Is Love Winning?

Mini-Love Lesson  #265

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

Take heart !

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

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

Proof positive!

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

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

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

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

Search For Better Sources

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

Don't Overdose on Negative News

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

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

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

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

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

Warnings

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

Getting on the Love Victory Bandwagon

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

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

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

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

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Are You Talking About Love Enough?

“I just realized all we ever really intimately talk about is what’s wrong!  This is supposed to be a love relationship were having, so why aren’t we talking about our love and about love itself”?  Darma stated this to her husband, Antonio, in a worried and perplexed way.

Antonio replied, “Sometimes we talk about sex but you know, Darma, I think you’re right except I’m not at all sure I know how to talk about love.  When you talk about love what all do you talk about”?  Darma responded with a pause and a sort of stammer then said, “Maybe I don’t know how to talk about it very well either but I think we need to try.”

Antonio and Darma share a common problem that afflicts and contributes to the destruction of many a couple, also some families and some friendships.  They don’t talk about love enough.  Because of that insufficiency the love in those relationships may go undeveloped, unrepaired, may wane, become stagnant, weaken, deteriorate and if there are other troubles – may die.  Those who love each other have a much better chance of keeping their love alive, healthy and growing if they learn to talk about their love and about love itself.

Unfortunately our English-speaking heritage is particularly deficient in teaching us how to effectively talk about love.  Part of this comes from a time in which the English peoples feared love meant sex, and sex meant sin, and sin was bad so they thought they shouldn’t and, therefore, wouldn’t talk about love.  Consequently our English-speaking customs didn’t develop or include much of a language for love itself.  Another part of our poor love-talk-ability comes from the wrong headed, destructive, macho training of men for whom love was mistakenly thought of as a weakness and a far too feminine thing. Thus, it became unmanly to be anything but silent on the topic of love.

For a time English-speaking churches talked about love but then they abandoned that for talking about faith, and correct belief, even though the New Testament clearly teaches love is greater and more important than faith.  Love as a word having to do with great and powerful caring, compassion, courage , nurturing, protection and high joy was surrendered to those who wanted a ‘nicer’ synonym for sex.  Sadly for some our inability to talk about love has led them to believe love does not exist, or can’t be understood, or it has led them into very mistaken, destructive understandings of love (see the entries “Love’s Definition series” in the left column, and the “False Love series” in the Site Index under ‘F’).

Many couples, families and friendships don’t do very well at the naturally needed maintenance, repair, nurturing, healing and development type of talk required to keep their love relationships healthy.  So many couples talk only about love when a love relationship starts to go wrong or already is in deep trouble.  Others may get some ‘love subjects’ talk done but they may not do enough love talking to really keep their love lively and growing.  Some talk is better than none, but learning the wide range of important love related topics available and talking about them all is far better.

To help you with talking love and doing a good job of it here are a dozen guidance questions containing various love topics for you and those you love to practice talking about.  I suggest you go to a loved one and say, “Let’s talk about one or more of these” and, thereby, see if you can work toward the highly rewarding and enjoyable goal of really being able to talk constructively about your love relationship and love itself.

1.  Do you talk about how exactly those you love want to be touched, i.e. harder or softer, higher or lower, faster or slower, etc. when you’re trying to convey love to them? (See the entry “50 Varieties of Love Touch”).

2.  Do you know which of the eight major groups of behavior that convey or demonstrate love is most important to you and to those closest to you?  (Read Recovering Love Part Two, a book by yours truly).

3.  When a loved one talks to you about a problem in their life do you know how much they want you to respond with empathy, advice, expressions of care, instructions, commiseration, reasoning, sympathy, suggestions, hugs, silence, solutions, cheerleading or anger at who or what they are angry about?  (See the entry “Love Positive Talking”).

4.  Do you and your loved ones talk about how affirmational you want your verbal interchanges to be, i.e. filled with praise, compliments, thanks, appreciation, and other positive remarks?
5.  Can you talk to someone that loves you about how much and how well you do or don’t go about healthful self-loving self-talk?

6.  With those you love do you talk about how to work together to avoid speaking in ways that harm your love relationship and then about the love words you really want to hear?

7.  Can you identify, label and speak clearly about at least a dozen enjoyable emotions love can help you feel, and then can you identify and talk about the guidance messages brought to you by each of those emotions  (See “Emotional Intercourse”)?

8.  Do you and your romantic love interest do well at initiating and carrying on intimate, precious, tender, love talk?

9.  How well and how often do you and your romantic love interest ask for what you want when it comes to showing each other love?

10.  Are you doing a good job of sharing your love history, your love thinking, your love actions, your love hopes and the various emotions love causes you to feel?

11.  Do you talk with those you love about love’s compassion, love’s affection, about feeling cherished, about the bravery of love, love’s preciousness, love and trust, love’s rapture, love’s healing ability, love’s spirituality, love’s kindness, along with the ways of lasting love, mature love, healthy love, protective love and enriching love (read Dr. Bell Hooks’ book All About Love)?

12.  Do you and those you love talk about how you can grow your love, conquer with love, heal with love, survive with love (read Love and Survival by Dr. Dean Ornish), nurture with love, teach love, enrich life with love, worship with love, inspire with love and do sex with love (see the entry “Making Love or Having Sex?).

Hopefully that’s enough to get you started on ‘talking about love enough’ if you’re not already doing so.  Let me suggest you set yourself a goal of talking about love with someone at least once a week.  It’s also good to read about love at least that often.  Doing that is likely to assist you and those you love in becoming far more love oriented, love empowered, love effective and life victorious  (read Dr. Helen Fisher’s book Anatomy of Love and Dr. Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving).

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Are you good at enjoying talking love?

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Related posts:

1. Love Positive Talking
2. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
3. Pro-Love and Anti-Love Talking
4. Additive Talking – A Love Skill
5. Talking Styles That Hurt and Help Love 

No Hurt, Under Attack Self-Love

Mini-Love-Lesson  #264

Synopsis:  If you learn to practice what this mini-love-lesson is all about, you likely will not have a lot of hurt feelings, worries, anxieties or stressors that might otherwise impact your future life and interfere with all your love relationships.  So, start by wondering what the Sanskrit word, Upeksha, means and to where it can lead you and your relationships.  Especially is this useful if you want to more freely express yourself without fear of being rejected or hurt in the process.

Getting "Dissed" and Not Hurt

Imagine being confronted by several people severely "dissing" you (disrespecting, demeaning, and disparaging you) and it not bothering you almost at all.  In fact, imagine you even are feeling a bit sad for those people because they seem to be the kind of people who have to behave this negative way.  Also imagine, that then you go about your life as okay as you were before the dissing.   You only are thinking "was there anything those people said that might be a bit useful”.  You consider what might be practical usage, feel just fine and then mentally and emotionally fully dismiss it.

How do you get to be such a person?  How do you become able to be unscathed by criticism, serious verbal attack and even hate?  Yet, you still non-defensively can evaluate what they had to say garnering whatever is useful and then be free of it.  Here is a major way toward that.

The Upeksha Way

Let me introduce you to the Buddhist and Hindu way of upeksha love if you don't already know about it.  Among other things, upeksha is a way of healthy self-love that frees you from being hurt when you are being disparaged, put down under covert or overt attack, or facing rejection.  Upeksha is also a way that frees you from becoming trapped in useless defensiveness or harmful offensiveness when responding to negatives coming your way.

Furthermore, it is an approach which opens the way to loving others, even your enemies, as you love yourself.  Upeksha, therefore, is an "I win, you can win too" approach that not only keeps you okay but tremendously helps in assisting relationships get and stay okay.  Upeksha love fits well with healthy self-love understandings and especially with not giving your power away concepts. Furthermore, a upeksha love mindset often is fantastic for developing one’s healthy self-love.

Upeksha Difficulties

The upeksha way has some drawbacks.  It often is hard for the western mind to understand and practice it at first.  It is even hard to translate into western languages.  The closest term to upeksha we have in English is the quite inadequate word "equanimity" which leaves out the very strong love aspects of upeksha.  Equanimity sort of gets close to the cognitive aspects of the upeksha approach.

Upeksha, as a concept, has been misunderstood and mistranslated as detachment, indifference, uncaring, uninvolvement, unconnectedness, and even non-loving.  Upeksha is a way of not getting involved in the tangle of dysfunctional ways of relating to others and not being destructively influenced by others.  At the same time, it definitely is a major way of love.

Upeksha love is great for avoiding fights, emotional distancing problems, destructive relating, staying okay in spite of what others do, making and keeping peace, getting to rational thought mixed with love, and reducing unhealthy stress and stressor illness effects.

One other difficulty for many is the necessary unlearning process of old programming in order to proceed with upeksha.  Some of those have to do with more western ways of quickly taking and returning offense, a proneness to overt conflict, and the western world way of being highly vulnerable to emotional hurts.

Exploring Upeksha Love

In the East, the upeksha is known as one of the four immeasurable mindsets of real love.  It, therefore, is of tremendous significance.  Reportedly, it is called immeasurable because the more you give it, do it and live it, the more you have of it to give, do and live.

Upeksha means having the wisdom to love with a mindset that sees the world with an equality of values and importance whether or not it is for, against or indifferent to you and yours.  This mindset embodies many great teachings like "love your enemies", respect all life and life forms, the most stupid crazy incomprehensible ideas of today can turn out to be the wisdom of tomorrow, victory and loss, praise and condemnation, hate, love and even indifference all have much to teach us, and all our ups and downs are relative to the perspective of where we are looking from.  Therefore, we are to look for the merit in all things even those things we would oppose vigorously.

So, the upeksha mindset recommends when facing negatives about you coming from others, work to see them with democratic curiosity.  Think of this.  If someone handed you a piece of paper and on it was written a scathing, lie-filled, discrediting and very negative description of you and your character written by someone you did not know very well, how might you feel -- upset, hurt, angry or what?  Now, if it was written in a language you cannot read and have no understanding of, how would you feel?  Perhaps only a bit curious, certainly not upset, hurt, angry, etc.  That is an example of how it is not the words that come at you but the meaning you attached to them, in your own brain, that hurts or upset you.  Of course, you have been trained, programmed and conditioned to attach great hurtful, emotional meaning to quite a few words and terms.  So, it is your training and upbringing that make you vulnerable to more or less being easily, emotionally hurt.  However, with the upeksha mindset you can overcome much and maybe even all of that.

With a upeksha mindset and thought tools, you dispassionately detach yourself from your inner program for getting upset and from the meaning you attach to the words of degradation coming your way.  You need not detach from the person speaking or writing critically of you but you can if you need to.  Here are a few thought tools you might use.  Think "what your detractors say of you probably says a lot more about them than about you" and "who are you giving your power away to, to be your judge and why even do that?".  Remember, you always can make yourself at least 51% of the vote on your own okayness.  You also can think “is there anything useful in what your detractor is telling you and, if there is, be thankful for it and use it.

Once you get into not hurting yourself with what others think or say of you, you become more free to better understand what they get themselves upset about and then you can be emotionally empathetic in regard to your naysayers.  That is a loving part of the upeksha mindset.  You need not defend yourself by being uncaring, counterattacking, fighting to defend yourself or change their thinking, or by fearfully trying to just escape.  If you fear there may be some truth to what they are saying against you, that deserves some evaluation-thinking with equanimity.  That means having a mental calmness and composure that gives even-tempered, balanced, levelheaded, democratic reasoning to all sides of whatever is the issue at hand.  At the same time, the upeksha mindset empowers you to love the people, including yourself, and/or other life forms evolved.  It is surprising that once you get into this mindset you often find things that are humorous absurdities and well worth laughing at.  Sometimes this includes yourself.

Upeksha Love and Fairness

One of the best things about the upeksha mindset is how it helps with thinking and acting with fairness.  The upeksha approach greatly assists in nondiscriminatory thinking, unbiased judgment, broad viewing and even-mindedness.  It is teacher speak for "the wisdom of seeing many things equally" and, therefore, not being unknowingly biased, unconsciously prejudice, blinded by traditional thinking, but instead, being egalitarian and sufficiently impartial, and still being passionately caring and kind of heart.

Only An Introduction

There is a whole lot more to the mindset of upeksha love and how it can help in each and every love relationship.  We can only scratch the surface here in this introduction to the subject.  So, I encourage you to find out more.  You might do that by reading Teachings on Love by the highly esteemed Buddhist teacher/author Thich Nhat Hahn.

Also germane to this topic is the article “Healthy Self-Love and Not Giving Your Power Away”, a a mini-love-lesson which can be of considerable help. More can be found in this site’s indexes.

One More Thing:  Talking about anything you are learning helps learn about it better, broader and in new and different ways.  So, who might you enjoy talking to about the upeksha love mindset?  Not all branches of Buddhism or Hinduism stress the Four Immeasurable Mindsets of Real Love the same way.  However, if you find a Buddhist, a Hindu or comparative religions teacher to talk to about these four mindsets – quite a few good, big things might come from it.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Dealing With Love Hurts: Shared And Unshared Pain

Know that there is great value and importance in sharing your love related hurts.  When you share any of your feelings you share an important part of yourself.  This is especially true of anything that involves your hurt, and also your joy.  When hurt is shared the people in a relationship can join together to work against the harm that the hurt is trying to lead you away from.  (Remember, hurt’s purpose is to help you avoid harm – see blog entry “Dealing with Love Hurts: Pain’s Crucial Guidance”).

Hurt shared also can lead to stronger, more loving, intimate connection, thus, strengthening a love relationship.  Hurt handled alone usually takes longer to get past and may be unnecessarily worse.  Shared hurt has cathartic or ‘venting’ value and with the right loving people gives you a chance to replace it with an input of love.

Too many people try to hide their love relationship hurt and handle it secretly on their own.  Of course, it can be satisfying and individually strengthening to know that you handled it on your own.  However, that may not do much for your relationships and it may be harder to deal with on your own.  Lots of people want to tough it out and avoid the shame or embarrassment of failing at love, or be seen as weak and love-needy.  Toughing it out can be done but it’s ever so much slower, and often less curative of love hurts than when they are shared with caring others.

Sharing your hurt with friends and family, carrying counselors, clerics, therapists and helping professionals of many types, along with one’s higher power all can be marvelously assistive.  It’s important to know that frequently it is not so much their advice but the receiving of a sense of loving care coming your way that makes the difference.  Loving listening (see blog entry “Listening with Love”) can be the great healing medicine for love related hurt.  This is especially true when hurt is intense.  Knowledge and suggestions, however, can come more and more into play as the hurt reduces.  That’s where counselors, therapists and the lore master’s of love can be ever so helpful in assisting you not to repeat the actions that lead to love related hurt and to possible harm.

So, if you’re hurting because of a love relationship situation going poorly, or badly, or one that is over, think about who are you going to share your hurt with.  Probably it will be whoever you feel closest to.  Perhaps you will hear a message in your head that you don’t want to burden anyone with your hurts.  If that’s the case be sure to offer to do the same caring listening for whomever you share your hurt with if they are hurting some day.  I’m prejudiced but I like to suggest that the very best person to share your pain with maybe an empathetic, love-wise counselor or therapist.  That way you also probably can learn what you need to learn from the hurt.  A very love-centered cleric, teacher, physician or other helping professional, and those wise people who do seem to know more about love also may do quite well.

When you share your love related hurt with someone that you see as the cause of your hurt there are special things to be aware of and special things to do.  First, be aware that a person you think has caused your hurt is likely to hear what you are saying as an attack, full of blame and accusation.  They then may respond with defensiveness which will come across to you as offensive.  A fight may then erupt.  You may be able to avoid all that by starting your statements with “I feel…”, “I’m experiencing…”, “I want…” and other “I” statements instead of “You did…”, “You should have…”, “You should not have…” and other “you” statements”.

Also avoiding angry blaming looks and sounds helps sharing a love hurt to go better.  You also likely would do well to acknowledge that you probably helped or played a part in the causation of your hurt.  The way you caught, interpreted, perhaps misunderstood, and otherwise processed what the person you’re talking to said or did possibly has as much to do with your hurt as does the actions or words of the other person.  Here’s another thing to be aware of.  As you share your hurt the person you are talking to may feel guilty, inadequate, unworthy and in other ways simply bad.  None of that may help them help you with your hurt.

To get the help you want from them you may have to ask them exactly for what you want.  Do you want to ‘blow off steam’ and have them just listen with care?  Do you want a hug?  Do you want them to express empathy that you hurt?  Whatever it is, its best if you ask them clearly.  Otherwise you may not get what you desire to help with your hurt.  It usually helps a lot to say something like “I just want you to listen to me express my hurt, and I want you to show me you really care that I hurt by saying you care, and give me a hug, and not do anything else, like give me advice.  And I don’t want you to have any problems with what I’m saying if you can – OK?”.  Sharing your hurt with someone who helped create the hurt, when done well, can lead to improved loving, a closer relationship, better understanding, and an avoidance of similar hurts in the future.

The trick, of course, is doing it well.  It is important not to think a loved one who helped create your hurt will know what to do to help you get over the hurt.  It’s your hurt, you own it, and you are the one most likely to know what to do to make it better, while you’re loved one just may be confused.  It’s a mistake to think that because they love you they’ll know what to do.  So, at least guess what will help you and then request that as clearly as you can.  If you completely don’t know what will help either try saying something like “Give me a break until I figure it out” or “I want to see a caring look on your face, hear caring sounds and words, and feel loving, caring touch” because those things usually do help soothe love related hurts and help them diminish.

As always, Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question If and when you are baffled or overwhelmed by your hurt in a difficult love relationship situation how easy is it for you to share your hurt and seek help from the loved one(s) involved in the situation, or a friend, family member, or helping professional?

Dealing With Love Hurts Series
Dealing with Love Hurts: A Dozen Love Hurts to Know and Grow From
Dealing With Love Hurts: First Aid Tips
Dealing With Love Hurts: Pain's Crucial Guidance
Dealing With Love Hurts: Shared And Unshared Pain

Habit Action, Love and You?

     

Mini-Love-Lesson  # 263

Synopsis:  The necessity and value of developing love action habits for expressing love and for accomplishing improvements in well-being are introduced.  A quick, simple, starter aid usefully presents 10 intriguing habit, love questions to ponder; some problems to avoid in being habitually loving and how to obtaining regular love actions you would like to have come your way are all helpfully related.

Love in Actions Not Just in Feelings

Love, healthy real love that is, motivates love action.  Love actions are of two main types -- those behaviors that express love and those actions done to benefit the well-being of the loved.  Love actions that express love are those that show, demonstrate, give evidence of, convey, communicate, and directly give love.  Additionally, and extremely important are the many love actions that are done to contribute to the benefit and well-being of the loved.  Included here are actions which are caring, nurturing, healing, protective, rescuing, supportive, steadfast, strengthening, cooperative and anything aimed at advancing the well-being of the loved.

Arguably, our species and perhaps all higher orders species depend heavily for their survival and thriving largely on love-motivated, contributing actions.  From the love motivated care parents give their children to the love-motivated struggles for freedom, equality, and universal human improvement, love actions carry us forward.

Culturally, love feelings seem to get the most attention.  Love without at least attempts at achieving contribution to well-being is much less emphasized.  Historically, love feelings mistakenly have been taught to include jealousy, possessiveness, madness and a great deal of noncontributory and destructive action.  Those factors, in my view, more accurately are linked to various forms of toxic, false love and lack of love syndromes (see our book Real Love False Love).

Love must be done not just felt.  It has long been taught in various love oriented religions and philosophies that love feelings are good but not adequate until they result in contributory action.  Many have concluded that love without action is insufficient love and probably destined to fade and fail.

Relying on love feelings without a sufficient emphasis on the doing part of love, according to some thinking, is the main reason for many love relationship’s frailty and floundering (see “Love Active Enough?”).

Action Habits of Love

Habits are behaviors that we keep doing over and over, rather automatically.  Habits can be good, bad or neutral.  Love habit actions can be good, in fact, very good for ourselves, for others and for love relationships.  Some people, but not enough, grow up in families where the action habits of love are plentiful and effective.  Here are some examples. 

• With Nurturing Love, bedtime stories get read to children almost every night.
• With Protective Love, the doors get locked and windows secured time after time.
• With Affirmational Love, well merited praise and compliments flow.
• And with Tactile Love, hugs and caresses are are freely and abundantly given.

In families with good love habits, children observe, benefit and copy these habits for themselves in adulthood.  Many kids, however, are not so lucky to grow up in such love-skillful homes and so they have to consciously and purposefully give attention to learning and developing these and other kinds of love action habits.

Reportedly,  the great philosopher, Voltaire, taught that the most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.  According to both Hindu and Buddhist teachings about real love, the most important love action you can take daily in ordinary life is to be in a good mood and give that as a gift to those you love, to those you encounter and to yourself.  This practice is part of doing what is called "Mudita" love, one of The Four Immeasurable Mindsets of Real Love.

Choosing to habitually yet sincerely have a countenance that is appreciative, happy and loving in everyday life is likely to be the best gift of love you can give, over and over again for the rest of your life.  It also probably is one of the most psychologically and relationally healthy things you can do – regularly.  So, why not make it a habit to look for what you genuinely can appreciate and enjoy, get yourself happy with that appreciation, and then lovingly express and/or share that appreciation and joy with whoever you can – on each and every usual, ordinary day.  On extraordinary days, there may be a need for compassionate love, or adamant love, or serene love and, of course, for other things like work, duties, rest, etc. (book reference Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh).

A STARTER’S AID TO DEVELOPING AND IMPROVING LOVE ACTION HABITS

Below are 16 questions aimed at helping you start your own survey of love habits you might want to consider developing.  Each question introduces an action that can be related to a habit for expressing or doing love.  These questions can be more for pondering than for definitive answering, if you wish to use them that way.

1. When greeting loved ones, do you commonly, lovingly touch them and, if so, how might you improve that love-giving experience?

2. When starting to talk with someone you love, do you quickly make and maintain good eye contact and have a loving, interested look on your face?

3. As you talk with someone you love, are your tones of voice usually pleasant and/or caring?

4. If a person you care about is upset, do you almost always listen with care more than you talk?

5. On most days, do you gift your loved ones with a countenance of positivity, pleasantness and joy?

6. Do you regularly and readily give experience gifts, do favors and act to assist friends and others you care about?

7. Is it your habit to show up and stay with loved ones in their times of crisis, difficulty and stress, as well as during their times of celebration and/or victory?

8. Frequently, do your words often offer sincere affirmation of the worth and quality of those you care about, uncontaminated with criticism or laudatory self-reference?

9. Do you often spend time thinking about how to show or do your love, learning about love and/or discussing love relationship improvement issues?

10. Do you linger in times of closeness and extend your time with loved ones, enjoying just being with them and listening to whatever they want to talk about?

There are literally thousands of other similar questions to the ones you just read.  Those 10 are just to get you started thinking on developing your habits broadly.  You might want to make up some more love action habit questions of your own.

Some Love Habit Problems

Nothing is perfect and so it is with love habits.  One issue is, can you be okay with the knowledge that no matter what love actions you do there are some people who can see them negatively?  They may misperceive, misunderstand, misinterpret, be of a generally critical mindset, or just be having a bad day and be making everything negative.  It helps to remember that whatever negative reaction others may have, that likely tells you more about them than you.  Your job, with the help of healthy self-love, is to stay okay and give a balanced critique of their criticism or reaction to see if it might have any use.  It is healthy self-love to not give your power away to other’s negations and that also is an action that can be done habitually (see “Self-Love -- What Is It?”).

Another problem with love habits can be that we may do them so automatically that we do not consciously think much about them once the are established.  Therefore, it is good to purposefully re-examine them every so often to see if they need some adjustments, improvements, etc.

Insincerity, perceived or real, is another issue with things done habitually.  With that, can come loss of love-action-impact or effect.  Even love, when done habitually for too long, can seem just perfunctory.  For that reason, putting in variations of love-habit behavior can help a lot.  Examples are longer/shorter, softer or more vigorous hugs, cuddling with differing caresses, or just stillness and closeness, kisses delivered where they have not been delivered recently, words of love said more intensely or whispered, etc.  Almost all love habit actions can be infinitely varied and still habitually delivered.

Getting the Love Habit Actions You Want?

Are there love actions you want consistently and repeatedly given to you?  Perhaps you hunger for more regular I love you statements, or kisses on the back of the neck, or laudatory statements made about you in front of your family, or … whatever.  What you want may indeed be something you need for full and healthful functioning.  In our wants are often hidden our needs.  So, we must ask the question “what are you doing to get your wants/needs for love action habits to be in your life more”?  Is there something in the way of your straight-forwardly asking for what you want?  Perhaps you were taught it is too selfish to directly ask for love, or love is somehow spoiled if you have to ask for it, or some other of the anti-love and love sabotaging trainings in the world.

There are many of them.  If so, please work to ignore them.  It is honest and efficient to take the guesswork out and just ask for what you want.  It is best if the way you ask is clear, exact, behaviorally descriptive and requested in loving, cheerful, self-confident tones.  It is good to add that you are willing and wishing to hear whatever the person you are talking to might also want (see “Asking For What You Want -- with Love!”).

One More Thing Please

Some of those who talk over these mini –love-lessons with others, report getting additional benefit out of them.  Maybe you will too.  If so, please remember to mention this site and our many free mini-love-lessons, and thus, maybe spread some healthy, love knowledge around.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable question:  Are not actions and achievements that contribute, far more worthy than actions and achievements that don't?