthful path. As this understanding soaked in, their guilt faded and both felt the relief of stress and strife from not having to live a lie anymore.

How Others Saw It

The friends and families of this couple had a great many, contradictory things to tell them about their divorce decision. Together they made a summary of what they heard.

“Marriages are made in heaven and, therefore, it’s wrong to divorce!”

“Marriages are made in legal proceedings, and end in legal proceedings, and the rest of marriage is whatever you think it is.”

“Real marriage is made by two people who have real love for each other and are psychologically and spiritually bonded together by their real love.”

“The legal part is just a formality and paperwork, and the religious part is just a social ceremony dressed up in religion.”

“Marriage is a cultural contrivance we all have been brainwashed to go along with so society can be organized, stabilized and controlled.”

“Divorce always hurts the children.”

“Marriage is a gift of God and a contract between two people with God. It starts on earth but goes on for eternity. Therefore, all divorce is breaking a covenant with the divine and you will be punished for that.”

“Love and marriage are just fairy tales we try to make real, and they were invented to keep people together while they start a kid and that’s all they really are.”

“I suspect both marriage and divorce today are just commercial devices designed to help sell more stuff because with both marriage and divorce a lot of money changes hands.”

“Divorce is a good thing because it helps mix the gene pool, and besides that nature didn’t intend us to be with just one partner for all our life.”

As you can see from their summary, they were barraged with many views, at odds with each other, about these subjects. So, what is your view? Also is your view based in what you have been trained to think or is it something you have come to on your own?

Religious Issues

In my marriage and family counseling work as a relational psychotherapist, I have on a number of occasions been asked to do Catholic Marriage Tribunal evaluations for people seeking an annulment. This was so they could have a new church-sanctioned and blessed marriage in a Catholic Church with a new love of their life. A basic question to be answered is “Was the former marriage a real marriage?” One of the several concepts used to assess that question is to ask “Was the marriage based in a real love, a false love or something else?”

A corollary question has to do with whether or not there was a psychological condition, problem or illness involved which impeded the marriage from becoming a real marriage? The identified False Love Syndromes help to answer this question. Each major pattern of probable, or possible, false love indeed can be seen as evidencing a psychological problem, condition, or be related to a psychological illness which is especially obvious in a case of Fatal Attraction Syndrome.

It especially has been pleasing to me to see various prelates of the church take the question of real and false love into consideration in their deliberations. It also is gratifying to have various ministers of several faiths use real love and false love concepts as they grapple with various issues of marriage and divorce.

There is growing evidence that changes are occurring in various religious bodies regarding love, marriage and divorce. Those changes show greater flexibility and more loving forgiveness, as well as greater understanding occurring in these often problematic arenas.

Many of the world’s religions, or at least branches within those religions, are quite accepting of divorce and divorcees, but many are not. The evidence I am aware of suggests that in many parts of the world, religious institutions of many kinds are taking a less condemning, less judgmental and less rejecting approach to these issues, than they have in the past, and toward the people struggling with them. From this mental health professional’s viewpoint, that is a very good thing. However, no small number of others disagree with me on that.

The Quest for Real Love

More and more people around our planet want to live in an ongoing, spouse-type, partnership relationship based in real and lasting love. Sure, there are lots of other reasons people become couples or get married. It can be for sex, safety, status, propriety, money, custom, to feel okay about themselves, and a host of other things. But even in those unions there usually is some hope that the relationship will grow a real and lasting love.

The unseen problem for so many is that a false love might ensnare large numbers and lead them astray into what often turns out to be a life-harming disaster. When a breakup or a divorce happens because people were in a false love and an ongoing catastrophe, is a divorce primarily a bad thing or a good thing? Is it the correction of a mistake or just another additional mistake?

So many have been taught that all divorce is bad, wrong, sinful, etc. but the world seems to be changing in regard to that. Some think the importance of real love is in ascendancy over the importance of marriage. No small number of pundits bemoan the high divorce rate in many lands, and also consider couples who breakup after living together to be equally bad. But if the healthiest way to live is in a real love relationship, as much research points to, isn’t ending a false love in order to set people free to find real love, more positive than negative?

There are those that think there is no such thing as real love, but more and more studies in the brain sciences and in a host of other research fields indicate otherwise. Of course, in many cases there are all sorts of other, intervening variables which affect the outcome of both a marriage and a divorce. But all-in-all the quest for a real love relationship is being shown to have greater and greater importance. Sometimes the quest seems to necessitate going through a breakup or divorce, and getting to the other side where real love can happen. What do you think?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Do you know enough about what constitutes healthy, real love and what the signs and symptoms are for false love?

Murder and False Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson begins with “an event all too common”; it then presents ‘is it really love or false love’; ‘is passionate love a murder motivator’; ‘love against harm’; how you can help; and ends with the question “Can passionate, false lovers be helped?”

An Event All Too Common

You Can Help!
I’m angry and I’m sad. Once again, I have been referred the children of a parent who has been murdered by the children’s other parent; in this case a teenage step-daughter and her two younger, half siblings whose father murdered their mother.

He has been arrested, and the police say he has confessed, and the case is airtight. The parents were separated and the father said he did it because she would not reconcile with him, and if he couldn’t have her no one else could, because he loved her so much.

The agony of the children is heartbreaking to see. The hate and desire for vengeance on the part of the adolescent may ruin that child’s chance at all future love relationships. If the courts for some reason let the murderer off, the victim’s brother vows to capture and torture him to death, even if it ruins his own life. The victim’s mother has been psychiatrically hospitalized and the murderer’s father has had a heart attack. These kinds of secondary outcomes also are all too common in this type of all too common murder.

This kind of referral has happened too many times in my practice, and in the practices of many of my colleagues. Time and again we hear statements like, “I did it because I love” him or her. In this case the husband robbed from his own children, his and her parents, siblings and friends, someone they dearly and truly loved – but this abhorrent act was not motivated by love by the perpetrator. I maintain that healthy, real love never motivates the violent harming of someone truly loved. Only false love and a great lack of real love does that.

Such murders are all too common in many parts of both the developed and lesser developed parts of the world. Justification that the murder had something to do with love is also all too common. Sometimes it is children who are murdered, sometimes the father/husband or some other friend or family member. Almost always in these kind of situations the murderer voices that it was love that drove them to kill. “I loved her so much I could not stand to lose her”, “I could not bear to see him with someone else because I loved him so much”, “ I loved him too much to let him live after what he did to me”. These also are the all too common kind of statements made by love relationship murderers justifying what they did.

Is It Really Love or Is It False Love?

I maintain that healthy, real love causes people to always protect the ones they love, to consistently be constructive not destructive, and to want for and work for the health and well-being of the loved. It primarily is false love that motivates the murderer to kill those they supposedly love. (A ‘possible’ exception is mercy killing) Murdering someone you think you love is an act of profound, loveless, perverse self-serving. It is in truth an anti-love action. It actually gives proof that no real love existed, and only a huge, needy, sick, demanding desire to be loved was in the place of love.

It also gives evidence that the murderer was sorely lacking in healthy self-love, and probably subconsciously had regressed to an infantile, demanding, controlling, possessive, immense sense of insecurity and inadequacy coupled with hurt and rage. Such people in that state usually are considered incapable of having or giving healthy, real love.

I further suggest that it actually is those who are intensely love-starved who commit murder when they hurt badly because their major love relationship does not go as they would wish. They long to find some person willing to give them some love, or positive attention, and feed their secretly infantile, insecure, needy, love-starved selves. They don’t really love. They only have their hungry neediness disguised as love. When they do get what they think will be their saving source of love, things in the relationship improve for a while and then deteriorate.

In their lack of self-love, deep insecurity and lack of belief that anyone could truly love them, they become possessive, controlling, authoritarian, demanding, often more needy, frustrated, angry and they destroy the very relationship they so depend on. Sometimes they do this in very sneaky, manipulative ways and sometimes blatantly. If alcohol or other addictive substances are involved, their neediness escalates and exacerbates the danger potential. A number of several syndromes of false love frequently involve these dynamics (See “Fatal Attraction Syndrome”).

Is Passionate Love a Murder Motivator?

What about the many people who say passionate love, gone awry, is a major motivator for murder? Homicide detectives, criminologists and detective story writers seem to commonly hold this view. By doing so, they promote this idea and give a large number of people a false excuse and, in a sense, permission for doing violence to those they supposedly love.

It is true, many murders are committed in the name of love but think about it, could that be real love? I’m of the opinion that it definitely is not. I suggest those who murder their lovers, spouses and others are the outcome of three things. The first is the presence of one form or another of a false love syndrome. (see False Forms of Love Series). The second is a severe absence of healthy, real love in the murderer’s development. The third is the cultural teaching that presents passionate love as jealous, possessive, obsessive, desperately needy, controlling, and an insane phenomenon.

That cultural teaching promotes the idea that one is justified in harming and even killing those they love if the person they love severely emotionally hurts and betrays them, or wants to leave them for any reason. This cultural teaching basically helps people think that ‘if I love you, you are mine’ and, therefore, I own you. It is not much of a cognitive jump from there to thinking ‘if I own you’ I can do what I want with you, even destroy you’.

I once consulted on a sentencing hearing of a mother who attempted murdering one of her children. She argued the child belonged to her and, therefore, she had every right to kill the child after it became too disobedient and rebellious. The fact is that that viewpoint was once upon a time a standard belief, and in some places was well supported by law. It was similar to the law that said if a husband found his wife having sex with another, it was grounds for justifiable homicide and case dismissal. Remnants of those very anti-love positions still exist in the minds of many, and still are in effect in some parts of the world.

I maintain that none of that has anything to do with healthy, real love. No, it’s the kind of thinking that once grew out of various forms of false love and the under-valuing and lack of understanding of how healthy, real love works.

Love Against Harm

I counseled a daughter who shot and killed her father. The father had on four separate occasions beaten the daughter’s mother to the point she had to be hospitalized with broken bones and other serious injuries. Though they had moved to escape him, the father had found them and was once again breaking through the front door vowing to beat the mother and the daughter unless they came back to him because ‘they belonged’ to him. That was when the daughter emptied a revolver into his chest.

This and mercy killing are the only types of protective, real love that I know of which can lead to violent killing. It is the kind of love that can go to extremes to protect a loved one from harm. Healthy, real love can cause people to go to great lengths to protect a truly loved one from harm. And hopefully an effective intervention can be applied before it comes to these extremes. One also has to be careful here because over-protection can be a detriment to the well-being of the loved. Basically, healthy, real love is the enemy of harm.

How You Can Help

Do you agree that healthy, real love is a constructive and not a destructive force in the world, and that it is not real love, passionate love or other mis-guided substitutes that ever motivate the violent harming or murdering of the truly loved? Do you also agree that a society which accepts the idea that love can sometimes cause people to do violence, even to the extent of killing those they love, is in effect unknowingly excusing, supporting and promoting love relationship violence and murder? Do you further agree that society will be healthier and safer if we rid ourselves of the teaching that promotes the idea that love sometimes causes people to justifiably harm and destroy those they purport to love?

If you agree or tend to agree with these propositions here is what you can do. You can search for and find opportunities to bring up these concepts. Wherever you can, you can work to promote the constructive view of love with anyone and everyone you have contact with. By doing this you will be promoting healthy, real love in our world, as you also act to work against love ignorance, sick false love and all the harm it does. So, I urge you, do your bit and help change the ethos that presents love as a motivator for harm and death.

You also can help if you know a family member or friend who continues to accept escalating physical violence, by lovingly sharing some of these concepts and relating to them the very real danger they may be in, and starkly telling them many people are killed in those situations. You might help them explore options to keep themselves and their loved ones safe. And if you find some of the examples ‘a little too familiar’ please don’t think “It can’t happen to me” – that is what many of those murdered by a supposed loved one said to themselves. Get help! Get safe!

Can Passionate False Lovers Be Helped?

Those who suffer (and they do suffer greatly) from the fixations of false love, can indeed be helped. They can go on to healthy, real love although it usually takes a fair amount of therapeutic work. Those trapped in false love syndromes can learn healthy self-love and then healthy, other love. They usually have to unlearn a great deal in the process, reprogram their anti-love and non-love approaches to love relationships, and practice what they learn for quite a while before they become fully love successful. Often in their fear of seeing their own immense love starvation, and feeling it’s pain more acutely, they dodge the very help that would save them and those they addictively endanger. But if they do seek help from a love knowledgeable therapist things can go wonderfully well.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Have you believed that real love could turn to hate, and what do you think of that idea now?

False Love Awareness

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson first gives you three quick examples of what can happen with false love; then tells of how false love is a lost and re-found concept; next touches on usual, common false love disasters; followed by some ways to protect yourself and loved ones from such disasters.

Has Something Like This Happened to You?

Enthusiastically, and to everyone she met, Audrey professed her love for Bobby saying, “I know I will love him forever”. Six months later she broke it off to pursue a relationship with CJ. Dietrich and Elizabeth both absolutely knew they were in true love with one another because their feelings for each other were so strong and not like anything they had ever experienced with anyone else before.

Two years after their marriage they were in divorce court wondering why those feelings had vanished. Faith and George had fallen in love with each other at first sight. Their first months together were so very ideal, romantic and oh so passionate. They were totally certain true love had finally come their way.

A few years later neither one of them understood how Faith could have become so involved in a torrid affair with Harold, a married man with children. Now after much anguish and struggle, followed by reasonably good counseling all these couples came to the same answer as to why things went the way they did. All of them, independently, discovered they were led astray by one form or another of highly deceptive and destructive false love. They all then went to work on how not to do that again, plus how to grow and get into healthy, real love.

The Lost and Re-Found Concept

At various times in history, it has been common knowledge and common practice to consider the issue of true or real love versus false love. Not so very long ago there were magazine articles, books, lectures, panel discussions, sermons and many late-night, private, intimate discussions about this very topic. When this was a common focus people seemed to have been more careful about deciding whether they were in a state of real love or something else. Lots of different terms were used to indicate that easily and quickly concluding that one was in love might be unwise and even dangerous – terms like enamored, moonstruck, smittened, love sick, having a crush, a dalliance or fancy (still used in the UK), and my favorite, twitterpated. All of these, and others, at least seem to have helped open the mind to the possibility that something other than true, lasting love could be occurring.

Perhaps because of the modern tendency to quicken, shorten and simplify everything, or perhaps because the ‘love’ word came to be a synonym for sex, or because it became popular to say that love was indefinable and, therefore, false love was indefinable too, these terms and related topics dropped from common usage and consideration. Once in a while one still hears the word ‘infatuation’ and newer terms like ‘main squeeze’ and ‘significant other’ which can imply that the existence of love is still in question. Some think it would be quite good for the older terms to come back so that we would have more categories to think of besides just ‘in love’ or not.

Thanks to modern science and much improved understandings and definitions of love, the subject of ‘real love’ versus ‘false love’ is once again something that can be productively considered (See Definitions of Love).

False Love Disasters

False love can be seen as the cause of many divorces, many ‘broken hearts’, many addiction relapses, many betrayals, many deceits, many violent abuses, many wasted efforts, many neglected children and spouses, many severely hurtful episodes and no small number of love relationship-related suicides and murders. It has been common to see all these kinds of problems as stemming from individual mental illnesses, personal inadequacies, character flaws, personality disorders and the like.

Increasingly research into relational dynamics shows that interrelational syndromes and mutual patterns of maladaptive interaction, influenced by certain kinds of relationally triggered, bad brain chemistry may be more the root cause, or at least a strong contributor to what is happening in these personal disasters. False love syndromes seem able to happen to mentally healthy individuals as well as others. The well-adjusted, do indeed, also have love disasters, as do the highly intelligent and otherwise successful people.

False love Protection

If you develop a good awareness of how the various forms of false love can seduce, trap and harm you, and an awareness of how healthy, real love is different from false love, you may be able to protect yourself from false love relationship disasters and their accompanying, considerable agony. If you teach your children about the possibilities of false love, you may help protect them from false love disasters. If you go to the trouble to learn about ‘real love’ and ‘false love’, you may help protect yourself and others from relationship calamities. If you talk-over with friends and family what you are learning and ideas about ‘real love’ and ‘false love’, your understandings and awareness are likely to grow considerably. By doing these things you can protect yourself and help protect your loved ones.

See mini-love-lessons concerning various forms of False Love below.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who would be a good person you know to have a discussion with concerning ‘real love’ and ‘false love’? Will you initiate that discussion?

Scam Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson begins by talking about vulnerability to scam love; how it is different from Spouse Acquirement Syndrome; and ends with ideas about how you can protect yourself from scam love; more.

Vulnerability

“I was incredibly hungry to feel loved, valued, wanted and not alone in a relationship. That hunger blinded me to all the warning signs I should have paid attention to. Consequently, I easily got seduced into thinking I had a new, real love. Then I got conned out of a ton of money and in return all I got was broken hearted and ashamed of what a fool I was!”

Could that be you? Unfortunately it is the sentiment of a great many people who have been scammed into thinking and feeling they were being loved, when actually they were being conned, used and manipulated by those who use affectionate, romantic, erotic and other love connected behaviors to fool you and harm you for their own personal gain.

Scam love occurs for a variety of reasons besides money. Almost everyone is familiar with the people who say “I love you” to help others convince themselves it is okay to have sex with them. To give themselves permission to have sex with someone, a lot of people ‘scam themselves’ temporarily thinking they love and are loved when at a deeper level they know better. Sometimes the reasons are not entirely selfish. Listen to Eric who said, “I just had to have a mother for my infant son. My wife had abandoned both of us and there wasn’t any way I could make my life work trying to raise him by myself. So, I convinced the first acceptable girl that came along that I really loved her so she would marry me and pick up where my former wife left off. That worked for a while but now I’m trapped in this marriage I don’t want and I’m having affairs I don’t really want either.”

Then there’s Pauline who commented, “My family would have disowned me if I hadn’t hooked up with a guy. They were on the verge of deciding I was a lesbian, which I am, so I did what it took to convince a guy I was in love with him. I know it was wrong and when he finds out it’s going to break his heart. He’s such a nice guy but I have to hold onto him until my sick and fragile father passes away. So, I guess I’m going to be living this lie a while longer because it would destroy my ailing father to know I can only fall in love with girls. If I hurt my father, at the last of his life, my family will hate me forever”.

Many a child molester has scammed many a child or adolescent into being convinced the child molester really loved them. Sometimes the child molester convinces the child or adolescent’s parents that they have a pure, filial love for their targeted youth. Sometimes children and other youth are love-scammed as part of a larger scam directed at gaining status, security, wealth, etc. from the parents of the love-scammed youth.

Some people do scam-love to attain status, social position and more luxurious living. Some people do scam-love to attain stability, safety and security. Some people do scam-love because they don’t believe in real love or its value but also see the advantages it might bring. Some people do scam-love to escape misery, abuse, poverty and sometimes just a boring, ordinary life. Others do scam love in order to attain power and various other advantages over others. Cults do scam-love to obtain control over members.

Scam-Love Explained

Scam-love occurs when a person sets out to purposefully deceive another into thinking that they are loved by the scammer. It usually involves deceitful manipulation of the target person into believing that they love the scammer also. Once this is achieved the scammer then sets out to obtain some hidden agenda goal from the target person. Often this ends up being very harmful to the targeted person.

Here are two brief examples. Jessica said she followed her mother’s training and examples by marrying the richest man she could find, artificially giving him everything he wanted in a woman and then divorcing him for a considerable amount of money, and then going on to an even richer man to do the same thing. Bernard targeted Beatrice because she came from a high status, old money family and he was from a low, blue-collar background; Bernard very much wanted entry into the elite and exclusive levels of society. As soon as he was established there by way of his wife, Beatrice, and her family he took a mistress and later divorced Beatrice.

An All Ages Phenomenon

It isn’t just the young and immature who get love-scammed. Older people are a particular target of love-scammers. They know that retired people who have lost their spouse are often particularly easy targets for love-scam manipulation. Some older, retired couples also are easily conned into thinking they had just made a new loving, and ever so helpful friend who just happens later to suddenly and desperately need a bunch of money quickly. AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, has a fraud fighter hotline (800-646-2283) which provides counseling, education and victim advocacy for cases of their members who have been love-scammed and for other more senior citizens.

Love-Scams and Spouse Acquirement Syndrome

Romantic love-scams are similar to the false love pattern called Spouse Acquirement Syndrome, but are also different in some ways. (See the mini-love-lesson, Spouse Acquirement Syndrome, at this site) Usually in an acquirement syndrome a person either unconsciously or semiconsciously talks themselves into believing they really are in love with who they are marrying. Sometimes they see this as the way marriage is done, by deceptive acquirement rather than truthful love. In that case they may have been culturally programmed for this acquirement behavior. In the scam-love situation there is premeditated, purposeful and planned, selfish deception with a hidden agenda and goal. The love scammer is fully aware they do not love the person they are scamming. Their actions demonstrating love are all false and manipulative and will cease once their hidden agenda goal is attained.

How Can You Protect Yourself?

To protect yourself ask yourself these questions. What do you have that someone might want other than love? How are you useful to someone who is supposedly professing love for you? Does it seem like you are being rushed toward a committed relationship or anything else by a person who supposedly is a love source? What do you really know about this person and their previous love involvements that didn’t come from them? Do you know others that can tell you things about this person? Are you going to be patient enough in this relationship to be sure that things really are as they seem? Are you finding that some of the things your supposed lover tells you do not seem to quite be true? Are you prone to be a rescuer, helper, fixer, etc. in relationships?

If you are getting answers you don’t really like it doesn’t mean that you’re being scammed but it does mean you might be. Take more time, look deeper, don’t be afraid ask probing questions, and check up on answers you get. Remember, protecting yourself is part of good, healthy self-love.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
How questioning and honest are you with yourself about what’s really going on when you are in a romantic love situation?

False Form of Love: Nympholepsia

Synopsis: This mini love lesson starts with a getting to know Nympholepsia; then discusses unrequited love; a typical case; getting the accurate picture; confusions; sex and Nympholepsia; not wanting what’s wanted; ever seeking and never finding; and what’s to be done about this False Form of Love.

Getting to know Nympholepsia

Nympholepsia is one of the most interesting forms of false love. Sometimes it is like being in love without having to go to the trouble of actually having any relationship at all. It even can be a love-like relationship with someone who doesn’t even exist. Nevertheless, the emotions involved can be extremely intense, the behaviors involved quite complicated and sometimes the outcome is quite devastating.

Judge Roy Bean, of “The Law West to the Pecos” fame, is thought to have had a pretty bad nympholeptic problem focused on the greatest actress of his time, Lily Langtry. He went to all sorts of trouble concerning her, including even renaming a town for her, Langtry Texas. However, he never had any but the most formal personal contact with her. One of America’s greatest salonnières and the female who was declared the World’s First, Great, New Age Woman, Mabel Dodge Luhan, is said to have had a terrible nympholeptic relationship with John Reid, the amazing young chronicler of both Poncho Villa and the Communist revolution in Russia and who wrote the incredibly influential “Ten Days That Shook the World.”

Unrequited Love

In the age of chivalry, knights who were supposed to chastely and platonically ‘pine for’ unattainable Royal ladies, who were above their own rank and station, may have been being led to suffer from Nympholepsia (also known as nymphlepsy). The same condition is thought to affect a fair number of the thousands who go into frenzies when adoring the rock star of the moment. Then there are those who learn of some hero or heroine of a past time and are quite sure they have hopelessly fallen in love with that person who is no longer counted among the living.

Tragically some of those even suicide so as to have a chance to find their love-interest in the hereafter. Others swear they meet their paramour in their dreams, while others testify strongly to having had wonderful sex with their favorite lover ghosts. Some even claim to be madly in love with literary characters that never existed in real life. Most who suffer from this false form of love do so in a more ordinary way, but that doesn’t make their suffering any less intense.

A Typical Case

Chastity was brought to counseling by her husband who said she cannot sleep, won’t eat and is in a frenzy about everything, but can’t tell anyone what is wrong and we are all very worried about her. Talking to her alone Chastity frantically fidgeted, got up and paced around and showed many other signs of agitation. After miscellaneous comments she began to blush and whisper that her condition began right after she learned her pastor was moving to another church in a distant city. Slowly it all came out. She had become enamored of her pastor soon after he arrived at their church some six years ago.

He was a popular, handsome, charismatic figure that many women found intensely attractive. Chastity quickly came to secretly worship him from afar. At the church she volunteered for everything that would put her in contact with him. At night she dreamed romantic but never erotic dreams of him and never let anyone know her true feelings. She gave him and his wife and their children very nice appropriate gifts, did them favors and never strayed over the lines of propriety. It was enough for her to just serve him and be in his shadow, though her actions slowly became more and more frenetic.

Her husband, and her children, and later even her parents occasionally complained that her church activities seemed a bit too much but that’s all they did. But now that the pastor was going to be even more completely unattainable than before she was in a frenzy of uncontrollable, rapidly changing, very difficult to handle emotions. In time with therapy and some medication she did become healthier.

Chastity came to see she actually did not have an adult, real, romantic relationship with her pastor but rather she was fixated on the fantasy of him loving her. By being valued by him in her fantasies she too became valuable. In real life he would often thank her, praise her, compliment her, and make laudatory remarks about her to others. This gave her meaning, purpose and fulfillment for a time. Later she figured out that all had to do with her childhood and her father who never was very loving, seldom praising and almost never thankful. She saw that she didn’t want her pastor to respond to her erotically or even very romantically because those actions would be too different from a father to a daughter.

These dynamics are not common to everyone who suffers from Nympholepsia but they were her dynamics. Today she is well past all that and has actually grown from the experience but she would not want to go through it again.

Getting the Accurate Picture

The two most important words for understanding Nympholepsia are ‘frenzy’ and ‘unattainable. The condition throws people into a frenzy of emotions, and scrambled thoughts and sometimes peculiar behaviors. The dynamics often involve seeking or even feeling one has love for and/or from that which is unattainable.

In the worst cases some people ‘go crazy’ trying to attain the unattainable and then fall into the pits of depression or even psychosis. In the 1800’s the condition was thought to frequently cause convulsions and seizures, along with other somatic symptoms.

The word Nympholepsia comes from the Greek ‘nympholeptos’ which means to have been caught and bewitched, or entranced by a naked, highly erotic, attractive nymph or Sprite who was by definition unattainable to humans. This, it was thought, drove people into an emotional frenzy causing them to spend their lives in hopeless pursuit of the nymphs and finally to wither and die.

In mythology and Catholic theology the term meant accidentally seeing a naked nymph and being driven into a frenzy of ecstasy, never again to be satisfied by a mere mortal human. The only salvation from this demonic possession required a full-fledged exorcism. Today the term refers to going into an emotional frenzy while trying to obtain something or someone unable to be obtained and being destructively effected in the process.

Confusions

Nympholepsia sometimes is confused with pedophilia because it often involves people of rather different ages being attracted to each other or one to another. It also has been confused with the ‘Lolita complex’ and misidentified as something that mostly men do with younger females.
It, furthermore, has been confused with nymphomania, probably partly because it has the prefix nymph and partly because it has to do with romantic-like relationship situations and dynamics. It also has been misidentified as something young girls do toward and with older men.

Some of the people thought to suffer from this false form of love have been known to be quite fixated, and obsessive and occasionally even violent in their acting out of their passion. The ones in this condition who are highly sexed sometimes are confused with having a sex addiction and the nonsexual ones with having a neurotic or, more recently, with having a sexual desire problem.
It’s interesting that some therapists seem to think this condition mostly occurs only in males and others think it mainly shows up in females. In my experience it’s pretty gender even. It also seems to occur in homosexuals, bisexuals, older people, younger people, all races, all socio-economic classes and every other category I know, although there are those that disagree with me about that.

Sex and Nympholepsia

With this condition there can be people who have no sexual desire nor even any sex feelings involved in their nympholeptic condition. With others there is a great deal of sex especially frenzied, passionate sex. Sometimes the sex is with a surrogate and sometimes with the target of their passions, and if that target is unattainable sublimation may occur. A common complaint goes something like “he (or she) professes lots of love for me, has great sex with me, but won’t stay with me, marry me and won’t stop going off with others, or won’t stop doing big, long, involved things that have nothing to do with me and don’t including me”. Another common complaint is that she (or he) is emotionally unavailable while at the same time being very sexually available.

Some nympholeptics have serial sex. I once counseled a girl who just knew she was truly, and deeply, and incredibly in love with one drummer after another. She had all-consuming, frenzied emotions with each drummer right up to the morning after a wild, passionate night of sex together. Then she would have the realization that the drummer would be going on to others and never really be hers at a heart level, and he just would be like the last several drummers and probably like the next one, which essentially was that he would be unavailable for a healthy, real, love relationship. In her case the background cause was very poor self love and very musical parents.

For some people suffering this condition it all can change if the female becomes pregnant. At that point they often lose interest in the other person and it’s all over. This leads some of my evolutional psychology friends to suspect the whole condition has something to do with genetic survival mechanisms.

Not Wanting What’s Wanted

Some people suffering from Nympholepsia are quite secretly and safely satisfied if the unattainable person remains unattainable, though they still suffer about it. By longing for someone they can’t have, they have a relationship without having a relationship. They can tell people that they love someone and often can tell a great deal about their romantic feelings, but when they want to do something as a single they are completely free to do it. This accounts for some of the people who marry a prisoner serving a life sentence or serving a very long sentence. They can say they’re married, they can send love-like messages back and forth, they even can visit, and they can have romantic, long-suffering experiences which brings the drama of romance to their life but with very little of the trouble.

This may be a sort of pseudo-Nympholepsia or just another form of it. Sometimes people in this variation of Nympholepsia panic and run away if their ‘romantic target’ suddenly becomes available or somehow actually comes into their real life. Others truly pine away and, to a large degree, either dysfunction or excuse their dysfunction with their unrequited love situation.

Ever Seeking Never Finding

A fair number of people repeatedly go after the unattainable lover, and for a long time they just won’t quit. This wears them out, drains them, distracts them from healthy productive living, causes a lot of agony, depletes their self-confidence, generally wastes a lot of life, and sometimes gets them to turn to various addictions, become depressed and sometimes suicidal.

Some of these people keep going after the same person over and over, and others keep going after ‘versions of the same person’ but either way they never really get what they’re after. That’s because what they’re after is truly unattainable. Do they subconsciously know this? Some therapists think so, others think not.

Interestingly for many with Nympholepsia if they actually do seem to attain the lover they are after, one of two things happens. They either have finally won the prize and don’t need to go after it anymore, so they basically sort of say “thank you, goodbye” and go on to something healthier.
The other outcome is that what they have attained turns out not to be all that desirable after all. In both cases the relationship comes to an end.

In its milder forms Nympholepsia is like a ‘crush’ or ‘the idealization’ phase of an IFD False Form of Love pattern, maybe without the F and D stages. (See False Forms of Love: The Devastating IFD Syndrome) In a stronger form, the frenzy can get quite destructive and the lack of attainment can be very deeply frustrating and depleting. All forms of Nympholepsia generally are thought to have a tendency to block people from having healthy, real, love relationships develop.

What’s to be done?

Some form of fairly deep psychotherapy usually is what’s needed to cure this affliction if it is severe. There are those who seem to ‘mature out of it’. Some who are good at insight and redirecting themselves, figure it out and learn about healthy, real love and go after that instead. Knowledge about this condition helps people avoid it, especially in its earlier stages. If a friend or family member seems to be headed toward suffering from Nympholepsia I suggest you encourage them to read this mini love lesson and then direct them toward a therapist known to be able to do deep, psychotherapeutic work.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Are you now or have you ever set yourself up for love failure by desiring the unattainable? If so, are you likely to do that again?

Illustration: Nymph by Blanche Paymal-Amouroux, French, 1899, public domain, thanks Wikimedia Commons.

Anti-Love Myth # 2: You Will Have Eyes Only for Me

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with some shock and dismay examples; goes on to examples of the ‘totally opposite’; then asks some intimate questions; gives intimate and surprising answers; discusses unnecessary breakups; and ends with ideas of what to do if this love myth is giving you trouble.

Examples of Shock and Dismay

Angela crashed into despair! She just had discovered porn on her fiancé’s computer. Along with her shock and dismay her self-esteem was blown away by this revelation. She was sure that if her man wanted to look at other women it must mean he did not really love her. It also must mean her looks were insufficient and inadequate to hold her lover’s interest and keep him attracted. She wondered how she could have been so gullible and naïve as to believe her fiancé when he told her he “ had eyes only for her”.

Bradford first became furious, then hurt and then confused after he found his new wife reading a trashy, super-sexual romance novel and sexually pleasuring herself. He lamented that he had thought only he could get her ‘turned on’. He wondered, was she secretly a ‘bad woman’ and not ‘good’ like he had thought? Had she purposely deceived him? Did she really not love him? Had he married the wrong woman? Previously Bradford was sure women were different from men, and a woman who loved him would “have eyes only for him”.

Caroline intimately revealed to Derek, her lover, that she wanted him to take her to a nudist beach because she wanted to see naked men and their “special parts” which “secretly fascinated” her. Derek couldn’t handle it and broke up with her knowing that he had to have a woman that would “have eyes only for him” and his special parts.

Eleanor and Flynn got into big fights every time they went out in public because she repeatedly caught him secretly ogling other females. Flynn explained he couldn’t help it and Eleanor accused him of being a sex addict, and not really loving her because if he did he would “have eyes only for her”.

Those Totally Opposite

Contrast the above situations with these. Helen described feeling really intimately close and wonderfully naughty when her husband was able to tell her about his sex fantasies concerning other females. She began pointing out sexy looking women in crowds and asking him what he imagined when he saw them. Then he started doing the same with her which led to them rushing home to have all sorts of sexy times together.

Isaac bragged that he knew he really had a special wife when early in their marriage she got him subscriptions to Playboy and Penthouse magazines, and they began looking at the sexy pictures together. Later they got into Internet couples porn. Isaac was sure that helped he and his wife be more emotionally close and intimate than many couples achieve.

Wanda advised her friends that in her opinion “a man who doesn’t look and lust at lots of different women isn’t a real man and, therefore, wasn’t worth having”.

Kevin explained that he discovered his wife was very sexual when she shared her orgy dreams with him. Sometimes they role-played the orgy dreams, each acting like they were various other people, some of whom they actually knew.

Intimate Questions

How is it that one woman loses her self-confidence when her guy looks at other women, while another feels more intimately special and connected to her guy when he shares doing the same thing? Why is it one guy gets angry when his wife enjoys looking at other men, while another guy gets turned on by that? Why does one couple grow closer when they openly lust for others while another couple breaks up over this sort of thing?

Please note: In this mini-love-lesson about a love myth we are discussing ‘looking’ and ‘sharing’, ‘not acting upon’ the lusty thoughts with someone outside the couple relationship.

Intimate And Surprising Answers

One answer to the above questions comes from the world of ‘positive psychology and psychotherapy’. As people develop healthy self-love, self appreciation, self-esteem and self-confidence they come to trust their own attraction power more, and more. Consequently, they are not much threatened with the fear of a lover being attracted away to someone else. If it were to happen, their solid sense of being attractive and worthy helps them know they would tend to attract new, quality lovers, if they want to.

Some, more psycho-pathologically oriented, posit the ‘issue of projection’ to answer these questions. Sometimes what we see in others is actually what is more true of ourselves. Fearing someone will be attracted away or cheat because of looks or other attraction issues may mean the one having the fear might do the same thing. They project onto another what could be secretly true of themselves.

The social sciences offer another approach to answering these questions. There is evidence suggesting it’s ‘all in the culture and family influences’ that get inside our heads as we grow up. If you are brought up believing “my lover will have eyes only for me” you may be severely disappointed if it doesn’t work out that way. If, however, your upbringing teaches you something like “looks do not determine love”, your lover looking with lust at others is likely not to mean so much to you. Were you to be brought up in a culture that says “looking is part of the fun and to be shared with your love-mate” you probably would look forward to it.

We have the brain sciences to thank for providing the most recent answer to these types of questions. Brain functioning evidence points to some very intriguing facts. It seems that most men, and quite a few women, are neurologically ‘hardwired’ to enjoy looking at a variety of sexy appearing and acting people whenever they can. That has nothing to do with love or commitment. It’s just a natural, automatic, neurologically-caused phenomenon. Apparently more women than men are auditorily or tactically, sexually stimulated, so for them the sounds of voices, the spoken word and various kinds of touch will be noticed more than good looks.

Unnecessary Breakups

Sadly a lot of relationships breakup over the “you look at others” issue. It appears that highly, visually-oriented people will look at others they find attractive, no matter what. It seems it’s just in their nature to do so. By itself this behavior is not a threat to a relationship. What is a threat is the interpretation that ‘looking’ behavior gets. If the interpreter is insecure about their own attraction power, the interpretation is likely to be negative and fear-based. That, in turn, probably will cause relationship difficulties. With more self security and ‘owning’ one’s okayness, things usually get better. If the person doing the looking tries to hide it, lies about it, promises not to do it again but does, things in the relationship are likely to get worse.

What to Do

If you are upset because your love-mate ‘looks’ at others, maybe it’s you and your relationship that needs some help. So get some! If your love-mate has trouble because you are ‘looking’ and that’s leading to relationship difficulties, be kind and loving about your love-mate’s possible insecurity. Then go get some help. We can de-program and re-program and get past this sort of love myth problem, and usually it’s faster with good help.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question If you have a ‘looking’ issue, what is your attitude about getting the coaching help that can come with relationship counseling?

Healthy Real Love -or- Toxic False Love

A 20 Factor Check List

1. Well being
Healthy Real Love makes us want for the well being of loved ones.

Toxic False love wants primarily for our own well being, wants and desires to be all important, and can sacrifice the supposed loved one for self.

2. Self Love Healthy Real Love makes us balance our healthy self love with our love of others.

Toxic False love wants others to sacrifice and diminish their self love for our benefit.

3. Strength Healthy Real Love causes us to want our loved ones to be strong & powerful in their own lives.

Toxic False love makes us act to diminish our loved ones’ strength so we can dominate and control them and, thereby, feel more false safety.

4. Growth Healthy Real Love promotes the growth, development, education, and advancement of those we love.

Toxic False love works to block & hamper growth out of fear of being surpassed, outdone, and abandoned.

5. Aloneness Healthy Real Love allows & promotes alone time, understanding it’s healthful benefits.
Toxic False love fears being alone and allowing a supposed loved one to be alone or off to himself or herself.

6. Sex Healthy Real Love mixes both self love & other love into shared eroticism making it democratic, varied, open to exploration of new & different intimacy, & always guided by caring.

Toxic False love is absent of sufficient love expression &, thus, often is sexually demanding, obsessive, or dominated by sameness &/or fearfulness.

7. Power Healthy Real Love pushes us to share power equally, work to synthesize & compromise, operate with free speech, independent action, alternating leadership, negotiation, & interpersonal democracy.

Toxic False love pushes us toward either dictatorial dominance, or an abdication of selfhood through fearful surrender.

8. Difference Healthy Real Love promotes & delights in the loved one’s differences, ways of being unique, dissimilar viewpoints, divergent approaches, varying ways by valuing the enrichments they bring to relationships.

Toxic False love works to suppress & eliminate differences and bring about the false safety of sameness.

9. Dependency Healthy Real Love helps work for the loved one’s self dependency, one’s own self dependency while also promoting agreed upon, chosen, mutually supportive interdependency.

Toxic False love wants the supposed loved one to be dependent on the false lover, or wants the relationship to be mutually co-dependent.

10. Jealousy Healthy Real Love is not jealous, not even a little bit, because love does not spawn jealousy, possessiveness, or irrational suspiciousness.

Toxic False love is jealous because it is grounded in inadequate self love & the fearful insecurity that we can not hold the love of another by our own personal worthiness.

11. Friends & Family Healthy Real Love causes us to attempt to love, like, or at least be appropriately & be consistently accepting of those the loved one loves & likes (including pets, ex-spouses, dysfunctional relatives, etc.) but not to the point of supporting destructiveness.

Toxic False love causes us to work toward excluding, limiting contact with, & markedly avoiding the loved one’s interaction with their ‘others’.

12. Trust Healthy Real Love makes us take the ‘gamble’ of trust in our love and the loved one’s love &, therefore, causes us to willfully become ‘vulnerable’ to them, their words, and actions. This is done to affirm the loved one and make the relationship function in workable ways.

Toxic False love makes us mistrust, spy, be suspicious, hinder the freedom, doubt, & distrust the supposed loved one which eventually destroys the love relationship.

13. Self Disclosure Healthy Real Love helps us accept & become self disclosing of (past, present, & future) thoughts, feelings, actions, victories & defeats, strengths & flaws, & all else.

Toxic False love works to hide our less pleasant aspects, be secretive, present false images, & fears exposure.

14. Priorities Healthy Real Love puts love first of all values.
Toxic False love puts many things above the importance of love.

15. Healing Healthy Real Love causes us to work for the health of our loved ones.
Toxic False love often works toward illness, or avoids the promotion of healthful living.

16. Affirmation Healthy Real Love is affirming in word and action. Compliments of being & doing, praise, brags, showing affirmative support, cheering for the loved one, and more demonstrations are common. It also makes us look for, appreciate & affirm the qualities of our loved ones.

Toxic False love praises & compliments for personal advantage or gain. It often also dis-affirms with criticism, put downs, devaluing & debasement.

17. Tolerance Healthy Real Love causes us to tolerate the less pleasant aspects of those who are loved unless those aspects are clearly destructive.

Toxic False love tolerates little demanding its own way, or tolerates destructively to weaken the supposed loved one’s strength.

18. Reception Healthy Real Love makes us highly receptive to our loved one’s likes, needs, wants, ways, and especially expressions of love.

Toxic False love makes us neglectful, avoidant, critical, & undervaluing of our loved one’s efforts to love us.

19. Gifting Healthy Real Love helps us frequently and openly enjoy gifting our loved ones with what they want both with object and experience gifts.
Toxic False love helps us give gifts we want, gifts designed to manipulate, impress, result in return gifting from the loved one, or to give few or no gifts at all, and to gift with poor and negative attitudes.

20. Joy Healthy Real Love helps us take joy in those we love, take joy in their joy, work to enjoy what they enjoy, share what we enjoy, & create mutual joy.

Toxic False love works to disregard or discount the joy of the supposed loved ones, and try to manipulate them to only enjoy what we enjoy.

As always – Grow In Love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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Image credits: “Fairy eggs fullsize” image by Flickr user melanie_hughes .
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Attraction or Love or What?

Synopsis: Attraction/love confusion problems; understanding attraction systems; nature’s way; sexuality attracts but love bonds; insecurity issues; sharing attraction system pleasures.

Attraction/Love Confusion Problems

“Where can I go to live, where I’d like to live and where there are no redheads? I know it sounds crazy but, you see, I fall in love with just about every redhead I meet. I’ll never be able to settle down and stay faithful because the next redhead will come along and I won’t be able to resist this ‘falling in love thing’ I do with redheads.”

Does this person really have a ‘fall in love’ with redheads problem? No, not really. This person appears to have a ‘fall in’ multiple, perhaps serial, attraction issue which they are confusing with real love. I suspect this person hasn’t gotten even close to having anything like a true ‘love’ problem. It would seem they, like many, may not have learned to clearly perceive, understand, and think about the big differences between love (the healthy, real kind) and mere attraction.

There are lots of other ways that the love/attraction confusion causes problems. To really see that, read a few more quotes. “I’m getting wrinkles, getting gray hair and looking older. I’m really afraid my husband will quit loving me when I look old, and then he will fall in love with someone who looks like I did when I was 20, and he will leave me for her.” The woman who said that did not understand that it is not looks, but love, that best holds couples together over time.

“My wife has recently developed this thing for young men with swimmer’s bodies, you know, the long, lean, smooth-stretched muscle types. I don’t look anything like that, so does this mean she doesn’t love me anymore and she’s really looking for somebody else? The answer to this man’s question is “probably not”. It just likely means that her attraction dynamics direct her toward having some enjoyment and maybe mild, fantasy fun thinking about ‘swimmer’ types, but probably she loves her husband dearly. Her love of her husband is far more important than any simple, physical attraction dynamics, and maybe some reassurance of that fact is in order.

“My guy can’t stop staring at other women, and looking at pictures of naked females and stuff like that. Does this mean he doesn’t really love me? He swears he would never cheat on me, and it’s just the way he’s wired. I want to believe him but my girlfriends tell me not to trust him”. Usually this sort of statement suggests that the woman saying it is insecure about her own attraction power, and she is confusing her man’s ‘natural attraction dynamics system’ with his couple-type love for her. She also may have been conditioned by society, and/or her family, to incorrectly think love always alters a person’s attraction habits. Who we are naturally attracted to, and who we love can be two very different things.

Attraction can lead to a relationship getting started but then, in the long run, love has to take over to keep it going. Once love is strong enough it keeps couples together into old age. But often a couple’s attraction habits, which were established before the couple met, remain the same and operate independently. A couple who can share what they are in the habit of being attracted to usually are a much stronger couple than those who can’t share because they fear triggering insecurity and jealousy in their mate. One more thing. Listening to friends advising mistrust really just may be listening to fear-based, mistaken perceptions.

“My wife keeps wanting me to watch romantic porn with her, and then role-play being the guy we just watched while she plays the female. She tells me it’s all just sexy, fantasy fun, but I can’t help wondering if this means she is on her way to searching for love with somebody else”. This quote suggests a man who would do well to study what love really is as opposed to attraction. It also may point to a man who could use a little more healthy, self love and/or a little more reassurance from his wife that he is the one she really wants to love and play with, and the rest is just a way to do that.

Understanding Attraction Systems

The above examples just are a small sample of the many ways that confusion between ‘love’ and ‘attraction’ helps mess up relationships. Here’s what research suggests explains our attractions systems and the way they operate.

A large percentage of males, and a smaller but still significant percentage of females are genetically ‘hard wired’ to be attracted primarily by sexy, visual stimuli. A large percentage of females, and a smaller but still significant percentage of males are genetically ‘hard wired’ to be attracted primarily by sexy, verbal/auditory stimuli. That is why men’s porn is largely pictorial and women’s verbal or written. Other people’s attraction systems may be primarily tactile, kinetic, olfactory or a variety of balanced combinations of the above. Of course, there are those whose attraction systems are primarily oriented to anyone, and everyone, who are in some way quite powerful, intensely feminine or masculine, highly sociable, high in status or popularity, or attracted to personal characteristics like intelligence, kindness, being humorous, artistically talented, individualistic, stable, protective, sexy, etc.

The existence of love in a relationship doesn’t necessarily change a person’s attraction system, especially if it is quite strong. If you are strongly attracted visually or auditorily only, or in any other way, you likely will stay that way, whether or not you deeply, romantically love someone or not. Therefore, when you encounter someone who activates your natural, inbuilt attraction system you will observe and enjoy observing what you are attracted by. The enjoyment comes from your brain making neurochemical compounds that cause pleasure sensations when your attraction system is activated. This is not love. It is your attraction system at work, doing what it’s supposed to do.

Nature’s Way

Humans are built by nature to have many attraction experiences. This seems especially true for humans with various ‘strengths’. By strengths we mean those who have strong attributes or desirable qualities like leadership, assertiveness, the tendency to ascend and succeed, all sorts of different talents, sociability and of course ‘baby making and bearing’ potential. We are built by nature to enjoy both being attracted to others and being attractive to others. The enjoyment reinforces the attraction system and its operations.

Long ago when there were far fewer of us this system helped especially strong males plant their ‘seed’ in a lots of different females, and helped especially desirable females get ‘seed’ planted in them from men with lots of varying, strong qualities. That helped mix the gene pool and create more and more humans with various strengths. That, in turn, assisted humans in becoming the dominant species on the planet, so the system worked quite well.

Our love systems also were incredibly important for helping us to survive, cooperate, protect and nurture one another, plus a lot more.
Healthy, real love can develop after attraction brings people into contact but there are lots of times when it does not. This is one of the ways we know that ‘attraction’ and ‘love’ are different. Love can influence attraction to a loved one to grow, broaden, deepen and keep happening.

Sexuality Attracts, Love Bonds

Attraction can be partially defined as that which draws people or things together, or pulls toward it that which is ready and free to be attracted. Attraction brings things together so they have a chance to form a connection but attraction is not the connection itself. It takes healthy, real love to hold a couple together once they have made a love connection. Mutual attraction helps people go ‘psychologically toward’ each other and want to keep going toward each other. If healthy, real love develops a couple may become love-bonded and stay together but if healthy, real love does not develop they will, in time, likely split up.

Those who worry about losing their mates because they have ‘lost their good looks’ would do better to worry about how well they are doing love. Those who jointly love well tend to stay together and those who don’t – mostly don’t stay together. There is nothing wrong in doing what can be done to stay physically , sexually, or in any other way attractive, unless it detracts from the more important issue of giving and receiving of healthy, real love. Of course, there are unions in which things, other than love, are of paramount importance. Sex object wives, success object husbands, trophy wives, sugar daddy lovers and husbands, and status entry spouses are classical examples of other reasons people join together.

Insecurity issues

Do you have self-security and love relationship security? These two things go together quite nicely. Are you insecure about your desirability or your ability to give and get healthy, real love? Let me suggest security in couple’s love is best attained by love not by looks or anything else. Therefore, the self-secure, healthfully self loving individual has a great advantage over the insecure and the less love-able. The self-secure tend to avoid damaging their love-mate relationships with fear-based actions, like trying to keep a spouse from looking at attractive others, enjoy flirting with others, having fun with wide ranging sexiness, being around other attractive people, having jealous fits and practicing restrictive control via religiosity, shaming or guilt tripping. Most of those attempted restrictions usually backfire and make your chances of losing somebody larger, not smaller.

Sharing Attraction System Pleasures

In a solid, healthy, love-based relationship people can share the joys of their own and their love mate’s attraction systems. Here’s an example. Harriet said, “I so enjoy pointing out sexy women to my husband and teasing him about what excites him. He is so cute when he’s both embarrassed and turned on. I’m not threatened by other females because I know our love is strong, and sharing what excites us makes for intimate, special fun that draws us even closer together. I really like my man being a real man. Real men are turned on by lots of women, just like us real women can let ourselves be turned on by different guys. It’s all just harmless, naughty fun. Both of us get off on sharing each other’s lusting and just appreciating how others are attractive. It makes us closer and never afraid because we create our security by sharing everything.”

Well, dear reader have you given much thought to understanding the differences between love and attraction? Have you been getting the two of them mixed up with each other? Have people been attracted to you and thought it was love? Have you been flattered by someone finding you attractive or have you had your ego boosted and then thought they were in love with you, or began to wonder if you could love the person being attracted to you? There’s lots here that you might want to consider.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question What are you going to do the next time you are rather strongly, sexually attracted to a new somebody. Are you going to do guilt and confess it, enjoy it, fantasize it, deny it, hide it, ignore it, share it, or go after it?

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

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Sexuality Attracts, Love Bonds

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