Monogamy for Love & Monogamy for Sex

Synopsis: Two real-life, sex and love faithfulness dilemmas starts this mini-love-lesson; followed by the question ‘why monogamy’; ends with concepts and information about how monogamy dilemmas get resolved; and more.

Faithfulness in One and Not the Other

“I keep having this struggle,” Lacey said with an anguished look.

She continued, “I sincerely love my husband and I certainly don’t want to do anything to mess up our really good marriage.  However, every so often I have to have sex with somebody new and different.  My sex life with my husband is good and I know he deeply loves me, and not only that, but he always turns me on.  I wouldn’t change any of that for the world.  But then I get really attracted to other guys and sometimes gals, and I end up in bed with them.

“Sometimes I go back to the same person if we develop a real friendship, but usually the sex part slowly fades out and then we’re just friends, even good friends.  I don’t want my husband to find out because he would be really hurt and I never want to hurt him.  I’m still in love with him and think I always will be.  Outside of sex, he definitely is the one and only for me.  I mean as a life partner he is definitely the one I want to spend my whole life with.

“I struggle and keep trying to become sexually faithful and sometimes I manage it for maybe six months.  In my work I get to go and come as I please, and make my own schedule, and meet a lot of interesting people.  Some of those I bed and have a really erotic, passionate, exciting and very different experiences with.  It’s different from what happens with my husband.  With him it’s more about love with sex.  With the others it’s just about sex but it is usually great sex.  I guess my heart is monogamous but my body is not.  What’s wrong with me?  What am I to do?  This has been going on this way for years.”

It was rather the opposite for Lowell.  He came into counseling saying, “I’m in love with two women and I can’t break it off with either one.  Both of them say I’ve got to choose one of them and let go of the other.  I’ve tried that with each of them, more than once, and it never lasts.  One way or another we just get back into the same three-way thing.  It’s not a sex thing.  Sex with both of them is good.  A few times all three of us tried sex together but neither of them wanted to keep doing that.  I am really in love with both of them.  I am told I can’t really love two women at the same time so it must not be real, but I think it is.

“After all, I love my two parents, and my two children by a former marriage, and both my brother and my sister, so why can’t I love two women at the same time?  They both have tried breaking up with me but then they both have come back, and we start up again.  What am I to do?  I hate to see both of them hurt.  I tried breaking up with both of them at the same time so I wouldn’t hurt them anymore, but that didn’t work for any of us either.  Is there something wrong with me because I can’t choose?  I so don’t want to keep hurting them”.

Why Monogamy?

For ages in many cultures marriage was about the four P’s: procreation, progeny, privilege and property.  Custom ruled at first, and later religion, and then the law.  At certain times in history, love in marriage was even considered embarrassingly wrong and sinful.  In many places and times, monogamy was something married women had to do but not husbands.  That was to ensure progeny or that the man’s official offspring was actually the man’s offspring and not some other man’s.

Love had nothing to do with it.  It was with the rise of the democracies that monogamous love, sex and marriage began to get intertwined and eventually melded together in the minds of many.  Since then more and more, the idea of having a special, monogamous, life partner for love and sex and maybe for offspring has been becoming the desirable way to do things.

Around the world and throughout history that has and is, by no means, the only way.  Nor has monogamy proven to be all that successful a way.  There are those that argue that especially ‘sexual monogamy’ is anti-natural, and attempting it causes more personal and societal harm than health.  There also is evidence that the ‘monogamy of the heart’ tends to work better than the monogamy of the genitals.  In this day and age, many, perhaps most, people have to deal with the issues of monogamy or non-monogamy of sex and/or of love.

The Two Monogamies, Apart and Together

Of course, the two monogamies  do get very mixed up together and are seen as inseparable in a fair number of people’s minds.  Making love is not just having sex but is doing both love and sex simultaneously and, therefore, is one thing as many see it.  It is hard, or nearly impossible, for some to separate the two.  Therefore, to them monogamy means both marital loving and having sex with just each other.  However, it seems for a great many people, they may be monogamous in their spouse-type love but not in their sexuality.

For a large group of others, they come to have romantic or spousal love for more than one person but they remain sexually monogamous with their official spouse.  They have ‘affairs of the heart’ but not of the body.  In those social spheres, countries and cultures where love and sex is supposed to be only with a spouse, this presents many heart wrenching conflicts and dilemmas.  Those dilemmas frequently destroy relationships and even lives.

These dilemmas and their destructive outcomes don’t happen all that much or all that severely everywhere.  Monogamy related dilemmas, to a fair extent, have been resolve in a number of social spheres, cultures and countries.  Historically, polygamy, polyandry and other ‘poly’ approaches have prevailed and worked rather well for at least a sizable percentage of people.

Some cultures or sub-cultures developed a system where a person has a main life partner who is dearly loved but there are also other lovers and even in some places ‘sub-spouses’, or people who also are loved and in which sex relationships occur in an ongoing manner without there being much conflict about it.  Of course, in the monogamy-emphasizing societies, people are not raised to think or operate that way, and so most live either in faithful love and sexual monogamy or in deceit, deception, angst, ongoing conflict and guilt.  A small percentage go ‘outside the cultural box’ and make alternate life styles like polyamour and swinging succeed.

How Do Monogamy Versus Non-Monogamy Conflicts Get Resolved?

For a great many people in the monogamy stressing cultures, resolution comes at great cost.  Heart ache, agony, anxiety, depression, anger and a host of other bad feelings occur, along with breakups, divorces and fractured families.  The final resolution also frequently comes with very emotionally wounded survivors of all that.  For others they go through the same agonies but come out stronger and wiser.  Sometimes those people are much more able to discern how to create and grow real love while avoiding the traps of false love.  Still others just repeat the same, unsuccessful pattern again and again.  For those who go to a good counselor or therapist, there can be repair and improvement along with quicker resolution.

Let’s look at what Lacey and Lowell managed to do for the resolution of their monogamy dilemmas.  Lacey got interested in going back to college which she had never finished.  In doing so, she got really interested in a new career, got fascinated with advanced learning, finished her degree, went on for a Masters and entered her new field.  As she accomplished these achievements she did have sex with several men and a woman but her interest in doing so faded.

Her interest in living honestly and doing love with self-disclosure grew, and with it, a desire to risk her husband knowing a more complete truth about her.  Still, she did not want to hurt him so she remained quiet about her sexual involvement with others.  Then on a trip to Sweden where they met a number of people who practiced what might be called ‘open marriage’ he got a little drunk and let it be known that he knew about her affairs or at least some of them.

He also told her he had known for some time that she had to have others occasionally, and if that is what it took for her to be happy, and their marriage to continue being good, he decided long ago to accept it.  He did wish that she had trusted him enough to open up and tell him about the affairs ages ago.  He then confessed that he had a few involvements with other women of his own but had not wanted to hurt her or risk disrupting their marriage by telling her about them, because those involvements were quite unimportant.  In reaction to that knowledge, Lacey experienced a great, tumultuous, bundle of mixed feelings.

Relief mixed with jealousy, irony mingled with anger, confusion was contradicted by a long desired, beginning sense of closure.  Most surprising was a greater sense of intimate closeness with her husband.  All these feelings went up and down, and around and around like a merry-go-round in her heart and gut.  That was followed by long, emotion-filled talks, lots of hugging, crying, laughter and tenderness, finally ending with a fine sense of mutual serenity.

They both made the agreement with one another that if they got a strong desire to have sex with anybody else, they would talk with each other first and figure it out, sort of on a case-by-case basis.  Most importantly they would not hide anything from each other anymore.  Then together they got very involved as volunteers teaching English to disadvantaged immigrants.  The whole thing about sex with others became a sort of ‘been there done that’ and ‘might do it again, but probably not’ resolved dilemma.

Lowell came to a very different solution.  In counseling, he came to view his problem as one of ‘giving his power away’ to both women.  Like a good ‘male hero’ is supposed to do, he was automatically thinking he had to do what his two ‘damsels in distress’ wanted him to do to alleviate their pain.  He came to the point of view that ‘the difficulty’ actually belonged to ‘those who owned the hurt’.  He could be empathetic, sympathetic and even more loving to them both, but it would be acting against himself to quit either relationship.

Since the women had the pain, they owned the pain and, therefore, owned the responsibility of doing something about their own hurt and dissatisfaction.  He saw that with this approach, one or perhaps both of them eventually might go away, or they might just go on in this three-way relationship for, heaven only knows, how long.  However, as he now thought he didn’t have to sacrifice himself and what he wanted, to solve what was essentially their problem, not his; his resolution was to do nothing different.

Kindly and tenderly he talked all this over with each of them.  Both women got extremely upset, furious, threatening, crying and emotionally thrashed about hysterically, at first.  Then when that didn’t change anything, they both calmed down and they all went on as before since they both were getting some good things from the relationships.  Eventually one of the women became involved with another man, and that led to some very sad goodbyes.  Lowell and the remaining lady then went on lovingly together.

Lacey and Lowell found resolutions, perhaps different than you might want to find if you were in their place.  What I have seen in dealing with a great many of these kinds of situations, is that each individual, or couple, or threesome, with heartfelt love and careful work can find their own, unique, healthy solution.  Those solutions vary greatly but they are solutions.  Being open to multiple outcome possibilities helps tremendously.  Avoiding ‘my way, or no way’ approaches, being pressured into cookie-cutter solutions, making anybody the enemy, doing guilt trips, blaming and judgmental-ism, getting lost in feeling negative, or inadequate, inferior or at fault, clears the way for constructive and sometimes surprisingly creative solutions.

As always – Go and Grow with Love!

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Which is more important to you, monogamous love or monogamous sex, or perhaps non-monogamy for either or both?

Related posts:

1. Multiple Sex Partners and Love
2. Sex Fears Mastered with Love
3. Do You Want To Say ‘Love’ When You Mean ‘Sex’?
4. Making Love OR Having Sex?
5. Can You Talk about Sex – with Love? 

Unselfish Self-Love

Synopsis: Three contrarian questions lead off our mini-love-lesson; which then goes to eye-opening answers to those questions; some knowledge about the benefits of unselfish self love; more.

Three Contrarian Questions

Who do you think does more good in the world, the highly self caring or those who are frequently self-sacrificing?

Who do you think are more giving and helpful to others, those who are highly self-critical or those who like and love themselves a lot?  Who do you think attends more to the less able and less fortunate, those who are low or those who are high in active self-love?

Eye-Opening Answers

The research data shows, contrary to what many have been taught to think, the healthfully self loving are more effective and more frequently active in doing kind and compassionate love behaviors and working for the benefit of others than those in various other comparison groups.  It appears the self-sacrificing are not viewed as very good at self care.  Therefore, they are thought to grow depleted and less able to help others over time.

The self-critical often are seen to be too busy giving themselves negative attention to do all that much for others and are considered to have a lack of sufficient self-confidence which slows them down.  The emotionally needy and low in self-love put much more of their energy into confused attempts to get their own needs met, so they too often do not have much to give others.  The timid and guilty fear to act because they might do something wrong and they also are believed to back away from criticism, resistance and disagreements that arise in trying to benefit others.

Those who are healthfully self loving turn out to be the more unselfish, compassionate to others as well as to themselves.  They also are more likely to act altruistically, charitably and champion humanitarian causes, plus be more steadfast in encountering resistance and they are far less likely to surrender to criticism or opposition.  At least that is what a growing body of research points to.

There are other groups that are largely unselfish but it seems that without sufficient, healthy self-love and the self-care and self compassion healthy self-love brings them, for various reasons, don’t do as well.  There are those who think they have never done enough but the self-negativity that brings can be de-energizing and counterproductive.  There are those who have been taught that all pride is a sin, feeling good about yourself is egotistical and blinding to one’s own flaws, and all types of self-love lead to being self-centered, self-indulgent, self-seeking, smug, complacent to the detriment and expense of others.

So far at least, research does not support the contention that people who believe this way are better at being beneficial to others than are those who have strong, healthy self-love. Quite the contrary in fact.  There is evidence that points to the self compassionate and self caring being the most compassionate and caring to and for others.  Thus, they more than others, actually best fulfill the ancient admonition “Love others as you love yourself”.

Are the Selfish the Least Self Loving?

It can be argued that the highly selfish, egocentric, braggadocios, egomaniacal, etc. are just misguided and mistaken, and are attempting to make up for their own considerable lack of real and healthy self-love.  In essence the selfish are seen as trying hard to be self loving but they are trying in the wrong ways.  From this point of view they are doomed to real, self love failure.  Their’s, in fact, is seen as fake self-love.

The healthfully self loving are thought to more likely have a large sense of mysterious awe concerning their own nature, a great sense of gratitude for all that contributed to their own, unique selfhood, plus a tendency toward humorously accepting their own flaws and fumbles.  These are not characteristics thought to be easily found in the strongly selfish.  It is the unkind, uncharitable, unforgiving, un-thoughtful and insensitive to others who are deficient in self-love.

Those who are healthfully self loving are more likely to have what can be called ‘a full cup’ and, therefore, have a lot more they can give to others than those who are desperately trying to fill their very empty and leaking cup, so to speak.  The healthfully self-loving do not need to be egotistical because their cup not only ‘runneth over’ but does not leak.

Narcissism Versus Healthy Self-Love

Narcissism often is defined with the term self-love.  In light of a growing body of evidence concerning healthy, real love, it would seem appropriate to re-think narcissism.  Narcissism is understood to be a condition which blocks or at least lessens love for others.  More and more available evidence shows healthy self-love to enable and promote the love of others.  In fact, narcissism most accurately may be seen as a form of false self-love.  Perhaps it was not self-love that Narcissus experienced when he saw his image in the pool of water and fell in love with himself, but rather just a romantic infatuation, crush, or some other form of false love like love/lust confusion (see the entry) or even a case of time-limited limerence (see the entry).

One of the characteristics of the healthfully self loving is self compassion, well mixed with empathetic compassion for others in suffering and misfortune.  Narcissism is understood as making people so enamored of themselves that they do not notice or care about the suffering and misfortune of others.  Clearly healthy self-love and narcissism appear to be two very different things.

The Benefits of Unselfish Self-Love

It is very self-serving to be unselfish.  A bunch of surprising research results, show that when you act from altruism for the benefit of others you get all sorts of health benefits like improved immunity mechanism functioning, lowered bad cholesterol, better blood pressure and a number of other very, healthy things.  When you show compassion for the suffering of others, but also when you show compassion for yourself at the same time, or soon after, the likelihood of feeling depleted from giving to and caring for others is much less.  Likewise, if you show empathetic responses tor others, they are much more likely to show the same back toward you.

So, if you want to be good to yourself be good to others.  Once again, the amazing wisdom hidden in the simple words “Love others AS you love yourself” is being shown to have biological validity.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Have you ever decided to make yourself feel good by going to do some kind of good for another?  If not, how about starting now?

Related posts:

1. Compassionate Love, A Big Sign of True Love?
2. Thinking Love to Improve Love
3. Forgiveness in Healthy Self-Love
4. Self-Love – What Is It? 

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?

Related posts:

1. Adultery And No Divorce Love
2. False Love Awareness
3. Murder and False Love
4. Are Love and Marriage Getting a Divorce?
5. False Forms of Love: Thrill and Threat Bonding 

What is a Love Hearing and Why Hold One?

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson tells of a couple’s relationship saved by holding love hearings; explains what love hearings are; describes putting ‘the love part’ in; gives the job of the listeners; and ends with a suggestion.

A Couple Saved

With tears of joy in her eyes, Jessica declared, “Holding love hearings saved us!

 “Before we learned how to do the love hearing thing, Jeff and I just ended up having fight after horrible fight.  We would get so mad we both would be yelling trying to get the other one to listen to us, we’d be talking over each other, shouting and screaming, and filled with desperate frustration because the other one wouldn’t ever really hear what either of us was trying to get across.  Neither of us were listening, we were just spewing and trying to get heard.  It wasn’t any wonder that our kids started doing the same thing with each other and then with us too!  Thank goodness we learned about holding love hearings before it was too late for us.”

Jeff then emphatically added, “It took us quite a while to get the hang of doing love hearings well but right from the start it helped a little, and then more and more as we practiced it.  I was very skeptical that anything could help at first but anxious to try anything that might conceivably get us out of our downward spiral.  Love hearings are probably not for everyone but for us learning about love hearings tipped the balance in our relationship back to the positive.  Love hearings don’t cover all the bases but the ones it does cover are major or at least that was true for us.”

What is a Love Hearing Exactly?

The idea for holding a love hearing comes from the field of political science and especially the study of democracy.  Whenever there is an issue, problem, concern or idea for an improvement, and before proposals for solutions or fixes, and definitely before any actions are decided on, “hearings” are held.  Hearings are supposed to be just that – a hearing of what anyone concerned wants to say on a topic and related issues.

Questions for clarification and requests for additional information can be asked, especially at the end of a hearing.  No disagreement, debate, explanation or attempts to fix things are allowed. In the ‘love hearing’ way of doing things.  Brief statements of emotional support to the person speaking can be made but that is about all.  Even if someone feels that they are being accused of something and have an impulse to defend themselves, that is not to be done in this sort of “hearing” situation.

Literally hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my couples and family counseling practice I have heard people say, “I just want to be heard”.  So often that was followed by another person in the session immediately talking over the one who had just made that plea.  Then of course dysfunction ensued until therapeutic intervention managed a difference.  Love hearings are a sort of semi-formalized way of avoiding that sort of dysfunction and allowing everyone concerned to be heard, hopefully with love.

The Love Part

A Love hearing usually is started by someone who says they want not just a hearing but a “love” hearing.  Couples, families, close friendship groups and others in love relationships can use the love hearing system to avoid conflict.  Frequently at first it is good if everyone be reminded that everything can be said with love and everything can be heard with love, and it is best for all involved to aim for that.

It also is good for people to focus on ‘centering themselves’ in their love for whoever is going to be the speaker before the hearing starts.  A start time and end time (very important) are agreed upon, and a place to hold the love hearing, preferably fairly comfortable and not likely to be interrupted during the time allotted are also chosen. This may help to slow down the dissension in an argument that may have just started and also may help interrupt escalating negative emotions.

The person who wants to be heard starts by saying whatever it is they want to say, usually with expressions of emotion included.  Usually the speaker is the only one who can allow an interruption.  It is best if everyone present (even if it is only one person, or a small family, or a larger extended family or a friendship group) does not try to interrupt, no matter what they are thinking or feeling. In a love ‘hearing’ everyone does their best to listen to the speaker and hear the words and feelings being conveyed.

Expressions of care and concern for hurt feelings can be made if they are brief and are empathetic.  That is where the love comes in.  It usually is important that the listener keeps good eye contact with the speaker and, from time to time, has very caring looks on their face and hopefully very caring feelings in their heart.  The concepts of ‘active listening’ and the idea of really listening to the person and not just to the meaning of their words is encouraged.  For more on that, see the entries in the mini-love-lesson’s Subject Index under Communication.

The Job of the Listeners

The job of the listener is to really hear the heart and gut messages of the person speaking as well as their thought process to, in effect, look through the speakers eye’s, feel their feelings emotionally as well as mentally, understand where they are coming from and what they are going through.  Then give them expressions of love and care, possibly at the end. No advice giving, alternate fact presentation, instruction and especially no defensiveness or argument is a part of this love hearing process when it is done well (Note: this may be difficult with the thoughts and emotions the listener is having but know it is possible.  Remember, the listener also gets to be the speaker in a love hearing later if they want).

In this loving process the listener, in effect, is allowed to visit in the mind, heart and gut of another and see how things are there, but it is not a time to try to change anything but rather just to understand and care.  If something is to be decided, a second meeting for that discussion or debate is to be set.  If another listener feels they have a lot to say in response to what they have just heard, they too can ask for a love hearing at a different time (if emotions have calmed, that time may even closely follow the first love hearing but remember to set the time and place again so as to change gears for an alternate love hearing).

Patience is to be shown, plus pauses and time outs (especially when children are the speakers) if they are having a hard time finding words to express their thoughts and feelings.  Children, by the way, as well as adults do well with praise and thanks for self disclosing their views and feelings.  Various couples, families, etc. add other guidelines.  Some people formalize the process with more exact rules but many do this process more informally or semi formally following the guidelines given here.

If you are having trouble and arguments like Jessica and Jeff or anything similar, why not try holding a love hearing?  It may be a little awkward at first but those who work at it seem to get good results.  Children especially often like this process and adults find it much much better than fighting.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What do you think about the statement which says “really good listeners can repeat-back whatever has just been said to them, pretty much verbatim, and also can tell you the emotions of the one who did the speaking”?  Does that description fit you?