What Makes Love Last?

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson first discusses love maintenance and its importance; then touches on male and female false training; followed by a list of a dozen “Lasting Love Factors”; and ends with how those factors might be achieved in your love life.

Love Maintenance

Once you fall in love the rest is automatic, isn’t it?

You will magically live happily ever after once you have found your one true love, isn’t that right?  Once you both make a commitment, get married, etc. you’re in a state of relationship security and the rest is mostly easy -correct?  Of course, intellectually you know these statements may not be true and you might have to do some hard work to keep a love relationship going and not lose it.  Subconsciously, however, you may be programmed to believe in and depend on some very false myths about love and what it takes to succeed as a couple.  No one ever told you a story in which Prince and Princess Charming had to go to marriage counseling to keep their love alive and progressing.

The truth is love relationships take a lot of maintenance work, just like everything else of major and lasting importance.  About love and marriage, a super-rich real estate developer once said, “If you have to work at it (love) something is wrong.”   He went on to explain that if something was wrong with it you might as well get rid of it and start over, which is what he did – marriage after marriage after marriage after marriage.

Almost everybody wants their major love relationship to be lasting.  Unfortunately not much is done to teach people they must do the maintenance work and the improvement work that makes a love relationship last.  We certainly can’t rely on lasting love being magically automatic.

Male and Female False Training

Many a man has been trained to think ‘love work’ is ‘women’s work’.  That’s a prescription for a heartbreaking breakup.  Many a woman and also a lot of males have been subconsciously programmed to think “if he or she loves me they will know what to do, and do it”.  That too is a prescription for a lot of heart ache and an eventual, big, love failure.  Both people in a couples, healthy, real, love relationship will have to work at it, and they’ll have to do that labor in good team work to make it last.

A Dozen “Lasting Love” Factors

1.    There has to be healthy, real love and not sick, false forms of love.

2.    Love repeatedly has to be shown through behaviors to demonstrate, deliver and trigger feeling loved.

3.    Power is democratically shared.

4.    High appreciation and respect are mutual and commonly communicated.

5.    The relationship supports the growth of healthy self-love in both partners.

6.    Both partners repeatedly enjoy each other.

7.    Truth prevails and deception is absent.

8.    Emotions are shared and empathetically treated when shared.

9.    Problems are treated in an ‘I win, You win, Nobody loses and, therefore, We win together’ approach resulting in an ‘It’s us against the problems’ teamwork and not an ‘Us against each other’ style.

10.    The major kinds of behavior that tend to destroy love relationships are absent.

11.    There is high valuing of the love relationship and the love partner and both are frequently and sincerely expressed.

12.    There is a consistent working on the relationship for both growing, improvement and repair when needed, and never taking the relationship or the loved partner for granted or undervaluing either.

Achieving The Above

You can learn and do a lot about all of the above 12 factors.  Also you can do what it takes to make these 12 factors a description of your couple’s love relationship and make it deeply joyous, inspiring, energizing and a lot of simple fun.  Not to work in teamwork with one another to achieve the above 12 factors in your couple’s life could be destructive and dangerous to the health and well-being of your love.  At this website you can find mini-love-lessons to assist you in achieving each of the above 12 factors.  Books, other websites, workshops, seminars, retreats, relationship coaching and counseling, and couples therapy also exist to assist you.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Which of the above 12 factors gives you the most trouble, grabs your attention or puzzles you the most, and why do you suppose that is?

Related posts:

1. It Might Be Healthy, Real Love …
2. Adultery And No Divorce Love 

Einstellung Effects, the Little-Known Cause of Repeated Love Failures

Mini-Love-Lesson #227

Synopsis: Why do some people repeatedly fail at love or at some aspect of love relating?  Here you find out about a rarely known psychological mechanism that accounts for some of those failures; you learn some clever things you can do to see if this applies to you; and then, if it does, what to do about it.

Oh No, Not Again!

First there was Jeffrey who had pretty much the same failed marriage three times with three different women.  All three seemed so different from each other at first.  Then there was Sonya who kept getting psychologically and physically abused by a succession of lovers, each worse than the last.  She was so sure each one would be different than the last but they never were.  After them came Jake and Emma who married and divorced each other three times.  This brings us to Stella and Marco who swore they kept having the same fight over and over but could not find a way to stop and it was getting worse each time.  Lastly there was Katerina who had so many repeated love relationship failures she just gave up on love entirely.  Now she lives depressed and lonely.

At first it might seem that the examples just given are quite dissimilar to each other.  A deeper look shows they are not.  In fact, underlying each of them is a very similar psychological mechanism.  But wait, first let’s look at Victoria and Eva, Martin and Fiona, along with Zandra and Burke who all used to suffer from the same kinds of situations.  However, they all learned something that empowered them to escape their cycles of repeated failures at love relating and go on to fine and thriving love.

With some well-informed counseling, they came to understand they were effected by a little-known, seldom recognized, mental malfunction which prevents some people from choosing new and better solutions.  With that understanding and some help, they were able to work out and try out new solutions and approaches to their love life situations quite successfully.

That psychological mechanism is named the Einstellung Effect after the scientist who discovered it.  Here we are dealing with a relational form of the Einstellung Effect which shows up in a great many areas of human and animal behavior and, therefore, in most branches of psychology and its related fields.

The Basic Way Einstellung Works

A person (or a lab animal) gets used to dealing with a task, situation or problem in a certain way.  We will call that WAY 1.  Then a better way becomes available and/or apparently evident.  We will call that WAY 2.  Occasionally, the person or animal sees and explores WAY 2, even tries out WAY 2 or, at least, gives it a good look over.  Then even if WAY 2 works better than WAY 1 they go back to WAY 1 and keep doing that.  Frequently, the person then rationalizes why they keep choosing WAY 1.  Many do not even perceive the existence of WAY 2. or believe it to be better even when its superior attributes have been clearly pointed out.  While we do not know exactly what the lab animal is thinking, he behaves exactly the same as the person.  It keeps choosing WAY 1. and ignoring WAY 2. even when Way 1. does not work anymore.

Interestingly, there are people and lab animals who do not follow this pattern.  They quickly and often eagerly adopt the new and better ways, and that’s that.  For some people but not others, this is true in their love relationships.  Some people keep rather automatically repeating their love relating failure patterns while ignoring other solutions, and some do not.

Why Do Some Repeat Love Failure and Others Not?

Different branches of psychology and their related fields can posit different answers to this question.  Each of those answers may have some validity and add useful insights.  Addictionologists may say this is a classic relapse pattern and it is just what addictions make happen.  Psychophysiologists suggests that a part of the brain is malfunctioning in some people but not others.  Phenomenologists and perceptual psychologists analyze the first, and/or the early, success a person has which can put that pattern of success to the forefront, and put later possibilities to the background in our perceptual system, thus, hiding new ways from us.

Just like with eyesight, other people can have broader, perceptual ability.  Behavioral psychologists can deduce that some people have been positively reinforced for sticking with early success and others for later success.  Counselors and clinicians may diagnose trauma caused fear and anxiety states to be greater in those reluctant to try the new and different, even to the extent of subconsciously being blinded to the possibilities of trying something different.  Developmentalists could propose that during a early critical period, a love relationship pattern imprinted in some people and not others.  Attachment theories suggest that as young children the WAY 1 people had insecure bonding and the WAY 2 people more secure bonding so, they are more confident and less fearful concerning trying new things.

Now, notice that all the above branches of psychology and their presented possible explanations might be examples of the Einstellung effect itself.  Each school of thought is seeing things in their habituated mindset of what they are used to seeing and are being rather oblivious to the others.  Yet, they all may have value and are worth considering.  So, if one of those concepts above seems to draw your attention more than the others, study it.  Your subconscious may be trying to pull your conscious toward the one to look into the most.  But then again, your subconscious may be blinding you to the others via the Einstellung Effect so study them too.

What to Do about It

With the above you have some background knowledge to work with, so now let’s add some honest, personal, diagnostic self-examination accomplished by answering the following questions and case samples to think with:

1. In love life situations do you keep attempting solutions that never work, or do you keep looking for and trying new and very different approaches that might work?
(Case sample: After years of arguing his very logical points but always losing, Joe learned to do empathetic listening instead of arguing and his love-relating situations finally got happy and successful.)

2. Do you tend to favor and feel safer with established proven solutions, viewpoints and standard ways, while being reluctant and suspicious of untried, experimental and new knowledge-based approaches?
(Case sample: Teresa married and divorced three quite successful, big-city businessmen.  She then met, went off to work for and happily co-habited with an adventuresome, wilderness tour guide who she is still with 10 years later.)

3. In lover’s quarrels or spousal arguments’ do you both find yourselves saying and hearing the same things over and over with the same outcomes and with an increasing sense of futility, and/or with rage and/or desire to escape?  Or do you both make some progress trying new approaches and, by steps, make small improvements, quarrel less and shorter, and see your relationship with a growing, shared joy and encouragement?
(Case sample: Jake and Myrna, on the verge of a breakup, with the help of a couple’s counselor discovered their fighting patterns were the same as a combination of their parent’s fighting patterns, even lasting almost the same amount of time and with the same outcomes their parents had.  At first, they denied all this, then they agreed to attempt some small, new, different behaviors when their fights began.  That helped a bit so they tried some more steps and slowly things kept getting better and new, more loving patterns replace the old.)

4. Do you rather automatically find it hard to consider, be open to and/or appreciate a loved one’s alternative ideas, solutions or approaches to your own?
(Case sample: It was not until Dietrich and Hannah learned and practiced the reflective listening skill of saying back to each other, rather exactly, what the other one had just said that they realized they had never really heard each other accurately.  After that and with some appreciation and affirmation training, things got much better.)

5. Would your loved ones agree with the answer you gave question number 4?

Diagnosis to Treatment

After mulling over the above, do you think you, or whoever you are thinking about, experience repeated love failures that might be influenced by the relational form of the Einstellung Effect?  If so, what are you going to do about it.  Will you let this information sink in, mulling it over some more?  Will you discuss this with trusted friends or family?  Will you talk it over with whoever is personally involved, perhaps using this mini-love-lesson’s information?  Will you individually or jointly make exact, behavioral plans to change?  Will you journal and keep tabs on your efforts to change?  Will you read more about all this? (See “For Failing Love: Avoid, or Convert, or Escape” and “Is Love Ignorance the Problem?”) If needed, will you seek out and rigorously engage in counseling or therapy to make deep, solid improvements?

One More Little Thing

To help your heart fill and fill the other “hearts” in your life, fill your head with love knowledge.  To do that, if you haven’t already, SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE to automatically get our regular mini-love-lessons and, while you’re at it, maybe recommend somebody else to doing the same.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable question:   If you want someone you love to quit repeatedly doing something, might you best be willing to trade or just quit repeatedly doing something they don’t like first?

Cheating and Love, in Love Relationships

Mini-Love Lesson   #221

Synopsis:  A rather fresh view of cheating and its problems; surprising origins; dynamics; multiple causes; possible outcomes and what to do about it lovingly is quickly, yet broadly and very helpfully, covered here.

Cheating In Spite Of Love

"I love them both, what am I to do?  I tried to break it off with one then with the other but it never works,  I secretly always go back and start up again.  Sooner or later, one of them will leave me or maybe even both will leave me at the same time so, I guess I'll just keep lying to the both of them until then."  "I'm sure I truly do love my spouse but I just have to have others, so I lie and cheat and hate myself for it but, for now at least, I won't stop."  "I'm very conflicted.  I don't know why I cheat, I just do but I also dearly love my spouse"  These remarks, and many like them, are commonly heard in the offices of every good therapist who works with love relationships.  The good news is they all represent situations that, with some hard work, usually are healthfully and positively resolved in those offices.

Many who really do love also cheat.  A great many more seriously consider cheating.  Others fearfully suspect cheating is occurring in their own love relationship.  Cheating especially is thought to occur eventually with people tangled in false love syndromes.  Studies show over 50% of the marriages in Western world countries experience affair problems usually involving a lot of destructive deceptions inherit to cheating.

Cheating often brings on a great deal of lying, mistrust, stress, anxiety, depression, conflict, guilt, shame, general misery, profound confusion, family harm, breakups and divorces even among couples who truly love each other.  However, most committed couples who experience a cheating problem do not break up or divorce.  They find another way and stay together.  Some even use the cheating experience to strengthen their love relationship.  Love can conquer and heal the harm cheating so often does.  Of course, there are those who get away with it but they usually do not escape the draining strain and stress that usually comes with cheating.  Then there is the fact that cheating is often very dangerous.  In all too many situations, it can get you beat up, hospitalized, possibly crippled or even killed.  Then why do so many choose to cheat?

It is true some people cheat because they really do not love their spouse or love mate, but quite frequently that is not the real problem.  You can love and still cheat on the person you love for a whole host of different reasons.  Nevertheless, most cheating harms love because it involves dishonesty.  Remember, It is almost impossible to build something real and lasting out of that which is false and contrived, even when real love exists.

The Importance of Getting Clarity

Cheating, deception, lies, manipulating interactions and all that usually go with cheating often cause a cluttered, conglomerate of confusion and inner conflict.  So, getting clear about some of the issues involved is highly useful.

Some say it really is not cheating unless you and another, or even third parties involved, have a clear, mutually understood agreement about what cheating is and what not to do.  In counseling I have heard people say "What I did wasn't cheating because I didn't love who I had sex with", "It was only a one night stand so that shouldn't count", "Yes, we stimulated each other to orgasm but we didn't have intercourse, so that wasn't cheating, was it?", "Even if you loved Joe only in your mind, that still is cheating on me", "If you so much as look at any other woman, you're being unfaithful to me", "Sex with others is okay but don't you dare fall in love with anybody else but me, because that's really cheating ".

Most people seem to think that everyone has the same understanding of cheating which is just like their own, but they don't.  Phenomenology shows us no one has exactly your understanding of everything, especially not anything having strong emotional impact.  So, it all has to get talked out and clearly agreed upon, hard is that often is.  If you are going to get clarity about cheating and everything related, it probably is going to take interactive, uncomfortable, mutual, hard, communication work.  Unspoken agreements are best thought of as disagreements in waiting.

Two Base Points of Cheating

In most love relationship, cheating is oriented around one or both of two points.  One point is love and the other is sex.  It commonly is suggested that males, especially psychologically immature and insecure males, are concerned mostly about sexual cheating.  On the other hand, females, especially more psychologically mature but insecure females, are concerned largely about cheating related to love.  Bisexuals and transsexuals are thought perhaps to be more equally affected by both.

What may be more important than gender orientation is the strength of one's sex drive and/or the strength of one's drive or need for healthy, real love.  Also, very much involved is one's sense of being secure about sexual adequacy and/or one's sense of security about being lovable and love able.

Cheatings Two Biggest Causes?

Cheating is thought to be pretty much nonexistent among a fair number of the indigenous tribes of South America.  That is because they share a belief that babies are best grown out of multiple contributions of different male’s semen.  Women seek out and bed men with different qualities so that their offspring will have those male’s various qualities.  Bedding just one male makes for too few qualities in one's child.  This belief system also expands the number of men who take father responsibility for helping the child grow up.

That example, and others like it, suggest and point to a possible, real root-cause of our problems with cheating.  That root-cause is our deeply incorporated, cultural training about sex, spouse type love and monogamy.  Had we been brought up with a mores like those indigenous peoples of South America, we might have no need for romantic dishonesty and, therefore, no need for cheating.

This also suggests that those who can get more free of our standard, cultural training about spousal love and monogamy may be able to better love their way through cheating and affair problems.  Indeed, freedom from cultural control may help explain why so many couples do not end their relationship when cheating and affair issues occur.

The second major reason for cheating being so prevalent may have to do with our biology fighting our cultural training.  There is a growing amount of evidence and analysis pointing to the conclusion that a particular biological imperative rules.  That is that 1) males are built and driven to plant their seed in multiple vaginas and, 2) females are built and driven to get the seed of different men who have various desirable qualities planted in their vaginas.  Especially, might this be a natural truth for both higher quality males and females who have more survivor qualities to offer the human gene pool for our species continuence?

Apparently, this two-part, biological imperative operates somewhat independently of our natural, psycho-biological imperative to love-bond with others.  Successful, emotionally close, pair bonding (poly and throuple bonding) examples exists around the world and throughout history which have not been emphasized, where sexual monogamy has.  Our natural state in love relationships may be much closer to that of the bonobo apes.  They are seen as more family, friendship and small-tribe love bonded than pair bonded while still being very actively, multi-mingling sexually.  Interestingly, various indigenous peoples around the globe are found to have similar behavioral norms and to be without so many problems of jealousy, possessiveness, sexual insecurity, divorce or cheating.  Lots to think about, right?

Other Reasons for Cheating

"I had to cheat because I had to find out if I was still desirable".  "Actually, I cheated because the outside love and care I got gave me the fuel I needed to keep working on my marriage",  " I think I cheated mostly because that's what successful people do when they reach the status I have attained in life",  "It helped me a lot with my self-love",  "I did it out of vengeance",  "Everything else we both were doing in life was dishonest, so being dishonest in love and sex came easily",  "All my friends were doing it and it seemed like fun",  "To be truthful, I identified with being bad and cheating is so bad",  "Others I knew were getting away with it and I was so envious",  "It's what the people in my growing up family did, so why could I be any different",  "My spouse was far too goody-goody, straightlaced and normal.  I just couldn't live that way, so I started a secret life apart",  "I tried it out of boredom and got to really liking it".

These are but a small sampling of the multitudinous reasons people discover for their cheating.  Only occasionally the reason given is that a spouse is no longer loving, or attractive, or sexual.  Sometimes the reason is to escape or find somebody better than their inadequate or abusive spouse.  While the reasons are important, far more important is figuring out what to do about it.

Other Forms of Cheating

Cheating and deception can concern and does occur regarding money, substance and behavioral addictions (like gambling), family, status, personal history, religion, politics, food, health and a good many other things.  But it is the love and sex areas where cheating is the big deal that concerns us most here.

The Poly Cure for Cheating

In the history of Europe and the Americas, every so often there appears a new attempt at one approach or another for solving the problems inherent in monogamy, or if you prefer, serial monogamy.  Polygamy, communal sex, group marriage, swinging, open marriage, free love, and more recently, poly amore alternate lifestyles are but a few of the many examples available.  With each attempt, there are people who make it work quite well and those who do not.  Common to many of the attempts are emphases on open honesty and getting okay with people having both sex and love in multiperson ways.  Common also is condemnation by the more conservative and those threatened by the new and different.

With the advent of the social sciences, what makes these different love relationship ways succeed for some and fail for others is becoming more understood.  One answer may be this.  It seems that those who learn and practice the behaviors that demonstrate love well may be able to make any form of love relationship work better, including monogamy.  Those who more poorly, or less frequently behave in the ways that convey love, more likely fail at each form of love relating, also including monogamy.  So, perhaps it is not the form but the love abilities of the people engaging in the form that makes the difference.

Cheating is hardly ever a loving action.  It is an action that risks hurting and harming another person and perhaps several others severely.  Cheating in some situations may be the healthiest alternative available as well as the least dangerous and least destructive to all concerned but those situations are rare.  There are those who attempt open honesty and who are willing to work out "I win, you win, everybody wins" type solutions.  And there are those who may be truly unable, as well as unwilling, to go for "tri-victory" outcomes.  Likewise, there are counselors and therapists who do not have what it takes to help others achieve two party, let alone three party resolutions, when cheating and affairs have been involved.  But with other nonjudgmental counselors, it can be done.

The Couple's Cure for Cheating

In my experience working with couples who have a cheating issue and supervising therapists who deal with similar issues, what helps the most is a very love-centered couple’s counseling, largely done in conjoint sessions where the couple meets together with the therapist.  Such therapists work in an unbiased way, are rather loving, practical, highly truth oriented and willing to experiment with couples outside the box toward possible solutions for improvement.  Couples’ group counseling may follow and greatly add to the strength of improvements.

The Individual’s Cure for Cheating

For individuals, I have found individual group therapy to quite often be the most advantageous and efficient treatment, though singular individual counseling may work well too.  The challenging but supportive and non-condemning ways of a good positive-focused group therapy can work wonders to help people give up a cheating way of going about relating and to risk replacing it with ways that are much more lovingly truthful.

For more help related to cheating, you may wish to consult these mini-love-lessons: “Love Affairs: Bad?, Good? and Otherwise”, “Trust Recovery and Love”, “Protecting Those You Love from Yourself”, “Forgiveness - A Much Needed Love Skill”, “Checking It Out - As a Love Skill” and link “Conclusions, Confounding and Corrupting Your Love?”.   I also heartily recommend reading Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jetha.  In my biased view, serious cheating issues are best dealt with with the help of a good love knowledgeable therapist, well-trained in relationship therapy, not just individual therapy.  You might be able to find one of those therapists via your national marriage and family therapy and/or counseling associations.

One more thing:  let us suggest you talk to some people about your thoughts and feelings concerning this mini-love-lesson on cheating and this site’s many other love lessons.  Think about quoting and using the following quotable love question to include in that talk.

As always –Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Quotable Love Question:  If we can love two parents, several siblings, four grandparents and other relatives, including stepparents and multiple friends all at the same time, why do we think we can not have real love for two or even more lovers simultaneously?

Betrayal in Love and Handling It Well

Mini-Love-Lesson #208

Synopsis: The agony of betrayal; what the recently wounded can do to recover; learning to heal and protect oneself; five most things not to do; the no blame inventory with seven crucial questions for betrayal avoidance and recovery.

Stabbed in the Back?

What to do when someone you love, and who you were sure loved you, seriously betrays you?  They did what you thought, hoped and believed they never would.  They were treacherous betraying you and the love you shared and it hurt so very very much.  You trusted them and they violated that trust.  Now it is hard to believe that someone who loves you could do such a thing.

Agonizing questions arise.  If they could hurt you this way does that mean they are not who you thought they were, you were not really important to them, your love relationship with them was false, something is seriously wrong with you or this wouldn’t have happened; they are evil, sick, wanted to hurt you, or what?   Painful quandaries and confusions abound along with sorrow, anger, destabilization, insecurity, profound disappointment and pervasive mistrust.  Do you give up on them, end the relationship, retaliate and get even, figure ways to punish them, or do you forgive them, just suffer through it and try to keep going, look for a way to start over, seek outside help individually or together, or what?

Recently Wounded? – Go Hide for Awhile!

If you feel stabbed in the back and it pierced your heart, the first issue is about finding safety from further hurts where you can start to heal.  We do not tend to handle things well when we are wounded.  We do not think straight, make good decisions, understand things clearly, have good judgment, see things accurately, do emotionally laden work well or even, if forced to fight, do it very well.  Everything we try to do may result in more harm or hurt, and yet we want to do something to end our suffering and make it all go away and be better.

Consider doing what wounded animals do.  Find a cave and hide out in it licking your wounds, helping Mother Nature start your healing process.  Your hideout cave maybe a cabin in the wilderness, staying with a friend or with family, getting a hotel room or just locking the door where you live and staying inside.  While you are there it’s okay to cry, weep, rant, rave, thrash around, pound, stomp, eat comfort foods, sleep a lot or do anything that is not destructive to yourself or others, or do anything valuable and important.  If you want to be with loving accepting others as you do all this, that’s fine.  Maybe you can do the same for them someday.  Alone is okay too for a while or with loving pets around.

When you are ready, and at first in small doses, help your healing by starting to study and learn what you need to from this love betrayal experience.  To assist you with that, just keep reading this mini-love-lesson, and then go to some other mini-love-lessons at this site.  I recommend that you next go to our series (in the Subject Index Problems and Pain all beginning with the words Dealing With Love Hurts) starting with the one called “Dealing with Love Hurts: First Aid Tips”.  Then you might do well to look at “Changing Your Emotions Via Love and Love Smarts” and “Through Heartbreak Recovery to Full and Lasting Love”. These have been known to help and do much good.

Lasting Hurt from Older Betrayal

Sometimes it takes a long time for a love betrayal to cure.  Occasionally we can get stuck along the path of healing and not progress.  For both of those conditions some think it is because we need to learn something we are dodging, need to focus on something were not seeing yet or otherwise need to add to or alter our way of dealing with a love betrayal experience.  For those situations and possibilities, let me suggest you first finish reading this mini-love-lesson and then go on to “Dealing with Love Hurts: Pains Crucial Guidance” and “Trust and Mistrust in Love”.  I have gotten feedback on how much those two mini-love-lessons have helped others; I hope they help you too if needed.

Learning to Heal and Protect Yourself from Love Betrayal

Learning gives us options we did not have before.  So, let’s learn a little bit about love betrayal and some options we have for dealing with it.

Unfortunately, betrayals in love relationships of one sort or another are all too common.  Consider the research on marital infidelity.  Study after study shows that in the developed world well over 50% of married and unmarried couples face one or more problematic affair issues or crises at some time in the course of their love relationship.  The good news is most couples handle it, stay together and often even grow from it.  Nevertheless, it usually involves agonized dealing with lies, deceptions, broken promises, damaged trust, and the hard long work of relational healing.  What you learn now may help you avoid much of that.

Of course, there are a lot of ways love betrayals happen besides through duplicitous infidelity.  Sometimes they are quite complicated and confusing.  A son chooses not to follow in his father’s professional footsteps and the father expels the son from his family life feeling betrayed by the son.  But by his acts, has the father betrayed his son and, in essence, betrayed what loving fatherhood is really all about?  A daughter steals from her parent’s savings desperate to pay for her inclusion in a good but costly private, drug addiction, treatment program which her parents refused to help with.  Who really has betrayed who in this case?  Long-term and dear friends breakup over the public revealing of each other’s most intimate secrets, blaming each other for having started it.

Another issue is how value systems differ.  One person may see an act of betrayal as small and mild, while another as huge and severe.  “I only had sex with your brother once, and it wasn’t very good sex either, and besides that I was drunk so it shouldn’t count for much.  Actually, I think I did it just to get back at you for all the times you neglected me.  So, in a way it’s really your fault” said the rationalizing wife to her furious husband.  A lots of people assume their loved ones have the same values and also value things to the same degree as they do.  On close examination, that is hardly ever exactly true.

Lots of couples, families and friendship groups consciously and subconsciously fake values similarity for the sake of harmony until something comes along to reveal the differences.  When that happens, betrayal often is painfully felt and angrily accused. As you can see, love betrayal might seem more simple than it is until you start learning about its underlying causes and dynamics.  Not understanding that has caused lots of misinterpretation difficulties and wrong conclusion mistakes for many love relationships.  Consequently in love betrayal situations, it is best not to rush to judgment and to proceed slowly and carefully.

What Not to Do

1. Get Revenge. One option is vengeance.  I had a professor in graduate school who was fond of quoting “vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord God”, then adding “that’s because people can’t handle it”.  In my counseling career, the biggest thing I ever saw revenge accomplish was making divorce lawyers rich.  Otherwise, it did not work, brought on escalating retaliations, hurt children and other family and was a big waste of effort and time.  link “Anger and Love”.  Know that in love betrayal situations, recovery and revenge are usually antithetical.  Maybe you have heard, the only kind of revenge that works is living well.  I agree.  Go after living well, happy and wonderfully well loved.  Then show it off when you get the chance.

2. Live in Victimhood. Some people discover being a long-suffering victim has some advantages, at least for a while.  People feel sorry for you, give you attention and do stuff for you sometimes.  Also you do not have to do the work of finding out how to succeed at real love.  Furthermore, if you are good at being a martyr, there are those who are looking for someone in need of saving for example, professional damsels in distress, “frogs” and “beasts” who do not really turn into princes, and those who think themselves too weak to ever leave their rescuer until a better rescuer comes along.  You can do far better.

3. Never Love Again.  Some people are so hurt by betrayal, especially repeated betrayals, they decide to permanently withdraw from all attempts at love.  That is a lot like one might feel after food poisoning and wanting to never eat again.  We all thrive on the food and the medicine of love and we malfunction without it.  Remember, all forms of real love do us good starting and including healthy self-love, pet love, friend love, spiritual love, altruistic love and all the others.  Then, if you learn and practice the right stuff about romantic love, you much more likely will succeed there too.

4. Beat-up on Yourself.  Victims of love betrayal often are too hard on themselves and too good at self condemnation.  Commonly there is inner self talk which sounds like this.  “I must not be worth much for someone to hurt me like that”.  “It’s got to be that I’m not lovable or they wouldn’t have wanted to hurt me like they did”.  “How could I have been so stupid”.  “Everything I did was probably wrong”.  “If I had only tried harder”.  “It’s all really my fault”.  “I’ll always get betrayed and/or abandoned because I just don’t have what it takes”.  “I’m not good enough to get lasting real love”.  That kind of depressive thinking happens a lot in those who are programed to think that way.  You can learn to think in far more accurate, positive, energizing and love productive ways. “Healthy Self-Love and Not Giving Your Power Away” and “From Self-Love to Other Love and Back Again”.  Use those and you won’t be betraying yourself with self blame.

5. Play the Endless Anger and Accusations Game.  Some people who feel betrayed in love are endlessly angry and accusational about it.  Anger gives you a sense of power when you feel powerless and that can help for a little while.  A better power comes from learning from it, then letting it go and moving on to new better ways of doing love and life.  As is said in all sports “you can’t win them all”, and even if you could it usually might mean you should have been playing in a tougher league.

Now, those 5 above might sound hard-hearted, and we all might need to cathartically do a little of some of them when hurting.  The point is not to get stuck there – it is not healthy or self-loving.

Conduct a Rigorous Non-Blaming “Learn from It” Exam

If you learn enough from a love betrayal and grow from it, you may not have to experience love betrayal again.  To learn from it, you have to not dodge but straightforwardly examine it.  The exam has to be rigorously honest and as accurate as possible.  Blame does not lend itself to honesty or accuracy and that is why it has to be non-blaming.  Blaming yourself, or others, or God, the stars, fate, etc. may have some cathartic value but not much else.  A productive, good learn from it exam means facing and dealing with tough questions.  Here are seven you might do well to begin and continue with.

1. What did I do that helped (not caused) me to get betrayed, and how can I not do those things again?

2. What do I need to learn about betrayal, it’s workings and its causes so I can better protect myself from betrayal and its emotional pain in the future?

3. How are my betrayer and I different; are we too different?

4. If I continue our relationship, am I strong enough to go through more betrayal, or am I too vulnerable and too susceptible to a reoccurrence to risk it?

5. If I forgive my betrayer, can I also realistically protect myself well enough to stay/be okay as I explore and figure out what to best do with this relationship?

6. How do I need to change and add to my thinking about trust, people who are and become trustworthy, and those who are not and do not?

7. Can I, should I, and will I dare to love without trust?
If your suffering from betrayal goes on too long or is too excruciating, get some help from a love-knowledgeable professional.

One More Little Thing

Who are you going to talk this over with, because this is really a good one to talk over with others, and while you’re at it would you mind telling them about this site and all its free, mini-love-lessons?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: What might cause you to betray someone you love, and how do you feel about that?

Related posts:

1. Dealing with Love Hurts: A Dozen Love Hurts to Know and Grow From
2. Trust Recovery and Love
3. Trust and Mistrust in Love
4. Dealing with Love Hurt: Diagnosing Love Hurt Accurately
5. Dealing With Love Hurts: Pain’s Crucial Guidance 

No BUTs - A Big Important Little Love Skill !

Mini-Love-Lesson #209

Synopsis: The subtle and both conscious and subconscious, negative effect of the word BUT on love relationships is examined and a simple, effective cure is described and heartily recommended.

Does the word BUT have an anti-love effect?

Suppose, in nice tones of voice, you hear the words “I love you so much – BUT…”.  Would you feel loved?  Would you start to feel loved but loose that feeling as soon as you heard the word BUT.  Would your feeling change to a bit of disappointment, apprehension, rejection, let down, on guard, defensiveness, anger or what?  Would you end up with any good feeling?  If there was a good feeling, would it be lessened because of the word BUT.

Your feelings might be affected by whatever came after the word BUT and also how you feel about the person saying it – their voice tones, facial expressions, etc. when they said it.  Are you and those you love among the many people who just upon hearing the word BUT experience a small, quick, negative reaction?

Now think about these comments.  You are wonderful BUT…  You did a good job on that BUT…  I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings BUT…  I could be wrong BUT…  I possibly can use that advise BUT…  Of course you’re really important to me BUT…   What happens inside you with each of those sentence beginnings?  What do you suppose happens inside the people you love if they hear those words or anything like them coming from you?

Does BUT Have Different Psychological and Dictionary Meanings?

All words can have different psychological and dictionary-type meanings.  Sometimes in fact those two can be exactly the opposite of each other.  Remember when the fad was to say “you’re so bad” and it meant exactly the opposite.  In many situations the psychological or connotative meaning is much more important than the dictionary meaning.  This seems to be the case with the word BUT.  Especially may this true in personal relationships and even more so in various kinds of love relationships.

What Does Neurolinguistic Psychology Have To Do with It?

Guess what happens when most people hear the word BUT.

We can hook up people to various types of brain reaction measuring devices.  These devices can tell us whether you are having a little bit of a positive or a little bit of a negative brain (emotional) reaction, consciously and/or subconsciously, when you hear a word.  When many people hear the word BUT, their reaction is predominantly negative.  It is sort of neutral for some others.  It hardly ever is a positive or good feeling for anyone.  Sometimes there only is curiosity but that is about as good as it gets.

Worse Than Neutral !

The word BUT gets a lot of different interpretations.  Hardly any of them could be called good.  For some people, hearing the word BUT means they are about to hear something they don’t want to hear so they emotionally withdraw a bit and get defensive.  Others interpret that they are not really being heard or understood.  If a positive statement was followed with the word BUT plus something less positive, they interpret the positive part as a lie, or deception or an effort at manipulation.  None of that is likely to be helpful in a love relationship.

Are You Canceling the Positive?

Imagine you say something positive to a loved one like maybe a statement that praises or compliments them, and then you add the word BUT followed by something not so positive.  It is likely you just canceled whatever good your positive praise or compliment might have done.  Even if your loved one does not consciously see it that way, they may subconsciously.  The evidence seems to point to the idea that the word BUT has been coupled with unpleasant experiences so often in the lives of so many that just all by itself it provides a negative experience. There are okay uses of the word but.  Mostly that seems to occur in very impersonal interactions.  As soon as there is a personal relationship component, using the word BUT probably is working against you and is self sabotaging.

What’s the Cure?

The cure is quite simple to understand and a little harder to implement.  To understand the cure, first read these two statements. (1) “Yes, I love you BUT can we talk about that right now?  “Yes, I love you AND can we talk about that right now?  For most people, the first sentence means something like “I don’t want to talk about it right now”.  Also the words “I love you” seem to be somewhat insincere or of uncertain importance.  The second sentence usually is interpreted more like “I do want to talk about our love and now is a desirable time”.  The words “I love you” are seen as more sincere and the emotional tone is generally positive.

The word AND is psychosocially additive in its usual effect while the word BUT is psychosocially subtractive even though it’s dictionary meaning is not.  Therefore, the cure is accomplished by just replacing your use of BUT with the word AND every chance you get .  Then see what happens.  Talking additively as opposed to subtractively, or even neutrally, usually helps people feel more positive toward you.  And that is especially thought to be constructive in all kinds of love relationships.  In addition, you yourself may feel an internal, positive shift by substituting AND for BUT.

Replacing BUT with AND

The hard part is making it a new habit replacing an old habit.  That may take some work and it will be worth it.  With this word replacement, you will not be canceling, or sabotaging, or in effect torpedoing your main love messages.  That is because there is some evidence that shows people who talk with AND instead of BUT get heard quite a bit better, cooperated with more, and also probably are liked more and loved better.

Also AND’s and BUT’s seem to have cumulative effects.  In relationships, although subtle, there are constructive and destructive impacts.  Apparently they can add up over time (both with positives for AND or negatives with BUT).  Therefore, we suggest this little love-skill may be a lot more important to the success of a love relationship than might at first be recognized.

Little Love Skills Add Up

Using AND instead of the word BUT may seem like a too small of a thing to pay attention to.  Let me suggest it is best to come from the position that all love skills are worth learning and practicing.  Ovid was right, for love to be lasting it takes skills.  Also remember that while love-feeling is automatically natural, love-relating takes a learned set of skills.

One More Thing

Talking over this mini-love-lesson and its main message with others is likely to implant it in your own head better.  So, who might you do that with rather soon?
As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Do you agree or disagree with the idea that when you are talking with someone you love, each and every one of your words has a love positive or love negative effect?

Related posts:

1. Touching Back – A Surprisingly Important Love Skill
2. Additive Talking – A Love Skill
3. Catharsis Empathy – A Love Skill
4. Intimacy Creation – A Love Skill
5. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill 

Changing Your Emotions Via Love And Love Smarts

Mini-Love-Lesson #202

Synopsis: For many, this mini-love-lesson presents a fresh and different than usual approach to both discovering new learning from your feelings and for changing them for the better with love-befriending techniques and through some rather different ways to think and behave in regard to your own emotions, especially the ones you don’t like to feel.

About Bad-To-Better Feelings

When you feel bad, even real bad or maybe just blah or sort of neutral; do you want to feel better?  Of course you do.  But do you know how?  Many people don’t or aren’t very good at it.  Some people even think it can’t be done but maybe they just don’t know how.  There are ways to do it which you can learn, and with practice you can accomplish the changes quite well and healthfully.  Also, you might want to assist your loved ones in learning these love connected skills.

Some Stuff to Know and Think About Concerning Emotions

To change your emotions from bad to better and best, you will do well to first know some things about emotions.  Emotions are part of your feeling system.  You have two kinds of feelings, physical and emotional.  Your emotions are processed in your brain but also effect your body.  Because emotions are inside you, you can effect them (change them).  To do that you may have to give up the idea that they are entirely caused by things outside of you and over which you have little or no influence, let alone control.  That means changing the way you think and maybe the way you talk, especially to yourself.

When you say “he, she or it made me feel . . .” you may be subtly and subconsciously giving away your power to change your feelings.  He, she or it did not make you feel anything.  They only triggered, or assisted or activated your internal feeling system.  Your internal feeling system can be strongly influenced by the other two major psychological parts of you – your thinking and your behaving.  To change your emotions, change your thinking and/or your behavior.  Of course that is much simpler said than done.

How You Catch, Is Key

Think of a game of catch the ball.  Somebody throws the ball at you and how well you catch it determines whether it hurts or not, and whether or not you get to play catch with them and have some fun.  How well you psychologically catch what is thrown at you, determines how you psychologically feel.  When being cussed at or criticized, some people catch it poorly and get all upset while others can disregard it and be unaffected or even be amused.  If you are cussed at or criticized in a language you do not know, you are likely to be mostly puzzled but not hurt.

Sure, the nonverbal or expressional part might make you a bit apprehensive but it does not have the same effect as if you understand the language.  If what they send at us made us feel something, we would all feel pretty much the same thing when it reached us.  Like we all react the same way to a bullet entering us, we bleed.  It is your linguistic understanding that causes it to hurt, or upset you or whatever feeling you get.  That feeling occurs in your head where you can have influence and make (catching) changes.  You learn to emotionally catch, the way you do growing up.  You can improve on that now.

Bad Feelings Are Your Friends Trying to Help You

I once had a really brilliant little kid in therapy who said, “I guess God made evolution put that bad feeling in me for a good reason.  Without it I would never have learned to forgive and love my mother and myself for what we did to each other”.  He had learned that he does better when he learns from his hurt and that is part of why it is there.  And, no, you do not get to know about the thing with his mother.  That is private and confidential.

You have to learn that hurt is the enemy of harm (that is one of the big things to learn about emotions).  Here are some examples.  Anxiety warns you that something harmful may be approaching, so look for it.  Fear says the same thing only stronger and gives you power to escape faster.  Anger gives you emergency power to fight perceived threatening destructiveness.  Depression helps you inventory what is wrong in your life.  Very frequently depression has something do with a lack of sufficient healthy, real other love or self love.

When you hurt after hearing something negative aimed at you, it is a message telling you “maybe you need to catch better”.  All your feelings, both good and bad, were created in you to help you.  So, learn to befriend them, listen to what they are trying to tell you and then cooperate.  Doing that usually gets bad feelings to get over and be done with faster than trying to fight or ignore them.  Trying to influence your emotions with just chemicals (e.g. drugs) or escapist behavior, may only help you miss their message and make things worse in the long run.  There is a role for meds to play when bad feelings overdo it but medication is best used along with counseling or therapy.

About Seeking Help

Like all human systems, your emotions system can overdo or under do it.  None of our human systems are yet perfected.  Fear can turn to dysfunctional panic, anger to irrational rage, and so forth.  This especially can happen when people have not learned to work with their feelings and hear their feeling’s guidance messages.  It also can happen when there are certain neurochemical imbalances in the brain.  When that happens seek professional help.  A good therapist usually can work wonders.
Emotional education can help.  It can be argued that at least half of our emotional pain seems to come from love problems of one sort or another.  For more on dealing with love related hurt and negative feelings  link to the mini-love-lessons “Dealing with Love Hurts: Pain’s Crucial Guidance” and “Dealing with Love Hurts: A Dozen Love Hurts to Know and Grow From”.

What Love Has To Do with Changing Bad Feelings to Good Feelings

Have you heard the concept: “Love all your parts and all your systems, and they will be more likely to love you back better.  Especially love the ones you do not like and think you do not want.  That is the way to bring them into harmony with the rest of you so they can do you their maximum good, which is their purpose”.  What do you think of that concept?

To help you think about that, consider what Maxine thought.  “I just couldn’t stop worrying.  I over-worried about everything and nothing helped.  Distractions, drugs, alcohol, sex, cognitive behavior therapy, religion, they all did a little good but only for a little while.  Then a new therapist got me to talk and listen to my inner worrying self in a semi-hypnotic state.  She told me my worry was just a presentation of a possible problem.  But I would never do what I was supposed to do about the problems, which she told me was to make a plan and then do something about the problem, or go on to something else if there was nothing that could be done.

My worry myself also told me I just get stuck on the problem’s presentation.  That is because I don’t love and believe in myself enough, nor believe that I am competent enough and can come up with adequate solutions, which don’t have to be perfect solutions.  I was astonished that all that knowledge was in me and I just had to lovingly listen to the part of me that knew it”.

“With my therapist’s help I worked on growing my healthy self-love and believing what my worrying self told me.  It was even more amazing when my worrying self evolved into my solution suggesting self.  Now when I worry, I listen really closely and get the guidance message.  I don’t know exactly how that works but it does work for me.  I now love and respect that part of me that worries but that also comes up with solutions.  It’s a precious part of me I was ignorantly trying to reject and ignore, but now I embrace it with love”.

More Love Please!

This love is so often, at least a part if not the whole solution, needed for the emotions you want to change.  So, you might consider just going and asking someone who loves you to show you love, and see if that helps.  If you have a good loving dog or other pet, go get a dose of their love and see what that does.  While you are at it, give yourself a hug and some good, self loving, affirmational talk.  Getting more love is like putting high-octane gas in your tank.  It helps you go further with more power and more calm confidence.

The Thinking Different to Feel Different Approaches

Sometimes a new insight, a different understanding, the mental re-framing of an event, or reasoning something through, changes emotions for the better.  That often occurs in psychotherapy and personal counseling.  Another type of thinking also accomplishes changes in emotion.  This is the positive cognition approach which sometimes uses positive imagery, affirmational language, heightened emotional motivation self-talk and confidence building terms, sayings and slogans.  It does not go through investigative reasoning very often but rather works to directly create emotional change. 

Non-conscious and semiconscious approaches, such as occur in pictorial thinking and the thinking that goes into music, movement and art therapies sometimes bring about marvelous changes in emotions.  When any of these are dynamically coupled with healthy self-love, love of life, altruistic love and spiritual love focused thought techniques, they seem to have a more powerful effect, at least for a lot of people.

The Motion Emotion Love Connection

If your emotions are not what you want, out of healthy self-love decide you are going to treat yourself with a big dose of positive, upbeat movement.  That’s right, motion can change emotion especially when done with a healthy self loving thought process.  If you talk to yourself with some positive self loving affirmations and push yourself into dancing around the house, going for a run or vigorous walk, doing happy movements exercise, bouncing a ball off the wall and catching it, marching to vigorous music or any other way you choose to move, you are very likely to change your emotions for the better.

Remember before or after you do the upbeat different motions approach, or any other approach, to change your feelings, it will be important to listen and figure out the guidance message coming from your less than pleasant emotions.  Otherwise they probably will have to come back and try to deliver their maybe unpleasant but actually friendly message again.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Possibly all your life you have been practicing some other approach to dealing with what you perhaps think of as negative emotions.  It also is likely that no one around you has been effectively modeling for you the approach of loving befriending and working cooperatively with all your feelings.

Therefore, it may take quite a bit of practice to counter and reform your habitual way of dealing with certain emotions.  Working on making these changes with a counselor’s or personal coach’s help can speed the process.  Working on this sort of changing as a couple or with friends doing similar work also can be quite useful.  However, you do not have to believe in this process before you experiment with it.  It is not a true believer system.  It is a “do different to get different” system. Know that it usually does take repeated effort.  So, with good, healthy self-love why not give it a go?

Help us spread the word.  Tell somebody about this site and our free mini-love-lessons, and how knowledge about love and love-relating helps.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success question: How much do you know about your own and other’s emotions; where did you get your knowledge; and is it doing you any good, especially in your love relationships?  You might want to read any of a number of books about emotional intelligence.

Related posts:

1. Upbeat Emotions & Learning for Love
2. Thinking Love to Improve Love
3. Loneliness and Love
4. Love Bids and Their Astounding Importance
5. Conflict, Power and Love Success 

Faithfulness Fears and the Love Cure

Mini-love-lesson  #200

Synopsis: In some surprising and different-than-usual ways, this mini-love-lesson addresses the problem of what to do when someone is troubled by fears that their spouse, love partner, special other is not being faithful.  Included are what to do before you do anything else, the role of healthy self-love, not letting fears take you over, using more and different love relating skills and the importance of self-disclosure love.

Fears to Face and Fight

Are you afraid your special other is secretly now, or going to get involved with someone else?  Do you fear maybe they are in love with somebody else, may be having sex with somebody else or even several other somebodies?  Are you apprehensive that they are planning to leave you for another who maybe has qualities you secretly fear you do not have?  Might it be that your beloved is more attracted to somebody more attractive than you, better at love or sex, or life, or something you are not even aware of?

Are you suspicious about their time with friends, their fellow workers or that they might be spending time with an old flame, an ex or someone you know nothing about?  What is going on when your beloved is spending time away from you?  Or when your beloved is with you are they longing or lusting for another?

There is so much you can fear, suspect, worry about, be threatened by, feel insecure about, have anxiety over and generally drive yourself crazy with.  What are you to do?  How can you get to a dependable, true safety and sense of security?  Should you just try to dismiss these fears if you can, confront your beloved with accusations, spy, be more controlling, restrictive and possessive, repeatedly third-degree question them, hound and/or beg them for constant reassurance, or what?

In my practice I dealt literally with hundreds of couples and individuals where infidelity, cheating, adultery, etc. was an issue.  I counseled even more where these things were a worry and cause of anxiety.  I shall be a bit braggadocios.  I am happy to say that the vast majority of those situations were worked out rather well, often for all concerned including the others sometimes involved.  What I discovered dealing with these aching and struggling clients was that focusing on healthy, real love made the big difference in most of these very agonizing, complicated situations.  So, what follows are some of the love cure particulars that helped the most and are best done before you do anything else.

You Must Include a Strong, Healthy, Self-Love Focus!

Struggling with the kind of fears we are talking about can be very undermining of your self-love including your self-esteem, self-confidence, self security and your all-over sense of worth. (“Self Love – What is it?”)  It is very important you work to keep your healthy self-love as you struggle with fidelity and relational fears.  Otherwise, your fears can take over, distorting your perception and cause you to make a lot of serious relationship mistakes.

Time again, I have seen fears of a lack of faithfulness have a frequently, unrecognized, serious, component problem.  That component problem is twofold.  First, there can be a preexistent, long-standing lack of sufficient healthy self-love.  Second, the lack of self-love gives rise to an inability to accurately examine oneself and one’s own contributions to what is really causing or contributing to the fears about faithfulness.

Without sufficient self-love, there can be a subconscious mindset in the person feeling the fear that works something like this.  “Secretly I think I’m not good enough to be really loved by my beloved.  That means I don’t have the attraction-power to hold or keep my beloved.  If that is true, my beloved is bound to want and get attracted to somebody better than me.  They’re bound to be looking for somebody with qualities I don’t possess enough of.  Maybe they already have somebody else.  Maybe I’m already about to lose them to somebody else.”  At that point, creeping and then flooding into conscious awareness is a growing sense of anxiety-ridden-insecurity and fearfulness.  Out of that comes a driving, sometimes obsessive, need for reassurance and the return of relational safety.  That in turn, then drives all sorts of often self-sabotaging fear-related behavior that seldom gives much relief.

The nature of the fears usually has a lot to do with the areas we secretly feel inadequate or conflicted in.  If we most fear sexual infidelity, our area of secret weakness is probably sexual.  If we fear losing out to someone more attractive, we may not see ourselves as attractive enough, and so forth.  Facing and examining our fears actually may tell us something about where we do need to improve but denial can make us blind to that useful insight.

Not Letting Our Fears Take Us Over

Sometimes our secret sense of inadequacy is more global or total.  That can give rise to very broad ranging and ever varying fears of infidelity.  Sometimes when that happens, the lack of healthy self-love can be so complete that a person becomes fully convinced their beloved is having an affair and fully believing their fears are definitely true.  Sometimes no amount of evidence to the contrary or reality checks can convince us to believe otherwise.  When this is the case, several profound, destructive and dangerous problems can arise.

Fear of infidelity can cause people to start spying on their beloved, invading their privacy, being increasingly controlling, possessive, blaming, obnoxious and unloving.  This, of course, is self sabotaging, counterproductive, anti-love behavior and exactly the opposite of what is needed.

In counseling sessions, I don’t know how many times I heard things like “he or she accused me of cheating so often I finally decided to go ahead and do it”.  That is how self-fulfilling prophecy mechanisms work – you fear something so much, you don’t know you are doing it, but you are making what you fear happen.  Fear-based behavior can crowd out love-based behavior and result in exactly what you fear most.

Profound, secret insecurity about one’s own power of attraction and worthiness can either result in or stem from the serious mental illness often called paranoia.  One of the syndromes of paranoia involves slowly, increasing crazy, fear-based fantasies of infidelity which the sufferer believes are real.  That can lead to destruction of the marriage or romantic relationship which actually sometimes gives temporary relief to the sufferer.

Rarely, it also can result in the sufferer physically abusing and even sometimes killing their spouse or love partner and then themselves so as to at least be with them in death.  Some think people who are prone to the fatal attraction form of false love are strangely attracted to just the sort of people who suffer from this deadly form of paranoia.  I have treated people where indeed this did seem to be the case (see “Fatal Attraction Syndrome – A False Form of Love”).

More and Different Love, Not Less, As the Love Cure

After self-examination and self love work, there is a second area usually needing attention.  It is not whether or not your beloved actually is being or wanting to be unfaithful.  Before getting to that issue, let’s look at the issue of love-relating and the quality, quantity, nature, and skills involved in your love-relating.

You see, you can have lots of real love and feel lots of real love for someone you love.  However, that is a very different thing from how well and often you do the relating of your love.  It is not enough to know you love someone for it to do you and them the good it can do.  You have to relate it or actively send and receive it, preferably with skill and coordination ( see “Love Is Natural – Love Relating You Learn”).

Occasionally it seems we can subconsciously sense poor or insufficient relating of love and the poor or insufficient interrelating with love occurring in a relationship.  That can arrive in our conscious awareness as a vague fear that gets interpreted as a fear of losing our beloved to someone else.  With that interpretation, we can mistakenly focus on defending ourselves against outside threats that do not really exist instead of improving our love-relating actions.

To avoid that mistake, ask yourself these questions.  How well and often am I, and are we, relating our love?  Have my ways or our ways of showing our love dwindled in quality, creativity, freshness, depth, intimacy, closeness, sincerity, power, realness, appreciation, or many other ways?  Am I or we custom tailoring and making special our love-relating?  Are we making and remaking our ways of love-relating current with who we are today, or are we a bit behind and out of date with what is current for both of us in today’s life?  How do we need to do our love-relating differently and better?

The Incredible Importance of Self-Disclosure Love

Many who have fidelity fear issues try to sneak up on the problem by just being better lovers, sex partners, more affectionate or nicer, but they do it secretly and without the necessary self-disclosure.  Doing those improvement things is good except that it may lead to missing the real issues involved and also the intimacy and closeness that realness can bring.  It also avoids team-working the issue together which usually is much more successful and love producing.
Of the eight major ways to show love directly, self-disclosure probably is one of the most important for fixing fidelity fear problems. (“A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love” and Recovering Love book).

This means that in loving ways you self-disclose that you have fears and insecurity concerning your own attraction power and your ability to keep your beloved from wanting someone else.  You ask if they think you and both of you are relating in and with love well enough to keep things faithful and sufficiently safe from outside threats.  You do that directly because those two things are at issue whether you consciously know it or not.

Thus, you bravely expose your insecurity and risk being chided, misunderstood or ignored, or just possibly lovingly dealt with and respected for your bravery and realness.  Do not hide your fears and try to look more okay than you feel, but do not overdo it either.  Also, self disclose that you as part of this love relationship may need new, better and different relating-work alongside the work of your love partner because, that too, turns out to be almost always a true need in the relationship.  Do not blame, accuse, find fault with, guilt trip, beg or be defensive.  Do good listening as you internally do good self-love.

Now, after working with all that you may be ready to lovingly ask if your fidelity fears have any basis in reality and, if not, could you please have some sincere loving reassurance anyway.

If you do hear that some form of unfaithfulness has or is occurring, do not totally despair, turn into a condemning parent, or retreat into being like a severely abused and hurt child.  A timeout is okay if needed.  The question to ask, and face, is what do you both want to do about it.  To work that out, couple’s counseling with a therapist experienced in dealing with faithfulness, affairs and cheating issues is highly recommended.  You also might want to look at the mini -love-lessons titled “Infidelity and Love”, “Infidelity & the Love Messages That Block & Stop It”, “Adultery and No Divorce Love”, “Forgiveness – A Much-Needed Love Skill” and “Forgiveness in Healthy Self-Love”.

Help spread the word.  Knowledge about love-relating helps.  Tell someone about our Mini-Love-Lessons and this site.  Okay?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: What do you think about the fact that most couples stay together after one, or both, have an affair, and they report they are glad they did, while most couples who break up over an affair are not?

Related posts:

1. Intimacy Fears and Love As the Cure
2. Sex Fears Mastered with Love
3. Infidelity & The Love Messages That Block & Stop It
4. Infidelity and Love
5. Trust Recovery and Love 

Dealing With Love Hurts: Pain's Crucial Guidance

While life’s greatest joys can occur because of love some of life’s greatest hurts also can occur because of love going wrong, gone wrong or love lost.

Love relationship failure and its profound agony, the despair of love leaving, the brutal stab of love rejection, the anguish of love betrayal , the angst of love in doubt, the sickening emptiness of love never present are but some of the hurts we humans face when dealing with insufficient and malfunctioning love.

Few people are raised with good examples, helpful knowledge and useful guidance concerning dealing with the many types of hurt possible in love relationship situations.  The good news is we can learn the skills it takes to cope and even grow from these painful experiences.

What to do when we are deeply lonely for a love that is absent?  What to do when we are involved in a love relationship that is becoming more agonizing than enriching?  What to do when in spite of our best efforts destructiveness is mounting and constructiveness disappearing?  Right this minute around the world there are countless millions facing how to cope with abandonment, feeling unwanted, continuing on when profoundly neglected, being repeatedly demeaned, seriously disregarded, suddenly displaced, and worst of all is not knowing how to get back up and try again after being disastrously love defeated?

Well, I know something of the answer to these questions both from my own personal life love hurts and from working with all the suffering people who have come to me for help with their love hurts.  Take heart and be hopeful if you are hurting or have hurt from similar difficulties!  You can surmount the pain and, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, fly again more beautiful, more powerful and far higher than ever before.

The vast majority of the people I deal with who seek assistance with these love relationship agonies do recover, and learn to soar again going on to love victories greater than what they knew before.  Sadly, of course, there are some who don’t.  They let love relationship related pain bring them down.

Relapses into addiction, profound ongoing depression, long-lasting anxiety, fear-based living and self-destruction of many types are all too often the result of love relationship pain inadequately dealt with.  If you are hurting due to problems related to love I dare you to suspect you can recover.  If you’re not hurting right now but have before, then dare to suspect that none of that deep hurt has to happen to you again.  Dare to believe that “seek and you shall find” is true when it comes to getting over love relationship pain and going on to the victories and joys of a new and different healthy, real love done well.

So, let’s talk of some of what it takes to adequately and successfully deal with the pains that sometimes come along in our love life.  I like to suggest that you start with the idea that all hurt has something to offer.  You see, hurting has usefulness.  Hurt exists for the purpose of guiding us away from harm.  It is important not to confuse hurt and harm; they are quite opposite and are actually enemies of one another.  Hurts are feelings.  Harm is a condition of destructiveness.  Hurt causes you to jerk your hand away from the hot stove before your hand is truly harmed.

It is hurt that gets you to go to the surgeon who takes out your appendix before it blows up and kills you.  Thus, hurt saves your life.  Emotional hurt can get you to study how to do love well so your next love relationship efforts are better.  Yes, hurt in essence is your friend trying to guide you away from harm.  One of the most dangerous things in the world are those diseases which cause no hurt until it is too late.

Some of the most dangerous relationships are those in which one person, without warning, suddenly explodes with long suppressed, hidden hurt and in doing so suddenly causes another person great harm.  Had the hurt been expressed and mutually dealt with they might have worked out a better resolution for all concerned.  Hurt warns us something is wrong and tells us do something different.  Our job is to work with hurt against harm.  This is especially true for hurting, loveless individuals and for those in painful love relationships.

Therefore, a very important thing to do with the pain you experience in a love relationship is to go looking for the ‘guidance message’ in that hurt.  These guidance messages that come from pain can vary greatly.  Your hurt may be sending you a message that says, “Learn to ask for what you want better”, “Do more loving listening”, “Mix sex and love better”, “Stop taking everything so personally”, “Go to counseling”, “Get a divorce”, “Find somebody better”, “Run away” or a thousand other things.

Then, of course, you have to evaluate the message against all the other factors involved.  The trick is to act constructively not destructively.  If possible do that for all concerned.  Remember that hurt always says do something different.  If you don’t do something different expect more hurt.  Your love for someone may tell you to endure the hurt and that may be more important than hurt’s message to do something different.  However, remember that hurt warns you that harm may be coming your way unless you change something.  Hurt becomes harmful when it grows too big for you to be able to get its guidance message.

Often that happens because you have not paid attention previously and sufficiently to hurt’s guidance message.  Here’s a simple example:  Joe kept falling for cold, distant, difficult women.  Once he had such a woman the agonies of dealing with her became intolerable.  Each of these relationships hurt more than the one before.  Finally he heard his hurt’s guidance message and established a lasting relationship with a warm, close and easy to get along with female, so unlike his mother which is where it all started.

Consequently, a really good thing to do with love hurts is to look for and discover their guidance messages.  You can try to reason that all out and sometimes that works quite well.  Often better and quicker is to do a ‘gestalt internal dialogue’ or ‘psychosynthesis – two sub-personalities exercise’.  It works like this: say “Hello” to your love hurt and ask it “What are you trying to tell me?”  Then in fantasy you become your hurt and say, “Hi self, I am your hurt and what I’m trying to tell you is …” followed by the first thing that pops up in your thoughts.

At first this may take some practice but those who practice usually get surprising and surprisingly useful replies from their subconscious.  When you practice these techniques more they usually help you go much further and get excellent results.  Some people learn from their hurt by journaling or writing out what their hurt is telling them, others draw or use other visual arts, some achieve understanding through music and others through dance therapy techniques.

Love hurt is likely to increase and repeat if you don’t learn its guidance message.  Of course, after learning the guidance message you have to heed that message, and do something different and hopefully better.

As always, go and grow with love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Can you list what you have learned from some of your past love hurts?  Is that learning still with you or will you have to learn it again?

Related posts:

1. Dealing With Love Hurts: First Aid Tips
2. Dealing With Love Hurts: Shared And Unshared Pain
3. Dealing with Love Hurts: A Dozen Love Hurts to Know and Grow From
4. Dealing with Love Hurt: Diagnosing Love Hurt Accurately
5. Why Love Problems Hurt So Bad