The Huge, Hidden Reason So Many Fail at Love?

FREE Love Lesson #175

Synopsis: Rediscovering a ‘becoming invisible’ cause of our huge number of love relationship failures starts this mini love lesson. It then is followed by a listing of 12 major love failure syndromes; the best source for learning about all this; more.

What Used to Be Understood

Did you know that 50 and more years ago there was a widely accepted but mostly now forgotten reason for failing at love.  This reason was commonly understood and very helpful in protecting people from many of the traumas and tragedies which now beleaguer masses of those struggling to make their love relationships work.

What was that reason and its accompanying solution?  Before we get to that, let’s give a couple of clues to see if you can figure it out.  Clue 1. Are you aware that once upon a time the most popular magazines list included titles like “True Love”, “Real Love”, “True Romance” and “Real Romance”?  Clue 2. Have you heard these terms: twitterpatted, smitten, having a crush, amentia, bewitched, gaga over, enamored, beguiled, stupefied, calf love, puppy love, spellbound, infatuated, gone dottie over, and love crazy.

Clue number 1 helps us see there was a widely accepted implication that untrue love, unreal love and/or false love really and frequently existed.  The words and phrases of Clue 2, and others like them, were all terms used to indicate various versions of that same thing – false love.  They also were widely used to help a person not jump to the possibly, disastrously, mistaken conclusion that one was entering into a state of true or real love.  In other words, false love was seen to be a reality of perhaps multiple types, and everyone had best beware of false love because some of its forms might be highly misleading, very painful and quite destructive.  It would seem, that was the common mindset.

Somehow, strangely, the subject of real versus false love is not much looked at these days.  For many that means the protection this concept gives is no longer acting as a safeguard.  Typically now, too many people quickly conclude if “it feels like love, it must be love” and in fact it must be real, true and therefore, highly desirable and dependable, healthy love that will last.  More times than not, this conclusion can be flat out wrong.  So what is happening and what can be done about it?

The Secret That Is Re-Revealed

Perhaps the reasons for a 50% or higher divorce rate and an estimated 75% love relationship breakup rate in many countries may be due to false love.  The solution to false love, of course, is real love, learning how to tell the difference and how to stay away from the false thing, and instead, do the real thing.

Couples whose relationship is based in a false rather than a healthy, real love are bound to experience one kind of love failure or another.  It seems this used to be well understood and broadly recognized.  It also seems those who worked with this conceptualization better protected themselves from the many failures inherent to false love.  It likely is that such couples who do this now can be much more successful in finding, developing, creating and growing real love and, thereby, attaining its many healthful and more lasting benefits.

With this thinking, would it not be wise for those who teach and write about love to once again contemplate, do research and put forth information and ideas about false versus real love?  Isn’t it time that once again we shed light on that which has slipped into the shadows and has become again a sort of secret.  It seems like a mysterious truth is being kept from the vast number of people who dearly need to avoid or escape from the living disasters of love going wrong.  Shouldn’t it be proclaimed that there is healthy, real love but there also are toxic forms of false love that can harm and even destroy your life?  Isn’t it also true that the more we look at love relationship problems in this light, and the more we learn how to recognize the differences between real and false love, the better off we all will be?

Below is a list of a dozen forms of destructive, false love patterns or syndromes thought to exist by investigators, researchers therapists and others of notable expertise.  It was compiled from work done in a broad array of fields by a wide variety of those who give serious thought and effort to these issues.  Each is accompanied by a very brief hint about what some of these false love forms have to tell us.

12  MAJOR  FORMS  of  FALSE  LOVE

1. The IFD Syndrome
    (Hurts and harms most people at least a little and many a whole lot)

2. Spouse Acquirement Syndrome
    (Peaks as graduations approach)

3. Thrill and Threat Bonding
    (Rescuers, victims and excitement junkies beware)

4. Unresolved Conflict Attraction
(Why we marry our abusers – again and again)

5. Limerence
(No matter how great it feels, it’s over in 2 to 4 years)

6. Love And Lust Confusion
    (Great sex/romance and then more great sex and then “see ya”)

7. Imprint Mating
(How odd that I should desire who I desire and so strongly)

8. Relational Dependency & Codependency
(Take care of me so I don’t have to grow up and do it myself)

9. Meta-Lust
(I want you totally so I can discover all of me and then – we’re done)

10. Shadow Side Attachment
    (Why we fall for ‘bad’ boys and ‘bad’ girls)

11. Nympholepsia
    (Can you really fall in love with a ghost and what about a sprite?)

12. Fatal Attraction Syndrome
    (This one actually can get you killed – really!)

The Best Source

In my long practice as a relationship focused therapist, I discovered that hundreds of individuals, couples and families benefited greatly by working with the concepts involved in the real love versus false love issues.  My international work showed me the real love versus false love factors were applicable worldwide.  From my extensive experience, every kind of love relationship problem bears at least some examination viewed from the perspective of real love versus false love issues.  Especially is this true for every individual and couple wanting a romantic relationship or involved in one, as well as those recovering from a failed love relationship.

It is with that background and the reasons involved, that my ‘40+ years, love mate/partner, Kathleen McClaren, RN’ and I wrote the e-book REAL LOVE, FALSE LOVE: Answers and Solutions (currently exclusively available at this website).  This book covers the above named and listed 12 Syndromes, complete with amazing and inspiring case histories and the how to’s of avoiding, escaping and recovering from false love, along with, and when possible, how to change false love into real love.  Yes, of course, that is a plug.  But it really is a fine book presenting highly engrossing and useful information you will not find all together anywhere else.  And from the feedback we are getting, REAL LOVE, FALSE LOVE is doing lots of deep good for its readers.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Do you know and can you tell the differences between healthy, real and toxic, false love?

Related posts:

1. Love Against Blame And It’s Hidden Harm
2. Removing Your Hidden Blocks to Receiving Love Fully
3. False Love Awareness
4. False Forms of Love: Limerence and Its Alluring Lies
5. Unselfish Self-Love 

Love Is Not Arrogant

Mini-Love-Lesson #241

Synopsis:  This mini-love-lesson starts with a brief review of how arrogance and love work against each other; a look at the nature of arrogance; true and false arrogance; its destructive effects on love relationships; an appreciative note on Paul’s unusual inclusion of arrogance in his list of what love is and is not.

How Arrogance Works Against Love                                     

Arrogance acts as a put down to others as it attempts to put up the person who is demonstrating the arrogance.  Love works to help put up, or boost, everyone with no put downs involved.

When a person speaks or acts with arrogance, they may not know it but they are sending a message conveying that they are more okay, important and of significance than the person to whom they are sending the message.  Furthermore, the message conveys that the person they are messaging is of a lesser worth, status and power than merits much notice, attention or interacting with.  That message also may be received and interpreted by those who are very wounded and vulnerable as indicating they are being seen as too unimportant, deficient and flawed to be loved or to even to exist.

Healthy, real love motivates sending a very opposite message.  It works to indicate you certainly are an okay person worthy of attending to, dealing with, noticing, appreciating, caring about and you certainly are of equal, democratic value and importance along with the rest of us. In short you are a person to love and your existence is valued (see “Communicating Better with Love: Mini Lessons”).

What Is Arrogance?

Arrogance has been described as unpleasant, unattractive and undeserved pridefulness.  Arrogance simply can be defined as a pretentiousness of superiority over others.  It often is manifested by behaving insolent, overbearing, contemptuous, pompous, vain, demeaning, smug, imperious, haughty, intolerant, conceited, lordly, entitled, disdainful, bored, dismissive, excessively critical and with exaggerated bragging.

True and False Arrogance

There is true and fake arrogance.  True arrogance is when someone consciously really believes they inherently are superior to others.  Fake arrogance is when someone acts superior but consciously knows or suspects they are engaged in a phony act.  In both cases, it is thought that subconsciously those manifesting arrogance secretly suspect and strongly fear they are actually inferior.  A lack of true, healthy self-love is suspected as being at the root of all that.  Arrogance actually may be a compensating defense mechanism trying to counterbalance the lack of self-love (see “Self-Love -- What Is It?”).

The Why of Arrogance

Arrogance probably exists because it works.  At least it works in shallow, not close, pragmatic relationships but it does not work well in real love relating.  Some people use arrogance to show they are powerful, as a way to dominate in social situations, as a support mechanism giving permission to rudely vent anger, be negatively critical and openly show disapproval, etc., to fend off would-be challengers, avoid being vulnerable and to escape more real and emotionally close, personal interactions which they secretly fear and feel inadequate about.

Arrogance may have evolved from primitive blustering behaviors which helped scare off competition and assisted in keeping underlings compliant and submissive.

The Destructive Effect of Arrogance in Love Relationships

Frequently arrogance tends to have a distancing effect in couples, families and friendships.  That especially is true if the demeaning put down component in arrogance is strong.  There are people who admire what they think is arrogance but often it really is okay pride, playful showing off or just self-confidence they are perceiving.

Healthy, real love is strongly affirmational rather than demeaning and disrespectful as is arrogance.  In some relationships, arrogance is demonstrated through disguised constructive criticism, teasing and other subtly dominating actions.  It also can show up as for your own good manipulative behavior.  All that tends to erode love and frequently results in passive aggressive counterattacks and sometimes eventual relational abandonment.  Sometimes these negative effects are hidden and suppressed but secretly they are accumulating internally.  Then eventually there is a big, destructive eruption and maybe a relational dissolution.

The participants in Love Relationships benefit from healthy self-pride, self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-love partly because none of that needs to have any put down or demeaning component as does arrogance.

Acting arrogant to a loved one tends to decrease rather than increase their respect for you and it is no help at all in growing emotionally closer and more loving with one another.  Emotional distancing that sometimes occurs with arrogance treatment has been cited as increasing the likelihood of an affair occurring.  Arrogance also is thought to help demote democratic teamwork development in couples and families, as it promotes resentment and resistance in the same arenas.  None that can be good for, or part of growing healthy, real love.

Paul’s Inspired Inclusion of Arrogance

Arrogance interweaves with Paul’s tenet of love not being boastful/pretentious but it also presents a whole array of additional components to consider as we already have seen.  Paul’s anti-Arrogance message is one of the more surprising inclusions in Paul’s list of what love is and what love is not.  Not many have addressed the arrogance and love issue but on close analysis there are those who find it insightful, inspired and an essential understanding about love.

Paul wrote love is not “ou phusioutai” which in Paul’s Greek is literally translated as “not puffed up” but then, as now, it is interpreted to mean not arrogant.  Some think it is better translated as love is “not conceited” or “puffed up with false pride” or a “with sense of superiority”.  Perhaps Paul understood that when one person in a love relationship, or a love network has an arrogant sense of superiority over one, or more, others in the relationship, that has a poisonous effect on the love relationship.  This was and still seems to be a rather under-dealt-with understanding of how love does and does not work (see “How Love Works -- Seven Basics”).

One More Thing

Who do you know that might enjoy talking about what you have just read?  Might not doing such talking be expansive and enriching?  If you do it, please mention this site and our many free mini-love-lessons as well as our free subscription service where you automatically, every month receive intriguing, recent and useful information about love, arguably the most important of all topics.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question:  If I love you and treat you arrogantly, have I not just shown you I have deficiencies?

Finding Love

Mini-Love-Lesson  #254

The First Place to Look

The first place to find love is inside yourself.  If you have good, healthy, sufficient self-love your chances of finding good, healthy, real love go up dramatically.  If you are hoping that someone loving you will make you okay and then you will be able to love yourself, that can happen but there is a danger.

When you are really hungry for love you may accept anything that looks like love but all too likely, it will not be the real thing.  If you are starved and desperate for love, you are in danger of becoming entangled in a destructive false love.  So, work on your healthy, real self-love and you are much more likely to draw someone to you of quality and real love ability (see “Getting Healthy, Real Love in Your Life”).

Non-Conscious and Conscious Searching

If you are undernourished for love or just love hungry, your subconscious (deeper parts of your brain) probably are actively searching for love sources whether your conscious mind knows it or not.  Some people believe the romantic myth that if you consciously go looking for love, you won’t find it because love has to be something you fall into or it falls upon you.  Believing that just may make it harder to find.  Mounting evidence strongly suggests that your conscious cooperating with your subconscious while looking for love is likely to work best.

What Is “Finding Love”?

Let us be clear about what finding love really means.  Most people mean finding a special heart-mate to love and be loved by in an emotionally close life partner way.  Some just mean a good sex partner and others just want someone to be officially married to, while still others want an endless romantic involvement.  There are lots of people who definitely do not mean finding an equal adult-to-adult life partner kind of love.  There are lots of people who say they want to find love but their real reasons have nothing to do with actual love.  They may just want safety, to be taken care of, someone to control or be controlled by, etc.

So it is very important that you become clear about what finding love is really all about for you.  Do you know enough about love to be reasonably sure that is what you really are looking for? (See “Definitions of Love Series”)  Do you know enough about yourself to know why you are looking to find love?  It could be it just is natural to do that but are there other reasons?

Quite a few relational authorities who think that what we really are doing when we are hoping to find love is actually looking to find a good candidate to grow a healthy, real, lasting love life with.  Once we find a good candidate our subconscious finds acceptable enough, we then start on the issues of learning how to do love-relating with that person – or not.

Two Ways to Find

Accidentally just stumbling across  something or actively searching for something are the two ways to find anything, including love.  Actively searching works better if you do it smart (see“Hunting for Love”).  Furthermore, when you actively think about searching for a heart-mate, you learn more and you lessen the risk involved in making the gamble of love.  Also, remember love does not have to always be from just one, special other spouse-type person.  You can get and give love lots of different ways, in lots of different forms of relationship (see “A Dozen Kinds of Love to Have in Your Life”).

Knowing Love When You Find It

The romantic myth is you will just know it when you find it because it will feel so strong and different from everything else.  A great many divorced people say they used to believe that myth.  The truth is several forms of false love feel just a strong and make people feel just as sure they found real love as does authentic love.  Another truth is that attraction is not love but it gets easily confused with falling in love (see “Attraction or Love or What?”, Link “Fatal Attraction Syndrome – A False Form of Love”, “False Forms of Love: Unresolved Conflict Attraction Syndrome”).   Some people say you can not know if it is real love or not until you have given it at least six months to grow (see “It Might Be Healthy, Real Love If...”, “Love Is Patient”, “Definitions of Love Series”).

What Most People Are Looking For

One way to find love is by looking for its characteristics showing up in people you meet.  More together, okay and mature people see the prime, characteristic feature of love to be caring.  Caring is the tendency to empathetically and emotionally care and to behaviorally give care to others especially when they are in distress.  To care about the well-being, the feelings (both physical and emotional), the growth and development, the quality of life and the future of a person are all involved here.  Caring shows high valuing of who and what is cared about which is a major characteristic of healthy, real love.  Without caring, the ability to love, at best, is limited.

The second characteristic is the ability to be and interact intimately.  That means emotionally, sexually, mentally and behaviorally.  It also means to make oneself vulnerable via authentic self-disclosure of what is real within oneself.  That can include idiosyncrasies, failings, foibles, weaknesses and ordinariness.  But it also includes revealing what is confident, successful, excellent and just plain good about oneself.  Good intimacy also includes lovingly dealing with the same factors coming from another in ways that show tolerance, acceptance, noncritical understanding and affirmation.

The third factor most more okay people see as representing love is the ability to emotionally connect and, once connected, become dedicated to staying caringly connected irrespective of any and all difficulties that might destroy the caring connection.  This characteristic usually is called commitment.

The fourth factor has to do with having and demonstrating strong, positive feelings about and for a loved one.  It is sometimes known as passionate love and may include sexual feelings and actions but it also involves being intensely for and on the side of the loved.  Feelings of being bonded to and loyal to the loved one also are included here.

Less mature, less okay and certain, but not all, more emotionally troubled individuals are much more likely to think attraction impulses and feelings signify real, heart-mate love.  All too often, this attraction-based belief does not work out well for lasting, love relating.  Attraction can lead to love beginning but it is a different thing.

Finding Someone Good to Love and be Loved By

To find that special someone, do lots and lots of active looking.  Do that looking as many ways as possible but do it smart.  Go where love-oriented people go.  They go where they can be caring to, for and about others, and/or for things of intense, intrinsic value.  They often have careers or avocations that work to achieve worthy, constructive results that benefit others.  They tend to volunteer for stuff that makes improvements happen of one sort or another.  They may be involved in adamant love for various causes having to do with making the world a better place to live in (see “Adamant Love – And How It Wins for Us All”).  Whatever they do they tend to use whatever they can for the good of somebody or something.

Some people are kind of afraid to love someone like that.  They may fear not being good enough or becoming trapped in a goody good, societal sphere.  That is seldom the case.  Such people, as described here, often are iconoclastic, individualistic to a fault, and fierce about fighting for what they believe in.  They also can be quite fun-loving and positive about life.

Love-able and love-oriented people can be found almost anywhere but not so much where more harm is being done than good, or where there is more greed-orientation than contributory.  Their position often is more of the “I win, you win, everybody can win” approach than of the “I must win, you must lose to me” way of dealing with the world.

The Three A’s for Finding Love

The three A’s for finding love stand for assertiveness, attitude and action.  When you use these your chances for finding healthy, real love start to look good.  So, let’s look at each.

Assertiveness means being friendly and lovingly assertive and it is not to be confused with aggressiveness.  Aggressiveness can mean being pushy, annoying, contentious, snide and a host of other undesirable things.  Friendly, loving assertiveness is accomplished by smiles and pleasant facial expressions, gestures, posture movement, voice tones and positive word choice.  Friendly, loving assertiveness tends to attract an array of rather fine people.

Attitude means something you first do for yourself.  Many people find they can self-talk themselves into a good attitude.  A bold, socially adventuresome attitude helps a lot.  Developing a good attitude gets you ready to take the necessary social risks for finding a good heart-mate.  Being mindful of your physical safety is important but being too socially safe gets in the way.  If you get yourself embarrassed you probably doing something right.  Think about the attitude you want to project.  Loving, friendly, caring, sexy, joyous, healthful, confident, self- loving (not arrogant) and love-positive toward life likely will do you well.

Action means do just about everything you can think of to do and also enjoy the adventure of it all.  Yes, use the Internet but also go some places and get a bit involved.  Everything from A for art to Z for zoos has groups of people organized and meeting to support or be involved with those things.  Most of these places have some very fine people you probably would like to meet.  Self-talk yourself into a good attitude and go assertively and meet some of them.  Don’t worry much about what they think of you.  Be more concerned with what you think of them but give them a chance and don’t be too negative.  That is self-defeating.  Scan the group for who looks most interesting and go talk to those people.

Some Other Things to Do

Read these related mini-love-lessons: “Getting Healthy, Real Love In Your Life”, “Above Normal Love”, “From Self-Love to Other Love And Back Again” and “Willing and Ready for Love?”. Give some thought to the study of love itself so you consciously can think about it.  That will help you cooperate better with your subconscious in finding what you want.  Give some effort to focusing on growing and giving love and the major ways that is done. It’s not all about just getting love.  Good heart-mate love usually includes sexuality so if you are not already OK get Ok with sex and especially love expressed in sex along with sexiness.

One More Thing

Talk all this over with some others and see if they might want to go with you as you adventure into new groups of people.  While you are at it, please mention this mini-love-lesson and this site.  Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Date Your Mate - Always !

(Note: ‘mate’ as used here is the North American, and other’s term meaning ‘a person of ongoing romantic love involvement’ not the Australian or New Zealand (our Oz and Kiwi friend’s), and other’s  ‘acquaintance or friend’ meaning).

Date your mate or lose your mate!  Date your mate to keep your mate!  Have you heard these modern dictums or axioms?  They speak to a modern world love truth you may do well to think about.

Lots of couples come to me complaining that their relationship is not what it used to be.  They worry that they are falling out of love, feel like something is missing that used to be there and wonder what to do about it.  Examining this usually reveals that they are not behaving in ways that keep love alive and growing.  One of the missing ingredients is they have stopped ‘dating’ one another.  They may go out to eat, or go to the movies and things like that but they don’t behave like they are on a date when doing those things.

There are no special preparations like wearing sexy clothes or using a little perfume or aftershave.  When out together there is no flirting, holding hands, sexy innuendos, playful nudges, intimate strokes or romantic squeezes.  Nor is there looking longingly into each other’s eyes, romantic talk, hints of mystery or surprise, or anything else that might identify what they are doing as a date.  Worse there may be problem talk.  It is not a date if there is talk about problems.  It is a meeting!  Dates that grow love usually are best accomplished when two people give each other special, personal, positive focus.  Dates are for intimate compliments, personal appreciations, expressions of enjoyment and sometimes desire and passion.

A real date includes shared laughter, a sense of personal closeness and all things fun and good – not problems, and not a lot of dealing with everyday practicalities and functionality.  Usually after a couple starts taking each other out on new real dates again improvements start to return to their relationship.  This is not the only thing needed but it can be a big jump start toward increasing the special form of love that couples can create.  So, I like to suggest that couples abide by the modern dictums, “Date Your Mate or Risk Losing Your Mate.”  And “Date Your Mate To Keep Your Mate”.

It is especially helpful to go on lots of different kinds of dates.  Here are some to think about.  Mini dates (ice cream store, walk in the park), regular dates (a movie, out to eat), informal dates (coffee shop, browsing a bookstore together), special event dates (birthday, anniversary), dress up dates (a play, the symphony), romantic dates (candle light dinner, carriage ride), adventure dates (balloon ride, mountain hiking), mystery dates (involving unknown destinations and activities), play dates (amusement park, howling at the full moon together – maybe star gazing after), elegant dates (fine art museum, fine dining), sexy dates (tango dancing, a risqué club) at home or at a special hotel sex dates (erotic massage, striptease) and combinations like a romantic adventure date involving riding galloping horses together through the surf on a moonlit night.

One trick to remember is to call it a ‘date’ in order to get in the right mind-set and help you remember to act like you’re on a date.  Avoid doing just the kind of parallel activity that friends can do but instead do the more intimate, special, connecting interactions which are, by the way, good for couples of all ages.  That way you are more likely to keep the love in your love relationship growing healthfully.

As always – Grow in love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success questions
Today will you give thought to the kind of date or special time together a loved one might especially enjoy, and with those thoughts design a date that you ask that loved one to go on?  If you have trouble designing a date how about asking that special loved one today, “What sort of date or time together would you especially like?”  Today would you consider going over the above list of different kinds of dates with them?  If not today, then when exactly?

Related posts:

1. Connection Matching – A Love Skill
2. False Forms of Love: Unresolved Conflict Attraction Syndrome

Ready or Not for Love?

Are you really ready for love?

Explore the following ‘willingness’ issues and you are likely to help yourself be ‘more ready’.  You also may get in touch with the areas of love- readiness you might do well to understand more, need to strengthen, and the areas in which you are most love-able and love-potent.  Which willingness areas can you say “Yes” to, which ones elicit a “Maybe”, and which ones get your “No” or “Probably not yet” response?

Do You Have STRONG :
1.    Willingness to do the work of learning to love well?

2.    Willingness to do the work of practicing loving well?

3.    Willingness to do the work of unlearning unloving, negative thoughts and feeling systems and the negative behaviors that go with them?

4.    Willingness to risk (to let fear and safety NOT be primary)?

5.    Willingness to love yourself healthfully?

6.    Willingness to live love-centered (NOT money-centered, status-centered, power-centered, etc.)?

7.    Willingness to explore and experiment with new ways?

8.    Willingness to be open to both getting and giving love?

9.    Willingness to choose and use the power of love over all other forms of power?

10.    Willingness to be transformed by love (because that’s what happens) into an ever growing, better self?

11.    Willingness to work at using real love to help heal others, and to use real love to heal you of old wounds and the negative thoughts, feelings, and behavior systems those wounds empower?

12.    Willingness to let love deeply connect you with others, life, nature, spirituality, and other love forces in the universe?

Add up your “Yes” responses, your “Maybe” responses, and your “No & Probably Not Yet” responses.  If you have mostly “Yes” responses you probably are well on your way to ‘readiness’ and enriched living through love.  Mostly “Maybe” answers suggest you could use some work on your love readiness and it is advisable to proceed carefully in love matters.  Mostly “No & Probably Not” responses suggest that before you enter your next great love adventure you may want to emotionally strengthen yourself, look much further into understanding the dynamics of healthy real love and how to avoid love trauma and tragedy.

Please know this is not a definitive test just a little guide for examining your possible love readiness.  It also can be used by couples, or friends and family, and others to help each other look a bit deeper into the area of love readiness.


As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly