Do and Don’t Love Talk

Synopsis: Love-destructive “don’t” and love-constructive “do” talk; buildup effects; “don’t” for sex disasters; other ways to convey do and don’t; a major “Do” way toward love improvement; and some self-examination gives you what this mini-love-lesson is all about.

“Do” May Send Love, “Don’t” Won’t!

“Don’t kiss me so hard!”  “Don’t make so much noise when we make love.”  “I don’t want you to pull away from me so fast after sex.”  What do you think hearing or saying a string of “don’t” messages like these can have on your sex life?  And on your love life?

“Don’t” messages, no matter how well intended or even based in love, tend to have an emotionally negative effect on most love relationships, be they with a spouse or lover, a child, a teenager and adults of all ages.  They even can have a negative effect on your relationship with yourself.  In relationships the effect usually is thought to put emotional distance between two people and make an emotional dissonance more likely.  That bodes for more arguments and a reduction of demonstrated affection, along with less harmonious time together.

Subconsciously whatever the “don’t” word is referring to, doesn’t usually matter much.  Whenever we hear the word “don’t” or any kind of “don’t” message, no matter what it is attached to, it may trigger a tiny, internal, negative, brain chemistry reaction.  That especially is likely if it is coming from someone important to us.  Saying don’t or sending any other type of don’t message also may create a tiny, negative experience for someone you love.  Saying don’t also is a tiny, negative experience in the brain of the sayer, so it turns out “don’t” are bad for everyone.

Don’t’s and Their Build-up Effect

The problem is that taking in or sending out “don’t” messages can be cumulative.  That means a build-up of negative experiences which can have an erosion effect on a love relationship.  Furthermore, if you heard too many “don’t” messages growing up, you may enter a love relationship “don’t”-sensitive because you already have a subconscious build-up of experiencing “don’t” as a non-conscious negative.

Unless the word “don’t” or any “don’t” message is said with really soft tones and the message is truly loving as in “don’t forget you are my super, special person”, it likely will have this subtle, cumulative, anti-love relationship, brain effect.  It is suspected this may be one of the causes of a fading love phenomenon.

“Don’t” and Its Disastrous Effect on Sex

When I was earning my subspecialty certification as a sex therapist, I became acutely aware of how critical ‘don’t’ and also ‘do’ communications were to success or failure in sex therapy.  Many people with sex problems especially are sensitive to “do” and “don’t” messages having to do with their sexual performance and ability.

Sadly even “do” messages can have a negative effect here.  That is because people sensitive in this area can interpret “do” as a “you’re doing it wrong” message.  However, once we could get a person to accept a “do touch me this other way” type request, as a piece of information that was good and needed, things generally went much better.  Of course, we often also had to get the sender of that message to send it positively and with love for things to go sexually and lovingly well.

Even small ‘don’t’ messages having to do with anything sexual could sometimes cause setbacks that took weeks to overcome.  In conducting sexual love research I later discovered the more loving you can make a sexual request the better it works, and I brag here and say, we published some productive papers on that.

Other Ways to Say “Do” and “Don’t”

Not every “don’t” or “do” message is sent with those exact words.  Sometimes the message is in the tone of voice, the face, the body language, the gestures or it is in words satirically said, or it just is said with other words as in “never come on to me that way again”and “you can keep touching me right there, that way, a lot longer”.

Censuring, Silence and Stifling

Sometimes couples make themselves the rule “don’t say don’t” and that is okay but it doesn’t go far enough.  By itself that sort of rule can lead to self censoring or actions that help censure, silence and stifle those you love.  That rule needs the addition of a “what to do instead” component.  Know that a stifled, censored or silenced loved one frequently is trouble on the way.  That is true even if it involves self stifling.  Silence can be a message that screams loudest of all messages.

Long-term censuring just means long-term hiding truth which may be unpleasant but probably is needed and is going to come out some other way eventually.  Acting to censor a loved one is liable to encourage being treated falsely and is liable to assist passive/aggressive attacks coming your way.  Censuring, silencing and stifling frequently tends to have strong anti-love effects.

Can We Make Every Don’t Into a Do?

So you may ask what’s the solution; if I stop telling you what I don’t like and what I don’t want you to do with or to me, what am I to do instead?  Remember, “don’t kiss me too hard”.  That can change into “Darling, do kiss me soft and tender.  I like your kisses that way so very much”.  “Sweetheart, let’s make quiet love this time.  I think that will help me enjoy it more” can substitute for “don’t make so much noise”.  Then instead of the “don’t pull away from me” message, think about saying something like this.  “Beloved, I really would like you to stay here and enjoy cuddling with me after intercourse.  I think that will just extend our lovemaking and make the whole experience even better for both of us”.

The basic concept is, whatever you say in the way of a “don’t” message probably can be better said with a “do” message.  To do that you may have to be responsible and figure out what you do want instead of what you don’t want.  Then lovingly ask for it.  If you can’t figure that out, you can say things like “Honey, I know I want something a bit different but I don’t know what it is.  Would you help me figure it out.”

Are You Mostly a “Don’t” or a “Do” Talker

To be better at being love constructive and avoid love destructiveness, it will be good for you to figure out if you are more of a “do” or a “don’t” message sender.  Also it is helpful to figure out “why” either way.  Some would proffer, if you are mostly a ‘don’t’ talker it is because you secretly are warped and neurotically negative about yourself and life, or something clinical like that.

Social psychology instead would suggest most of us are just talking the way we heard people talk when we were growing up.  Linguistic psychology suggests you probably will say about as many “do’s” and “don’t’s” as was average in your upbringing.  Developmentalists might add, you probably are talking about like those most influential in your upbringing – maybe like your parents.

The good news is you can change and improve and, thus, become more love constructive in the messages you send your loved ones.  That will take some work but love relationships take work, and they are well worth it because they are the most important relationships we have.  At least, those are the enhancements I have seen with those couples, families, friendships and self talkers who work to improve and increase their “do” type messages while they decrease their “don’t” messages to their loved ones and to people in general.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who in your life might you like to talk to about becoming a better “do” message sender?

Related posts:

1. Can You Talk about Sex – with Love?
2. How to Talk Love Without Words
3. Self Talk for Improving Love 

Cuddling for Greater Love and Better Sex - a Love Skill

Mini-Love-Lesson #189

Synopsis: How cuddling leads to more and better sex as well as to love itself; the fine and healthy benefits of cuddling; overcoming cuddling resistance and reluctance; plus how to give, get, start and restart better and longer cuddling are all covered in this mini-love-lesson.

Cuddling around the World

They studied over 70,000 people in 24 different countries.  It was the same everywhere.  Those who cuddled often tended to have better sex lives and better love fulfilled relationships.  Those who did not engage in cuddling much didn’t.  Not only that but those who expressed affection more often and more freely including doing so in public and those who frequently kissed passionately along with affectionate touch in a variety of ways had the best sex and all over the best loving relationships.  The easiest place to read about all this is in a book called the Normal Bar which gives an easy, fun to read overview of this amazing study from the world of social psychology.

Now, I will brag a bit.  Kathleen McClaren RN and I discovered and published in a major sex therapy Journal something very similar way back in 1982.  In our research we added training in eight types of love behaviors to standard sex therapy behavior training and got a 50% plus improvement over just standard sex therapy with couples in sex therapy.  In our second study the sex therapists we trained got similar results.  Sad to say, the field of sex therapy then didn’t seem to be much interested in love or love conveying behaviors and so nothing much came of our findings at that time.

What’s Special about Cuddling?

When we cuddle especially in spoon cuddling, or when nude, a lot of our skin gets involved.  Furthermore, our skin tends to be stimulated in a longer way than in hugs and other forms of loving touch.  This means several, larger, good things are likely to be happening in our brain and nervous system.  Neurochemically oxytocin, the chemical compound that helps us with feeling love-connected, tends to be produced more abundantly, along with other feel-good brain chemistry.

There also is some evidence suggesting we become more neuroelectrically in harmony with each other but we are not quite sure what that does for us.  The evidence suggests that with cuddling you are likely to feel more love-bonded, happier, safer, more comfortable, more relaxed and have lowered stress.
If your cuddling becomes mutually sexual, then a lot of added pleasures are possible. However, it is important that sex not occur in at least about half of the cuddling experiences or the love feelings may diminish even if the sexuality continues to be good.

Will My Sex Live & My Love Life Improve with More & Better Cuddling?

The answer to this question is probably a strong yes!  Our research found most couples could learn and maintain better love behavior, both in and out of sex, with some love and sex behavior skills’ training added together and practiced for a while.  Also behaviors which interactively expressed and demonstrated the emotions being felt, particularly feeling loving and loved, were especially important both in and outside of sexual interaction.

What About Cuddling Reluctance And Resistance?

A sizable minority of people have trouble with cuddling even though they hear how much most other people greatly enjoy it.  The reasons vary greatly and are often unknown consciously.  There are a small number of people whose epidermis is hypersensitive and for whom touch can be unpleasant or even painful.  There is a far larger group who had negative or even traumatic experiences associated with cuddling or cuddling-like touch.

So, they tend to avoid it because of the conscious or subconscious feeling-memories it brings up.  For another group it is too pleasurable and/or to easily sexual, and they tend to cut short time spent cuddling, not wanting to get sexual at that time.  Also if people grew up in a non-cuddling family, or in a family that did only very short cuddling, their habit may be to do the same.

Some couples let cuddling fade out of their regular ways of showing love to each other.  That can occur due to lengthy recovery time from illness or injury, work schedule conflicts, childcare demands and a variety of other reasons.

Starting and Re-starting More and Better Cuddling

Most people who have a problem with cuddling or cuddling longer can get over their reluctance if they go about it as follows.  First talk it over with your cuddling partner, and if you can jointly agree, follow these procedures.  Start with whatever amount of cuddling seems tolerable, side-by-side on a couch or in a bed.  Then go just a bit longer.  Then in an hour do the same thing even a bit longer than before.  Repeat going a bit longer each time, an hour apart twice more.

Usually these first cuddling experiences are to be done with only a little, soft, gentle movement and nothing sexual.  Repeat the next day at least three times with a little more soft gentle movement of hands and arms and body movement.  And again, do nothing sexual, just caressing in slow comforting ways.  If anything seems displeasurable, ask for a change into whatever would be a little more pleasurable, or at least tolerable instead of sending a stop message.

Part of the cuddling usually is best done by being still and mentally focusing on what you are feeling, both physically and emotionally, plus noting that nothing harmful or painful is occurring.  You also silently might reassure yourself that you are ok and you are on your way to very positive feelings and experiences.  If you can do this exercise 3 to 5 times a day for a week, you likely are going to go through a period where you find your feelings about cuddling to be either mixed or just neutral, but not really negative.  Then usually you go through a period where you are starting to increasingly enjoy cuddling.  After each practice cuddle it is good for you and your partner to go do something simple and pleasurable for just a little while.

Only after both people are fairly comfortable and enjoying cuddling as a way to lovingly be with each other does it become desirable for small amounts of sexiness to be added.  This can be increased in the same way as above, every third or fourth time a cuddling exercises is conducted.  Most of the couples we worked with reported having really wonderful and enriching cuddling experiences happening after about two weeks of following these procedures.

It is important to remember that  to cuddle is for most people primarily an act of joint and mutual love interchange, and it is important that it be done with a strong love-focus most of the time.  It can be especially comforting in times of emotional pain.  Furthermore, it can be playful, serene, even spiritual, provide a sense of safety and be very important in love-bonding.  It also can be sexual so long as the love elements predominate over time.  It also is important that there be no negative talk of any kind during a cuddling experience because that can defeat all of it’s many positive effects.

If there are continued problems getting comfortable cuddling, consulting a good love-oriented and touch knowledgeable couples’ therapist is recommended.  Some massage therapists also are good with helping couples gain the benefits of loving touch including cuddling, as are some sex therapists.

Cuddling with Others

It is especially is important as a love practice to cuddle infants, children and teens except when they are in their natural periods of individuation and tend to pull away.  With other family members and dear close friends, along with anyone who needs support and reassurance it is usually a very good thing.

Getting Yourself Cuddled More and Better

The simplest way often is the best and most efficient way to get yourself more and better cuddling.  That way is to clearly but lovingly ask for it.  This can be a part of lovingly and jointly talking over how you both want to be touched which is a good thing for every couple to do.  Do not forget that asking for what you want, clearly and lovingly, is a powerful part of healthy self-love.  To learn more at this site go to the Subject Index and check out the mini-love-lessons titled “Love Hugs for Health and Happiness”, “Touching Back – A Surprisingly Important Love Skill” and “50 Varieties of Love Touch”.

As Always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Do You Think You are Good at Giving and Getting Various Types of Loving Touch?

Related posts:

1. Touching Back – A Surprisingly Important Love Skill
2. Growing Closeness – A Love Skill
3. Making Love OR Having Sex?
4. Sex Drive Differences and Love
5. Intercourse Absent Lovemaking – a Love Skill 

Making Love OR Having Sex?

25 Ways to Answer “Is It Love or Is It Just Sex?”

1. It may be “making love” if both people’s entire bodies are loved on.  It may be only “having sex” if it’s mostly about the genitals and what’s done with them.

2. If all sorts of different emotions are felt during a sexual encounter, these emotions can be shared and also empathized with its more likely to be “making love”.  If only sexual feelings are felt and shown it’s more likely to be “having sex”.

3. Possibly it’s “making love” when there is the inclusion of the very tender, the closely intimate, and the sweetly precious along with the passionate and the powerful.  Possibly it’s “having sex” when it’s all simple, raw, quick, rough or boring sex.

4. It may be “about love” if “No” is an OK answer to a sexual request.  It may be just “having power trip sex” if sexual desires are expressed as demands, followed by punishing rejection if the demands are not complied with.

5. If before during and after a sexual episode you feel a pleasing sense of warmth and a happy sense of bonding it could be “making love”.  If these or similar feelings are lacking, even if it was fantastically great sex, it may not have been making love but rather “having sex”.

6. In an ongoing series of sexual events with a partner it’s more likely to be “making love” if there is a fairly wide variety in the intensity, amount of time, and amount of energy involved and, therefore, lazy sex, silly sex, mental sex, sleepy sex, and no climax sex can all be part of the ongoing picture.  It’s more likely to be “having sex” if it’s usually pretty much the same experience over and over again.

7. When having sex makes you want to know and experience your partner more, be increasingly close, and do more of life together it is more likely to be “making love”.  If having sex results ends with just a feeling of being finished and wanting to get on with something else apart from your partner it could be just “having sex”.

8. If following sex there is an inner dialogue of self-demeaning focus or partner-demeaning focus, criticism, derogatory thoughts, etc. it’s more likely to have been just a form of poor conflicted “having sex”.  If, however, after sex there is an inner and outer dialogue of affirmation, appreciation, honoring and celebration it may have been “making love”.

9. It may be “making love” if there is lots of responding in kind to each loving touch, movement, word, kiss, sound, caress, look, etc..  It may be “having sex” if there is only short, mild, or no responsiveness, or if responses are made only to that which is blatantly sexual.

10. It could be about “making love” if whatever you want, or don’t want, can be talked about freely and lovingly.  It may be “having poor or restricted sex” if there are earnest putdowns, critical remarks, rejection statements, or shaming words and actions given for expressing different sexual thoughts or desires.

11. It could be making love if there is as much, or more focus on pleasuring as being  pleasured.  It’s more likely just to be having sex if satisfaction of the self is the prime goal.

12. ‘Wild sex’, ‘kinky sex’, ‘dirty sex’, etc. all can be part of making love if there is real care and concern for a sex partner’s happiness and well-being along with adequate safeguarding.  All the many forms of sexuality without loving care and concern as an integrated part just may be different ways to be having sex.

13. It really could be making love if all levels and types of one’s physical sexual response and reaction system are acceptable and lovingly treated.  If the physical sexual system of the self, or of the partner, does not respond as desired and that leads to emotional and/or relational dissonance it probably is more about sex than love.

14. It is more likely to be love making if there are a lot of mutual all over gentle caresses, tender kisses, terms of endearment, cuddles, and loving looks leading up to, during and especially following orgasms or following a nap after orgasm.  It might be having sex if all that’s going on are actions that directly assist getting to a climax.

15. Making love more likely is occurring when there are feelings of deep connectedness, high appreciation and high valuing of the unique personal aspects of the partner and of the relationship with the partner.  If there are worries about what the partner is thinking of you, of your sexual expertise, of your masculinity or femininity, of your attractiveness, etc. then maybe it’s more about having insecure sex.

16. If there are repeated insistences or demands for certain sex practices (including intercourse and climax), and without those practices bad feelings and relationship troubles occur it might be more about having sex than making love.  If there is a free-flowing variety of sexual requests with alternates being lovingly accepted then it’s more likely to be about making love.

17. It’s much more likely to be about love making when sexual encounters lead to a greater love of life, general sense of being uplifted, sense of awe, appreciation of beauty and higher self love.  If the experience leads to a sense of lowered self worth, to  indifference, to a desire to get away, to a sense of lonely aloneness or despair, etc. it may have been having unfulfilling sex.

18. When there is a sense of conquest, scoring, using, defeating, proving potency or self importance, of lowering another’s value, getting even, etc. it’s not likely to be about making love.  When there is a sense of mutual enrichment, shared joy, giving and getting benefit, and having done a really good, natural thing then it’s much more likely to be making love.

19. If there are restrictions on verbal or behavioral expressions of strong, vigorous, powerful, potent sexuality along with insistence on only verbally expressing reassurance, commitment, devotion, or tender love and on all sex actions being mild it could be that having insecurity filled sex is what’s really happening.  When a wide variety of expressions of sexuality along with free-flowing expressions of love are being enjoyed lovemaking with eroticism is more likely.

20. Feeling proud, blessed, delighted, cherished, sublime, glorious, excellent, and of course well loved tends to go with quality love making.  Feeling raunchy reverie, glorious debauchery, carnal passion, lovely lust, beautiful lasciviousness, wanton satiation, thoroughly eroticized, saturated with shameless sexual pleasure, and ecstatically exhausted goes with having great sex, all of which and can be mixed into making fantastic love or not.

21. If there is a lot of guilt, shame, disgust, fear, depression, anxiety, repulsion, etc. then it seems there probably is not enough healthy self-love and self care happening while having sex.  If there is a sense of healthy self fulfillment, mixed with care and concern for a partner’s pleasure, well-being and fulfillment then love making more likely is occurring.

22. If when contemplating a sexual encounter there is a fear of failing, performing inadequately, not living up to a standard, or somehow being insufficient then perhaps it’s about having ‘performance’ sex.  When whatever happens is okay and able to be treated with mutual lovingness and fun, and when there is a continuance of sensuous and loving actions even when there is a ‘oops’ then good healthy making love more probably is in evidence.

23. It probably just was having great sex if wonderful erotic excitement, intense pleasure and saturating satisfaction resulted.  However, if there also was added feelings of marvelous union, cosmic connection and spiritual elation then possibly it was great sex with great love making.

24. It’s probably making love when there is a high valuing of the partner, the erotic experience of the partner, and the all over relationship with the partner.  It’s probably having sex if the sexual experience itself is the only thing being valued.

25. When there is a mutual sense of great connection, the people involved are safeguarding each other, there is a sense of natural improvement from the experience, plus a sense of healthfulness exists, and there is rewarding joy it’s very likely to be that a true lovemaking experience is what’s happening.  When emotional disconnection, true danger, unnaturalness, and unhealthfulness, and one type or another of emotional agony results it’s pretty likely that having loveless sex was all that was happening.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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Image credits: “Close up of The Thinker” by Flickr user Brian Hillegas, “The Thinker (female version)” by Flickr user Dave Hogg.
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Related posts:

1. Do You Want To Say ‘Love’ When You Mean ‘Sex’?
2. It Might Be Healthy, Real Love …
3. Sex Fears Mastered with Love
4. Monogamy for Love & Monogamy for Sex
5. Sexual Love Laces 

Happier Love and Six Big Ways to Make It So!

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson covers six important ways recent research in behavioral economics and the emotions of economic decisions have discovered, which can help people in love relationships be happier together.

About Happier Love

Is your love life getting happier?  By love we don’t just mean sex but that is definitely included.  We mean, are you doing love in such a way as it makes you and those you love smile, grin, laugh and have a sense of shared joy and, maybe once in a while, even have a sense of oceanic rapture together?  Whether you are a couple, a family or are really close, loving friends, you ‘together’ can learn and practice certain behaviors which researchers have discovered may assist us in growing happier as we go about love together.

1.  Savor more and more together!
Any good, joint experience is worth lingering in, so enjoy and share it longer and more fully.  So often we cut short our joy in order to get to the ‘next thing’.  Usually the ‘next thing’ could have waited a bit longer and wasn’t really that good, important or as necessary as you might have first thought.  Jointly sharing and, in essence, saturating yourselves longer in any positive experience likely will do you and your love relationship more good than whatever you are about to hurry on to.  Savoring any positive experience together can double your joy, strengthen your relationship and help you be more physically and mentally healthy.

Savoring basically is accomplished by purposely focusing longer on, and sort of soaking up, or emotionally digesting further the experience and it’s various elements.  Then for doing it more fully together, you can share what you focused on and the feelings that brought you.

2.  Be jointly open to flexibility!
Do you push to have the excellent date, set the just right scene, produce the most superb romantic dinner, create outstanding and incredible sex, have the finest time ever, give the perfect party or even just have a super clean house before company comes.  Well, doing all that often makes for way too much pressure, tension and stress for happiness to have much of a chance.  At best you may get a sense of pride and a sense of relief when it’s all over.

The more perfectionistic the goals and standards, and the more elaborate and picky the plans, the greater the likelihood of insufficient mental flexibility for shared elation to occur.  With flexibility and tolerational love, shared merrymaking has a much better opportunity to happen.  The ability to laugh together at various foul-ups, jointly appreciate odd occurrences, be united in humorous tolerance for deviations from the plan, and celebrate the unexpected as a loving team, the more you are likely to create great, happy memories and fine togetherness.

3.  Schedule fun including sexual fun frequently.
Most good and happy times occur because they were on somebody’s schedule to make happen.  Even if an experience seems spontaneous it is likely at least part of it was planned.  By its very nature, spontaneity can help provide some wonderful times together but it cannot be counted on to provide all the recreation (re– creation) fun love relationships need.

I suggest you abide by the principle that says ‘it won’t happen unless it’s given a time and it’s on your calendar’.  Enjoy whatever else comes along but don’t depend on it to fulfill your minimum, regular quotient of quality love experiences.  That requires scheduling.  Those who do this are found to have a lot more happy times, have greater experiences together and consistently grow their love better than those who don’t.  By the way, shared experiences usually bring more happiness than most acquired objects.

4.  Grow your mindfulness sharing.
Mindfulness means focusing on what you are experiencing right now, in thought and feeling.  It also means not letting your focus switch to anything in or from the past, the future or anywhere besides the ‘here and now’.  Mindfulness sharing means doing the same thing but sharing your ‘here and now’ awareness with someone you love.  It can involve verbally expressing the thoughts and feelings you are having right now about and with each other.  That works especially well if the mindfulness has to do with appreciation and affirmation.

Sharing mindfulness also can be done nonverbally with the expressional communications of touch, lovingly looking into each other’s eyes, facial expressions, tones of voice, gestures and posture changes, and just being physically close while experiencing emotional connectedness as you experience what is happening around you.  Think of standing together holding hands and feeling awe together as you both look at a truly awesome sunset, over and equally awesome land or seascape.

Now if for example, you are there but your mind has wandered off to some issue at work, checking your e-mails, or worrying that you didn’t lock the door back home, you have lost a “precious now” and are no longer receiving and sharing the “present” of the present.  Love’s intimacy, closeness and bonding will all be less.  When that happens I suggest you practice ‘mind yanking’ back to the ‘existential now’ and lose yourself in it together.

5.  Go for shared, serene joy as much, or more, as you go for jubilant excitement!
Shared calm serenity, simple easy-going non-demand comfort, quiet awesomeness, and the grand mystical togetherness feelings of deep, joyful love often bring much greater happiness than momentary ecstasy, or the highs of adrenaline-filled adventure.  Relaxed, peaceful, ongoing joy and happiness often is the best of love, although elation surprises and experiences also can be great.  Go for both.

6.  Enjoy emotional intercourse every day you can!
Emotional intercourse happens when you empathetically feel whatever a loved one is feeling emotionally, and they know or sense you are feeling something very similar to what they are feeling.  It can happen mildly to moderately, or in wonderfully strong and powerful ways.  If you ever feel like you really are inside each other, or you have melded together, or in ecstasy you exploded together and have become one with the universe, you have experienced great, emotional intercourse.

If you feel comforted and safe, pleasantly but deeply with, peacefully connected and just right with someone you love, you may be having the very excellent, more moderate form of emotional intercourse.  And if you have moments where you just are showing and feeling care for someone and they for you, that might be one of the milder, emotional intercourse experiences occurring.  There is great individual difference in these, but they all are very good.

To have emotional intercourse, focus on your loved one and what is going on in their heart and gut as much, or more than what is coming from their mind.  Enjoy their enjoyment.  Then center yourself in care or loving appreciation.  Do this especially when they are happy, or up, about something as well as when they are down.  In happy experiences be sure all your attention does not go outwardly to the experience and what is happening there, but also that some of you attention, or a lot of it, goes to the one you love and sharing the joy, or whatever feeling they are having.

At the same time share your own concurrent emotional experiences.  Then keep going back and forth in the sharing of feelings with them, responding with your thoughts and feelings about their thoughts and feelings.  Notice and share each emotion you are having when your loved one relates an emotion they are having.  This back and forth sharing of emotions of both of you, especially the happy ones, is the emotional intercourse that jointly grows happy love. (See the mini-love-lesson “Emotional Intercourse”).

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What do you think of the idea of becoming ‘a happy love farmer’?

Related posts:

1. Other Ways to Say I Love You
2. Intimacy Creation – A Love Skill
3. Emotional Intercourse
4. Upbeat Emotions & Learning for Love
5. Intercourse Absent Lovemaking – a Love Skill 

Limbic Love & Why You Will Do Well to Know about It

Mini-love-lesson #184

Synopsis: What your limbic system is and how it is important to your life of love and love relationships; what makes it unhealthy and how you can do three important things to make it healthier and in return get a healthier and more successful life of love is quickly covered in this mini-love-lesson.

Limbic Love: Love and Your Limbic System

Do you know that your psychological heart lives mostly in the limbic system of your brain?  Furthermore, your success at love may depend on the health of your limbic system.  Your limbic system is a big part of your deeper brain that processes love and guides your ways of doing love relationships.  It also gives you your higher more positive emotions, your ability to play and experience joy, plus much of what you do in all types of human interaction.  It sits under your conscious thinking brain, or cerebral cortex, and largely above your ancient brain.  Your ancient brain is the one which handles basic, physical functioning, simple and mostly negative emotions and rudimentary, impulsive and automatic behaviors. Thus our subject, “limbic love”.

Increasingly scientists suspect that the limbic system is one of the most important parts of our brain.  That is because it processes, motivates and guides our connections with others and pushes us toward cooperative advancements and improvements in of all kinds in all areas of life.  It is our limbic system that guides us toward who and what to get interested in, connect with, enjoy and get involved with more deeply.  It also processes our love of spouse, children, family, good friends, pets and our relationship with ourselves.  It helps us feel connected and belonging, feel compassion, intimacy, altruism and empathy –  all of which are involved in not only our cooperative survival but also in our team efforts toward mutual improvements, curiosity-based discovery and achievement.

In science, increasingly our limbic system and its love processing is suspected of being the primary reason mammals advanced and became ascendant, surpassing so many other other types of life.  Although the avian species also demonstrate love behaviors as did their ancestors the dinosaurs 200 million years ago; and many species have limbic systems.

What Makes Our Limbic System Unhealthy?

We are just beginning to learn about our limbic system’s health and what influences it.  We have learned that our psychological way of going about life can have a strong influence on the physical functioning, biological operation and neurochemistry of everyone’s limbic system.  This in return influences our psychological way of going about life.  This can create a deterioration or ascension cycle strongly influencing our all over health.  Certainly genetics plays a role and in some people a really huge role.  There are those that are born with very unhealthy limbic system functioning which then causes severe emotional and mental illness.  Such illnesses are becoming increasingly treatable neurochemically and psychotherapeutically.

Love problems including inadequate love, the failings of false love, deeply painful love loss, non-love and overt anti-love training, covert subconscious anti-love programming and non-love life modeling especially in childhood but also in adolescence and adulthood, loneliness and isolation all are thought to have very negative effects on the health of a person’s limbic system.

Unhealthy influences on the limbic system also include a number of other factors.  Undue prolonged stress, physical and psychological abuse, psychological trauma, chemical and some behavioral addictions, physical injuries to the limbic system, prolonged severe insecurity, over-reliance on reason and/or focus on power acquirement, negativism and similar psychosocial things all are suspected of being unhealthful for the neurochemistry of our limbic system and its functioning.  That is according to growing research evidence and our current, science-based understanding.

How Can We Make Our Limbic System Healthier?

Probably the biggest way to help yourself have a healthy functioning limbic system has to do with purposely going after and succeeding in attaining healthy, real love relationships.  To accomplish such “limbic love”, following three things are strongly suggested.

1. (A) Study and learn all you can about how to productively think about love.  That includes how to identify real from false love, give and receive healthy real love, detox from anti-love influences, develop multiple types of love including healthy real self-love, spiritual love, altruistic love, and the knowledge of the behaviors that demonstrate, healthfully give, create and grow love.

(B) As part of your love learning process, behaviorally experiment with using what you’ve been learning.  As you learn more, work to hone your love skills and your enjoyment in using them.  Celebrate your victories and learn from your failures realizing that love failures are best used as learning opportunities and are part of the natural love process.  Then practice, practice, practice with actual actions always.

2. As part of your healthy, real self-love, develop living via positivity.  Positivity has to do with having a realistic, positive, appreciative mindset, mood and approach to most of life and everyone in it.  All sorts of research including brain chemistry and body health studies show that the more realistically positive and real love oriented people are more the real winners in life, health and most everything else.  Negative and neutral just does not pay off in health and happiness, in most interactions with others and especially not in love relationships.  You might want to Google Positive Psychology, read Positivity by Dr. Barbara L. Fredrickson and Dr. Victor Frankel’s famous work Man’s Search for Meaning which tells how positivity saved lives even in a Nazi death camp.

3. Actively reach out to others for social connection and purposely go after building your love network with some of the people you meet when you reach out.  Don’t put all your love eggs in the lover, spouse, marriage love basket.  All kinds of love can give healthy, enriching life to your existence.  But, of course, love with a love mate or partner can be very important, and so can parent/child, family and deep friendship loves.  Be sure that at least some of your love efforts are altruistic which, by the way, is turning out to be a biologic, limbic system, natural, love drive born within us.  Positive connections with others are proving to be essential for limbic system health.  Healthy, real love connections are the most healthful.  Living like a hermit can be a prescription for love starvation.

Living healthfully physically by way of healthful exercise, healthy diet, healthy environment, healthful behaviors and good healthcare also are quite important for having a healthy limbic system.  Taking care of those factors can be seen as important ways for you to do healthy self-love as well as ways to assist your loved ones to live healthfully and happily (see  Self-love – What Is It, Self-love and Its Five Healthy Functions and Self-Affirmation for Healthy Self-Love).

So, help your limbic system function healthfully and the likelihood is it will help your love life to be more fully successful, happier and more fulfilled.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Who are you going to talk over this mini-love-lesson with because doing that helps you to better accomplish number 1. (A) above?

Related posts:

1. Brains and Love Behavior: Oxytocin and Other Healthful Neurochemistry
2. Living Well via Loving Well
3. Self-Love – What Is It?
4. Unselfish Self-Love
5. Loneliness and Love