Can You Talk about Sex - with Love?

Talking about sex with love is known to work wonders for both the sex lives and love lives of many people.  Unfortunately there still are many others who don’t know how to do this very well.  In fact there are quite a few who don’t seem to be able to do this at all.

Some people can talk with love about sex to a close, intimate friend but not to a spouse or lover.  Many parents trying to instruct their children about sex do it in very loveless ways.  For others talking to a teenager concerning sex in ways that are love-filled is almost impossible.  Many people can’t talk to their family members about sex at all, let alone in ways that convey love.  Many people long to have more love in their sex lives but they don’t know how to talk about or ask for that very well.

Others want more sex in their love lives but they sure don’t know how to lovingly converse about that.  And then there are some who are vaguely aware that something is missing, which if they talked about it would probably turn out to be communications of love that are missing.  Sadly they don’t know how to talk about that so this important missing element is never discovered or dealt with.

For so many people learning how to talk about ways to grow and mix healthy real love with sexuality would lead to satisfying unmet desires and greatly, even profoundly, enrich their lives.  Regrettably that is something they mostly are unaware of so that way of talking probably won’t happen.  You may ask, how did these blocks or inabilities come to be?  Let’s look and see if one or more of these causes and initiating factors happened to you.

Lots of people grew up in homes where no one talked about sex.  If that happened to you you were probably being subconsciously programmed not to talk about sex at all or to have a very hard time talking about it.  Other people grew up in families that talked about sex only in negative ways of one type or another.  If in your family sex was talked about with heavy emotional tones of guilt, disgust, revulsion, judgmentalism, fear, nastiness or any other negative mood or mindset you could have been programmed to talk about sex in similar negative ways and perhaps not even realize it.

Some of us were raised in homes where adults talked about sex in flat, matter-of-fact ways or in puzzling, unclear ways.  When sex is mentioned today we may talk in that same matter-of-fact or puzzling, unclear way.  For a great many others any mention of sex was embarrassing, shameful, sinful, and something God was against; and as adults it still is.  There is another group when growing up perceived talking about sex as a naughty pleasure.  Everything referring to sex resulted in a delicious tasting of forbidden fruit. Thus, sex talk was fun but love was not a part of it.  Love, therefore, still may be absent or minimal when communicating about sex for people raised this way.

Another common background for many has to do with a conflicted subconscious programming.  Parents taught talking about sex was “bad” but siblings and friends taught sex talk was “good” in that it was exciting, powerful, independent, and more adult.  This especially seemed true if sex talk was sufficiently shocking, nasty, dirty, raunchy, filthy, salacious, etc..  Such talk was ‘socially forbidden’, therefore, it was filled with the raptures of secret rebellion. This too had a subconscious programming effect which lingers in the minds of many adults today.  All this means that too few of today’s adults who were raised in the Western world (and in some other parts of the world) grew up hearing sex talked about with loving words and tones of voice, coupled with loving looks and a general atmosphere of simple, loving okayness.  Love and sex effectively often have been uncoupled, divided and set apart from each other, at least as far as talk is concerned.

Let’s look at what you can do to make this better.

Ask yourself these three questions.  Can you converse about sex with a mate, lover, friends, family members, a child you’re raising, a teenager or even with yourself with love?  Do you talk or avoid talking about sex in a way that avoids being loving?  Can you do a good job of mixing the words, sounds and looks of love with the words, sounds and looks of sexuality and the erotic?  If you can, be proud and happy, but also know that some of those you talk to in more personal ways may need some help in learning to do the same.

To talk about sex with love consider these words which sometimes are used to describe talking with love:
 
>>>Kind, caring, sweet, happy, tender, joyful, intimate, fun, affirming, praising, thankful, nonjudgmental, accepting, gentle, reassuring, challenging, honest, appreciative, celebratory, laudatory, passionate, reverent, zestful, precious, heartfelt, inspiring, adoring, close, delightful<<<

Can you talk about sex with yourself and others you love in the moods indicated by each of the above words?  If not, it might be good for you, and maybe for those who are closest to you, to work on learning how to speak about sex, sexiness and the erotic in at least a few of those loving moods.

Remember, doing a good job of talking together is not just about the words we use.  It also is about how well we listen and about the manner in which we receive and deliver messages.  A wink, a subtle smile, a whisper, a tonal change, the use of an innuendo and a great many other behaviors can empower or de-power our message, shape interpretation, convey emotions and deliver the ‘between the lines’ message.  All this especially is important when talking together about sex with someone you love.

The mood or manner in which we talk about sexuality often is far more important than the words spoken.  Mixing highly seductive intonations and strongly suggestive looks, postures and gestures with the sounds, looks and words of love can be enormously impactful in a personal relationship.  Happily and lovingly explaining sex to a child mixed with a certain amount of matter-of-factness can have a very positive effect in guiding a child toward a healthy, happy understanding of sexuality.  Being kind and caring while discussing a sexual difficulty may be crucial to overcoming the difficulty.  Being enthusiastically sexual with loving overtones can produce more superb, erotic love experiences.  Speaking intimately naughty but ever so lovingly friendly is another way to shape mood and manner in a positive fashion.

Sex talk with loving laughter, smiles and caresses can work to attain an atmosphere of intimate, relaxed, happy eroticism in which love with sex easily flows.  For many the success or failure of asking a love mate to try something new sexually depends on how lovingly the request is made.  Sweet, tender,  gentle, reassuring, and above all else love-filled talk about a sex conflict often is essential for the conflict’s resolution.  Heading into a new sex adventure together is frequently best started with strong, solid expressions of love for one another.

Another way to make talking about sex a love experience has to do with stating appreciation, thankfulness, praise, compliments and generally speaking in a laudatory fashion to and about your love mate.  Likewise, talking about sex and listening to someone else talk about sex with tolerance, open-mindedness, affirmation and kindness also can help make the talk a love-filled event.  And, of course, using terms of loving endearment like sweetheart, darling, honey, etc. can add quite a lot of love to sex talk.

For most couples doing well at talking about sex with one another is very important.  It may determine not only how well their sex life goes but influence a great deal more in their all over relationship.  How generally open, honest, intimate and real people can come to be with each other is frequently guided by how well they lovingly talk about sex with one another.  This can be true not only for couples but for close, intimate friends as well.  How lovingly people treat their love mate’s sex questions, requests and desires often determines how honest and self disclosing a person feels they can be in a relationship.

So crucial to a couple’s sexual development is the ability to hear ‘with love’ what turns on a love mate, what sex fantasies are imagined, what taboo explorations are secretly hoped for, what’s hard to talk about and, most of all, what’s desired.  Without demonstrations and expressions of love mixed into a couple’s sex communications there is a likelihood that censorship, inhibition, deception, intolerance, judgmentalism, boredom, emotional distancing and simple discomfort will grow.

Another part of mixing love and sex together in talk has to do with your healthy self-love and how you talk to yourself about your own sexuality.  In your internal dialogue can you speak with love to yourself about the erotic you?  Can you affirm the natural goodness and healthfulness of the sexuality you were born to experience?  Are you able to praise and give thanks for your sexual system and all the many good feelings it gives you?  Have you freed yourself of the unhealthy, anti-sexual and anti-self-loving influences that may have impacted you?  Are you able to love your own sexuality as a precious part of the bundle of miracles that you are?  Is your self talk increasingly loving and positive when it comes to your own sexuality?

It takes a bit of doing to overcome our subconscious programs from childhood that influence how we speak and don’t speak about love and sex.  To get a sense of this difficulty imagine you are talking, teaching and answering the questions of teen boys and girls concerning erections, vaginal lubrication, sexual intercourse, menstrual cramps, ejaculate, yeast infections, masturbation, orgasm, the G spot, birth control, STD’s, foreplay, condoms, oral sex, bi-sexuality  homosexuality, hypo- and hyper-sexuality and polygamous sex; and imagine you are doing it in a way that connects it all with reassuring love.  This is the challenge facing parents who have decided to do a thorough job of sexually educating their offspring.  Many would have some problems talking about these things coupled with love to their closest adult friends because of their childhood programs to be embarrassed, ashamed, etc.  Yet, the better we frankly can talk with love the better we can solve problems, avoid difficulties, achieve advancement and make growth occur in being lovingly sexual and sexually loving.

To overcome our subconscious programs that work against talking in a sex with love way often takes dedication and perseverance.  Those who practice it find the effort highly worthwhile.
Communicating with love and sex mixed together may be a primary way most couples build a sense of deep connectedness.  Without the love included a more limited, more narrow, more reserved and more distancing way of relating may be the result.  Experiencing the love your love mate has in their heart for you makes everything you do sexually together better.  It is the love that empowers sex to be dealt with in ways that enable sexual explorations, adventures, advancements, creativity, freedom, abandonment of inhibitions, and mutual attainment of erotic spiritual heights.  When love and sex are mixed together and well communicated awesome, oceanic, transcendental experiences of Eros may result.  Traveling together toward such incredible shared ecstasy can begin with developing your ability to talk about sex with love.

As always, grow in love
 
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question With whom are you actually going to talk to about mixing love and sex and the ideas in this blog entry; and how might that be for you?

Related posts:

1. How to Talk Love Without Words
2. Lasting Sex and Lasting Love
3. Sexual Love Laces
4. Emotional Intercourse
5. Are You Talking About Love Enough? 

Men: Doing Well at Love !

There are men who do very well at love and there are men who could do well but don’t – yet.  Love of a special other, love of children, family, friends, comrades, love of a cause, one’s higher power, love of country, the weave of sex and love, love of the arts, love of knowledge, healthy real love of self – they all count.  They all can be the focus of men doing well at love.

More and more research shows that men typically go about some things rather differently than most women.  These differences can be used by men to help them go about love powerfully, competently and quite successfully.  A fair percentage of men, along with not a small number of women, rather naturally think in pragmatic, functional terms.  This leads a great many men to think in questions like the following: What is it? What is it for? How does it work? How do you use it? How do you maintain it? How much is the right amount? Can you fix it if it breaks? How do you improve it? Can it be fun?  All these questions are very applicable to men doing well with love and with love relationships.  In working to love well all these somewhat male oriented cognitions and puzzlements have good workable answers.

The men who focus on love learning can arrive at practical answers to the above questions and then apply themselves to practicing those answers.  They then are likely to do well at love.  I know this because throughout all of my years of practicing counseling and therapy slightly more males than females have consistently come to me for help in solving their love life problems.  Most of the men learn to do quite well at love, be it with a mate, children, family, comrades, spiritual concerns, or self, etc..

Perhaps you are a man needing or wanting to do well at love, or perhaps you know a man who could stand to learn how to do better at love.  Vast numbers of women seem to wish their men would learn how to be more love oriented and generally do better at love.  However, these same women often do not sufficiently seem to know how to successfully tell a man the ways of making improvements in their love understanding, skills or actions.  Perhaps that has its origins in the neurological and cultural influenced ways men and women operate differently.

Sadly recent Western cultural influences have sort of taught men to think of love as a woman’s thing, and that to be focused on love is somehow unmanly.  This is in spite of the fact that many of the world’s great teachers and theoreticians focusing on love have been men.  Buddha,  Jesus, Socrates, Plato, and Rumi of the ancient world, and Stendhal, Erich Fromm, Kierkegaard, Harry Harlow, Ashley Montagu of more recent times are but a few of the many good male examples available.

For men to get directed and motivated toward doing well or better at love they usually have to see that there are clear advantages and benefits to doing so.  They also need to have clear and fairly precise things to learn and practice, ways to think clearly concerning love and its many dynamics, and recognize ‘manly’ things they may feel when working to improve their love ability.  Fortunately all this is doable for men who apply themselves to the task of looking into and practicing healthy real love.

The first question a man may ask himself is, “Will I go to the trouble to really look into love as something to do well at?”  After that comes the question, “Will I do what it takes to really do well at love?”  If both answers are yes incredible benefits are likely!  If the answer to either is no, missing out on life’s most important involvements, most useful powers, and most pleasurable adventures is predictable.

As always, Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success questions
Have you read the rather male oriented, scientifically based, and quite practical book Love & Survival by Dean Ornish, M.D., published by Harper Collins?  Or have you read the rather couple-oriented, highly practical, and also rather scientifically based book Recovering Love (although comfortable reading for most men, by all means oriented to both men and women) written by, I shall add perhaps egotistically, yours truly, Dr. J. Richard Cookerly, hardback published by McGraw-Hill, paperback by Authors Choice of  iUniverse?

Virginity Surpassed and Parental Love

Synopsis: A daughter’s startling declaration and loving request; Parent readiness; Big questions; A different example; Handling it all with the power of love.

“Mother, father, I would like you to just sit and really work at hearing me with love because I have what I think is a good thing to share with you.

Last night I did something really special.  I surpassed my virginity.  That’s what my group calls it instead of seeing it as something lost.”

This shy and gently stated declaration came from a beautiful, super smart, nearly perfect, not quite 17-year-old daughter, as her mother reported it.  She continued, “At first neither my husband nor I understood so my daughter repeated herself,  ‘Surpassed my virginity, not lost my virginity’.  Suddenly I was flooded with cascading, conflicting and confusing emotions washing over me – chaos, disbelief, shock, fear, sadness, empathy, guilt, worry, and a strange sense of pride that she was able to tell us this startling fact.

"Then I heard my husband stammering, ‘What the hell!  You mean you’ve already had…, already …, you mean …, you’re telling me, my little girl’s not a virgin anymore?  Is that what you mean?’  Our daughter calmly and kindly replied, ‘Yes, Daddy, and we did it the safe way with a condom and spermicide, and we did it with lots of love so I want you to be happy for me’."

This mother admitted her next words were a tearful, “But you’re only 16."  Her daughter’s well researched response was, “Mom, do you know around the world 16 is the average age where most girls ‘surpass their virginity’ so I’m just being normal.  Please don’t cry unless those are tears of happiness for me.  It was a really good experience and besides I think I’m the last girl in my group to do this.”

She said her husband, somewhat angrily, replied, “That doesn’t make it right, safe, healthy, or good.  Their daughter’s further response was, “Daddy did you know that in ancient Egypt, whose civilization lasted longer than anybody else’s and whose family life stability was legendary, girls commonly surpassed their virginity between the ages of 12 and 14 and were married by 15.  Not only that but sometimes marriage was to one of their brothers”.

“That’s not what we are talking about,” was this frustrated father’s reply.  This mom reported she then said, “Well, Sweetheart, you have shocked and amazed us, and you are going to have to give your father and I some time to process this because we certainly weren’t ready for it, like we probably should have been.  I do want to thank you for telling us and not keeping it secret like we had to do when we were growing up.  Let’s take a break while you’re father and I talk and then we’ll all talk some more”.

Their daughter replied in a very adult and kind tone, “I know this is hard for you given the way you were brought up so, yes, let’s take a break but first can we all hug?”  She said they did hug and they said they loved each other; then she and her husband shared their confusion and many different feelings.  All this is what the mother of a rather precocious adolescent reported to me in a quickly scheduled parent/guidance counseling session before asking, “Now what do we do?”.

Well, dear parents, are you ready for the day you find out an offspring of yours has “surpassed their virginity”?  Do you think you will be able to handle it with wisdom and love?  Maybe you will try to stay in denial and act like it hasn’t happened.  If that is so it may lead your youngster to feel and think that they shouldn’t or can’t share this kind of big, important fact with you.  If that’s the case they perhaps will try to handle the health, relational and psychological issues without your input, support and guidance.  Please consider that.

Perhaps you feel sure your teenagers will stay virginal until after marriage, and they may.  However, the majority of adolescents in a majority of cultures around the world do not.  As you probably know all around our planet both biology and modern world, cultural influences seem to be pressing youth toward becoming sexually interactive in middle or younger adolescence.  I think it is wise for parents not to be in denial and to prepare ahead of time for dealing with this bio-social ‘pressure’.

Let’s look at this: Concerning sex, especially virginity, do you have different hopes and standards for the males and females you are raising?  I have counseled no small number of parents, mostly fathers but some mothers also, who are secretly or openly proud of their sons but upset with their daughters when they first start having sex.  In this day and age ‘double standards’ more and more lead to destructive family conflict.  This especially seems to be a hard problem for families moving into the modern, westernized world from other cultures.  It also frequently is a devastating difficulty for religious conservative parents of many faiths who find their offspring gravitating toward more contemporary, secularly influenced lifestyles.

The big question for parents, from this family therapist’s point of view, is this.  Are you going to deal with the ‘surpassing virginity’ issue with sufficient healthy, real love?  No matter what your belief system is regarding ethics, morals, mores, propriety, etc., I suggest a powerful love-centered approach will work best.  From my experience with so many parents discovering that their offspring have become sexually interactive, ‘well expressed love’ is the primary thing that makes the outcome constructive.  Without love your mind seems closed and destructive dissonance grows.  Anger, condemnation, guilt tripping, manipulation, disgust, rejection, control efforts, abandonment, expulsion, lack of care, being overly nonchalant and indulgent, punishment, reasoning without compassion, hyper-religiosity etc.  usually lead to far less than desirable results.

Let me suggest that the parents who handle this issue best are also the ones who, with love and some study, prepare for it ahead of time.  Some years ago I worked with a couple who was attempting to deal with this issue responsibly and sanely.  They talked with each other saying, “It is likely our children will become sexually active in their teenage years, because we did, and that’s the way the world seems to work these days.  So, how do we want to prepare for that?”

After some research they decided to follow a parenting approach popular in certain circles in northern Europe, parts of South America and very recently urban China.   They gave their children a far better than average sex education involving not only the biology but also the psychology of sexuality.  There were those in their extended family who said they were just setting up their children for promiscuity and tragedy, but they rejected that after looking at the good results data from various other countries.

When their youngsters were in their early adolescence they openly discussed how and when they might choose to enter into sexual relations.  Each of their children became able to talk quite frankly about all this with their parents.  Both of their boys and girls chose ages later than their parents had worried they would.  Healthy self-love and others were a major focus in their discussions.  When older each of their offspring carried out their plans similar to those they had designed with reasoned modifications when needed.  A loving acceptance and even a family celebratory atmosphere prevailed as the plans came to fruition.

Recently I learned that their children, who are now entering adulthood, plan to do much the same thing when they have children because the results have been far better than the bad and chaotic experiences of many others.  No one got pregnant, no one got any sexually transmitted diseases and no one experienced any great emotional upheaval.  All of them agree that because love was made so much more important than sex the sexual issues got dealt with quite fully and constructively.

It is important to know that following this pattern might not lead to such good results for you. 
Because of all sorts of individual differences and possible other intervening variables disasters might yet occur.  There are no guarantees but the above example is, at least, a different example than many parents have been exposed to.  I suggest you study many examples and possible ways to go about facing this issue.  Then as parents you might want to make your plans regarding ‘virginity surpassed’, preferably with a ‘ big, powerful, love focus’ as a big part of them.

For a start on these deliberations let me remind you what that fellow we call Paul said about love over 2000 years ago: Love is patient, kind, not jealous, overbearing, arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way, is not mean-spirited or resentful, and love bears all things, for real love never ends.

As always Grow and Go with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love success question How similar or different from your parents do you want to be concerning your dealing lovingly with your children’s sexuality?

Related posts:

1. Parenting Series: Paul’s Points On Love For Parents
2. Better Parenting Through Love Series
3. Parenting Series: Love Motivating Your Child (& Every One) Toward Good Behavior
4. Parenting Series: How To Love Your Child Better 

Contemplating Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson first introduces you to the value of contemplating love by way of some mind-tickling and significant questions; then touches on a few super sources for love contemplation; next comes contemplative wisdom and trash; and ends with five starter, love-based conceptions likely to be well worth contemplating.

The Questions of Love

Do you give love much thought?  Lots of people don’t until it goes away or turns out to be false.  Perhaps you have pondered what love really is?  Or maybe you puzzled over how love works?  Do you ponder about how to tell the real thing from the false?  What do you think of love’s reported ability to heal physical and psychological illness?  Have you tried to figure out how one gets, gives, grows, loses, destroys, recaptures, sends, receives or benefits from love?  Yes, there are a great many questions when contemplating love and probably in doing so can significantly improve one’s life of love.  As might be expected, those who don’t give love much thought seem to be the ones who commonly run into all sorts of love troubles and big love failures.

You also can contemplate lots of questions concerning yourself and love.  Are you well loved?  Do you love well?  Have you ever thought about your own love skills?  Are your love skills poor, average or superior?  Are you skilled at integrating love and sex?  How about integrating love and parenting?  Then there’s integrating love and friendship?  Are you good at healthy self-love?  You have heard phrases like love of country, love of God, love of life, etc.  But do you know what actions to take to accomplish those kinds of love?  Are you a person who relies more on love luck, or are you someone who develops your own abilities to act with love?  Do others see you as a loving person, and do you see yourself as a person of love?

Contemplating love regarding others also is important.  Does she or he love me?  Do my children really love me?  Do I have friends who genuinely love me?  Do my family members love each other well or poorly?  Do you associate with people who love well, are love skilled and love oriented?  Are the people in your life mostly anti-loving and/or non-love oriented?  Contemplating these types of questions just might change your life.

What the Greats Have Said

Another way to contemplate love is to study and give consideration to the writings of philosophers, religious leaders and the great thinkers that have preceded us.  Socrates, Aristotle and especially Plato, who wrote his famous Symposium on Love, had a lot to say about love.  Teachings, concepts and ideas about love can be found in all the Scriptures of the world’s great religions.  Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, Krishna, Confucius and many other great religious masters have taught a great deal concerning love.  More contemporary great minds in a wide variety of scientific, research, human services and many other fields also have contemplated love and produced highly worthy and influential volumes on love.  So, you might want to do some reading to assist your contemplations.

Wisdom and Trash

The largest number of ideas about love contemplated by the largest number of people probably comes from songwriters, poets, novelists, playwrights and the like.  Love stories are thought by some to be the very first written works.  For ages it was only those in the arts who tried to convey understandings concerning love.  Not only writers but painters and sculptors have presented much that can produce meaningful and inspirational contemplations concerning love.  Some of this is very wise, helpful, healthy, useful and right.  Unfortunately, a great deal of it can be considered trash, wrong, stupid, misleading and downright destructive.  But that also is true of many of the ideas presented by the supposed great thinkers, writers, etc.

So, it is by contemplation that one may sort out some of the trash from the jewels of wisdom that actually can do you and your loved ones some good.  For example, consider this.  Many a love story and love song has reinforced the idea that love is jealous.  The teachers and Scriptures of several religions definitively teach “love is not jealous”.  Which one is right?  Which one is wise and which one is more likely to lead you astray, and best be considered trash?  Perhaps you will want to contemplate that!

Starter Things to Contemplate about Love

Below are some statements involving love which you may enjoy thinking about, or in other words, contemplating.  It’s perfectly all right to not believe them, disagree or agree, or to go off on some tangent.  You also might want to think them over, out loud, with someone else.  That’s another way to help contemplation, by discussion.  See what you think about these ideas.

1. Hate destroys the hater
Indifference dulls the indifferent
Love makes better the loved and the loving.

2. Healthy, real love is always about and for the benefit of the loved.

It is only false love that can turn to wanting to hurt, harm and destroy.

3. Love is the greatest of all naturally occurring phenomena, but how to do it, give it,   get it and grow it takes lots of learning.

4. Two things get better and bigger by giving them away, ideas and love.

5. How well and how much you do healthy self-love will effect how much and how well you get healthy real love from others, and how well your love relationships will do overall.

Now, I suggest you contemplate the above statements and above questions as a way to get started on practicing love contemplation, and see where it leads you.  I think you may be quite pleased with the results you get.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What is the most important, influential and significant thing ever said to you, or read by you, about love?

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Related posts:

1. How Smart Is Your Love? – A Test 

Pet Love

Synopsis: Pets who teach love; Healing with pet love; the super importance of pet love; the social good pets do; the importance of pets as love receivers; lifesaver pets; and pets showing us that to give is to receive.

Love Teachers

The fire in the middle cast a warm, friendly glow all around the tepee and on the people in it.  All were silent as the elder wise-woman in her beautiful, white, beaded, deerskin dress intoned an ancient chant.  Then she told her clan’s story of the first time the Great Spirit love-bonded wolf cubs with their ancient people.  It seems that humans did not know enough about how to love so the Great Spirit put what would become dogs into the world to teach us how to love.

As every tribe member knew, dogs know how love better than all other creatures.  So it was that dogs taught us to nuzzle, and cuddle, and caress, and do love-play, and share food and shelter, and to be patient, and to protect, and to bond, and to lick wounds for healing, and to work together for common good, and to feel joy in uniting and sadness at parting, and relief in reconnecting, and even in times of great peril how to lay down our lives for one another.  Yes, the Great Spirit put dogs into the world to teach us to love and to love well.  The wisdom teacher of the tribe went on to explain that all animals have things to teach us and most important are the lessons of the dogs.

I was only 17 when one summer through a scouting program I went to stay a couple weeks with Native American people and heard this tribal-teaching-story.  Ever since I’ve had at least one dog – sometimes five plus puppies, from time to time cats and kittens, and once a horse.  Then there was a blind squirrel, a rescued armadillo, a recovering raccoon, along with assorted small, injured birds, a clever crow, lizards, turtles, salamanders, skinks, newts and a few small, brightly colored snakes – all released when recovered.  Is it any wonder that the most beloved woman of my heart was the large-mammal-docent at our local zoo, and at her instigation we road a highly valued and well-cared-for elephant through mountain terrain in Thailand.  She is quite the love-teacher also.

Healing Pet Love

Many years later the Native American, wise woman’s story rushed back into my awareness when I was in England doing research on how love is dealt with in psychotherapy there.  That was when the English were introducing dogs into hospital, surgical, recovery wards.  They had discovered that surgery patients healed faster with fewer complications when the patients had a dog to love and be loved by.

In my own practice I often work with very lonely people.  Some have been hurt in relationships and consequently are protectively reluctant to mix with other people.  I frequently recommend getting one or more mammal-type pets.  We talk about how to find an appropriate and good animal-match.  Almost always the ones who follow through on my recommendation start rapidly improving shortly after acquiring a dog, or cat or another mammal.  Perhaps I’m prejudiced but dogs seem to get the best results in these cases but it somewhat depends on the ‘personality’ traits of the animal.  However, people with all sorts of dire conditions start getting better with various pets.  Miracles of recovery and stunning improvement from serious physical and emotional maladies especially seem to occur with horses in the picture.

In my area of Texas, and elsewhere, there are equine therapy clinic stables with patient rehabilitation riding and caring for the horses programs that get outstanding results.  Children, teens and adults, as well as the elderly, who suffer depression along with other debilitating and even deadly physical diseases and conditions are known to make surprising improvements once they bond with a loving pet.  Even criminals have less recidivism when given dogs to raise, train and love.  Good results also are attained with the smarter birds like parrots, crows and cockatoos.  As many a healer knows, love heals and the species the love comes from doesn’t seem to matter a great deal, though higher order mammals usually are the most successful.

The Super Importance of Pet Love

The importance of a pet in some people’s lives cannot be over-stated.  Repeatedly I have heard from patients, often with tears in their eyes, “Getting a pet saved my life”.  I have seen loving pets make crippled children smile for the first time in months, cause angry morose teenagers to start to be kind, the brokenhearted and isolated begin to socialize again, and the severely mentally ill start back toward reality.

The Social Good

Considerable evidence suggests people who have a close, truly loving relationship with a pet are much less likely to commit suicide, murder, violent crime, and much less likely to be destroyed by drug addiction.  Pet lovers tend to live longer and healthier, and rate themselves as happier in life than do others.  Evidence also suggests children, raised loving and being loved by pets, as adults do better at love relationships of all types.  They also tend to be much better at giving and receiving physical affection than is the general norm.

Couples who are active in loving pets together seem to have better relationships with one another and their children.  There is no doubt that pets help improve the mobility of the elderly and also the evidence suggests elderly pet owners heal faster from injuries, experience less infections, and report more joy in life than others of similar age.

The Importance of Love Receivers

Cat owners often speak of their feline pets modeling independence for them.  Of course, cats also do a good job of getting themselves petted, picked up, cuddled and otherwise loved on.  In the process they show the ‘reception of loving behavior pleasure’ by purring and often rubbing against and playing with their humans in what seems like return gestures of love.

De-scented skunks, rabbits, goats, sheep, ponies, monkeys and a host of other higher order animals have been known to do things that pretty much seem like receiving and giving behaviors of love.  The neurosciences have shown that similar areas of the brain activate, in both mammalian pets and humans, when giving and receiving love actions.  Also there is evidence to suggest ‘love-conveying actions’ in humans, mammals and certain birds, result in very similar, healthy, brain chemistry changes.  Thus, the natural, powerful process we call ‘love’ is evidenced as occurring in a good many species besides humans.  Yes, the data points to our pets being ‘creatures of love’ just like we are.

Lifesaver Pets and Others

Pets save lives.  There are countless, true stories of pets saving human lives.  Whether it’s waking the family when the house is on fire, or dragging the baby out from under a collapsed structure, or attacking the bear who is mauling its master, or finding the child lost in the woods, or swimming under and supporting a drowning man, or going for help when finding its mistress unconscious on the floor, or … well, you get the idea.  Arguably they do this out of love just as loving humans do.

Animals have been known to repeatedly experience severe, excruciating pain or physical deprivation, even unto death, in an attempt to save people who, it can be said, they are love-bonded with.  A pet dog that continues to be maimed by a lion as it stands between its wounded master and a hungry pride is but one of the many examples of this.  Skeptics say this just is instinct but is not love born of instinct?   There even are examples of animals saving strangers (consider the report of dolphins that support and push a drowning human to shore) is this ‘agape’ love or altruistic love?

To Give Is to Receive

I heard a severe, chronic pain patient say, “I’m alive today not because of all the medicine and therapy I got but because they gave me a blind cat to take care of.  The medicine and therapy helped but it was having a cat to love, and later be loved by, that made the difference as to whether I would stay alive or not.  Now I have a bunch of cats and other pets to love and be loved by.  My life is joy in spite of the pain”.  Receiving love well is ‘giving back the gift of love’.

Researchers were surprised to discover that when people give love to others the givers get healthier.  Of course, the givers need receivers, preferably appreciative receivers.  Many a pet fulfills this role quite well.  Also our pet animals need receivers too and humans can fulfill that role.  By the way, do you know about the great ape they taught sign language, when asked “what do you want” requested a kitten.  The smart, loving ape turned out to take excellent, loving care of the kitten feeding, petting, protecting and gently playing with it daily.  So it seems it is not only humans that benefit from giving and receiving pet love.

I think there must be at least a thousand other things that would be good to say about pet love and the good that it provides us.  Certainly there are at least 10,000 other wonderful and inspiring true stories exemplifying pet love and its marvels.  Space prohibits, but let me add one thought.  Take a little time to give serious attention to pet love and its importance.  Then, if you want to add more love and its benefits to your life, if you don’t already have one, get a pet.  In fact, get two so they have each other when you’re away.  If you do have a pet, go on, love it as soon as you can and over and over again – you both will benefit!

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question What actions might you take to make pet love a bit more of a joy in your life than it is now?