Responsiveness and The Life or Death of Love!

Mini-Love-Lesson  # 267

Synopsis: Everything from responsiveness ping-pong to the five types of love effecting responsiveness is usefully covered here, along with perhaps some love relationship saving ideas for improving one's own love responsiveness can be found in this mini-love-lesson.

On To a New Birth of Love

Jaden looked and sounded as heartbroken as he said he felt as he sat across from me in a first counseling session.

Choked up and shedding tears he stated, "I just learned too late to be really responsive to my sweetheart and now she's left me for someone who is way better at that than me.  At first when she told me I wasn't responsive enough I argued with her but I didn't really know what she meant.  For a while I thought she meant sexually but we were pretty good there.  She called me a robot and a stone face and said I just didn't get it and now I admit I did not.  She finally explained I seldom spoke back to her when she made a comment unless she asked me a direct question, I seldom smiled back when she smiled, touched back ( Link “Touching Back - A Surprisingly Important Love Skill” ) or showed any feelings when she showed her feelings.  I read up on responsiveness and was surprised to learn that it meant to quickly, positively, and often appropriately, emotionally reply to someone or show my feelings back to them when they demonstrated their feelings.  I really hadn't been doing much of that, if any.

In the family I grew up in, we were obediently quiet or mostly just critical of each other.  You know, I didn't even say I love you back very often when she said it to me.  So, Dr.C., Is there hope for me, can I learn?”

In time and with work, Jaden unlearned his family's ways and did far better with a new love.  However, first it cost him a lot of heartache and then a bunch of self-work to get to the good love life he had achieved when I last saw him.

Responsiveness Ping-Pong

Lots of people say and do things just to get a response.  Sometimes what they want is a response with some love in it.  That might be simple and delivered by an upbeat tone of voice or a happy grin, a factual reply with an affirming smile, or by a curious question with a positive quizzical but kind look, or maybe even by a playful teasing reply -- just so it is rather quick and positive in some way.  What is said more often is not as important as the positive interplay it starts.  It sort of is like a friendly game of ping-pong. It is not a serious table tennis kind of game where winning is what is so important, instead it just is a mutual bit of back-and-forth pleasantness or fun happening.  The dictionary meaning of the words going back and forth do not convey the real communications that are occurring, instead the facial, tones of voice and other expressional behaviors do.

For many people trained and in the habit of focusing mostly on the meaning of the words being said and maybe missing the rest, this can be quite hard and confusing.  It also is difficult for the cautious who may have gotten seriously hurt when they made spontaneous, quick replies.  That happens a lot in certain kinds of dysfunctional families.

Five Types of Love-Related Responsiveness

Love relating depends on responsiveness.  Without responsiveness there is no mutual, interactive, love relating.  With good love responding, the relationship thrives.  With negative, or non-responding, or fake responding, a love relationship diminishes and then may die.  Here are five types of responsiveness effecting love relationships for you to know about and work with.

1. Unresponsiveness  A non-response frequently is perceived as a negative response indicating rejection, an insult, an expression of anger,  an attack or some other form of a negative inner response.  Remember, sometimes silence screams the loudest.  Especially in love relationships, nonresponsive reactions often trigger hurt, defensiveness, retaliatory actions and/or emotional and physical distancing.  A nonresponsive person may not have felt or meant any of these negatives.  They just may have been distracted, preoccupied, deep in their own inner concerns, doing rehearsal thinking about what they want to say next, or just not hearing well due to congestion or some other physical issue.  Quickly negatively reacting to an unresponsive loved one with anger, or accusatory complaint, or by guilt-tripping them usually makes things worse for some time.  It also can be quite unjust.  With tolerational love and kindness, checking to see if they heard you, or asking for a reply in an up tone of voice, or saying something like “I think I'm being non-responded to and that's bothering me a bit, so help me with that please" can often work much better.

2. Neutral responsiveness  In love relationships, neutral responses sometimes can work fine but sometimes not.  Neutral responses are things like saying "ah", "oh", "humm", giving a  nod or gesture, etc..  They are better than unresponsiveness because they indicate having received a sent message and usually being sufficiently okay with it.  This also conveys that the speaker is being listened to, at least to some degree, is not likely to be having a strong negative reaction and is okay enough for things to continue.  Too many neutral responses soon can begin to seem negative.  Neutrality in response to high emotionality can be interpreted as a lack of understanding, being uncaring or feeling restrained disapproval.

3. Negative responsiveness  Responses of anger, aggravation, exasperation, reluctance, disappointment and the like may just be a cathartic release, a defense against interruption or being talked over, or being diverted from a desired path or goal.  Some people tend to interpret almost every new input coming at them as some sort of negative or critical remark including even the most neutral and laudatory statements.  Likewise, they interpret informative, neutral and general comments as criticism or complaints aimed at them.  They often had one or more highly critical parents.
Then again, the negative response may indeed be a personal attack indicative of very unloving feelings and disapproval.  It even could be a subconscious expression of hate or a marked undervaluing of another's importance.  But sometimes it just is a habitual poor way of responding.  The thing is, with only one negative response to go on, unless it is severe and prolonged, you can't know for sure why it was made or how to accurately interpret it.  That is why a response of pleasant equanimity to the perceived negative response usually is best.  Pleasantly say something like "Honey, you sound unhappy, are you?”  That way you give your loved one a chance to reflect, explain and reorient themselves while not letting yourself get into a not okay reaction.  Being quick not to take offense or get trapped in sending negatives back to where perceived negatives came from is usually a better way.

A negative response often is not as bad as a nonresponse.  That is because it indicates at least some attention is being paid and some interaction may have begun.

4. Fake Positive Responsiveness  This has some value sometimes.  It may help keep the peace, give time for thinking things through, avoid destructive exacerbations, help us not sweat the small stuff and best of all allow for the emergence of tolerational love.  It, however, can have a high cost.  Fake positives can grow distrust and generate emotional distancing along with tendencies toward passive/aggressive relationship sabotage.
                                    
5. Real Love Positive Responsiveness  Just about anything said to you by a loved one actually may be a bid and/or an opportunity for some love interaction.  It also could be a tentative start to a loved one revealing personal, intimate and important feelings.  Then again, it could be any of 1000 other things.  More likely, it could be a little chance for a mutually pleasant and rather nice bit of joint, love-bonding experience.  It might be playful, affectionate, romantic or even a bit sexy and/or fully sexual.  In any case, it is an opportunity for something positive to happen; so why not use it and respond in a pleasant, positive way (see “Love Bids and Their Astounding Importance”).

We all miss these opportunities from time to time.  We all respond negatively or not at all sometimes, and fake positive is the best we seem occasionally to manage.  If we respond with other than love positivity to our loved one’s offerings too frequently, we may do serious harm to our love relationship with that loved one (this includes children, parents, friends and other loved ones).

It is a love positive when we respond with a smile, a loving up tone of voice, a love pat, a little affectionate squeeze, a bit of appreciated humor or wit, or with anything else that helps make a friendly smile or laugh occur.  Even better is when your usual demeanor around your loved ones is one of happy and/or caring receptivity and loving responsiveness (see “A Best Gift of Love”).  By making positive, expressional responses to most inputs from a loved one, you show the loved one that you respect them, value them and feel a loving positivity toward them.  Not only that, you also are sending the message that you enjoy their presence in your life and you find their influence to be worthwhile and wanted.  That, of course, helps build relational harmony and teamwork which is good for kids, friends, family and even strangers to see happening. ,Responding positively even concerning negative things helps a loved one feel safe with you and that can assist deep bonding.

Loving responsiveness and especially happy, loving responsiveness is good for all concerned.  That is because our brains produce more happy making and health making neurochemistry when we respond to one another with love and especially when it is happy love.  As love goes back and forth between people, both giving and receiving love causes a broad range of health creating brain reactions in both the givers and receivers simultaneously.  That is the biological equivalent of loving another as you love yourself.  It also is a form of doing what the Buddhists and Hindus call Mudita love which has to do with choosing to be happy and sharing your happiness with others (see  “A Best Gift of Love?”  and Teachings on Love by the acclaimed Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh).

Learning to Do Better, Positive Love Responsiveness

To make ever improving quick positive love giving responses, often takes some doing.  It frequently requires unlearning relational sabotaging habits of unresponsiveness and negative responsiveness picked up in childhood.  Have you ever noticed that there are quite a few people who start most of their replies with the word "no" followed by whatever they want to say.  That speech habit is sort of self-defeating because starting any statement with a negative word like "no" seems to increase the chances of hearing a return negative reply.  Then there are other people who habitually start to frown whenever others start talking.  That too can cause communication self-sabotage.  Responding with unfriendly gestures, distancing movements, power posturing, speaking in gruff and or winey tones and a host of other expressional language factors all can be done non-consciously but, nevertheless, can have some subtle but considerably destructive effects on love relationships over time.

Good loving responsiveness is best done by being amply attentive to what loved ones are feeling and are dealing with currently in their lives.  Being able to tune in to a loved one’s emotional, overt and covert feelings is useful for every interaction with them.  That emotional tuning in to a loved one enables us to make appropriate and effective responses.  Also, learning to lovingly ask directly how or what a person is feeling usually is very helpful but not always reliable.  So, keep looking for emotional indicators to make your responsiveness replies spot on (see  “Listening with Love”and “Communicating Better with Love”).

One More Little Item.  May I suggest you try developing your own thinking about responsiveness by talking it over with others, perhaps loved ones.  If you do that, we would very much like it if you would mention this site and its many mini-love-lessons about the better how-to's of love.  Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Love Success Question:  What do you hope to see yourself do the next time someone, perhaps a loved one, does not respond to something you say, or makes only a neutral sort of grunt noise, or takes what you innocently said and interprets it as some kind of put down, criticism or other negative?

Sexual Love With Spiritual Love

Mini-Love-Lesson  #233

Synopsis: Very different mindsets about this topic help you explore your own, and how you might change your life for the better via love-filled, spiritual sexuality are covered here.  Explanations of spiritual love (even for atheists), sexual love, sexual spirituality, spiritual sexuality and their mixing and more.

Can We and Should We Mix Sex and Spirituality?

Which of these following people think the closest to the way you think?

Trevor said, “I can’t think of sexual love and spiritual love at the same time.  For me it’s almost like they’re enemies or at least they belong in completely different boxes in my head”.

Celia replied, “I’m just the opposite.  To me all real loves (sexual, romantic, parental or whatever) are spiritual.  If it’s not spiritual it’s not real love, no matter what kind of love it is”.

Donald added, “I guess I don’t know how to even start thinking about what spiritual love means and putting the word sexual with the words real love gives me trouble too”.

Darla related, “I’m wondering if that’s what went wrong in my love life.  Just possibly I didn’t do romantic love or sexual love spiritually enough, so maybe my love life was bound to mess up”.

Jacob then asked, “Are we sure we are talking about anything real?  What do all those words really mean?  I know what my religion and sex are but spirituality with sex and love just confuses me.”

Ava emphatically pronounced, “Love and spirituality are the most real things in my life and they’re what make my whole life work right including the romantic and the sexual”!

Noah then firmly declared, “I don’t think we can or should try to mix sex with the spiritual.  Sexuality will just corrupt the spiritual and bring us down into sin”.

What About You?

Which of these people comes closest to having said what goes on in your head if you ponder spirituality mixed with sexuality and love?  Or do you think something entirely different from all of them?

Now for a couple of other possibly life-changing important questions.  What do you think about your spiritual life becoming more sexual and your sexual life more spiritual?  While we are at it, what do you know about the many religious movements and teachings the world over and throughout history that pronounced the unity of the spiritual and the sexual to be a good thing?  Also what do you know about what the religion you are most familiar with has to say about spiritual and sexual love?  Then there is what the nonreligious but spiritually-oriented ideologies and philosophies say?  Finally, do you want to consider the spirituality of agnostics and atheists.  Many say they are quite spiritual.

Now more personally, Do you suppose you will live more fully and more fulfilled if you achieve a greater confluence of your sexuality with and within romantic love and spirituality? Will those you love benefit more from your love if you work to intertwine these parts of your life?

How Were You Taught?

Were you perhaps subconsciously trained to keep spirituality and sexuality in separate boxes in your head like Trevor?  If your love life has been very troubled or disappointing could Darla’s concerns be yours?  About these matters, is your background training deficient, conflicted or just unhelpful leaving you confused like Donald or maybe a bit rigidly dubious more like Jacob?

Figuring out what and how much has already gotten in your head about these issues is often a good way to start exploring for what may turn out to be stupendous improvements in your life.  I say that because that is what has been true for the many who proclaim the integration of sex and spirituality has been for them, nothing short of stupendous.

What Is Real Love?

To answer this question I refer you to the definition of love mini-love-lessons at this site (see “The Definition of Love” and “A More Ample Definition of Love”).

What Is Spiritual Love?

Spiritual love can be described as a sense of mysterious love connection with that which is perceived as being far greater than the self.  It also is seen as transcending the ordinary, the mundane, the usual, the normative, the common and even time and space, and as infinitely profound and often amazingly life changing.

Is all real love spiritual?  Sages of quite a number of diverse spiritual and metaphysical traditions have said that it is.  Interestingly, several teach that before anything there was only love and love in its need to be creative burst forth with the birth of the universe.  Therefore, everything of real importance is of love and especially is that true of sexuality because it can lead to the miracle of birth.  Another shared teaching holds that the substance of deity is pure love from which all real love flows (see “Spirituality and Love, Great and Grand”).

Throughout history and all around the world, those in love relationships, be they spouses, lovers, deep dear friends, loving parents of a newborn or even lovers of life itself, proclaim the experience of love to sometimes be awesomely spiritual.  Many a couple experiencing amazing love-filled sex testify to having undergone a profound, spiritual/sexual experience.

Some reductionist scientists posit that spiritual love must only be some unusual, neurophysical event in the brain.  However, others comment that this reductionist explanation might describe how spiritual love is neurochemically processed and that cosmically there may well be much more to it than that arguably arrogant conclusion suggests.

More Spiritual or More Religious?

Spiritual seekers tend to be quite different from religionists though many are both.  Spiritual quests lead seekers along mysterious paths into the unknown as well as toward uncertain goals.  Religionists, on the other hand, tend more to accept and profess established doctrines and credos.  Spiritual seekers often grapple with the great questions like why are we here and what is my purpose in life.  Frequently they then quest for their own individual answers and personal enlightenment.  Religionists more often conform and adhere to the belief systems provided for them by authoritative sources.  Spiritual seekers can tend to be more open to a diversity of love experiences and understandings while many religionists not so much.  At least that is what some research suggests.

What Is Sexual Love?

Sexual love is easier to define.  It simply is real love integrated with natural sexuality.  As such, it can be experienced confluently with spiritual love.

What Is Sexual Spirituality and Spiritual Sexuality?

These two can be described together as grand and powerful feelings of intimacy while feeling and acting passionately sexual and, at the same time, feeling intensely loving which brings on a sense of transcendental and oceanic connection with that which is far greater than the self.  It often includes awesome feelings of being a part of the universal, unknowable and immensely wondrous.  Spiritual sex and sexual spirituality also can be described as incredibly precious, highly personal, extraordinarily intimate, deep core uniting with the sacred spirit of another and/or a deistic presence.

Exploring Sexual and Spiritual Love Together

By exploring this mini-love-lesson, you already are joining millions of others who have, or are exploring sexual and spiritual love often together with a loved one or more.  I suggest the next step might be for you to read more about it.  There is plenty written.  For that, you might check-out Sacred Sexuality by A. T. Mann and Jane Lyle, perhaps followed by Sex and Spirit by Clifford Bishop. Love and Living by the Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton, is full of the wisdom of love and the theological.  For a more deeply psychological understanding, Sexuality and Spirituality, Pursuing Integration by Dr. William F. Kraft will do nicely.  All of these help in giving a fascinating and wonderfully, wide-ranging look at the many components of our subject.  The first two of these sources especially cover what a great many, different approaches actually have done about exploring love-filled sex and spirituality.

Some books give sexual/spiritual procedures to follow in the form of a series of exercises, and a fair number of couples have followed these and reported positively about their results.

A Google search will show you a huge number of other sources, many of which are not very useful in my opinion.  Some are just propaganda for selling a particular brand of religion or costly stuff.  But then again, some sources are quite fine, helpful and less expensive.

The next thing you might consider doing is attending workshops, retreats, courses, spirit quests, getting group coaching and attending other more experiential events.  Tantric workshops and retreats are among the most popular in this area of spiritual sexuality.  These kinds of experience-based events have a great range of intensity and for some are quite shocking.

So, considering the experiential, are you ready for participating in or observing reverent eroticism, prayerful masturbation and sacred mutual masturbation, liturgical naked chanting and dancing, reverential group nude massage, sacramental lovemaking, genital sanctification, risqué and sensuous religious rituals, aphrodisiac ceremony, orgasmic blessedness, Goddess sex and a great deal more.  It is important to select carefully which of these kind of and level of experiences you will be okay with.  Be sure to get enough information ahead of time from those who are in charge.  Many of these are for couples only but there are ones for singles available.  My suggestion is to carefully consider doing at least one or two of these type things but only if they seem to have a lot to say about love itself and are not ridiculously expensive.  Perhaps start with the milder ones and watch out for con artists (see “Sex Fears Mastered with Love”).

Now, if you are in a romantic type, love relationship, consider together following a guidebook or receiving instruction in a course of spiritual/sexual/love-based procedures available via a well credentialed, trained and qualified sex educator, counselor or therapist with some modern loving, health-oriented, spiritual background and see where that leads.

This is not to say that a couple in a deeply loving relationship must search outside their relationship to learn and experiment with combining sexuality and spirituality.  In a mutual, loving and trusting environment, peak experiences can be achieved together.  Just don’t play strike one, you’re out; time and patience often leads to success. Outside alternatives sometimes offer things a couple might not have thought of or instructions that might prove helpful.

One More Little Thing: With whom might you lovingly talk-over this mini-love-lesson, perhaps mentioning where you got the ideas from?

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

Quotable Question: If we keep the sexual and the spiritual separate, who benefits and who is perhaps harmed?

Returning to Touch Love

 

Mini-Love-Lesson  # 277

Synopsis: The good that loving touch does in our brains; our natural hunger for tactile love; physical and emotional distancing; and mindfully getting ready for when we can do more, safe, love touching after the pandemic are all succinctly and usefully reviewed here.

Touch Love in the Brain

When people with love in their hearts touch each other, skin to skin, almost magical things happen in their brains.  With loving touch, the brain chemical oxytocin starts to flow which greatly facilitates love bonding.  Dopamine and norepinephrine are produced and circulate which significantly helps the loving feel good with one another.  Immunity mechanisms strengthen and dozens of other helpful things begin to happen as our brain continues to process healthful, real love.

Love Touch Hunger

With the pandemic, millions have gone without much touch love and its multitudinous benefits.  In those lands where the pandemic has been well-managed, it is not as bad and it is  getting better.  Elsewhere, not so much yet.  However, there is a worry that in too many places too many people may have become touch shy, avoidant or just habituated to having less loving and friendly touch in their lives.  There are studies that suggest as hunger for affectionate and loving touch goes unmet, people of all ages become more easily agitated, fatigued, anxious, depressed, irritable, uncooperative and more disease susceptible.  As this occurs, love relationships of all types suffer.

Loving Touch in the Soon to Be Future ???

So, after enough people get vaccinated and touch becomes safe again, how well will we return to doing loving and friendly touch with each other?   Also, how much will you and your loved ones lives be benefited or deprived of loving touch’s many contributions?  

Let’s consider hugs.  Are you going to hug more, less or about the same?  How are you going to hug?  Will you be doing full body hugs, A-frame hugs where there is no touch below the waist, country club hugs where there is no touch at all or what?  Will you hug everybody you use to  hug?  How do you want to respond when meeting new people who want to hug you?

What about shaking hands?   Communicable disease experts advise that shaking hands probably would be a habit we could do well without.  Do you want to stick with fist bumps or elbow bumping instead of shaking hands?  How about the old Roman Empire’s mutual, wrist grab and squeeze?

What will you want to do about pats on the back, one arm buddy hugs, snuggling, cuddling, hand holding, back rubs, foot rubbing, spooning, massaging and tap touching?  Then there is how you may come to touch and be touched by children, teens, elders, different genders, workmates, friends and others?  Will you pick up from where you left off before the pandemic or do you want to make some sort of fresh, re-start to friendly and loving touching?

There are indications that all these touch involvements have diminished during the worldwide emphasis on “distancing for safety”.  Along with physical distancing, there is thought to have been an increase in emotional distancing that had best be reversed for the good of everyone’s mental, physical and relational health.  Distancing, regrettably, has contributed to our, research-identified, global problems with loneliness and what some call our wide-spread, love-malnutrition.

Until were safe out in the world, giving and getting lots of loving touch with those you safely live with, probably is a very healthy practice.  That might require an increase in what you and your close-at-hand loved ones are used to.  You might want to talk that over with them.

Touch Love Mindfulness

I suggest it will be advantageous for us all to become a bit more mindful of our post-pandemic touch behaviors and what we want them to be.  Such mindfulness may be especially useful in regard to those we love, those we call friends and those new acquaintances we may want to befriend or we could even come to love.

It is also important to think about getting ourselves love-touched enough.  Additionally, we all may do well to make-up for lost time spent apart or out of touch with our distanced friends, family and other loved ones.  In time, as we reconnect face-to-face, we may want to say things like “How about a big, long hug” or other love-touch initiating remarks.  Until then, we can ready ourselves for when we again can give and get loving touch more freely.  Being a bit more mindful of how we send and receive love via touch, likely will lead to our love relating being improved, enhanced and enriched.

If you want to learn more about love-touch and its wonders, try reading the mini-love-lessons found under Touch in the Subject Index Link of this site.

One More Little Thing.  Are there some people you might like to touch on these subjects with?   You could call, Zoom or Skype with them, if you can not yet get in touch with them face-to-face, and make a joint plan for getting in touch with each other as soon as it safe.  If you do that, please mention this site and its abundance of mini-love-lessons aimed at making the world a bit more love knowledgeable.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question:  Do you ever give yourself a love hug, or otherwise lovingly touch yourself perhaps while saying some healthy, self-love words to yourself or to certain parts of yourself?

Farmer vs. Mechanic Love Fixing

Synopsis: The clashing and conflict of Farmer Frank versus Michelle the Mechanic, the yea’s and nay’s of our two contradictory approaches, what Michelle did not want to hear and was glad to learn, timeouts, help from the deep inner mind, making choices versus growing solutions, some practical guidelines, and the beautiful interweave of what Frank and Michelle do now.

“Dammit!  Stay here and talk it out with me!  Don’t you dare walk away!  We need to work this out right now, Frank, no matter how long it takes, how upset we get or how tired we get!”  These demands were blasted out by Michelle in loud, angry tones accompanied with ugly looks and defiant gestures.

Frank much more firmly announced “No, I don’t believe that’s true.  We need to take a break, give each other time to calm down and think things through, figure out what we really feel and then work on this problem one little part at a time”.  Who’s right?  Whose approach is better?  Which way of trying to fix a love relationship problem gets the best results, Michelle’s or Frank’s?  And while we’re examining this, think about which of these two ways is more like your usual approach to a love relationship difficulty?

In one way of looking at it there are just two main approaches to fixing love related difficulties.  One is the ‘mechanic’s’ approach and the other is the ‘farmer’s’ approach.  Michelle is using the mechanic’s and Frank the farmer’s.  The mechanic just gets in there and works on the problem until it is fixed, provided he or she has the know-how, the parts and the tools to fix the problem.  The farmer has to work on the problem then back off and let nature do its thing for awhile, then do some more, and then back off again letting Mother Nature do more of her share until the problem is fixed and the goal achieved.  If the farmer digs up the freshly planted seeds to see if there is anything more to be done with them, or to make sure they have started to grow, it’s likely that will destroy the developing roots and stop the growth process.  If the farmer hastens the harvest too soon the crops will be ruined.

The farmer must work with natural processes which require doing some start up actions, backing off, doing some additional tending actions, backing off again and finally harvesting the results.  This is the usual way of working with those things that live and grow or are in need of healing, like crops or people.  The mechanic can take apart and put back together whatever he or she is working on endless times, but for the farmer that could be a very destructive way of going about things.  Some of the farmer’s approach is very mechanic-like and some of it requires leaving nature alone to ‘do its thing’ and being patient.

Here is what Michelle with her mechanic’s approach didn’t want to hear.  Whenever you’re working with things that live the farmer’s approach (with a possible exception) works best.  In fact, it may be the only way many of the difficulties living things experience can be handled successfully.  With inanimate objects the mechanic’s approach works fine.  Perhaps you’re thinking, “What about emergency medicine and surgery; don’t they work by way of the mechanic’s approach”?  No, because after surgery or emergency room procedures the patient is sent to the recovery room where nature’s healing ways take over to do the rest of the job, just like happens on the farm.  The one partial exception is where there is a true emergency and you have to do all you can, as fast as you can.  Even then quite often afterwards there has to be recovery done in the farmer’s or nature’s way.

With the love problems of couples, families, friendships and with self love we usually have to work on the difficulty in the farmer’s fashion.  We have to work on it consciously, and then back off and let our subconscious and other natural health and healing processes work on things without external interruption or too much of our conscious mind’s interference.  Then we can come back and do some more direct, conscious work, and if needed back off again.  That’s why once a week counseling and therapy sessions are the usual frequency standard, whereas ‘intensives’ (extended, uninterrupted therapeutic work lasting many hours, a weekend or a whole week) to work on a relationship or psychological problems are the occasionally useful exception.

Couples and families need to be able to take time out and let everyone’s inner systems process what the conscious mind has taken in.  When facing difficult issues, after a certain amount of direct external work, we need restorative breaks, distraction and relief time, and time to allow our marvelous, deeper mind’s amazing sorting and creative inner systems do their work on our problems.  We need to have time for all our various inner parts or ‘sub-personalities’ to meet with each other and synthesize our often conflicting and uncoordinated thoughts and feelings.  Usually we must do all that internal work to get our best results before we next consciously deal with problems externally.

Another set of problems can arise in our ‘living’ system when we are pressured to use the mechanic’s approach too much or too long.  When we are pressured or rushed, especially at length, our brain begins to make too many stress hormones.  When stress hormones begin to flood our brain and body we tend to grow agitated, irritated, less able to think clearly, we grow angry and more prone to any quick, destructive action which will bring an end to the increasing production of stress hormones. 

Some people are more easily ‘flooded’ than others (which seems to result from how well they were securely loved as children) but everyone can reach their limit.  In addition to that, when we are rushed and pressured into using a mechanic’s approach we are faced with ‘making choices’ instead of ‘growing solutions’.  In love relationships interactively, mutually growing solutions tends to work far better than being forced into quick choice fixes.  This is true in many parts of life but it is especially true in issues of the heart and love relationships.

There are a few practical Guidelines for using the farmer’s approach.  First, agree to use and cooperate with anyone asking for a timeout.  Whenever a timeout is called for schedule how long it’s going to be and when the participants are going to meet next to work on whatever issues are being faced.  Timeouts can be extended if needed but always with a determined time to get back together agreed upon.  Otherwise, dodging the problem for too long or never getting back to it may occur. 

Another guideline is don’t let problem talk invade love or recreation time, and don’t do it late at night or when you’re also trying to handle other stressors.  Pick a start time and an end time to conduct problem talk and stick to that.  With lots of difficulties it’s good for people to ‘sleep on it’ for a night which allows our deep, inner subconscious mind time to ‘do its thing’ which sometimes is quite miraculous.

With some reluctance Michelle conceded the problem she wanted addressed wasn’t a true emergency and so she backed off her mechanic’s approach.  She learned to use Frank’s farmer’s approach more often, then he learned that he could use Michelle’s mechanic’s approach for some of the things they were contending with.  Once in awhile there was a true emergency in their lives and, much more cooperatively, they both went at it like good mechanics can.  They also learned to identify whether a problem they were facing needed a mechanic’s or farmer’s approach and in teamwork they learned to apply that knowledge which eliminated a tremendous amount of conflict they had previously experienced.  Perhaps you can do the same.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Are you more prone to the farmer’s or the mechanic’s approach when you are dealing with love relationship difficulties?

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Compassionate Love, A Big Sign of True Love?

Synopsis: A vital question starts this mini-love-lesson; followed by discussions of empathy, compassion, their mix, what science says, low compassionate relationships, the question of too much compassion; and ends with what can help and “the answer”.

A Vital Question?

Can you have real love without it being empathetically compassionate? Some of those who look mostly at romantic love, passion-filled love, young love and sexual love tend to exclude empathy and compassion as essential for authentic love. Others think all forms of healthy, real love have strong elements of empathetic compassion. They also tend to think that if empathetic compassionate love is missing, it is evidence the love is false and will fail. So let’s take a look at what is empathetic compassion.

The Nature of Empathy

Empathy usually is defined as feeling another person’s feelings. This can mean experiencing the same kind of emotions another is experiencing and even the same kind of physical feelings. These can be both good and bad feelings, but more frequently the word empathy is used to describe feeling another’s pain. More exactly, empathy commonly refers to when you perceive another in distress or in a state of hurting, you rather automatically feel a corresponding, similar sort of distress and/or pain.

Many think this especially happens in true love relationships but it may happen when viewing any other in any strong state of feeling. Examples include, one seeing a child suffering and you start to similarly suffer, or walking into a group of people laughing you might start to laugh too, although you don’t know what they are laughing about, thus, you are experiencing empathetic humor. Expressing empathy especially to someone in a state of emotional hurt frequently assists love bonding to occur and grow.

Sometimes empathy causes people to distance themselves from others who are hurting so as to escape the hurting they experience seeing others in pain. However, it is thought that when there is love it causes a person to go toward, not away, from the one who is hurting.

The Nature of Compassion

Compassion is usually defined as having deep emotional feelings and emotional understanding of another’s distress and the concomitant desire for the alleviation of that distress, and usually a strong desire to assist in that alleviation. Compassion also is thought to involve heightened perception, caring and responding to another’s suffering. Some think that love relationships tend to wither and die when there is a lack of sufficiently felt and expressed compassion.

Compassion often is seen as a key factor in both the healing of the psychologically wounded and many damaged relationships. Compassion opens doors to giving needed care, offering forgiveness and unselfish, altruistic action. Many very helpful and healing behaviors begin with compassion. Well expressed and received, compassion also precedes improvements in relational closeness, cooperation and collaboration.

Empathy and Compassion Together

If in the middle of a difficulty, someone has and shows empathetic compassion for whoever is in agony or distress, amazing improvements often can start to occur. To accomplish this sort of thing, empathy begins the process. Someone feels the feelings of a suffering other, and then has compassion, resulting in actions that show and give care. From that improvements begin. Some may feel empathy but for various reasons may not have compassion and, therefore, actions of care can be weak or absent. Others may act out of duty, guilt, obligation and other sentiments in ways that may seem to be compassionate love, but without the empathy the acts, in various ways, are less.

Science and Empathetic Compassion

Recently the brain and behavioral sciences professionals have been researching empathy and compassion and coming up with very important findings. Did you know that when you feel empathetic compassion you trigger your brain into more healthfully adjusting your own heart rate. You also cause your brain to make better and more healthful, neurochemical changes which result in feeling better both physically and emotionally. Feeling empathetic compassion also produces hormones involved in the brain’s motivating and processing interpersonal interactions. That in turn makes for better interpersonal harmony and love bonding.

Loving feelings become more common and stronger while stress reduces. Care giving actions increase and are felt as more rewarding after empathetic compassion starts to be felt and expressed. Another interesting fact is that empathetic compassion in loving relationships causes people to live longer and spend less time in medical care. Love relationships with low empathetic compassion are seen as having the opposite of these effects.

Can Low Compassionate Love Relationships Be Helped?

It is thought, and the data suggests, that those relationships where there is low expressed, empathetic compassion, tend to fail or at best function far more poorly than they might. Questions arise like, what can be done, can compassion be learned and increased, or are low compassionate relationships doomed? Are the people who lack sufficient empathy and compassion condemned to live sicker, shorter and more loveless lives while repeatedly having more love failing relationships?

About such questions there’s good, bad and indifferent news. Some of the good news is that according to Stanford Medical School’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research, compassionate training can significantly assist people in learning to have and show compassion, receive compassion from others, and get good at self compassion. All of that improves the activation of the brain’s regions most associated with love, kindness, general positiveness, stress reduction and it results in improvements in general health and positive affiliation and connectedness with others. In other words, compassion training improves people, relationships and the love in love relationships.

The bad news is that people low in empathetic compassion usually don’t know how bad that is for their love relationships and for their own health. Sadly there are quite a few people who see empathy and compassionate love as weak and useless, or worse. Many of them have been taught that being tough, unfeeling and compassion-free is a virtue of the powerful and the successful. It goes along with being tough-minded, efficient, practical and this is needed for survival in a tough world. The research on love and health, especially couples, family and comradeship love, would suggest just the opposite is true.

The indifferent news is that a lot more research is needed about all of this.

Can There Be Too Much Empathetic Compassion?

Like most things, empathetic compassion probably needs to be balanced with good sense and other factors like the ‘love that challenges’ (see the mini-love-lesson titled Are You a Challenge Lover?). There seem to be people who are made dysfunctional by their overwhelming compassion or empathy, but they are quite rare. If empathetic compassion is effecting your physical and/or psychological well being it may be too much. Or it may be that you might need to learn how to be compassionate and self-caring at the same time.

Are Some Totally Lacking in the Ability to Be Empathetic or Compassionate?

There are those in the clinical fields who think that, for all practical purposes, the answer to this question is “yes”. Psychotherapists, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists tend to diagnose such people as either sociopaths or psychopaths. They also tend to say that they are likely to be both incapable of love and of being cured, though they frequently can fake love and mental health rather well. This especially is true if it is to their own advantage and to other’s disadvantage to do so. Others think that with long term, quality, therapeutic help even the sociopathic and psychopathic can learn to have empathetic compassion and, therefore, can learn to do healthy, real love. In some Family Studies and Family Therapy professional groups the inability to have empathetic compassion is seen as evidence of the inability to have genuine love.

What can help?

Education, training, counseling, psychotherapy, relational therapy, self-examination and friendship all can be of considerable assistance in helping individuals and relationships grow and benefit from increases in empathetic compassion. Especially useful is the kind of training pioneered at Stanford called Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT). Research in applying CCT in counseling and therapy is occurring and looking quite promising. Joint couples and family members education concerning empathetic compassion also may be quite helpful. Asking yourself and loved ones about how you might work together to increase and better express your empathetic compassionate love might also be a good way to go.

The Answer

The original question was “Is empathetic compassion a big sign of true love? Here’s the answer, as I see it. Healthy, real love does indeed require an element of empathetic compassion, and if it does not exist in a love relationship then healthy, real love probably doesn’t exist in that relationship either. We must acknowledge that others disagree. So, what do you think?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Can you think of two ways you could improve your expression of empathetic compassion to your loved ones?

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