An Alphabet of Love's Good Feelings

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with a little introduction to love and feelings; then gives you more than 150 positive emotions that can be brought on by love; and ends with some things you can do to use this list to enhance a love relationship.

Love and Feelings

Love causes, triggers and brings about a vast array of various good or pleasurable emotions.  It also can stimulate a number of positive, physical feelings.  Knowing the names of the emotions of love can greatly help people who love each other communicate their love, improve their love and better experience their love.  Remember, love itself is not an emotion but a vital, powerful, natural process of which the feelings are only a part.  Getting familiar with love’s many good feelings can help you assist those you love to experience those good feelings and have them yourself.

150+ Positive Emotions That Can Be Brought on by Love

A.      Affection, Awe, Attractive, Astonished, Assured, Ascendant
B.      Benevolent, Brave, Blithe, Blessed, Blossoming, Buoyant
C.      Compassion, Care, Concern, Connection, Complete, Capable, Carefree
D.      Devotion, Desire, Desirable, Determined, Dreamy, Dutiful
E.      Excited, Extraordinary, Empathy, Earnest, Enhanced, Ecstatic
F.       Friendship, Fondness, Forgiven, Free, Fulfilled, Fruitful
G.      Grand, Giddy, Genial, Gleeful, Gallant, Game, Generous
H.      Happy, Huggable, Hope, Honor, Humorous, Harmonious
I.      Intrigued, Ideal, Idolized, Impish, Important, Irresistible
J.       Joy, Jaunty, Joined, Jubilant, Juicy, Justified
K.      Kind, Keen, Kinky, Known, Kinship, Kissable
L.      Loving, Lovable, Lively, Likable, Liberated, Loyalty
M.      Merry, Magical, Magnificent, Mated, Meaningful, Masterful
N.      Naughty, Nice, Nurturing, Nourished, New, Notable
O.      Open, OK, Opulent, Obliging, Optimistic, Oceanic
P.      Protected, Private, Passion, Patient, Perky, Purposeful
Q.      Quiet, Qualified, Quickened, Quivery, Quizzical, Quirky
R.      Racy, Radiant, Rapture, Reassured, Receptive, Romantic
S.      Sacred, Sexy, Safe, Self confident, Sensational, Seen
T.      Tender, Teasing, Tenacious, Touched, Thrilled, Together
U.      Unbeatable, Union, Unity, Universal, Up-lifted, Useful
V.      Validated, Valiant, Valid, Victorious, Vivacious, Venerating
W.     Warm, Well, Worthwhile, Wonderful, Worthy, Wonderful
X.      Xenophilic, X-rated, Xenial,
Y.      Youthful, Yearning, Yielding, Yummy, Yenful
Z.      Zany, Zestful, Zippy, Zealous, Zooming, Zenithal

Some Things You Can Do with This List

With someone you love, pick out 20 of the named emotions from the list and talk with each other about how you could lovingly do things together that would produce the feelings you soon want to have.

With someone you love, pick out one named emotion from each letter of the alphabet and ask, “Before you met me, tell me about a time in your life when you felt this emotion?”.  (This can help both of you share your positive, personal, emotion histories).

With someone you love, talk about which emotions in the list you most want to experience more of, and which you think are the most important in your relationship.

Now, create some other things you can do with this list to enhance your love relationships.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Have you shared with someone you love the most emotionally moving events of your life?

Related posts:

1. Many Good Feelings Brought on by Love
2. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
3. Loves Ultimate Measure
4. Alphabet Love Test
5. Emotional Intercourse 

Loneliness and Love

Synopsis: First this mini-love-lesson covers the surprising ways loneliness harms us; then the issues of ignore, fight, escape, just get used to loneliness, or what?; doing what loneliness wants you to do; a cautionary note; Ricardo’s example and Ricardo’s results, (can they be yours?).

Surprising Ways Loneliness Harms Us

Recent research shows loneliness is especially bad for your brain.  What is bad for your brain can be bad for many of your body’s health processes and systems because the brain influences and regulates them.  Loneliness also is bad for your psychological health and that can influence everything else in your life.  One study of over 8000 men and women showed the lonely have up to a 20% faster rate of decline in mental abilities.

Those who have prolonged loneliness are seen to have more stress illnesses and a greater likelihood of having brain inflammation problems.  Loneliness can be seen as a component of love malnutrition or love starvation, which is understood to have a very negative impact on our immunity mechanisms, cancer resistance, blood pressure and a host of other physical problems.

Ignore, Fight, Escape, Just Get Used To It – or ???

Many people try to escape their loneliness by diving into their work, business or various other involvements.  Some try to escape into substance abuse or various behavioral addictions.  Others get some temporary help from antidepressants and other medications.  Another group of people try to fight loneliness seeing it as some kind of weakness or enemy.  Still others see it as just one more human emotion to be ignored.  Learning to live with it can dull the pain but the damage being done by prolonged loneliness  still can happen.  Usually none of these approaches prove to best serve our health or well-being. At best, they may provide some assistance in the short run but they can turn out to be quite bad for us in the long run, or at most, useless.

So what are we to do?  Wallow in our loneliness and just let it do all the harm it can?  Of course not, that won’t help but there is a way that will.

Doing What Loneliness Wants You to Do!

Like all emotions, loneliness was created in us to do us some good, even though it feels bad, sometimes extremely bad.  It may in fact get worse for not doing what the feeling of loneliness wants us to do.  When we follow the guidance message in loneliness, the bad feelings tend to subside.  Sometimes they begin to subside as soon as we get loneliness’s message, even before we have begun to follow that message with action.  So what is the healthful, constructive, guidance message in the feeling we call loneliness?

Basically loneliness can be seen as an emotional message telling us to go in search of love in any of its many forms.  If you can’t find love quickly, go in search of “like” or at least tolerable company first because that might be on the way to healthy, real love.

It also is important to know that it is not just about romantic love, as our culture and/or family training may have subconsciously programmed us to think.  We are a gregarious species, meant to connect with each other and especially to connect in love relationships with one another.  So, hear the guidance message of loneliness telling you to go in search of new or renewed love.

You may be de-energized from your loneliness, think searching for love is too much work, you don’t have what it takes, love is all a matter of luck anyway and your luck in love is bad, and 100 other self sabotaging negatives with which to block yourself from taking productive action.  Remember, your loneliness may just get worse if you do that.  And none of those blocking mechanisms get you to a new and better place though they might help you rest up a bit first.

A Cautionary Note

As I have emphasized before, all our emotions, even the most painful ones, were created in us to do us constructive, healthy good though they may overdo it, under do it, or mis-do it like all human systems.  If you get any kind of interpretation of an emotion’s guidance message that is destructive to yourself or to anyone, it may have cathartic value but that is all.  Acting destructively is almost always destructive to yourself and not the real guidance message of any emotion.  Unless your interpretation of an emotion’s guidance message goes toward health and well-being, probably for all concerned, it is likely not to be your best or most accurate interpretation.

Following Ricardo’s Example to Love

Ricardo was laying awake night after night, hurting badly with loneliness.  He tried various prescription medications, then alcohol and other substances but nothing seemed to help all that much.  Some people at work, including his boss, pressured and nagged him into going to a counselor, and he went along with that just to get them off his back.  He expected to have to dredge up a lot of his past which would just use up a lot of time and money, but he thought he could probably cut it short being able to say okay, he tried that and it didn’t work either.  He was surprised that his counselor didn’t want to talk much about his past but wanted him to do some immediate things that might be helpful.

After resisting and just a few sessions later, Ricardo got himself a pet dog and everything started changing for the better.  He learned that a good pet dog is perhaps the world’s quickest and surest way to get some good, healthy love.  Brain studies of canines show evidence that, in brain functioning, dogs really do love pretty much just like we do and it is not just because we feed and pet them.

In counseling Ricardo did have to do some work on his blocks and fears that had some causation from his past, but mostly it was about understanding and following the guidance messages in his emotions.  It wasn’t long before Ricardo tentatively went in search of new involvements and new acquaintances.  He went online and discovered some groups with similar interests to his own, and with reluctance got himself to some meetings.  The new acquaintances showed him that new friendships might develop and were even likely.  He then looked up some relatives that he had lost contact with and a renewed family love possibility came out of that.

Ricardo volunteered to help in a cause he believed was good, and surprise surprise, out of that came a new romantic interest.  He took a class in something he was intrigued by and that yielded some more very interesting new people in his life.  He got involved in a religious connected singles group and out of that came a sense of spiritual love that he had not known before, plus some other new friends.  In counseling Ricardo learned about healthy, self-love and that there is a lot of good that comes from that.

Ricardo’s Results

Today Ricardo has a small group of deep, close friends he feels very bonded with, a renewed family love connection, a wide network of medium and milder friends, a fine and growing romantic love relationship and a much improved, healthy self-love.  Ricardo is not lonely anymore.

Whether loneliness comes from months or years of aloneness, or the death of a mate, or from shyness or any other reason, the prescription is the same: overcome reluctance and connect with others, and grow a loving support network for your health and well being.

Can you follow Ricardo’s example if you are struggling with loneliness?  I suspect you can, and hopefully you will if you need to.  It would be a healthy act of self-love and self-care, if loneliness is pushing at you, to do something rather similar to what Ricardo did.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question

Are you willing to be a good friend so as to do your share of having a good, friendship love relationship?

Sex Fears Mastered with Love

Synopsis:  This mini-love-lesson first presents the harm that sex fears do to individuals and couples; and then goes on to review the many faces of sexual fears both, conscious and subconscious; talks about things not to do; and much more.

The Harm Sex Fears Do

Samuel and Sarah are breaking up mostly because of their fears related to sex.  Sarah dreads even thinking or talking about some new sexual activities Samuel wants them to experiment with.  Samuel secretly fears he is not sexually ‘man enough’ or sexy enough to keep turning Sarah on, so he wants to attempt some new, exciting, erotic things he has been hearing about.  Both Sarah and Samuel are too afraid to openly and honestly talk with each other about their sex fears.  Consequently, on the increasingly rare times when they try to make love, Sarah tightens up with fear.  That in turn makes attempting intercourse painful for Sarah.

Sensing Sarah’s reluctance, Samuel has begun to fear that he will say or do something that will turn Sarah off to him more, which he thinks seems to be happening.  This fearful worry is making him have trouble with maintaining erections.  Recently Samuel has started having premature ejaculation problems.  Because of those problems Samuel and Sarah are beginning to emotionally withdraw from one another.  They also have started to argue about all sorts of small things that really do not matter to either of them.  Therefore, they both are becoming increasingly sex and love malnourished in their relationship with each other.  Both have begun to secretly fantasize about how things could be better with someone new and different.

In desperation Samuel and Sarah went to a counselor.  It turned out the counselor did not know much about handling love relationship or sex problems; as that had not been a part of the counselor’s training.  However, the counselor was able to refer them on to a well qualified couple’s therapist who had also been trained in sex therapy.  Over a fairly short period of time this therapist artfully guided them to tap into their love for each other which gave them the courage to carefully, kindly and compassionately say the things they feared to say, in loving ways, and to accept the things they heard from one another, and later to do the erotic things they feared to do together before.  In the process Samuel and Sarah learned to develop and use a variety of new love skills, applying them to overcoming fear and greatly expanding their sex life together.

Unfortunately there are thousands and thousands of couples and individuals whose relationships are defeated, divided and destroyed because they do not know how to ‘use their love to master their fears’.  There are thousands more whose love and sex lives continue on but are hindered, hampered and harmed because they don’t know how to ‘use their love to master their fears related to sexuality’.

The Many Faces of Sex Fear

“I’m so afraid my wife doesn’t love me because I found her reading women’s porn and masturbating”.  “I’m scared he just wants me for sex”.  “I mask it well, but I’m really threatened by the idea that I may be sexually inadequate and inferior”.  “Since I got out of the hospital I am totally terrified to try sex again”.  “I guess I am a coward but I can’t bring myself to ask my husband to do the erotic things I want him to do to me and I’m just dying to try”.  “I get really shaky when I start thinking about my sexual performance not being as good as what my spouse experienced with others”.  “I sort of panic when I suspect my sex dreams and desires are actually very sick, wrong and sinful”.  “Even though I really want to, I just can’t bring myself to do the things my lover wants me to do”.  “If I get into sex the way I’d dearly like to, I fear I’ll get addicted to it, my husband will think I’m a slut, and God will hate me”.

These quotes represent just a fraction of the many life-limiting, sex-related fears people are struggling with and are consciously aware of.  But then there also are the unrecognized, subconscious, sex-related fears which may be doing more harm than the conscious ones.

Subconscious Sex Fears

Many couples’ love relationships are being crippled, or at least limited, by deep sexual, non-conscious fears and the ‘cousins’ of fear – anxiety, worry, apprehension, sense of threat, etc.  Subconscious fears often are rather complicated, confusing and a little harder to get to.  After some in-depth counseling, Beth said, “I finally admitted to myself that I get mad at my husband for one thing or another, whenever I think he might want sex.  Then we fight instead of having sex.  Something about having sex makes me fearful”.  “Looking way down inside me, I suspect I still believe sex is essentially bad, and I was taught no one will really love me if I’m bad”.   “Understanding it that way makes me feel I might be able to change it.  Now I think I might be able to by talk this over with my husband by asking him to choose to be extra loving as we work to get rid of this problem.  I think that may work”.

Bill stated, “I see it now.  What I’m actually upset about is not her looking at other men, it’s when she looks at me I irrationally think she will remember my penis is small and think those other men probably have bigger cocks than I do.  God, I hate to say that but when I say it, it feels true”.  Barbara related, “I’ve been denying the truth so much it’s coming out in my dreams.  Although I truly enjoy sex with my husband, I dream about having sex with other women.  I’m scared to ask but does that mean I’m really a lesbian, or maybe bisexual, or perhaps a sex addict who wants it with everybody?  If I am one of those things what will that mean for my marriage, and my family and everything about my life?  That’s really scary!”

Everyone can have, and just about everybody does have, or will have some sort of fear issues related to sex.  When it happens to you, you may be quite conscious of it or it may affect you in strange subconscious kinds of ways.  The good news is that with healthy self-love and/or the love of another, plus with some good inner-work you can master, overcome and defeat fear and its effects.  But take note, it also is good to be aware of some of the things not to do.

Things Not to Do

Don’t blame!  Don’t blame yourself, or your beloved, or your parents or anyone else.  Blaming seldom arrives at solution.  Don’t surrender!  Letting your fears have their way just gets in the way of developing the love skills and methods which help you get past your fears.  Don’t keep quiet!  In the most loving way you can, talk to your beloved if you have one, talk to non-judgmental friends, knowledgeable source people, helpers like counselors and therapists and talk to yourself in encouraging, self honoring ways.

If it is your beloved who is having the most obvious problem with fears, don’t come at them without lots of love showing.  Don’t use argumentative reasoning, logic and debate skills on them.  Don’t use sarcasm and ridicule, and especially don’t use any condemnation.  Don’t try to hint, suggest, use innuendo or in other ways ‘beat around the bush’ about the problem but rather ask for their loving help, while talking clearly and directly about the difficulty.  Don’t use anger, threats, manipulation deception, withdrawal, cold silence or anything else that might be anti-loving.

How Love Wins over Sex Fears

Listen to Joe and Jesse.  Joe asked Jesse to do a striptease for him.  Jesse replied she would like to be able to do that but she couldn’t because she was too afraid.  Joe with slow, soft kinds of tones in his voice reassuringly said it was okay if Jesse did not do that.  Then he asked her if she could share what her reluctance was all about.  With much hesitation and nervousness Jesse related that she thought she was too fat, and far too clumsy and awkward. She said, “Joe you will just laugh at me, and it would all end up as a great big turnoff”.  Joe tenderly suggested that they just dance together, and as they dance together they take each other’s clothes off.  Jesse replied she was still scared but that was something she could try if they turned down the lights.  That’s how they started.  A month later Jesse turned on stripper music and told Joe to just watch and applaud.  Then she danced and stripped for him, better than anything he had ever imagined.

How did this victory over fear happen?  Jesse and Joe approached each other, and the problem, gently but clearly with stated truth, mixed with tender caring love. Their love of each other led them to help each other take small, careful steps toward what was desired.  Jesse said Joe made it obvious that his love for her was a lot more important to him than his desire.  And that, she said, made her want to do what he wanted ever so much more, and gave her the courage to try.  She also related that her self-confidence and self-love improved in the process.  Joe says his love and respect for Jesse were already big, and now they were much bigger because she worked so very well with him about doing what he wanted.

How Fear Can Assist You

When you work with your fear, it can assist you.  Fear is in us to protect us but, like all human systems, it can overdo it, miss do it, under do it, and otherwise malfunction.  Fear tries to protect us from harm.  However, many things we are trained to fear have no real harm potential.  This is especially true in the area of sexuality.  As Jesse learned, taking off her clothes to music could not really harm her.  No bleeding, bruising or breakage would come from it.  However, not doing it might be a bit harmful to their relationship.  So, whatever you fear, assess the harm potential.  ‘Harm’, by the way, is not to be confused with its enemy ‘hurt’.  Hurt, like fear, warns you that harm may occur, so be careful.  Some sexual hurt may occur, much like what happens with exercise, and then turn out to be a good thing for you.

What to Do

The basic thing to do is study love and develop your skills for conveying, receiving and applying love.  Then use those skills of applying love to work on your own and your beloved’s fears.  Whatever you fear to do, for healthy self-love, assess the harm potential.  That may take some research.  If the harm-potential is nonexistent or not high, carefully explore and experiment toward what you fear.  Remember, many sexual things can be lovingly done best by playacting and shared fantasizing.

In good loving teamwork, help your beloved to do the same.  You might want to read the book Feel Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers.  If your own efforts are not quickly getting you far enough, seek good professional assistance in the form of a love knowledgeable, couples therapist with sex therapy training and experience.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Sexually, what fear have you already overcome and what sexual related fear might you want to overcome next?

Related posts:

1. Can You Talk about Sex – with Love?
2. Dealing With Love Hurts: Pain’s Crucial Guidance
3. Intercourse Absent Lovemaking – a Love Skill
4. Dealing with Love Hurts: A Dozen Love Hurts to Know and Grow From
5. Elder Love 

Love It Is Not Boastful/Pretentious

Mini-Love-Lesson  #239

Synopsis: We start with conflicting interpretations that lead to broader understanding of what this tenet of St. Paul’s may have hoped to convey; followed by related issues of psychological dynamics; real and false self-love; self-confidence and end with the harm of self-debasement and it’s avoidance.

Translation Troubles That Help

Since we are working from Paul’s list of what love is and is not (First Corinthians 13) in the New Testament, we must enter into the translation puzzlement of what he meant exactly when in Greek he wrote love is not “perpereuetai”.  Various translations of the Bible have used quite a few rather different English words in translating this.  Some scholars suggest we may not have a sufficiently accurate equivalent word in English for this Greek word.  Hence, some translation confusion and controversy exists concerning what is meant here.

To get a broad sense of what Paul probably was meaning to convey, look at these scholarly based interpretations.

Love ... “vaunteth not itself” (King James), “dealeth not perversely” (Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible), “makes no parade” (Moffatt), “does not put on airs” (American Complete Bible), “is not pretentious”(New Catholic Bible), “doesn’t brag” (Common English Bible), “does not strut” (Message Bible), “is not conceited”, (Good News Edition), “Is Never Boastful or Proud” (Living Bible), “is not boastful” (Revised Standard Version).

As you can see there is similarity but also differences among these translations as well as with a the many others that exist.

If today Paul were writing in English he might be inspired to write something like love is not egocentric, self-aggrandizing, narcissistic or braggadocios.  Of course, those terms and their particular definitions did not exist in his day so he had to use what was available.  For help with original biblical linguistics check out Truth in Translation by Dr. Jason BeDuhn.

I have chosen to use boastful which is a common interpretation in Protestant translations with the more Catholic translation pretentious.  To me, that seems to make a decent bridge between what is coming to be understood about the nature of healthy, real love and recent biblical linguistic research findings.

What Does Boastful and Pretentious Mean Psychologically?

Boastful means excessively showing off, bragging and presenting oneself or one’s achievements, qualities etc. as superior, more excellent and more worthy of merit than is accurate or necessary.  Pretentious means pretending to have greater standing, skill, importance, sophistication, status, qualities, worth, etc. than is accurate or merited in a situation.

Psychologically, boasting and pretentiousness behaviors suggest a person who may be in need of greater self-love and more inner self worth.  Such a person also may need to find, own and/or develop their own talents, qualities, attributes, etc. so as not to need pretense.  Such a person also may be too outer-dependent and insufficiently able to be interdependent, co-functioning or team functioning which can be quite detrimental to successful love relating (see Recovering Love by this author).

Real and False Self-Love

Those who have healthy, real self-love tend to brag briefly.  Those of false self-love go on and on.  Those of real self-love tend not to do much politically correct, socially adept humility and self depreciation talk.  They avoid modesty-dishonesty as they also avoid over self-glorification because with healthy self-love they do not need it and it takes too much time and effort.  Thus, the healthfully self-loving in a close love relationship can see pretending to be more and less than they really perceive themselves to be, as deceitful and a poor way to treat loved ones (“Unselfish Self-Love”).

In false love, there is often a lot of pretense, phony manipulation, fake intimacy and a plethora of small to large deceits.  Hiding the truth about many things and other forms of secrecy frequently are common.  Many who secretly see themselves as somehow not enough attempt starting toward a love relationship with a lot of overt or covert, boastful falsehoods.  They may fake to impress and then work to hide what they have faked.  This usually turns out to be a very poor way to grow true love, trust or anything else that can be called real (“False Love Awareness”).

There is an old, silly story that says, on their wedding night she said, “I have to confess something dear” and took out the falsies from her very padded bra.  He said, “I too must confess” as he got 2 inches shorter after taking out the lifts in his shoes.  She said, “There’s more” and removed her girdle.  He remarked, “Me too” and tossed his toupee away, which was then followed by her wig.  They then continued that way until there was nobody there.

In a symbolic way, this is a true story about some marriages especially those of the trophy spouse type.  Being brave enough to present the truth about yourself, including brief bragging about the good parts along with the not so good, has been known to pay off two big ways.  One way is to either garner admiration for self-disclosure and brave, self sharing or the second way, to more quickly screen-out those who cannot relate or deal with honest self-disclosure and probably would not have worked out anyway (see “Growing Closeness – A Love Skill”).

Healthy Self-Love and Self-Confidence vs Boastful and Pretentious

Superiority syndromes or complexes long have been known to hide inferiority syndromes and complexes.  Neither of these are to be confused with healthy self-love and its strong, self-confident characteristic.  Being overly boastful and pretentious, suggests the dynamics of a person who frequently is attending to and finding importance in how others see them and how they can influence that.  Usually, the healthfully self-loving and self-confident attend to and find importance in how their world is functioning and what to constructively do with it.  This frequently is confluent with the dictum “love others as you love yourself” and, therefore, is not just focused on self gain, as are boastfulness and pretentiousness (see “Self-Love and Its Five Healthy Functions” and Real Love False Love by this author).

Avoiding the Harm of Self Debasement

Don’t ever be boastful, proud, brag, think too well of yourself, like yourself overmuch or care for yourself too much.  Instead, always be humble, modest, meek, self-sacrificing, acting with humility, put others first and self last.  For many people these concepts and others like them have been the connected and extended interpretation of the “love is not boastful or pretentious” tenant.  Add docile and obedient for a possible in between the lines meaning.  From a mental health point of view, all that has turned out to be anti-natural, unhealthy, self-destructive and really not good for the well-being of others.

This self-effacing understanding goes against the win-win understanding of the great, core teaching “love others as you love yourself”.  Those who healthfully love themselves do sufficient self-care, along with care of others, and end up doing better, longer, more creatively and more good for others than the de-powered self-sacrificing and self demeaning.  Being accurately self proud turns out to be a good thin.  Sharing what you are proud of is self-disclosure – a love action in intimate love relationships.  Socially, a brief, one sentence brag often is positively viewed as refreshing, honest and winsome self-confidence.  Three or more sentences, not so much.

One More Thing

You might want to talk all this over with others and, in so doing, create a positive, sharing experience.  If you do, please mention this site and its Mini-Love-Lessons along with the free subscription service. Thank you!

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Prototyping Love and How It Can Help You

Mini-Love-Lesson #218

Synopsis: This often, most useful and relatively easy way to arrive at a very helpful understanding of love is presented with clear, four point and 12 point trait examples; and 10 quick, practice exercises to help you immediately apply important love tools to your own love life situation, as well as arrive at an effective way to describe and semi-define love.

Your Better Way to Understand Love?

Love is so complicated!  Understanding what love is, has and does confuses and confounds millions.  Conflicting and contradictory concepts about love abound.  Ignorance about love and its workings, dynamics, functions and benefits cause a lot of people to miss out on many of life’s finest and most wonderful experiences.  Undervaluing love leads to dangerous vulnerabilities in both psychological and physical health, in close relationships and in life fulfillment.  People who misidentify love get trapped in tragic, false love syndromes causing great emotional pain and life dysfunction.

With all that at risk, you can see how having a good understanding of love may make a world of difference in your own life and the lives of those you care most about.  The question is how to get that good understanding.  Well, one way that may help you is using the prototype approach to comprehending and defining love.

What Is Prototyping?

Prototyping basically means building a model of something.  At the idea level, it is an assemblage of observations and concepts built into a mental model to help explain what something is by compiling and putting together what probably makes it up.

In the social sciences, prototyping is a formalized research approach which arrives at a descriptive model of a subject being studied which is created from social-psychological research into its defining characteristics, traits, features, distinguishing qualities and often times its functions, dynamics and idiosyncratic peculiarities.  Informally, prototyping means forming a mental picture or model of something from what some of its parts seem to be.

Prototyping is similar to crowd sourcing and in criminology it is similar to profiling.  An example is, if you want to know what a tree is or what people think a tree is, you ask 1000 people what they think.  Some may say it has leaves and others pine needles and pinecones but if they all say it has roots, a trunk and foliage which is usually green in the spring those last three, agreed on items, can go into your model prototype of what a tree is.  Of course, that is an oversimplification and there are rather advanced research procedures, algorithms and other statistical treatments involved in the actual research.

The prototyping of love has been undertaken by researchers in a number of fields especially sociology, social psychology, cultural anthropology, family studies and child psychology with contributions from sociobiology, sundry brain sciences, experimental animal comparative psychology and others.  But they are not the first to attempt prototyping love.

The Wisdom of Early Efforts

Smart, wise, insightful and inspired people have been listing the characteristics of love for a long, long time.  Plato in his Symposium on Love, Ovid in the Art of Love, St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians, Rumi in The Sufi Path of Love, Stendhal in On Love, Jung in his work on arch types in the collective unconscious, and Fromm in his The Art of Loving have all made contributions to creating a prototype definition of love.  Some of their ideas are lasting, some problematic, some useless and some just wrong.  However, taking together they all provide valuable observations for the historical prototyping of what love has been seen to be.

Likewise, every major religion has descriptions of what love’s characteristics are as have several schools of philosophy.  They all add to the pool of observations for prototyping the historical wisdom concerning what love is.  In my view, they all deserve considerable attention.  Likewise, the sciences are giving us differing but slowly more and more useful ideas which include those arrived at by the social prototyping approach.

Toward a Prototype Definition of Love

In a new field coming to be called Loveology (see “Is There Really A New Field Called Loveology?”) researchers are busy trying to weave together the wisdom of the ages and sages, the best contemporary thinking, and the many scientific approaches and discoveries for understanding love.  This includes the social scientists’ attempts to arrive at a psychosocial, definitive, prototype of love.

One such effort showed love to involve a prototype having 12 main attributes.  They are: (1) trust, (2) caring, (3) honesty, (4) friendship, (5) respect, (6) concern for others’ well-being, (7) loyalty, (8) commitment, (9) acceptance of another’s way of being, (10) supportiveness, (11) wanting to be with the loved and (12) high and manifold interest in the loved.

A moderately different set of results came from emphasizing characteristics for a prototype of committed love in established relationships.  Those research revealed characteristics were: (1) loyalty, (2) responsibility, (3) keeping one’s word, (4) faithfulness, (5) trust, (6) being present for the other in good and bad times, (7) devotion, (8) reliability, (9) giving best efforts, (10) supportiveness, (11) perseverance and (12) concern for the loved ones well-being.

In other research, a prototype emphasizing positive feelings and emotions resulted in a rather different prototype of love.  It showed love to involve the emotions of: (1) caring for the loved mixed with wanting to feel helpful to the loved, (2) having a strong desire to be in the other’s presence while feeling care coming from the loved, (3) experiencing a feeling of mutuality of trust and (4) feeling a sense of mutual toleration and acceptance of faults, shortcomings, etc.

Social and comparative psychology prototypes for understanding what love is and how it is done, have been arrived at by researching the observable and reported behaviors of love in humans and in a variety of other animals around the world.

Higher order lifeforms, especially mammals, seem to do a lot of tactile love actions including caressing, licking, cuddling, snuggling, grooming and rubbing.  Tonal love behaviors also are thought to occur via a variety of comforting and connecting sounds.  Love expressional gestures through certain head movements, postural movement actions, forelimb behaviors and tail wagging also are thought to be evidence of love.  Gifting love actions involving food, nesting and play experiences occur in many species.  Caretaking and protective behaviors also are common.  Some species are suspected of communicating love via amazingly rapid, brilliant, color changes especially the cephalopods (cuttlefish, squid, octopus).  Some think that a good many of our animal cousins might communicate love through scent changes and olfactory generated responses.

All of that might get included in a prototype of general animal love.  Of course, it actually would be different for each species.  That these actions convey love is supported by comparative brain science research which suggests similar brain regions, neurochemistry and neuro-electrical activity occur in human and other higher order animal brains when love is involved or thought to be occurring (see “Dog Love Is Real Love”).

How to Help Yourself with a Prototype Model of Love

If you are serious about love, you can do the work of either selecting or creating your own, prototype model of what love looks like, gets us to act like and feels like.  In a fuzzy, indefinite, subconscious sort of way, you probably have one of those already though you may not be consciously aware of it.  With conscious effort, you can weed out its mistakes and improve on it.  Then you can use it to do love better, know when real love is happening or not happening, think about love more clearly and in more informed ways, select the most appropriate and productive love actions, untangle love problems and come up with better love issue solutions, etc.

Here is an example.  Gunther had on his prototype list of love’s traits “love is kind”.  He realized on close self examination, that what he felt for Loretta and how he acted toward her did not involve much kindness.  He was, he honestly confessed to himself, more controlling, possessive and demanding though very sexually interested and pleased with her.  He set out to be more kind and their relationship gradually turned into more of a sexual friendship but not what he would want for a marriage or lifetime love mate, like he previously had thought.  Loretta came to a similar determination about her relationship with Gunther.  They are still friends but seeing others now.  Gunther concluded that without the analytical tools provided by his prototype of love, a life damaging mistake likely would have been made.  Loretta concurred and was thankful.

10 Quick, Practical, Practice Love Prototype Exercises

To get some practice in using a prototype of love, look at the first list above under Toward A Prototype Definition of Love, the one that begins (1) trust (2) caring, etc.  Now, think of someone you do, or may, or might love and who you hope does or could love you.  Then with that person in mind, apply and work with the following questions.  You also can adapt this into a couple’s effort.

1. Checking this list of love’s traits, does it seem he, or she, really loves me? (Note: you also can think about a group such as a family)
2. Checking the same list, does it appear I really love him, or her?
3. Using this list, does it seem I really healthfully love myself?
4. Thinking of these traits, how can I, or we, do our love better?
5. What traits of love might need to get more attention in my, or our, love relationship?
6. Which of the prototype traits of love do I, or we, see as most important right now?
7. Which of these traits do I, or we, see as least important and am I making a mistake to see them that way?
8. Which of these traits and characteristics of love do I, or we, probably need to learn a lot more about?
9. If I, or we, get better at enacting some of these traits, how well can I, or we, know for sure our love relationship is improving and growing?
10. How am I, or we, going to make our work on getting better at these prototypical love traits fun, exciting and rewarding? (Remember, fun with work can be much better work)

Some Problems with Prototyping Love

Once upon a time, social prototyping the nature of our earth would have led to describing it as flat.  When too many people share a mistaken idea about what something is the mistake can go into the prototype.  That definitely is a danger when it comes to a social prototype of love.  Also, when there is too much widespread ignorance about a subject, social prototyping fails.  Unfortunately, love ignorance seems rather abundant.

The good news is, lots of people find it a lot easier and more useful to define love in a prototyping way than they do any other way.  So, if you use it, be careful and know prototyping has its shortcomings.

One More Thing

I bet you can get a lot more out of this mini-love-lesson by talking it over with others.  While you are at it, why not tell them about this site’s broad-spectrum of love-related subject matter, wealth of love knowledge and how you’re using it?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: If you’ve been hurt in a love relationship, could thinking with a good prototype of love help you avoid getting hurt that way again?