Contemplating Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson first introduces you to the value of contemplating love by way of some mind-tickling and significant questions; then touches on a few super sources for love contemplation; next comes contemplative wisdom and trash; and ends with five starter, love-based conceptions likely to be well worth contemplating.

The Questions of Love

Do you give love much thought?  Lots of people don’t until it goes away or turns out to be false.  Perhaps you have pondered what love really is?  Or maybe you puzzled over how love works?  Do you ponder about how to tell the real thing from the false?  What do you think of love’s reported ability to heal physical and psychological illness?  Have you tried to figure out how one gets, gives, grows, loses, destroys, recaptures, sends, receives or benefits from love?  Yes, there are a great many questions when contemplating love and probably in doing so can significantly improve one’s life of love.  As might be expected, those who don’t give love much thought seem to be the ones who commonly run into all sorts of love troubles and big love failures.

You also can contemplate lots of questions concerning yourself and love.  Are you well loved?  Do you love well?  Have you ever thought about your own love skills?  Are your love skills poor, average or superior?  Are you skilled at integrating love and sex?  How about integrating love and parenting?  Then there’s integrating love and friendship?  Are you good at healthy self-love?  You have heard phrases like love of country, love of God, love of life, etc.  But do you know what actions to take to accomplish those kinds of love?  Are you a person who relies more on love luck, or are you someone who develops your own abilities to act with love?  Do others see you as a loving person, and do you see yourself as a person of love?

Contemplating love regarding others also is important.  Does she or he love me?  Do my children really love me?  Do I have friends who genuinely love me?  Do my family members love each other well or poorly?  Do you associate with people who love well, are love skilled and love oriented?  Are the people in your life mostly anti-loving and/or non-love oriented?  Contemplating these types of questions just might change your life.

What the Greats Have Said

Another way to contemplate love is to study and give consideration to the writings of philosophers, religious leaders and the great thinkers that have preceded us.  Socrates, Aristotle and especially Plato, who wrote his famous Symposium on Love, had a lot to say about love.  Teachings, concepts and ideas about love can be found in all the Scriptures of the world’s great religions.  Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, Krishna, Confucius and many other great religious masters have taught a great deal concerning love.  More contemporary great minds in a wide variety of scientific, research, human services and many other fields also have contemplated love and produced highly worthy and influential volumes on love.  So, you might want to do some reading to assist your contemplations.

Wisdom and Trash

The largest number of ideas about love contemplated by the largest number of people probably comes from songwriters, poets, novelists, playwrights and the like.  Love stories are thought by some to be the very first written works.  For ages it was only those in the arts who tried to convey understandings concerning love.  Not only writers but painters and sculptors have presented much that can produce meaningful and inspirational contemplations concerning love.  Some of this is very wise, helpful, healthy, useful and right.  Unfortunately, a great deal of it can be considered trash, wrong, stupid, misleading and downright destructive.  But that also is true of many of the ideas presented by the supposed great thinkers, writers, etc.

So, it is by contemplation that one may sort out some of the trash from the jewels of wisdom that actually can do you and your loved ones some good.  For example, consider this.  Many a love story and love song has reinforced the idea that love is jealous.  The teachers and Scriptures of several religions definitively teach “love is not jealous”.  Which one is right?  Which one is wise and which one is more likely to lead you astray, and best be considered trash?  Perhaps you will want to contemplate that!

Starter Things to Contemplate about Love

Below are some statements involving love which you may enjoy thinking about, or in other words, contemplating.  It’s perfectly all right to not believe them, disagree or agree, or to go off on some tangent.  You also might want to think them over, out loud, with someone else.  That’s another way to help contemplation, by discussion.  See what you think about these ideas.

1. Hate destroys the hater
Indifference dulls the indifferent
Love makes better the loved and the loving.

2. Healthy, real love is always about and for the benefit of the loved.

It is only false love that can turn to wanting to hurt, harm and destroy.

3. Love is the greatest of all naturally occurring phenomena, but how to do it, give it,   get it and grow it takes lots of learning.

4. Two things get better and bigger by giving them away, ideas and love.

5. How well and how much you do healthy self-love will effect how much and how well you get healthy real love from others, and how well your love relationships will do overall.

Now, I suggest you contemplate the above statements and above questions as a way to get started on practicing love contemplation, and see where it leads you.  I think you may be quite pleased with the results you get.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What is the most important, influential and significant thing ever said to you, or read by you, about love?

Related posts:

1. How Smart Is Your Love? – A Test 

Is Your Affirmational Love Enough?

 

Mini-Love-Lesson # 275

Synopsis:  The importance of stating and demonstrating love by way of affirmational behaviors; a three-step process for doing affirmational love; the importance of being real; 11 hints for talking affirmationally to your loved ones; and a surprisingly numerical answer to the question “how much affirmational love is enough?” are all quickly called to your attention in this valuable mini -love-lesson.

Affirmational love charges our batteries.  It is crucial for high functioning, long-lasting relationships.  Research shows couples who utilize best practices of affirmation typically stay together happily.

It also is known to strengthen love bonds.  If affirmational love is bestowed and well received, often it results in a loved one’s increased self-confidence and subsequent accomplishments.  

Affirmation is a beautiful tool to aid the cycling of love.  When we feel appreciation, it can lead to doing affirmational loving.  When affirmations are absorbed, often there is an impetus to send back an affirming response.  An affirmation is like a stamp of approval which recognizes attributes and honors them (see “Communicating Better with Love: Mini Lessons”).

Three Steps To Affirmational Love

Affirmational love just takes three simple steps.  First notice, second appreciate and third affirm.  First we notice something positive or likeable in a loved one.  These can be characteristics or behaviors that catch our attention or something we discover when purposefully looking for qualities that we genuinely appreciate.  Next we delight in this aspect of our loved one and appreciate how it is an intrinsic part of their being.  Then, that motivates us to share our appreciation in affirmational words or actions. 

Sometimes these three steps are quick and rather automatic, at other times they may be more complicated.  If what we see and appreciate is of deep significance or major importance, finding the right words or deeds to carry our affirmational love may take more time and effort.  Remember that affirmational love is one of the crucial ways to communicate our love and enhance our relationships for quality and longevity, so, it is well worth whatever time and effort we put into it.

Here is a little example.  Suppose you notice one of the people you love being kind to a child.  You pause for a short time, quietly appreciating their kindness.  Then with tender tones you say, “Watching how kind you were to that child, really touched my heart”.  You accompany those heartfelt words with a gentle hug.  By doing these simple things, you probably have helped yourself and your loved one feel good.  Incidentally, you probably have reinforced their tendency to be kind.

It also is likely they will want to be with you just a bit more.  With this positive affirmation, they may feel stronger and their self-image may get a boost.   Your heartfelt connection with your loved one likely has been nourished and bolstered.  Another boon is that you and your loved one probably will function, psycho-biologically, more healthfully – at least a tiny bit.  Had you just noticed and appreciated but not done the affirmation, you would have benefitted but your loved one would not have known of your appreciation, nor benefitted from your affirmation.  Relationships also benefit significantly when affirmational love is performed often and well.

Being Real

Affirmation rests on authenticity and sincerity.   If our affirmations are perceived as credible and realistic they will encourage trust in us and what we are asserting.  If our affirmations are perceived as genuine, they can be relied on, whether or not the recipient perceives in themselves the affirmed quality.  

When affirmations are seen as false, fake or unrealistic, they get discounted.  The person making a phony affirmation loses credibility and may be judged as untrustworthy.  Even if the motivation is to improve or advance a relationship, making false affirmations is like building a relationship on feet of clay -  it likely will topple in the first storm.  Link “Talking Styles That Hurt and Help Love”

Positive affirmational love can encourage hope, especially when someone is facing a difficult challenge.  It sends the messages, “you’re not alone”, “I’ve got your back” or “you can do it”.  Be careful not to overstate your affirmation because the affirmation is to help a person find strength in themselves.  Plus, if it is not seen as plausible, it will do little or no good.    Heartfelt affirmations ring true.

Hints for Talking Affirmationally

1. Avoid lingering in the past tense, instead affirm mostly in the present and future tense.   

2. Avoid negative words like no, never, don’t, won’t, can’t and not.  

3. Avoid negative implication words and phrases like lose, quit, stop, get rid of, get away from.  

4. Avoid words that focus on or imply an absence like saying “I  want”, “I wish”, “I would like” – these can suggest that a person  lacks something.

5. Avoid drawing attention to a problem more than to a solution.  

6. Be careful with comparison words like more, greater, less, better, and worse.

7. Be careful with ambiguous words, specific words work better.

8. Use positive emotion words.

9. If possible, be pithy with brevity.

  10. Use plausible phrases and positive words.

  11. Be personal.  Use the words “I”, “I am”, “You”, “You are”, “We are” and avoid the           impersonal.

How Much Affirmational Love Is Enough?

There is a host of research pointing to 5 love-positive communications to every 1 love-negative communication being optimal for keeping a spousal or heartmate love relationship well functioning (See the book, Principia Amoris: The New Science of Love by Dr. John Gottman).  Others think a 3 to1 ratio may do well enough, especially in demanding situations.  Then there are those whose studies suggest first it would be good to include evaluating the neutral communications, along with the positive and negative, before making a comparison.  There is, it seems, some evidence which suggests that more than 5 neutral to 1 positive may cause an erosion effect on a love relationship.

A question has arisen about whether a neutral message actually is a minor negative when it comes to love?  One elaboration of the 5 to 1 rule suggests both positive and negative communications must first be evaluated as to their strengths i.e. mild, moderate or strong, before comparing them.  It may be 3 mild communications equal 1 moderate, and 2 moderates make 1 strong communication, or something like that.  As you can see it can get rather complicated.

Generally the 5 to1 rule seems backed up by the most research.  7 or more positives to 1 negative may start to be too much and indicate relational devaluation of positives might occur.  If there are an equal number of negatives and positives, or if negatives outnumber the positives, that suggests that dysfunction and approaching breakup of a relationship is getting more likely.

So, now we suggest you ask yourself this question.  Do your love-positive outputs to your loved ones (praises, compliments, smiles, hugs, kisses, squeezes and so forth) outnumber your negative outputs (criticisms, scowls, gripes, growls, putdowns, complaints and the like) at the, more or less, 5 to 1 ratio?

Deeply and sincerely affirming the worth, importance and nature of those you love, definitely is a best practice of love.  Frequently sending affirmational statements and actions greatly advances the vitality and quality of love relationships.  In our experience, learning and using affirmational love nurtures and inspirits love connections.

One more little thing: are you going to talk over the ideas you have just read with someone.  If you do, it probably will enrich your to do so, at least a bit.  If you do that, please mention where they came from at this website and, thereby, spread some love knowledge around.  Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Did you grow up with enough loving affirmation of your being and doings, at whatever the amount, and what effect did it have on you?

Additive Talking – A Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini love lessons starts with an explanation of additive talking and subtractive talking; shows how truth need not be sacrificed for being additive; and then goes on to discuss the four major things that need to be focused on to make your talking with loved ones additive and not subtractive or neutral.

Add, Subtract or Zero

When you are talking with someone you love, is most of your talking additive, subtractive or neutral; do you know?  Additive talking and communication tends to enrich and strengthen love relationships.  It also usually helps the participant’s sense of well-being, assists both people to feel better for the experience of interacting, contributes to feeling personally enriched and stronger, and assists both in feeling positive about and toward each other.

Furthermore, it brings a sense that relating to each other is of value and it is worthwhile.  Subtractive communication does exactly the opposite.  Neutral, or ‘zero’ type communication as it is sometimes called, tends to have zero or slightly negative, emotional impact effectiveness.  Every communication you have with a person, especially in more personal relations, is thought to have an additive, subtractive or neutral effect in the limbic system of the brain.

The Truth and the Additive

Communicating your truth, the facts as you see them, your opinions, perceptions and understandings, etc. can be conveyed in ways to make your communications more lovingly additive without altering the essence of those truths.  Remember, all things can be said with love.  Plus, making your communications more additive is very likely to assist your loved ones improve their reception of your messages.  Subtractive communication tends to be tuned out, automatically resisted, devalued and discounted.  It also may cause your loved one to avoid you or be argumentative.  Neutral communication may be perceived as impersonal, emotionally distant and sometimes non-loving, mechanical, dull, boring and of little personal consequence.

Four Things to Focus On

When talking with a loved one is your talk usually making the relationship grow, shrink or neither?  If you want to be additive and help your love relationship grow, there are four things to focus on.  Each of these four things can make your talk additive and, therefore, more positive, powerful and effective.

First is your word usage style and habits.
Everyone has one or more talking styles.  Some talking styles are love constructive, others are love destructive and still others are love neutral.
Second is your voice usage characteristics.
This includes things like voice tones, volume, speed of talking, accent and pronunciation clarity.
Third is your motion/emotion presentation.
This involves your facial expressions, gestures and posture messages – all are likely perceived and interpreted subconsciously by a loved one who is listening to you.
Fourth is the subject matter you tend to talk about.

If your topics are perceived as interesting, fun, enriching, etc. you probably are talking in an additive way.  If they are seen as ‘downers’, criticism, false, negative, etc. you probably are talking in a subtractive way.  Neutral talking can be okay, but too much of it tends to have a negative effect eventually.

If you want your communication with a loved one to be additive, positive, constructive, and have a really good effect you will do well to give thought to these four factors.

Word Usage Style and Habits

Most of us have a talking style which is similar to the one we experienced when we were growing up.  With purpose and practice it can be changed for the better.  Here are some common examples to help you understand what is meant by word usage style and habits.  If you ‘gripe and complain’ more than you ‘praise and compliment’ you may have a more subtractive than additive style.  If your habit is to start statements with the word “no”  that is likely to have a minor, subtractive effect.  If you commonly mention more things that are focused on defeat, trauma, tragedy and downer topics than ‘up’, positive topics, your habitual word usage style slowly is likely to have a cumulative, subtractive effect.

If you commonly include talk about your loved one’s successes, attributes, victories, positive growth, etc. more than you mention your loved one’s deficiencies, difficulties, shortcomings and failures, etc. your style is likely to be having an additive effect.  If you repeatedly practice replacing the word “but” with the word “and” you will have a surprisingly good, minor, additive impact.  For example, instead of saying “OK, but don’t ask me to do that again”, you might say “OK, and I would like us to find another way to do that next time”.  If you learn to have a speech habit which includes frequently saying things like “as I see it…”, “my memory is…”, “I may be wrong, however, my perception is…” you are likely to be additive.  If you start your statements with the word “you”  followed by an affirmation or compliment you are being additive.

If you start your statements with word “you” followed by mentioning a deficiency, a shortcoming, a mistake, etc. you probably are being subtractive.  There are hundreds of other problematic or additive speech style factors.  Hopefully these examples can give you some idea of what to look for in your own speech style and habits.

Voice Characteristics

Some people sound angry when they are not; others sound wimpy and some others sound indifferent.  Some just lack practice sounding loving,  kind, pleasant, cooperative, etc..   Some people are really good at sounding tender, sweet, powerfully caring, etc; this probably is because they have worked at it.  You can too.

Motion/Emotion Presentation

Are you good at smiling at your loved ones?  Do you greet them with open arms?  When talking, do you look straight into your loved one’s face and often nod as you hear what they are telling you?  A great many facial expressions, gestures and posture changes can convey that you are emotionally positive toward the person you are talking with and that can send a very additive, emotionally positive message to them as they talk.  ‘Stone faced’ non-expression usually is interpreted as something negative and, therefore, is subtractive.  Scowling, frowning, rolling your eyes, and most of all hate looks can be very subtractive.  Similarly, clenching your fists, turning your back, pounding your fist, stomping off and the like usually are subtractive.

Additive Subject Matter

Are the subjects you usually talk about with your loved ones more frequently helping them feel good or feel not good.  This is a matter of balance.  Talk that is additive to a love relationship needs to occur more often than subtractive talking.  Additive subject matter can be affirmational, appreciative, uplifting, intriguing, fun, positive, laudatory, joyful and best of all loving.  This doesn’t mean serious, problematic and more downer topics are to be completely avoided.  It just means that it usually is best for them to be in the minority.

When the Negative Is Additive

There are times when subject matter may be about something painful or problematic but the way of talking about it is quite additive.  Offering emotional support, commiseration, shared angry venting, joint catharsis and voicing care are examples of this.  Talking in ways that attempt to dodge painful topics, difficult feelings and the like, sometimes can be quite subtractive.  However, if dodging the difficult gives relief sometimes it may be additive.  Semi-sarcastic putdown humor, kidding, reverse meaning statements, etc. can be additive if the person hearing them knows how to take them as such.

Hopefully this mini-love-lesson will help you add additive talking to your repertoire of  love skills and bring you and others much that is lovingly positive.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Are the people you commonly associate with more additive, or subtractive, or how do you experience the way they communicate and what effect does that have on you ?

Related posts:

1. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
2. Requesting Not Expecting – A Love Skill
3. Listening with Love
4. Catharsis Empathy – A Love Skill
5. Non-Defensiveness – A Love Skill 

Intimate Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lessons first helps you explore your own ideas about intimate love compared to what others think about it. Then it introduces you to the fascinating world of sensorium intimacy; and ends with ideas about how you can study developing greater intimate love; more.

Your First Thoughts

What pops up in your mind when you see the words “intimate love”? Lots of people think of something sexual. Others think of something powerfully and very personally emotional. There are a good many other people who think about both ecstatic sex and various intensely pleasurable, psychological states interwoven together.

The term “intimate love” can mean a surprisingly wide range of different things to different people.
Intimacy in a love relationship can mean knowing another and being known by another in incredible ways. It also can mean a sense of wonderful closeness, fervent shared eroticism combined with a marvelous sense of loving and being loved in very personal ways.

Some people understand intimate love to mean a wondrous sense of spiritual connection and the very best of love’s many fabulous feelings. Then there are those who see intimate love as something delightfully wicked, intriguingly naughty and scrumptiously salacious. So, what are your first thoughts about intimate love? Are they similar to any of the above? And if you currently are in what you think of as an intimate love relationship, do you know what your lover’s understanding of intimate love is? Is theirs a more psychological or a more sexual understanding of what the words “intimate” love refers to? You might want to have an intimate, lover’s conversation with them about this.

Sensorium Intimacy

For many intimate love is best experienced and arrived at visually. Being seen naked and seeing another naked, viewing and allowing one’s every, intimate part to be viewed in the most up close and personal of ways, and doing this with someone you love is what achieves intimate love for the strongly visually oriented. Looking deeply into someone’s eyes while they do the same with you, sometimes called “soul” looking, and/or looking very closely at every nuance of facial expression while being only inches away from one you love are also examples of love intimacy via the visual.

For those more auditorily oriented, intimate love can come by way of soft, warm voice tones, whispers, listening to music together and spoken words expressed in deep, close emotional ways.
For a good many others the primary sensory modality of intimate love is touch. Passionate embrace, gentle stroking, cuddling, being held and hugged, holding hands, myriad kinds of kissing, the many sensations of being touched sexually, all are involved in the tactile sensations that provide a sense of intimate love.

Some people find intimacy through taste, while for others it is achieved in an olfactory way, sometimes with the help of perfumes or essential oils. There also are those that best experience intimate love via kinetics. Being joined in slow dancing, swaying rhythmically, gently rocking back and forth and other forms of moving together greatly assist the sense of feeling intimate love for those who are naturally, strongly, motion oriented.

Of course, there are many who have a combination of two or more of the above as their major sensorium modalities. It is important to know that the major way a person senses or can be assisted in sensing intimate love varies according to which of their major sensing systems has the most impact on their emotions (on their brain’s limbic system). Most people can be reached or affected, at least a little, from each of these ways of sensing but they will have a primary sense, and the other ways of sensing will be secondary or tertiary.

If you are going to help someone you love have an intimate love experience, it can be very helpful to know witch of their major ways of sensing love is primary and which is secondary, etc. Then you can use that knowledge to lovingly assist them in having great sensations of intimate love via their primary sense. While doing that you also can mix-in your own primary sensorium modalities so that you can better simultaneously share a mutual, intimate, love experience.

Communicating For Intimate Love

They both said they wanted intimacy, but one meant sex while the other meant a sharing of deep-felt emotions. Until they learned to ‘spell out’ more exactly what they meant, they miscommunicated and neither one got the love they really were seeking. The word intimacy is one of those words which is commonly misunderstood and, therefore, frequently miscommunicated. In couples love relationships few words are as important to mutually understand as the words ‘intimate’ and ‘intimacy’. Couples’ love often can be injured when one or both of a couple does not understand accurately what is being meant when the words intimate or intimacy are used.

All too often one of a couple mistakenly assumes that the other shares the same understanding, and also shares the same ideas of what helps intimacy occur. Actually it is fairly rare for two people in a couples relationship to have the same understanding of this term, at least at the start of their relationship. Therefore, talking about this in some detail can be quite helpful to a couple’s intimate life together. Especially important in couples love development is discovering and talking about the words and actions which may create experiences of intimate love.

Intimate Love Differences

For some, intimacy means revealing one’s most personal secrets. In a similar fashion for others it is mostly about becoming vulnerable and the risk of getting very personally hurt, but in a much wider variety of ways. There are those who achieve intimate love primarily through acts of tenderness and small, gentle behaviors. Others find intimacy is the product of big, brave and bold, uninhibited actions strongly revealing themselves. For the more sexually oriented it may mean lovers letting themselves be erotically wild, acting with unbridled, shameless abandonment, being unrestrained and free to be entirely impulsive while completely accepting each other’s actions.

Acceptance and toleration love, along with being totally unafraid of negative judgment is usually a part of this picture. Awesome sweetness, treating and being treated as precious, cherishing and being cherished, and knowing that what is important and unique about you is especially valued by one who loves you, these can be of incredible importance in intimate love. Experiencing and helping a loved one experience intimate love often takes having and giving unique personal information that would be insignificant to others. What’s your favorite color, food, song, etc. are very simple examples which can be expanded in quality.

It is important for people who want to have strong, intimate, love experiences with each other that they explore and involve themselves in, and with, each other’s differences as well as their similarities. Respecting and honoring diversity and how it might contribute to a couples relationship is often a great help in laying down a groundwork for growing intimate love.

Studying Intimate Love

Discussing what you and a beloved might mean by “intimate love” and what you both might want to do to grow more, bigger and better intimate love usually is a very good thing to do. You can also learn more about intimate love at this very website. Go to the Mini-Love-Lessons listed in the Titles Index called “Intimacy Creation – a Love Skill”, and “Growing Closeness – Love Skill”. Read and discuss them with those you are close to, then of course go experiment and practice the ideas you get from what you have learned.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Can you imagine a scenario of events and actions that you and a loved one carry out, in which you could feel very intimately loving and loved?

Is Feeling Love, Love Itself?

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with a review of some of the many troubling contradictions and confusions that exist about whether feeling love is a feeling or not; the lesson then posits a clarifying and for some a contentious answer to the beginning question; more.

Contradictions And Confusions

“I’m totally baffled!  I don’t know what to believe. Most of my friends seem to think that love is an emotion but some strongly disagree. A teacher I respect says that true love is only the feeling of joyful compassion that leads to lifelong commitment and connection. One book I read said love is a wonderful emotion but like all emotions it is temporary and fading and, therefore, untrustworthy and relatively unimportant. Others say love is a mysterious, emotional power that makes the world go-round, and others suggest that feeling love is just part of the mating drive, while still to others love is just an insignificant but strong feeling you get when you play the ‘game of romance’.

I hear supposed experts saying things like love feelings lead to a parasitic, addictive dependency, best avoided or escaped. I also read love is a powerful, vital, natural, long-lasting and, once started, love is an ongoing psychoneurological process which mostly happens in the unconscious limbic system of the brain. That thought takes some contemplation. I understand that some historians suggest romantic love feelings were, in a sense, artificially invented and continued by Western world culture, starting with the French royals in the 12th century. But I also understand that animals probably feel love because their neurochemical, neurophysiological and neuro-electrical responses have been found to be the same as humans when they are behaving in ways thought to represent love occurring.

To make matters even more complicated my religion teaches me things like “God is love”, “love is everlasting”, “all true love (including couple’s love) comes from and is a manifestation of the Deity’s love”and consequently to think that love is merely an emotion, especially a temporary emotion, can be seen as sinful and heretical.” All those statements originated from a foreign graduate student, working hard to develop a cross-cultural, core understanding of this thing we call love.

So what do you think? Have you been taught, or led to believe, that feeling love is love itself? Is love an emotion? If love is an emotion is it impermanent, temporary, unstable and undependable or even fleeting and fickle? Is love only an emotion and, therefore, is not of much lasting importance?

The Perception of Love

One of the more common, perceptual mistakes people make is to confuse the perception of something internal with the thing itself. If I feel rumblings in my stomach I may be sensing  my digestive system functioning. But the sensing of it is not to be confused with digestion itself. In fact, my digestion mostly goes on without me being consciously aware of it – the natural process of love may work that way too. So, feeling love may be seen as occasionally accessing, or becoming aware of, an inner, ongoing, natural process which may always be there inside us once we truly love.

This understanding goes well with people who say things like “I know that I always love my child (children, spouse, family member or whoever they love)” but I don’t always feel that love”. It also is in accord with people who automatically and powerfully act to protect those they love in the split second of sensing that a loved one is in danger. Actions to save acquaintances and strangers tend to be much slower and less likely.  Does not the quick action to save a loved one tell us that the love is already there inside us and is ready to automatically motivate us to be protective. Also the tendency to risk one’s own life to rescue loved ones is not only far quicker but is far stronger than the tendency risk one’s own life rescuing others we do not love.

Another ‘evidence’ of love having an inner, ongoing and consistent component instead of being a fleeting and/or fading feeling can be seen in this example. John got up from a brief nap grumbling and griping about how hard it was to go to his second job. Later at that job a fellow worker asked him why he took and continued to hold this second job because it was so obvious that it was hard on John. John answered, “I do it to help pay my daughter’s college costs, and I do that simply because I dearly love her.”

Now, examine John’s statement. John is experiencing other emotions than the nice, warm, happy feelings often associated with feeling love. In fact, with his griping and grumbling he might be seen as feeling anti-love feelings. However, John’s negative feelings can be seen as somewhat shallow. Underlying them is a far deeper, pervasive, consistent and powerful process of love which keeps motivating John to do his love-motivated actions year after year.

Accessing Love

It seems that once love is solidly established, the people who truly love always can be aware of that love; they can access it, be motivated by it and bring forth actions that demonstrate it. Sometimes this is associated with having the feelings, or emotions, that go with the word love, and sometimes not as is evidenced in John’s example above. Whether it is felt or not, it is there. There are countless millions of other examples, especially among people  who have had long-term love relationships in which hardship or strong challenge has been faced because of their ongoing love. In sickness and in health, in adversity and stress, in deprivation and defeat, love prevails as nothing else can. If love were but a temporary emotion it would not be consistently accessible and available for motivating the great and heroic acts it does, indeed, motivate. 

Love Labeling

If someone strongly and sincerely says they love you, it would seem that perhaps they have gotten in touch with a strong, natural, inner process which may continue throughout life and actually may produce a great many other emotions along with many thoughts and life-changing actions. It is reasonable to think that it takes a lot more than a mere, temporary emotion to achieve all that.

It is true that a person saying they love you may have what can be called varying and various love feelings for you, along with that love, but there is far more to love than just those feelings. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say “I am feeling loving toward you, or for you”. Perhaps it also would be accurate for someone to say “I’m feeling loved” rather than the perfunctory “I love you too” response. After a time, two people in a love relationship may have the emotion of feeling lovable. Feeling lovable, loving and loved are all probably reasonable labels for emotions that flow out of love itself. Those feelings may come and go but the love that underlies them is probably most accurately understood as stable, dependable and consistently present, not temporary.

Evidence That Love Is More Than Emotion

Another source of evidence pointing to love being something other than just emotion comes from the research into love’s physically healing effects. Along with that is the research that shows the lack of love, or the absence of behaviors that convey love, can result in failure to thrive illnesses, psychosocial dwarfism, heightened susceptibility to disease and other physiological maladies. Serious depression and anxiety conditions also are associated with people who insufficiently receive the behaviors that convey love. Then there are the amazing incidents of the presence of a loved one having healthful effects on people in deep, comatose states. There also is accumulating evidence in the brain sciences pointing to love being a deep, usually unconscious, vital, powerful, natural process.

Research in systemic and interactional variables having to do with how two or more people, or animals, interrelate and what that interrelating does to their biological functioning, also shows interesting results concerning love. Some researchers think they have evidence which suggests that two people, or two animals, who are in what can be called ‘a love bonded relationships’ sometimes exhibit very harmonious neuro-electrical and neurochemical synchronicity which apparently does not occur in non-love bonded pairs. Lovers, parents and children, brothers and sisters, twins and others are thought to also sometimes exhibit this phenomenon. Is that evidence of love at the neurophysiological level? Some people think it is. Much more research on this has yet to be done.

Research in comparative animal psychology, social psychology, anthropology, pediatric psychiatry, and even behavioral economics tends to correlate with what the brain sciences have been finding concerning love.  Behaviors that bring about ongoing, close, caring connection, nurturing, protectiveness and healthfulness are all associated with the neurochemistry that seems to be a part of love responses, and love relationships in humans and higher order primates, as well as other members of the animal kingdom.

The Answer

The answer to the question “Is feeling love, love itself?” is no! The preponderance of available evidence from many sources points to love being far more than just a feeling.  It also suggests that when we feel love for someone, an animal or anything else, we actually are just becoming aware of an inner process which is natural, powerful and vital to full, healthful functioning. That process, the evidence also suggests, is something ongoing within us whether we consciously are aware of it, or not.

Therefore, it is sensible to conclude: Love is so much more than a feeling or an emotion.Feeling love is just a sensing of a much greater thing.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who do you know you love, whether you feel that or not at this moment?