Intimate Love, What Everyone Needs to Know!

       

Mini-Love-Lesson  # 259

Synopsis:  We start with the experience of intimate love; move on to what is intimacy and intimate love; the main two pathways to intimate love; its widespread healthfulness; the question “Is risking realness required” and then end with the wonders of intimate love via emotional intercourse.

The Experience of Intimate Love!

Close and personal, special and private, connecting and bonding, free and trusting, revealing and exposed yet safe and secure, known and accepted, miniscule and precious, cherished and soaring, erotic and sacred, tender and powerful, idyllic and serene, delicate and cosmic, warm and ebullient, core sharing and soul touching -- these are but some of the words people used to describe their experience of intimate love in a couples workshop on advanced intimacy and love.

Do some of these words resonate with you?  Would you use others and, if so, what?  What is your experience so far with intimate love?  Do you seek, wish for, long for, or work to create more intimate love in your life?  Are you good  at intimacy cooperation and intimate love teamwork?  Do you tend to eagerly welcome or more often dodge experiences of intimacy?  Do you tend to linger with intimate love or cut it a bit short like so many do?  In your future, what part will intimate love play?

What Is Intimacy?

Those who research intimacy tend to see it as a process of interaction in which, most commonly, two or sometimes a small group of people reveal and share their real, deeper , more personal and private thoughts, emotional and physical feelings, behaviors and sometimes their sexuality, thereby, letting themselves be more mutually and idiosyncratically known and experienced.  In doing so, intense forms of mutual feelings of closeness, bonding, joy, being preciously connected and valued can result.

Sometimes smaller, intimate experiences produce feelings of simple closeness and strong, shared appreciation along with cherished memories of the experience.  There is often a sense of conjoined caring, mutual understanding and dual affirmation resulting from shared intimacy experiences.

What Is Intimate Love?

Intimate love combines everything you have just read about intimacy with, for, and in the expression of authentic love.  Love simply is defined as a powerful, vital, and natural process of highly valuing, desiring for, often acting for, and taking pleasure in the well-being of the loved (see The Definition of Love Series “The Definitions of Love”). Intimate love therefore, is a major, close, personal way of doing just those things.

At the same time, intimate love is a marvelous process for accomplishing the five major functions of love.  In brief, they are (1) to connect us, (2) to nurture us, (3) to protect us, (4) to heal us and (5) to reward us for enacting the behaviors of love.  Intimate love often provides profound connectedness, nurturing, healing and rewarding experiences frequently in a wonderful sense of happy safety and, thus, facilitating all five major functions of love.

The Main Path to Intimate Love

The primary path to intimate love is self-disclosure and, with it, self-disclosure love (see “Self-Disclosure Love”, a chapter in my book Recovering Love). It is an act of love to disclose yourself to someone you love.  It lets them know who you are in intimate detail.  Ongoing self-disclosure shares your personal self with another so that they can understand who you are in many differing ways, enjoy you and much more fully experience the unique you.

Self-disclosure can be done by revealing your body, your way of being sexual, your physical feelings, your positive, negative and mixed emotions, your history (both bad and good) your ordinary past, your hopes and aspirations, fears, weaknesses, strengths, excesses, deficiencies, victories and failures, personal thoughts, areas of knowledge and ignorance, your troubles and triumphs, mediocrity, ugliness and beautiful parts, along with where you need healing and growth, your deficiencies and attributes, guilty aspects, shame, pride, enjoyments, proclivities, idiosyncrasies, and ways of just being yourself.

Do not forget to reveal your ways of being fair, decent, kind and ways of having pleasure.  Very important are your perceptions, understandings, conceptions and misconceptions, preferences, moods, attitudes, judgments and quandaries.  Even more important are your fears, anxieties, secret hopes and hidden desires.  In other words, share as much as you can and, while you are at it, enjoy your beloved sharing themselves with you (see “Growing Closeness -- A Love Skill”).

The Second but Equal Path to Intimate Love

The second great path to intimate love is touch or tactile love, both sexual and affectionate (mostly nonsexual).   Everything from one finger, tender, superlight touch to full body bear hugs and full body massage-type touching is included here.  When you fully, really love someone touching them in every loving way and on every loved part is a great way to create an intimate love, experience.  Likewise, letting yourself be touched every way and everywhere is a grand way to share yourself with someone and let yourself be intimately loved.

Passionate embraces and tender eyelid kisses, being vigorously lifted then swung around or super gently caressed, having your feet rubbed with scented oils or your back scratched -- they all can convey, enhance and embody intimate love.  So too does all types of wanted sexuality.  Experimenting with new types of sexuality, always done with shared love and without judgment or anything critical, can produce a wonderful sense of an intimate love experience.  That is true even if the sex part does not work out so well (see“50 Varieties of Love Touch”).

Intimate Love Is So Healthy -- Physically and Psychologically

There is quite a bit of research showing that high levels and frequency of intimacy resulted in higher levels of happiness, good mental health, better immune system functioning, less stress hormones in the blood, as much as eight years of greater longevity, greater general enjoyment of life, better body systems functioning, far better relational functioning and a host of other goodies.

Is Risking Realness Required?

Many people fear self-disclosure, intimacy and intimate love itself though still desiring it.  There are lots of different reasons for those fears.  For some, it is a fear of being judged and rejected, others have been trained to be ashamed, embarrassed or have a sense of being sinful when they reveal certain parts of themselves, while still others have very painful memories of betrayal stemming from the last time they risked being real.  Then there are those who rely on their social act and persona mask so much that they just can't bring themselves to do honest self-disclosure without embellishment and social deception.

If you self-disclose some intimate truth about yourself and it goes badly,  in one way that is a good thing.  It helps you know that the person you did the self-disclosure with probably is not a good person to do self-disclosure with, and consequently, is more likely to be a poor candidate for carrying out most kinds of love relationship with.  Thus, whatever went wrong is likely to be a message to consider ruling them out and to go looking for someone more tolerant, accepting, empathetic, less critical or whatever.

If you choose not to be self-disclosing, that can be quite a barrier to intimacy and intimate love occurring.  Some people do not do well at self-disclosure just because they were brought up that way.  Frequently they have been subconsciously programmed to mold themselves into strong silent types.  This especially is true for a lot of men in several cultures where showing your emotions is not considered manly.

Then there are those, women mostly, who have been subconsciously programmed to be attracted to the strong, silent types.  Strong can be okay but silent, not so much.  Silence is a prescription for emotional distance and loneliness.  It is done mostly for safety but, in reality, for love relationships it is not safe at all.  Whenever there is too much emotional distance in a romantic relationship love hunger tends to grow, as does, the likelihood of secret affairs.

Can you risk being seen psychologically naked?  If you are rejected, or have fled from or retreated from being criticized and condemned, can you be strong enough to be okay with the probability that you and that person may not be a good match -- which is a good thing to know sooner than later.  Risking revealing yourself is the only way to really find out if the real you and the whole you is loved.  Hopefully you have enough healthy self-love to both risk and survive going for intimate love.  Likewise, will you do well with self-disclosure coming your way?  Toleration love often is required for a love relationship to be good and lasting (see “Tolerational Love”, a chapter in Recovering Love).

Emotional Intercourse

Having emotional intercourse fairly frequently is absolutely great for making intimate love experiences happen and for keeping heart-mate love relationships interesting and enriching.  How do you have emotional intercourse?  Well, you do it by taking your positive and negative emotions about anything and everything and showing them, not just telling them to a loved one who can take them in with good listening and love reception skills.  It is sort of like living them with you as you share and self-disclose them (see “Listening with Love”).

Then, with good listening and love reception skills, you do the same as they share and self-disclose their emotions about anything and everything to you (“Tolerational Love”, a chapter in Recovering Love).   Emotional intercourse usually is fairly active though sometimes subtle.  Intimately looking into each other's eyes, while holding each other, while both have very loving facial expressions can be great emotional intercourse.  Emotional intercourse can occur at the same time as sexual intercourse if very free-form, active expression of what is being felt emotionally and sexually is occurring and is being observed with enjoyment and maybe with awe (see “Intimacy Creation – A Love Skill” and “Emotional Intercourse”).

One More Thing: With another, talking over what you have just read and sharing your feelings about it, as well as your thoughts, might lead to a bit of an intimate experience.  If you do that, please mention this site and our many mini-love-lessons.  Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: If you go emotionally naked and have emotional intercourse with someone and they, likewise with you, will you not, in one way or another, come to love each other?

Touch Only with Love: an Anti-Violence Tool

Some people grow up learning to physically hit, shake, punch, shove and do other acts of physical violence to others when upset.

Many do these things when they feel attacked physically, verbally or any other way.  Others become physically violence-prone when they get frustrated and others when they are mad.
Still others strikeout physically when they feel threatened and some others when just about any negative feeling occurs.  Many males, especially, have been well trained to physically ‘hit back’ when they feel ‘hit’, even though what hit them was only words.  No small number of females do the same thing.  Then there are those who ‘hit’ others in playfulness but they may do it too hard, too often, too much, in the wrong way, or in a wrong place or wrong time for others to ‘playfully’ accept it.  All of this can have very anti-love effects and, therefore, can have quite a destructive effect on a love relationship.

One common reaction is to tell the person who is acting physically rough or violent to “stop that”.  Be aware that quite frequently it does not work to tell someone what not to do.  It may only work to tell them what to do.  Saying things like “don’t hit, stop hitting, don’t ever hit him, or her, or me again”, etc. for long-range results often is almost useless.  It works far better to tell a person what to do instead of what they’ve been doing.  Until someone knows ‘what new behavior to replace an old behavior with’ there is a high likelihood that they will, by practiced tendency and habit, return to responding with the old behavior.  Until you know a replacement behavior you likely will keep doing what you’re used to doing until you learn what to do instead of what you have been doing.  It sort of is like being told what not to do creates a vacuum into which something will rush to fill that vacuum, just like in the physical world.  The easiest thing that fills that vacuum is the behavior you are used to doing.

So, what’s going to replace hitting or a physically violent activity that we want to stop? The answer can be becoming trained, practiced and committed to a ‘Touch Only with Love’ way of acting toward your loved ones and perhaps others.  This is not the only thing but it is a tool which can help a lot.  This tool can be made to work quite well with both children and adults.  Couples, family members and friends who get into physical fights with each other can commit to a ‘Touch Only with Love’ strategy to replace their physically violent reactions to one another.  Making a commitment to such a strategy often is a tipping point for creating a very important improvement.

Why does a person, who supposedly loves another, sometimes try to physically hurt or harm that person?  Here are some background factors about that.  Siblings who physically fought a lot when young are in danger of suddenly striking their spouses when feeling attacked.  Parents who were struck a lot as children are in danger of reactively striking their children, especially when they get tired, stressed or angry.  Those who grew up around adults who physically abused those around them unfortunately may have been subconsciously programmed to do the same. Those who grew up in neighborhoods or other environments where there was a lot of physical violence are more likely to be physically violent.

Growing up in any environment in which physical violence is praised, honored or seen as the right thing to do later may endanger subsequent loved ones to physical abuse because rewarded behavior tends to continue or re-emerge. Children who are not corrected for being physically violent in their youth might have been accidentally reinforced for being violent and often are more prone to become physically abusive in their adulthood.  The chronically immature can sometimes have similar permission giving, subconscious programming for violence.  As you can see, many people are programmed subconsciously to have a tendency toward being violent.  However, reprogramming is very possible and committing to the ‘touch your loved ones only with love’ approach can help accomplish that reprogramming.

With commitment, and training, and sufficient practice you can make a new habit dominant over an old one, therefore, replacing it.  ‘Touch only with love’ can be your new habit.  Adolescents who get into physical fights can be helped to form a ‘touch only with love’ habit by judicious use of rewarding them for the desired behavior.  Children can be shown and taught that soft, more gentle touches, hugs, etc. are the desired and rewarded way to touch each other.  Fighting families can draw up and agree to help each other abide by ‘touch only with love’ contracts.  Individuals who want to get past physical violence tendencies can commit to and then through role-playing practice a “I will only touch others with love” behavioral strategy.

I’m not saying reprogramming yourself is easy, I’m saying it is very worth the effort.  When you feel angry, frustrated, impatient, stressed or any time you might feel like lashing out physically toward a loved one say to yourself something like, “I’m not going to let my old violence training control me.  I’ve committed to ‘touch only with love’ so I’m going for a walk around the block to cool down” or “I’m going to take a couple calming breaths to relax some of this inner tension” or “I’m going outside to throw ice cubes at a wall to let off some steam” or “I’m going to the bedroom to beat on a pillow until I simmer down.

And when I return I’ll be more able to handle this and touch only with love” – or say something that works for you.  Amazingly this usually changes the whole dynamic of the interaction and makes room for positives.  You and your loved one both can benefit from your work to replace the old habit with one dominated by ‘touch only with love’.  

A commitment to or a contract between people to touch only with love has helped warring couples break their violence cycles.  Role-playing new behaviors in scenarios where you have previously struck someone, starting with reminding yourself that you’re committed to ‘touch only with love’, has helped a lot of people.  Adding a ‘re-direction of your actions’ strategy to the ‘touch only with love’ approach often is wise.  However, you really must work at remembering to tell yourself “I’m committed to touching loved ones, (others, etc.) only with love”.  Families and couples who contract with each other for a “touch only with love” agreement can plot out rewards for living up to their pledge, and also penalties for relapses.

A lot can go very wrong when people get physically aggressive, especially to a loved one.  Reminding oneself that in the modern world relationships involving physical abuse and violence usually end poorly and sometimes end tragically.  There is a lot of evidence pointing to repeated physical violence in a relationship almost inevitably leads to the relationship being either severely harmed or destroyed.  Violence in couple’s relationships is extremely prone to escalate causing real physical damage and sometimes even death.  Also with escalation there is the likelihood of lengthy, complicated, costly, judicial system involvement and possible imprisonment.

Increasingly parents who physical punish their children, much like they themselves were punished, are being found guilty of physical abuse and often have their children taken from them as well as facing possible imprisonment.  In lesser cases having to attend parenting classes or parent guidance counseling also may be involved.  So you can see there are lots of good reasons to develop a ‘touch only with love’ approach to those you love.

The very best reason to ‘touch those you love only with love’ is because that is the loving thing to do.  There are some other important concepts to understand which provide a foundation for understanding the importance of this tool.  Some people mistakenly think love causes or even justifies physical violence.  “If I killed her doesn’t that mean I really loved her?” is the infamous quote exemplifying an enormous, wrong understanding of love.  ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ is another one which has been used to justify physical abuse of children for ages.  The truth, according to the scholars in ancient times, is that the rod referred to was used to gently guide and never hit sheep, goats or cattle.

We now understand that physical violence toward our loved ones does not come from love.  That’s because healthy, real love fundamentally works to motivate us toward being protective not harmful to our loved ones.  Only false forms of love involve people being seriously hurtful or harmful to a loved one.  (See blog entries concerning “False Forms of Love”).  Thus, ‘touch only with love’ works as a tool for enacting and ensuring healthy, real love.

This tool can be used in a number of ways.  An individual can just dedicate his or herself to ‘touching only with love’ and that usually means touching softly, gently and with a love-centered ‘heart’ attitude (see blog entry “Love Centering Yourself”).  Any group of people (family, couple, friends, etc.) can contract with each other that their way of relating physically to one another will be governed by the rule of ‘touch only with love’.  Any group of people can agree to encourage, praise, compliment and thank each other every time there is a difficulty in which they adhere to their pledge to abide by this rule.  If penalties for violation of the rule are involved they need to be rendered via self-denial or deprivation of something, and not anything involving physical pain.

In rare situations some loving touch could conceivably require restraining someone from self harm or from harming another.  In some cases other strong touch actions might be loving but probably not the purposeful, selfish harming of another.  People who more or less automatically turn to violent physical action when they feel frustrated, unfairly treated, betrayed, jealous, misused, maligned or otherwise demeaned often find this tool especially useful.  ‘Touch only with love’ can be coupled with other anti-physical violence tools and strategies for a more comprehensive approach.

As always – Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Is there always love in the ways you touch your loved ones?

Related posts:

1. Number 51: Your Super Tool for Healthy Self-Love
2. 50 Varieties of Love Touch
3. The Anti-Love Forces Are Out to Get You
4. Anti-Love Myth # 1: True Love Means You’ll Know What to Do
5. Anti-Love Myth # 2: You Will Have Eyes Only for Me 

Metaphysical Love

Mini-Love-Lesson # 289

Synopsis: Here we work to understand and make practical sense of metaphysical/spiritual love and how it may work along with how it can productively be used.  What science is discovering, modern and ancient religious suppositions, philosophical offerings and what people all over the world are doing with metaphysical/spiritual love actions are included in clear, straight forward language.

Is love itself metaphysical?  Is love the greatest of all things, as spiritual masters have proclaimed down through the ages?  Does spiritual love rely on the existence of a mind-spirit connection?  Scientific evidence supports that love heals, love connects, love protects, love nurtures, love reinforces and rewards us.  And how does it do all those things – energy forces, bio-electrically, psychically, deity intercession, … ?  It has been suspected that the collective unconscious, group intelligence, spontaneous mood emergence, superorganism cooperation and metaphysical mass influences might have something to do with metaphysical love.  The mysteries abound.    

Do We All Love - Metaphysically?

When it comes to love, almost everyone, sooner or later, behaves metaphysically.  If a loved one is critically ill and we call on a mystical source to heal them, we are behaving from love - metaphysically.  If we pray for spiritual guidance when we are in the throes of despair - we are acting metaphysically.  If we go to the grave of a loved one and talk to the loved one’s spirit - we are love-relating metaphysically.  If we send our children off to school and imagine protective love energy surrounding them - we are acting metaphysically to safeguard them.  If we fantasize sending our love energy to a distant loved one - we are projecting metaphysical love.  If we are alone and feel a love-filled presence - we may be experiencing a metaphysical love event.  It seems there are many ways metaphysical love may manifest itself and be experienced.

We need not believe in metaphysical love to do it, or at least to attempt it.  We only need to have real love in our hearts and a willingness to experiment with metaphysical love behaviors.  Exploring these manifestations of metaphysical love may lead to surprising experiences and astonishing outcomes.  

When there is nothing more we are able to do in a difficult situation, we might attempt a metaphysical love behavior.  Behaving with and from metaphysical love often can be considerably beneficial to us and to those we love.  Metaphysical love can lead to a sense of spiritual serenity and heart-filled awe.  It also might guide us to appreciate the many apparent cosmic miracles that surround and fill our existence.  Psycho-physiologically, metaphysical love participation in rituals and ceremonies can bring stress reduction, metabolic balance and feelings of energized empowerment.

Research into the healing effectiveness of metaphysical love behaviors, shows intriguing results.  When metaphysical-related actions were taken on patients’ behalf, they tended to get better more often and faster even if they were not consciously aware of the action or even if they did not believe in it.  The experimental, matched, control groups did not get metaphysical treatment and did not show similar improvement.  Some of the experiments included praying for the patient, lighting candles, doing ceremonial actions and repeating ritual words.  It was found that the mindset and emotion demeanor (serene, loving, focused) of the person carrying out a metaphysical treatment influenced the results to some degree.  It also was found that benefit accrued to the doer as well as the receiver of metaphysical actions.

Interestingly, other patients also showed significant improvements even though they were not aware of volunteers, at a considerable distance, spiritually and metaphysically acting on their behalf,.  Unrevealed, distance healing is hard to explain in other than metaphysical ways.  

Some may not want to call what we are talking about metaphysical, but rather call it by some other term like spiritual or transcendental. That’s fine! The point we want to make is that whatever it is termed, this is a class or type of love behavior which is very common worldwide. Furthermore, archaeological and anthropological evidence shows this kind of behavior presumably has been going on since very early in the development of our human species.

Right now, this very moment, out of love, millions of people are doing metaphysical, or if you prefer, spiritual practices designed to have a positive influence on the well-being of those they love. Such actions are demonstrations of real, compassionate and caring love and they deserve respect and honoring for being so.  Respect also is due for those who rigorously and methodically are searching into the many complexities and conundrums of metaphysics within the realm of love.

What Is Metaphysical Love?

Metaphysical love may seems magical, mystical, mysterious, perhaps mythical and often quite hard to fathom. This kind of love is what many people turn to in times of love troubles. Metaphysical love also is known as the love that is spiritual, transcendental, supernatural, ethereal, celestial and preternatural.

We put metaphysical and spiritual together for several reasons. One is that, behaviorally, metaphysical and spiritual love are accomplished by similar actions. Another is that both seem to operate in much the same way and obtain rather similar results. There are those who study metaphysical and spiritual phenomena and suspect they are two views of the same thing. There also are those who vehemently oppose that concept. 

We operationally define metaphysical love as a love which people attempt to access, express and communicate through the behaviors associated with the metaphysical. To love metaphysically, means to have and feel a love that seems beyond this world’s reality. It also means to transcendentally or spiritually feel a connection with who and what we love.  For example, when long-distance lovers plan to gaze at the moon on the same night at the same hour; just by knowing they are sharing the same experience, they can feel metaphysically connected.  To metaphysically love means to try to transmit our love in a way that connects with another and beneficially effects them. Metaphysical love sometimes is explained as a special form of energy that exists in and travels through the ether of the universe.  

Doing metaphysical/spiritual love is enormously popular, common and esteemed all over the world. It does have its skeptics, disbelievers and naysayers, and conversely its ardent practitioners, promoters and believers   Metaphysical and spiritual love are the focus of a great deal of research, much of which supports that it is a useful and rewarding way to do love.

Framed in this world’s reality, metaphysical love sometimes is thought of as a bioelectrical or neuro-electrical phenomenon.  It is suspected to exist in and be transmitted from the brain’s limbic system components which are associated with love. Sometimes that love transmission is conveyed through touch and sometimes may be broadcast across space much like a radio wave transmission. Some research data has been analyzed as supporting this understanding.  A great deal more investigating is required to enlighten our understanding of these suppositions.

An ecumenical, somewhat theologically grounded and spiritually focused explanation exists and roughly goes like this. There is a deity force in the universe.  This metaphysical energy is pure love. This love energy can be accessed through spiritual and religious practices and, thereby, brought to bear on the living creatures and conditions of this world. Thus, metaphysical love is the spiritual love of the deity force which can be tapped into and channeled through us to our loved ones. Probably, clerics of every religion would want to alter this explanation, one way or another. In no way is it to be considered doctrinaire.

Philosophically, metaphysical love might be said to be the love that comes through “Meta-Ta-Physika”, Greek for the reality beyond the reach of objective study but able to be, at least partially, comprehended with the help of ontology, cosmology and epistemology. Did we say metaphysical love is complicated and hard to fathom?

Hopefully, these concepts have given our readers some sense of what metaphysical love is and may be, as well as how it might be done.

A couple other mini-love-lessons to explore at this site: “Transcendental Love: Mysteries and Wonders for Your Future” and “To Win at Love, Study Love”.   

One other thing - We think this mini-love-lesson is a practical, good one to discuss with others who like to talk ideas and use them and grow with.  See if you agree.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: If, right now or before day’s end, you were going to do a set of metaphysical/spiritual actions on behalf of someone you love, what actual behaviors might you do?

Love Centered Ethics

Synopsis: An ‘ethic’ to contemplate; what pilots your life?; personal questions; what’s an ethic?; what’s love?; ascendant life?; who are the who?; the ‘siblinghood’ of life; a very long look; anti-love ethics; and what’s it all got to do with your life?

The Ethic:
All those who love, can love, or may love are worth treating with love!

What Pilots Your Life?

Do you have major guiding principles or ethics by which you steer your life?  If you do, does love have a major role to play in your principles and the way you pilot your life?  A growing body of research results point to those people who live by one or more major love ethics doing better at just about everything having to do with happiness, health, well-being and general life success.

Especially are those who live by a major love ethic likely to do well in all sorts of relationships including the one they have with themselves.  With that in mind, let me suggest you consider that the above ethic, and similar love teachings and tenets become prime guiding principles of your life.  Let me also suggest that the more you live by a ‘prime love ethic’ the more you are likely to experience life ascendancy.

But beware.  Let me warn you that just thinking about this and similar love-centered tenets having to do with healthy, real love might just change your life in large and unexpected ways.  Furthermore, talking about this with those dearest to you has occasionally been known to totally change the direction relationships take so, yes indeed, do beware.

Personal Questions

Now for a few personal questions.  Suppose you seriously and deeply consider the above love ethic, what might that actually lead to in your life?  By extension, what might you seriously considering the above love ethic do for those who inhabit your life?  Would living by this love ethic cause you to change the way you treat other people in your work?  Could you use this ethic to improve and enrich the way you relate to people in your personal life?  How about your fun, recreation and play life?  To help think about that let’s define a few terms.

What is an ‘Ethic?

An ethic, as used here, is a concept of a ‘goodness’.  It has to do with what is considered to be a moral principle, a value, something to guide your life by, a part of a theory of desirable behavior, a tenet of what is understood and conceived of as ‘right’ as opposed to ‘wrong’ in the general societal ethos of humanity or for humanity.

What is Love?

We are using our standard, working definition of love discussed at length in the definition of love section on this site.  In short form our working definition of love goes like this:

“Healthy real love is
A powerful, vital, natural process of
Highly valuing, desiring for,
Often acting for, and taking pleasure in
The well being of the loved.”

Included in what we mean by love are the five functions of love (see “A Functional Definition of Love”) and the eight major groups of direct behaviors which have been found to convey love along with the four larger general categories of love action (see “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love”) .  These are discussed at length in The Definition of Love Series elsewhere on this site.  As a reminder the major functions of love, in brief form, are: To Connect Us, To Nurture Us, To Protect Us, To Heal Us and To Reward Us with Joys.  The eight groups of behavior that convey love are titled: Tactile Love, Verbal Love, Expressional Love, Gifting Love, Affirmation Love, Self-disclosure Love, Tolerational Love, and Receptional Love.

What Is Ascendant Life?

Ascendant life means a life that is getting better, becoming elevated and uplifted, going from lesser to greater, proceeding to a higher state of development, and a life becoming more enriched.  It also refers to a life in which obstacles are being overcome, difficulties surmounted, healing and health is occurring, and healthy life goals are being attained.

Who Are the ‘Who’?

Who loves, can love and may love probably includes everyone you encounter, have anything to do with or may influence.  It also includes YOU.  You may wish to become freshly aware of the ancient, timeless teachings about love, teachings such as: “Love your neighbor, and others, as you love yourself”, “Love your enemy”, “Have compassionate love for all life”, “Family love and fealty are essential”, “Love life and the life force that permeates us all”, “The broader your reach of love the higher your standing with that which loves us all”, “Without love we are as nothing” and “Faith, hope and love abide as the greatest ways of life, but the greatest of these is love”.  There are many more that have come down to us through the ages from the religions and philosophies of the world.  Don’t they all point to the ‘who to love?’ answer being – EVERYONE.

The ‘Siblinghood’ of Life

In addition to all people you have anything to do with or may influence, you may want to add the other creatures who do love, can love and may love.  The available scientific evidence says those likely include all large primates (perhaps all primates), dogs who give love best of all species, according to some, horses, elephants, dolphins, whales and actually maybe all mammals, or even all higher order animals including birds.  Then there are those who postulate that all animal, and perhaps even all life forms, are in one way or another love active and love activated.

A Very Long Look

We humans are a relatively new species on this planet.  We human types have been around maybe 2 million years or so.  Our particular kind of humans may be only an infantile 200,000 years old.  By comparison horseshoe crabs have been here 450 million years, give or take a few million.  Dinosaurs were the dominant species for 160 million years.  Not only that, but some think we humans have been actually talking to each other only for the last 30,000 years, so if that’s true it’s understandable that we are not yet very good at communication.  Then there is the fact that we’ve been doing this thing we call civilization for the mere 5 to 10 thousand years at the very most, although some think it could be a bit longer depending on what you call civilized.

If we humans earn the right to stay around as long as a good many other species we will probably need to get the hang of doing this thing we call love a lot better.  Some species don’t seem to be as bad at love and living with each other as we humans are, although our cousins, the Bonobo apes, have really got this love thing down good, not to mention doing great at sex.  As a young species we can be pleased that, at least in some parts of the world, we are doing pretty well at getting along better than we used to.  As an example, more countries bordering each other are at peace with one another than ever before.

Then there’s the fact that a smaller percentage of the Earth’s population is starving to death than used to be the case, several deadly diseases have been wiped out benefitting large numbers of people, and more people are living longer than ever before which increases their opportunity to develop quality living.  Just possibly, if you and I and enough others learn to do love well and maybe if we spread the word, teach others and lobby for love-centered ethics to prevail we may do as well as other species have, or maybe better.

By the way, did you know that there is growing evidence showing that at least some dinosaurs got and gave love.  Discoveries show that dinosaurs lived in ‘love’ connected family groups, nurtured their young and were protective of one another, even sacrificing their lives for one another – all evidence pointing at love existing way back to 200 million years ago.  I wonder if it was love that kept them surviving for so many millennia?

Anti-Love Ethics

Perhaps you have been taught one of these three other ‘ethics’ to live by, or something like them:
1.  Survival of the fittest is the law to live by, and it gives you permission to do whatever it takes, including the destruction of others.

2.  The ends justify the means which means you can do any evil to achieve what you see to be, or can call, a worthy outcome.

3.  Winning isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing which is used to justify any and all cheating, destructive manipulation, rule and law breaking, deception, dishonesty, neglecting and harming others, taking advantage of the weak and vulnerable, etc.

A problem with these kinds of ‘ethics’, or life guidance messages, is that they tend to create anti-healthful neurochemical and biochemical responses in people.  Adversarial, oppositional and aggressive (as differentiated from assertive) life stances and perpetrator predation dynamics tend to produce stress hormones which operate against the physical health of the person using these tactics.

They also work against the person’s psycho-emotional health, as does most pessimistic, cynical, fault-finding and negativistic cognition.  Such thinking seems to reduce pleasure, and interfere with the neurochemicals in the brain that have to do with feeling good, thinking clearly, and experiencing life in a positive manner.  Such thinking also tends to have an anti-love effect which negatively influences all types of love relationships.

Your Life

Suppose you decide to live, more than you previously have, by the ethic of treating all who do, can and may love, as worthy of your love.  How do you suppose this might impact your life?  If you switch to, or start including, or increase love centered ethics as guidelines for your life, what do you suppose may happen to your health, your relationships, your emotional life, your future and your core being?  What might be the worst-case scenario, and what might be the best.   Of course pessimists and optimists will differ, but would you like to give this suggested ethic and related ideas some thought, and maybe talk a little with those dear to you and see what happens?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
For you, honestly rank the following dozen forms of ‘power’ from most to least important to you personally: Money, Influence, Status, Popularity, Attractiveness, Physical strength, Security, Social acceptance, Privilege, Social recognition, Achievement and Accomplishment, Love?

Related posts:

1. Difficult Topics: A Love-Centered Way to Approach and Broach Them All 

Friendship Love’s New Significance

Mini-Love-Lesson  #235

Synopsis: Good and better friendship and its new importance for how you identify yourself, feel about yourself, attain better happiness, health and longevity, along with the love guidance of your own answers to important questions are intriguingly presented here.

What You Do and Personal Importance?

Who are you and what do you do?  Isn’t that what everybody asks about when they first meet someone new?  Well, not everyone but those are the questions many people try to answer first just about everywhere in the modern. middle class, Western world.  This is especially true for males and for those whose occupation is their primary identity.  It is a bit less true for those who hold lesser status jobs and those who travel in old wealth circles.  For many millions their occupation is there foremost identifying factor.  Usually tied to that is a sense of their identity, personal worth, societal value and peer group importance.

So, if your occupation is abolished and that work is accomplished using algorithms and creating machines to do your job, who are you and what will you become?  Will you have importance, purpose, worth and significance or will you be and feel useless and without value?  This actually is what is beginning to happen to more and more people as high-tech improvements continue to replace people in all kinds of work.  With a sense of uselessness often comes anxiety, depression, addictions, suicide and other forms of life failure.

However, this does not happen to everyone who loses their work life identity.  Some have been raised to feel important and of worth because of being born into or married into a higher status family, class, caste, race or otherwise more advantaged group.  Then there are a good number who feel good about themselves so long as enough people feel good about them, but if their popularity wanes they may crash.  In the modern Western world, some few others are lucky enough to have been raised in families that understood and taught having a sense of intrinsic worth and healthy self-love (or they learned this on their own through reading, attending courses or being around people who project a love of self and love of others).  Those who have intrinsic self worth have little need of external self valuing factors to feel good about themselves.  Unfortunately, they are a minority.  Some cultures do better at helping people develop a sense of self worth and self love, as do some therapists and counselors.

In many parts of the modern world, the majority of people seem to need an external way of sufficiently feeling good about themselves.  Vast numbers primarily have accomplished this via their work identity.  Take that away and what’s left?

Will Occupational Identity and Its Personal Significance Fade?

Some studies in behavioral economics predict that about 47% of all current occupations are expected to become human free by mid century.

This could grow to 92% by the end of the century according to some experts.  Humans already are increasingly being replaced by smart machines, algorithms, high-tech advances and the like.

So, if this happens to you what is going to happen to your sense of significance, self-esteem, and most importantly how will it affect your healthy self-love (see “Self-Love and 12 Reasons to Develop It”)?  A future looking historian pessimistically warns we are going to have a lot of occupationally useless people around and a great many social and political problems occurring because of that.  So, what is to be done?

Significance Through Love

Can you guess who the people are who suffer least when their occupational or professional identity and its personal validation importance goes away?  The research shows it is the people who have healthy, strong and deep love relationships.  Mainly that means strong, ongoing friendships where healthy, real, sibling-like love exists.  Healthy, loving families and love mates count too.  Perhaps that is because their ways of doing love are very similar to the ways of real, friendship love (see “Understanding Friendship: From Mild Geniality to Profound Love”).  Note: If somebody says “My spouse is my best friend” a healthful mix of love-mate love and friendship love may be occurring. 

Now, let us suppose you met someone new and asked them what they did?  Further suppose that the answer you got was something like this.  “I’m a really good friend and that’s my chief significance”.  Even further suppose that this sort of answer became common and it indicated a primary way to feel good about your own purpose and significance in life.  Suppose also that it became common knowledge that having deep, real, love friendships lengthens life, reduces susceptibility to illness, magnifies general happiness and improves quality living just about every way one can measure it.  All of which is true.  Most of all suppose that nearly everybody’s primary sense of self worth was largely linked to how well they did love relationships and especially friendship love.  Suspect that more friendship love in the world might lead to more altruistic love, family love, healthy self-love and, of course, mate-love along with all the other healthful forms of love (see “Friendship Love and Its Extraordinary Importance”).

What to Do with This?

With the above ideas in mind, let’s look at some very important wide-ranging questions.  If your occupation was abolished and you were replaced by a machine, would your self-concept and self-esteem suffer?  What about your sense of life purpose?  Do you work at improving your friendship skills?  Are you doing things to improve the friendships you have?  How much could pride of being good at friendship love skills help you with your sense of being a person of worth and significance?  By way of healthy self-love, do you give yourself the gift of good friendships?  Do you need to learn more about the how to’s of good friendship and friendship love?  Do you think it might be good for you to make your sense of self worth less work-dependent?  Are you aware that having a few high-quality friends is much more important and healthful than having a high number of acquaintance-level friends?  Are you someone’s good friend?  If so, are you positive about yourself for being a good friend?  Are you in fact your own really good friend?  In healthy self-love could you be your own better friend?

With each of those questions, think of the answers you gave yourself and turn them into guidance messages.  Then, of course, seriously consider following the guidance you presenting to yourself.

One More Little Thing

How about talking all this over with a friend, or potential friend.  If you do that, please mention this website.  By doing so, you will do us and them a friendly, good turn.  Thanks.

As always – Go and Grow with Love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: Who loves you best – a friend that tells you what you want to hear, one who tells you what you don’t want to hear but need to, one who tells you both or one who tells you little but very lovingly really listens to you?