In the Garden of Love

In the Garden of Love It Is More Important to Grow Flowers Than to Pull Weeds!

If you only pull the weeds out, all you will have left is a garden full of holes — into which new weeds will likely grow.
If you plant and nurture flowers, add grasses, crops and trees, also nurturing them — they will push out all but the toughest of weeds.
Those you can pull.  JRC

Think about it.
Is your way of dealing with a love relationship more about pulling weeds than growing flowers? Are you more prone to work on what is wrong or work on making things improve? If you are more prone to focusing on problems, deficiencies, faults etc., than focusing on creating and extending attributes, benefits, advancements etc., then your love relationship is not likely to be like a garden that you or anyone else wants to be in.

Are you watering your love relationship’s flowers, or its weeds? Do your praises, compliments and expressions of appreciation greatly outnumber your gripes, complaints, and expressions of disapproval? Sincere ‘thank you’s’, a soft touch of appreciation, a genuine offer to help with a chore, etc. water the flowers. The gripes, etc. tend to water the weeds.

In your garden of love are you doing the necessary work of being a good gardener. Growing and tending a healthy, good, love relationship takes a good deal of work just like growing and tending a healthy, good garden does. Nature only does so much, and then we have to do the rest.

Are you and your love ones spending enough time together in your garden of love, letting it nurture you by your shared mindfulness of its beauty and wonder? Are you soaking up the beauty of your garden of love’s flowers and deeply, fully appreciating them, holding them in awe, letting them inspire and nurture you?

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What kind of new and wonderful flowers might you plant in your garden of love? Would you do well to plant and grow more flowers of kindness, forgiveness, affirmation, lightheartedness, spiritual connection, appreciation or …..?

Talk With The People You Love

Mini-Love-Lesson # 278

Synopsis: Talking With versus talking At; positive word choice; head talk or heart talk; risking authenticity, listening well; and the importance of studying how we talk with those we like and love is quickly, easily and informatively presented here.

Talking WITH Versus Talking AT

Sometimes we get so busy and distracted in our everyday lives that we don’t pause to really attend to and talk with those we love.  It is personal talk that makes a real connection.  To stay current with those you care about, taking little chunks of time away from doing to just being, strengthens and maintains relational bonds.  When we spend time talking with someone it demonstrates they are important to us.  Talking with older people, children, friends and others we care about contains and conveys compassionate love.  The subject matter may be mundane but the process is what is important. 

There is a big difference between talking with and talking at someone; this especially is true when talking with loved ones.  Officers tend to talk at the troops rather than with them – not a style to be emulated at home.  With is a two-way process, at is one-way. 

The Importance of Positive Word Choice

Some word choices are more loving than others.  Have you ever encountered a person who habitually starts what they say with the word No?  Starting with a negative can be self-sabotaging.  Too many negative words can be toxic to a love relationship.  When love-filled words are sprinkled into our interactions, the relationship system strengthens, becomes happier and more effective.  Using more positive and loving words even has physical, health benefits like improved immunity function.  So, choose your words carefully.

Head Talk Or Heart Talk?

There are words or phrases that can interfere with love transmission.  The word Why is an example.  Have you ever said, “I love you” and been met with the reply, “Why”?  Have you then been confounded or confused?  That’s because why seeks an intellectual, concrete, historical and compartmentalized answer.  Love has to do with feelings experienced holistically in the present.  Why asks you to think instead of feel.  Why takes you away from your heart and leads you into your mind.  Why appropriately can be asked and answered but usually only after emotions have been dealt with.  A question like “Why are you crying” sometimes can bring on emotional discord.  Change it to “I care that you are crying” and a loving closeness is the more likely result.

Risk Being Authentic!

To those who fear using words of love may be Pollyannish, unrealistically positive, phony or may be interpreted that way, we recognize those worries.  A solution to this conundrum often can be found in being genuine.  If you can identify your love feelings, you authentically can give them voice.  When you are worried about how you are getting interpreted, bring it up and talk about that, lovingly.

Listening Well Is a Big Part of Talking Well – with Love

Focusing on your listening skills (yes, there are learnable skills for good listening) is a big part of talking WITH as opposed to talking AT those you care about.  Helping those you love feel really well listened to can be a major way to show them they are genuinely loved.  It also is a major way to improve communication, cooperative functioning, compatibility, sense of connection as well as avoid misunderstandings and a great deal of conflict (see “ Listening with Love”).

Study How You Talk To Those You Like and Love

Remember that love feelings come naturally while love relating takes learning.  Learning takes study, experimenting with improvement and practice.  If you want to do successful and high quality love relating, looking at how you do Verbal Love is a good place to apply yourself.

Let me recommend that you check out the list in “Communicating Better With Love: Mini Lessons”.  There you will find a dozen mini-lessons for talking well with love.  It contains a dozen very important things to know about communicating love when talking with your loved ones.  You’ll find widely diverse things listed from a lesson on Emotional Intercourse to How to Nag with Love.  Each brief lesson has been known to be highly helpful to a great many others according to the feedback we get.

One more thing: To help better implant what you just read in your mind, consider talking over these ideas with one or more others.  If you do that please mention this site and its many mini-love lessons learned, and help spread love relating knowledge to others – Thank You.

As always – Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Do you put some love into every time you talk with a loved one?

Infidelity and Love Info Silo - Love Dysfunction, Avoid It!

Synopsis: This mini love lesson deals with the question of what infidelity really is; New World infidelity; answers if it is the act or the agreement; considers if couples should breakup over infidelity; explores whether infidelity means he or she does not love me; considers forgiveness; and more.

What Is Infidelity Really?

Wow, do people vary on what they call infidelity.  Celeste said, “If you look at another woman for more than 30 seconds you’re cheating”.  Breck said, “My wife and I agree that it is okay to have sex with someone else when you’re more than 100 miles away from home.  So for us infidelity is sex with someone else within 100 miles”.

Kerri expressed that “it doesn’t matter what one does with their own or anyone else’s body, it only matters what they do with their heart. Heart infidelity is the only kind that really counts”.  Alfred proclaimed, “If you even think about another with lust you already have been unfaithful, committed infidelity, and you are an adulterer”.  Jeannie replied to Alfred, “If that is true, one might as well go ahead and have sex with anybody that strikes your fancy because I think just about everybody thinks about others with lust, and they may be weird if they don’t”.

Maurice told of his wife temporarily leaving him after finding him looking at porn on the Internet because she thought that was being unfaithful.  Later he discovered her reading the raunchiest sex scenes imaginable, which explicitly were described in her so-called romance novels.  Dolores said, “For us it’s about being excluded.  My husband and I do lots of threesome sex with our friends, and sometimes foursomes too.  If we did it without the other one present that would be an act of infidelity.
Jennifer said, “My husband, Jarrett, and I have agreed not to do anything that would endanger us bringing a disease home, so it’s really about ‘safe sex’ for us and, of course, no unwanted pregnancies please.

Marlowe remarked, “Where I come from having intercourse secretly with somebody other than your spouse is being unfaithful but oral sex, anal sex and everything else, except intercourse, doesn’t qualify as infidelity.  “I disagree strongly”, said Lucille.  “Infidelity starts with flirting, a passionate kiss is going way too far, and everything and anything beyond that is certainly infidelity and betrayal”.  Carl said, “I think it’s any time you break an important promise of any kind”.
As you can see, people can have very different ideas about this thing we call infidelity.  In couples counseling I’ve seen many couples disagree on what is  infidelity and this is an issue which is getting a lot more complicated.

New World Infidelity

Are you being unfaithful if you do mild flirting online with people you will never meet? How about talking really dirty and super-raunchy seductive online?  What about just listening to others do that?  Then there is online sex talk while mutually masturbating, and also having Skype sex with strangers.
A couple came to me and he was arguing she was unfaithful because her Avatar (a sort of alter ego, comic book like character she created online) was having sex with other people’s avatars in Second Life (an online, elaborate, alternate cyberspace world).  She said that was ridiculous, and it was just naughty fun and he shouldn’t be such an old world prude.  What do you think?

Is It the Act or the Agreement?

I like to suggest to couples that, from a very heart-centered position, they try to talk with each other about what they sexually want, might want, don’t want and could conceivably come to want.  Then I like to suggest that they make an agreement about what’s okay for now.  I also suggest that they include in that agreement a sort of clause that allows for renegotiation later.  That’s because people change and renegotiation discussions, done with love, may prevent a lot of trouble.

There are some husbands who say “my wife will never agree to the new and different things I’m starting to want to do” and there are some wives who say “my husband would never understand some of my wants”, gender role reversal of these statements happens also.  Then there are the lovers who are just too scared to bring up anything different than the standard stuff.

Sometimes it takes a lot of love and courage to deal with the truth of human nature.  Most unfortunately many couples don’t renegotiate their fidelity agreement until after one of them, or maybe both of them, has broken the original agreement.  So many people make fidelity agreements out of doing what they think is expected of them rather than what really fits them.

No small number secretly know or suspect they won’t keep a fidelity/infidelity agreement they enter into, but they make it anyway because it’s what people are supposed to do.  I like to suggest couples think about custom-tailoring their relationship with one another as that is a more unique, loving thing to do.  As you’ve seen from the above examples, couples fidelity agreements can come in a lot of different forms.

A Loving Approach to Another’s Infidelity

If you discover that your beloved has been unfaithful to you what should you do?  The first thing to do is don’t do anything immediately.  The best act of healthy self-love, which you’re probably going to need a lot of, is to go very slowly and do not do anything rash.  Definitely don’t make any impulsive life-changing decisions.

The next thing to do is notice your pain and if possible do something healthy to ease it.  Some people go to a good friend or family member and talk and get care and hugs.  Some people say a lot of self-affirming things and give themselves a hug.  Others do a lot of praying.  Various acts of healthy self-love definitely are in order.

Then it’s time to try thinking things through, difficult though that may be.  Getting help from a counselor, or therapist, or minister or someone like that can do a lot of good.

At some point going to your beloved and asking them to work with you on what’s happened, what it means, and what’s to be done about it is necessary if you’re going to have a healthy outcome.
Going into a rage, running to a lawyer and filing for divorce, becoming physically violent, or getting immediately lost in drugs or alcohol are all on the what not to do list.  I’m biased, but couples counseling is ever so frequently the best thing to do about it.  Be sure you go to a licensed couples counselor or couples therapist, not just an individual therapist because they often don’t know what to do that will help you as a couple.

At some point it will be important to note and work to understand where your pain really comes from.  In these situations a great deal of it may come from the way you were raised to think about infidelity.  Lots of people around the world take infidelity very seriously, and lots of people around the world do not take it very seriously and those, therefore, are not so severely effected by infidelity.  Those less severely affected seem to get healthier, more constructive results when infidelity does occur.  It’s amazing how much of your psychological pain can come from your culture and from your family upbringing and if you had been raised differently it might not hurt as much.

You can take a very loving approach to your unfaithful beloved.  The people who do that usually get the best results in the long run.  If you loved them before, just because you discovered they were unfaithful doesn’t mean you stop loving them.  Remember, a lot of people have said things like “love cures all ailments of the heart” and “love can conquer all”.   With lots of healthy self-love and with lots of hard-working, and maybe with heavy doses of ‘tough love’, things may be able to get better than they ever were before in your couples love relationship.

A Loving Approach to Your Own Infidelity

If you desire to do actions which your beloved would count as being unfaithful and you know if they discover your actions of infidelity they will hurt a lot, you have a lot of thinking to do.  If you’ve already done some of those actions you still have a lot of thinking to do.  What are you doing and why are you doing it?  Those questions are easy to ask but without assistance may be nearly impossible to actually answer thoroughly and accurately.

I like to suggest that you start with wondering about your own healthy self-love.  Lots of infidelity is done as an attempt at doing some sort of, possibly needed, favor or boost to the self.  I also like to suggest that you be as loving as you possibly can be to your beloved and to everybody else around.
Too many people having an affair start treating their spouse with indifference or distancing actions usually out of guilt or worse.  The situation needs more love and probably more truth.  I suggest that ‘beating yourself up’ with a lot of guilt, shame, self negation, etc. usually just makes everything get worse.  A better idea is to make the best ‘response-able’ set of actions happen.  Again a good, love-knowledgeable counselor may prove invaluable.

I recommend you consider taking a very love-centered approach to yourself, to your spouse and even to the other person involved, along with anyone else effected like children, family, etc..  Then work toward being able to live truthfully.

Know that having an affair or anything like that has been discovered to usually cause a lot of stress-related health problems and also quite a bit of poor self-care.  It won’t help anyone if you ruin your health, have a stroke or heart attack and turn into an invalid.  Take your vitamins, exercise, do things that relax you, etc.  With love and truth, and often with the help of a good, love-knowledgeable therapist, people get through all this and come out on the other side often better than when they went in.

A Dozen Common Reasons That Infidelity Happens

1. Genetic Predisposition  A wealth of recent, scientific evidence points to people being predisposed, especially those who may have a strong sex drive, and, therefore, being subconsciously compelled toward having sexual and perhaps emotional relations with a variety of people.
Some evidence suggests that people of higher than average quality, talent and psychosocial strengths may be especially so predisposed.  This is referring to ‘traits’ not a moral imperative.  That makes sense in an evolutionary way for the good of the human race because it keeps mixing the gene pool with higher quality contributions.

2. Love Starvation  People who are under-loved are much like people who are underfed. Their survival mechanisms push them to become adequately fed.  Love works much like a psychological food and so people subconsciously and automatically seek it where they can find it when they don’t have enough nourishment in their regular life.

3. Ego Boost  Romance, sex, being pursued, seduced etc. is for many people a great ego boost and they feel much better about themselves and their life, but perhaps they also feel guilty when they intimately have been with someone else.

4. Family And/or Cultural Programming   Many people’s families or the subcultural group that they grew up in subconsciously programmed them for infidelity.  For many being unfaithful is ‘just what you do’, while at the same time giving lip service to standard morality.

5. Establishing Intimate Independence  Infidelity, for a fair number of people, is a secret way to establish their own, independent, intimate selves.  By way of infidelity they privately see themselves as not controlled by society, religion, their parents, their spouse, etc. but rather by only themselves.

6. Curiosity  A bunch of people just have to find out what it would be like.  Others may have established a mated relationship early in their lives without experiencing other relationships.

7. Adventure  A major way quite a few people make their life interesting, full of excitement, drama, a sense of being fully alive, etc. is through acts involving infidelity.

8. Desire for Variety  Some people just are not going to be monogamous although they can be very loyal in a polyamore or other alternate lifestyle arrangement.

9. Revenge  There are those who get into infidelity as an act of vengeance because their spouse either cheated on them or has been particularly unloving or difficult in other ways.

10. Emotional Compensation  Some people are proving to themselves and others that they still are attractive, ‘have what it takes’, still are potent, can keep up with their infidelity-prone peer group or a group they identify with, or may be trying to give themselves evidence that they are not yet dysfunctionally old or decrepit, etc.

11. Avoiding Regrets  There are those who want to make sure they are not going to miss out on any major ‘psycho-emotional trips’ that other people get to go on in life and which they might regret missing.   Infidelity, a love affair, a higher number of conquests, etc. are on their secret ‘bucket list’.

12. Seeking a New and Better Love Mate This is the one almost everybody fears and it can be true both subconsciously and consciously.  Thus, some people may be involved in infidelity without consciously knowing they are actively seeking a better love mate.

There are lots of other reasons infidelity occurs.  The one most talked about in many circles is the infidelity which occurs when there is something wrong in the marriage or love relationship.  Lots of people jump to that conclusion.  A lot of other people jump to the conclusion that they are in some way sexually or relationally inferior, so they start blaming themselves a lot which usually makes things worse.

The other unloving source of infidelity is to think of the ‘unfaithful’ person as very blameworthy i.e. ‘a dog, a slut, a scumbag, a whore, etc.  Other blaming and self-blaming usually don’t lead anywhere worth going, and certainly don’t add accurate understanding to the picture.

Should a Couple Breakup over Infidelity?

Most of what I see suggests strongly that people who breakup over infidelity later very often wish they had not.  Most couples who use an infidelity experience as a motivation to work on improving their relationship usually are very glad they did so.

The wounds of infidelity frequently are very hard to repair.  However, with a lot of love, truth and reassurance relationships often can grow stronger than they were before the infidelity. Of course, that is only true if both people in the relationship are working at it with lots of love and truth.  Certainly a breakup is more likely to be necessary if there are a lot of repeated infidelities with lots of lies, deception, dishonesty, manipulation, etc. accompanied by a lot of emotional pain and life chaos.

Does Infidelity Mean He or She Doesn’t Love Me Anymore?

Quite frequently infidelity doesn’t mean any such thing.  As the above List of 12 Reasons people get into an infidelity experience shows, a lot of other causal factors may be involved.

What About Forgiveness?

Love is forgiving.  Love can forgive anything and everything.  To do that it has to be strong and great love.  1) Forgiving oneself, 2) forgiving one’s partner and 3) forgiving the way you both, in accidental teamwork, did not avoid the infidelity – all three usually are required.
The inability to forgive may be linked to low self-love.  It is important to remember that in ‘healthy self-love’ one always can be cautious and adequately self protective while at the same time be forgiving.  See the entry in the Subject Index under Behavior titled “Forgiveness in Healthy Self-Love”

Learn More

There is ever so much more to learn about this subject, and learning more about it may do you and those you care about a lot of good.  To learn more go to the Problems and Pain entries under the Subject Index at this site and dig in.  In particular you might want to take a look at the entries titled “Adultery and No Divorce Love”, “Love Affairs: Bad, Good and Otherwise” and “Trust and Mistrust in Love”.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question If infidelity enters your life will you do love well enough not to let it destroy anything really valuable to your heart?

Anger and Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lessons looks at what anger does to love; love constructive, destructive and neutral anger; internalized, suppressed and repressed anger; the Teakettle understanding; anger’s deeper dynamics; anger’s big secret; and ends with “love over anger” and other things you can do about anger problems.

What Anger Does to Love

Anger can destroy your love relationships! It can and often does bring an end to what otherwise could become healthy, lasting love. This happens with marriages, families, lovers, parent and child relationships, truly love-filled friendships and all other forms of love relationship.

Furthermore, it can sabotage a person’s healthy, constructive self-love. Those love relationships which are not fully destroyed by anger are often damaged, reduced, made more limited, hobbled, slowed, wounded, made more emotionally distant and generally made less than they could have been, at least for a time, sometimes for a long time.

On the other hand, there are love relationships which handle episodes of anger quite well and even make improvements in the relationship by way of anger. Sometimes, in anger, things are brought out that need to be dealt with which would not have been revealed but for the participants getting angry. Sometimes the venting of anger leads to a useful reduction in stress and strain in a love relationship. It is anger that sometimes gives people the power to face and deal with the hardest and most difficult problems effecting a love relationship.

Even in those cases where anger is assistive, it still can be harmfully tension producing and dissonance causing. Some people think there are almost always better ways to handle difficulties than with or through anger. Learning and practicing non-angry, powerful and productive ways to handle difficulties, solve problems and make advancements in a love relationship usually takes a concentrated and sustained mutual effort. Most of those who make that effort are very glad they did because they appear to get far better results in their love relationships than do those who behave with frequent or intense anger.

Love Destructive, Love Constructive and Love Neutral Anger

Ask yourself these questions. When you get angry with a loved one, do you aim your anger at that person? Do you do anger by way of demeaning, degrading, denouncing, condemning, putting your loved ones down, calling them derogatory names and otherwise acting to undermine their sense of worth and value? If you do, you are likely to be engaging in strong, anti-love and love destructive behavior. When you are angry with a loved one, do you engage in threatening behavior? All forms of threatening usually are very love destructive. When angry at a loved one, do you become physically hurtful, harmful or controlling? If you do, the result may be extremely love destructive. A general rule is ‘never touch a loved one when angry’ and, therefore, ‘make all touch love constructive’.

Love relationships only can withstand so many strong, anti-love actions. Are you aware that showing intense anger at a loved one is, more often than not, an anti-love action? Are you also aware that frequently showing anger at a loved one, and infrequently showing love, can be just as destructive. Both the frequency and the intensity of anger must be considered. If the number of anti-love actions exceeds the number of pro-love actions for too long, the love relationship is likely to be seriously damaged or destroyed. With each anti-love anger episode, relationship recovery become less likely. Anti-love actions, born of anger, can be among the most destructive of all anti-love actions. If the anti-love actions, born of anger, are more powerful than the pro-love actions the love relationship is almost sure to be badly damaged.

Not all anger is love destructive in a love relationship, but a much more of it is destructive than most people realize. There are ways for anger to be love-constructive in love relationships, and also for anger to just not have much effect on the love in a love relationship. Actively demonstrated anger against a loved one often can easily become one of the most love ruining kinds of behavior a person can do. Some people vent their anger at the universe, or at substitute targets, but do not use it to attack or act against a loved one. That type of active demonstration of anger sometimes can look quite frightening, but might not be otherwise harmful to the love relationship itself.

Most acute anger in a love relationship means that, prior to the anger, someone experienced strong, emotional hurt, possibly considerable fear and probably mounting frustration. One or both people also may have a desire for those feelings, and the things that brought them on, to go away or change and for things to be better. Contradictory though it seems, it also is likely the angry person hungers to receive a dose of well demonstrated, healing love despite their current anger. That can assist the ‘making up’ process.

Internalized, Suppressed and Repressed Anger

Outwardly expressed anger, frequently causes or triggers arguments, fights, retaliation, desires for vengeance, emotional distancing or debilitating fear and physical distancing and escape. Does that mean that you should hold your anger in and not let it show? No, because repressed, suppressed and internalized anger can be even more love destructive than outwardly expressed anger.

Anger held in can turn into or exacerbate stress illnesses like strokes and heart attacks, or cause neurochemical imbalances resulting in irrational swings in mood, irritability, sleep and appetite disorder, and even serious depression and anxiety problems. Anger held in also tends to result in anger leaking out in the form of passive/aggressive retaliation. That tends to insidiously poison love relationships. To not let anger damage or destroy your love relationships it helps to understand how anger works and what can be done about it.

The Teakettle Understanding

One way to understand anger is to think of a teakettle full of increasing and expanding pressurized steam. If the steam does not vent the teakettle will explode and be destroyed. People who do not vent their strong anger may one day blow up and spew their anger in all directions, and then break down and be very dysfunctional. If people hold in their anger to well, for too long, it may turn into serious depression. That is something like the teakettle blowing out its bottom and collapsing. Another thing that happens to people who hold in there anger too much and too long is they develop a stress related, physical illness. That is a little like a teakettle developing metal fatigue and structural failure at the molecular level.

Arguing with an angry, venting person often is like feeding the fire under the teakettle. It just makes the teakettle have more to vent. Frequently trying to reason and explain to an angry, venting person also just can feed their fire.

Another thing not to do is go stand in front of the venting teakettle spout. If you do you just will get scalded and, therefore, hurt a lot. Likewise, getting right in front of an angry, venting person just may get you hurt or even harmed.

Of course, lots of people faced with an angry, venting person let the teakettle dynamics take them over, and it becomes like two teakettles venting at each other which, of course, does nobody any good.

The best thing to do is to stay out of the stream of steam, and see if you can find a way to turn the fire off, and let the teakettle cool off. Getting the teakettle away from the fire and then cooled off also can help. Then you may be able to deal with it. To help an angry person get away from a ‘fire’ source, let them finish their venting and after that cool down which usually works pretty well. Until then they may be like a teakettle that’s too hot to touch. Loving listening, and not adding anything but supportive caring words may help them cool down faster.

Anger’s Deeper Dynamics

When you get angry it means you felt powerless or insufficiently powerful first, if only for an instant. That triggered your emergency power system which gave you the emergency power we call anger. If you were sufficiently powerful in a situation from the start, you would not get angry. You would handle the situation in an ordinary way, using an ordinary amount of your powers and methods for handling situations in which you desire some change. It is only when you perceive your ordinary powers, skills and methods as insufficient to make something change, that your emergency power comes on and gives you the power of anger.

The power of anger can be very big and incredibly quick. The problem is that it often is very clumsy and full of backfire potential, plus it is not useful for fixing things that are intricate and delicate. Anger is somewhat like a sledgehammer. You would not want to use it to try to fix a broken watch. Thus, anger frequently is counterproductive for fixing love relationship problems which often are intricate and delicate.

Anger’s Big Secret

Did you know that the more often a person feels angry the more powerless (weak & inadequate?) a person feels in their own life. The truly powerful seldom get angry because they just don’t need the clumsy, emergency power called anger very often. Sometimes the truly powerful use fake anger because it is much less clumsy and more manageable than real anger. Otherwise, the truly powerful use their other strengths to get things done and to make the changes they desire. Thus, it is that anger can be seen as indicating pre-existing or underlying weakness. The samurai warriors knew this when they put forth the principal in their code “first to anger, first to die”. They understood that excellence in fighting required being free of the clumsiness and blindness that occurs with anger.

Love Over Anger

The more you develop your skills in using the incredible power of love, the less you will need anger to provide power in your life. The more you develop any and all other skills for human relating, the less you will need anger. Anger will always be there, available if you really need it, sort of like a spare tire, but it best not be something you rely on or use frequently.

If you have a chronic anger problem make an act of healthy self-love and get yourself into an anger management therapy program with a good therapist. If you and a spouse or other loved one keep having destructive, anger episodes interacting with each other, get to a good couples or family therapist who can help you with the teamwork that replaces anger interactions.

There is a lot more to learn about the relationship of anger and love but hopefully this will give you a good base. Other mini-love-lessons having to do with love and anger can be found at this site. You might want to look at “Bull Wrestling, Bull Dancing and Love Quarrels”, “Destroyers of Love – The 7 Big D’s”, “Difficult Topics: A Love-Centered Way to Approach and Broach Them All” and “Touch Only with Love: an Anti-violence Tool”.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who taught and/or modeled how to be angry for you, and do you really want to be like them?

Starting And Parting Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson explains the importance and effects of both good and bad ‘start’ and ‘part’ love actions with short, real-life examples.

How Are Your Start and Part Dynamics?

Sheila and Kim both were looking forward to getting home after work and being with each other.

Sheila had a really hard day and was desiring comforting love.  Kim’s day was pretty boring and Kim was all geared-up for more exciting love.  Soon after they met each other everything seemed to go wrong.  Sheila had imagined a soft, tender, slow start to their evening.  Kim had fantasized an exciting greeting, active playfulness and behaved accordingly right away.  Then Kim saw that Sheila’s face looked disappointed and with displeasure responded with sour tones of voice.  The evening was ruined for both of them.

How could things go so wrong when both started toward their time together with thoughts of love?  What could they do to stop this from happening again?  How could they both get what they wanted with one another when they were in such different emotional places?

Starting on the Same Page

As you can see from the above example, how you start and also how you part can have a great amount of influence on how loving people spend time together.  If you have been away from each other, even for just a few hours, you may both be in very different, psychological places when you come back together.  If you re-enter each other’s space without lovingly greeting and coordinating with each other, you may clash and crash, or at least miss-out on what might have turned out to be good time with each other.  Like singing a duet together, you both have to start by singing the same song or you just make noise, not music.

Love Connecting Actions

Sheila and Kim learned they have to start with ‘lovingly checking-out’ how the other one is feeling and what the other one is wanting, before they start acting from their own agenda, even though both agendas might be love-oriented and generally good.  A good hug and kiss, and saying things like, “hello sweetheart”, “what are you feeling, and what are you wanting” when first encountering each other are good ‘checking out’ strategies.  Then a truthful response and acceptance if there is a difference in a loved one’s psychological place.  Next comes working to synthesize desires.  Maybe for Sheila and Kim they plan an hour of rest and cuddling, after which something more playful might occur.  Maybe they try flipping a coin to see who gets their desires met first.

There are lots of other ways they might proceed after starting well with lovingly checking-in with each other.  The trick is to start with love and good connecting actions.  Good, loving connecting actions can take less than a minute but often determine how the next several hours, or more, may go.  Connecting actions allow you to express your feelings and desires, and find out about the feelings and desires of your loved one.  That allows for coordination, synthesis, and ‘I win, you win’ outcomes.

The Dangers of Unloving Ruts

Lots of couples, family members and friends fall into unloving ruts, in which they are unknowingly expressing indifference to one another, in the way they start and part their encounters.  Couples that once passionately kissed hello and said goodbye the same way, too often get distracted by life’s many ‘to do’s’, and then they barely say hi or goodbye to each other as they come and go.  Thus, they miss-out on the energizing influence possible from their love.  Yes, it may take a tiny bit more time to say hello and goodbye with more love in the message, but doing so helps avoid relationship deterioration, and keeps putting ‘emotional gas’ in each other’s tanks.

The Importance of Parting with Love

When two people who love each other, take about 30 seconds or less, to really hold and kiss each other goodbye when they go off to work or wherever else they may be going, they are likely to come back together sooner and better.  This is true even when they may be gone from each other for relatively short periods.  Parting love also tends to make whatever they are doing next, done better.  Remember, love works like an energizing, healthy food.  Parting without a love-conveying-action is like going somewhere after skipping a regular meal.  You may do okay enough, but with a dose of love nourishment you will be stronger.  Without it, you may become easily irritable, annoyed and aggravated.

Saying goodbye with a really good hug and a genuine kiss, rather than something brief and perfunctory, sets up your next time together, and is more likely to be a time of mutual enrichment.  Beware of saying the same words every time; they can loose their meaning and power.  Be creative with hello and goodbye words; you may see a surprised response which probably will show that your love words have been soaked-up better.

Of course, if the time you are likely to be apart is going to be longer, bigger doses of love may be in order.  Good loving goodbyes also tend to help ensure your love bond with each other will stay strong while you are apart.

As always Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: If you think you don’t ‘start and part with love’ well enough, have you figured out what might be stopping you, and what you are going to do about that?