Bewildering Love Abandonment

Mini-Love-Lesson #258

 Synopsis: In this mini-love-lesson the painful and bewildering issue of sudden, unexpected and unexplained ending of love relationships is explored. Included are common and uncommon reasons and six important things to do about it if it happens to you.

Suddenly Gone

"I thought we were good until the day I came home to an empty house and a note that explained nothing". I can't count how many times I've heard a bewildered and very hurting client tell me that story or something very like it as to why they had come to see me. Some of those had been married for decades, some not long back from their honeymoon or what they thought had been a great vacation. Often their children also had gone with their exiting spouse which, of course, greatly increased the trauma, hurt and anxiety. Quite a few times a departing note had not even been left or they only found divorce papers. Startled, stunned, confused, profoundly hurt, panicked, anxious, angry and totally bewildered were the responses time and time again.

Why does this happen? How can it be prevented? How does one get over it and go forward? How can one make sure it never happens again? Can there ever be trust and love again? These are among the agonizing questions that victims of sudden, love relationship abandonment often struggle with as their feelings of betrayal, self-doubt, loneliness and depression grows (see “The Huge, Hidden Reason So Many Fail at Love?” and “Trust Recovery and Love”).

Other sudden love relationship abandonment situations occur. A young, adult child suddenly breaks off all contact with parents and family offering no explanation. A long-term friend does the same thing. Once in a while, the person doing the abandoning completely disappears from their regular life leaving no forwarding address or way of contacting them. In those situations, there is no way to figure out what occurred or went wrong and no chance to fix it or reconnect. Chances for relationship reconnection, repair, obtaining closure, learning from mistakes, explaining misunderstandings, healing relational wounds, understanding divergent perceptions or doing anything else that is jointly constructive are hopelessly blocked. This can be like having a wound that never completely heals. The person left is left to individually try to recover on their own or with the help of others. The good news is that can be done especially with the right assistance.

Why? The Common and Uncommon Reasons

Coming to understand something of what leads a lot of people to suddenly and surprisingly abandon another without sufficient explanation, in many instances can help a lot. Such an understanding provides a groundwork from which to work toward recovery and reduce the bewilderment factor and its damaging effects. Bewilderment helps keep people stuck and gives them little or nothing constructive to work with. That usually leads to a lot of circular thinking going nowhere and quite a bit of emotional fatigue which ends up growing a sense of hopelessness.

Where possible, I frequently have requested contact with those who have done the sudden leaving and often they have come in for at least one session. Here is what I have seen are the most helpful and useful things to understand about why people will suddenly and shockingly abandon a love relationship.

Secret fear is the most common reason people suddenly and surprisingly leave a love relationship. This can involve a fear of physical violence, psychological conflict, pressure and debasement, being guilt tripped, demeaned, shamed, controlled, dominated, harassed, teamed up on by family and/or friends, blocked and prevented from their own actualization, not being really or healthfully loved , wasting life with the wrong person and a great host of other similar things. Usually involved is a great fear of communicating the fear and expecting one kind or another of a very negative outcome if they did try to communicate their fear. Likewise, they also usually fear trying to explain why they feel the need to leave and they see attempting to do so successfully as impossible, and/or dangerous or likely to be more destructive than constructive.

Secret anger is another common reason many people plan and carry out a sudden revenge-filled attack/escape from what they usually secretly see as having to live a phony, pseudo-love relationship life where they are repeatedly maltreated one way or another. Neglect, demeaning treatment, control, suppression, inadequate love expression, toxic mistreatment, mistrust, misuse and being misperceived are issues often involved also are not getting emotional needs met, repetitious unfair treatment, sex problems, growing hopelessness, psychological, behavioral and physical abuse. Incompatibility, deficient emotional intimacy, excessive criticism, destructive addictions, lack of affirmation and fulfillment, repeated and frequent frustration, high and repeated stressful living, and fidelity issues also are commonly involved in helping resentment, anger and secret desires for vengeful retaliation grow and finally erupt.

Often in talking with the abandoning spouse or love mate, I have heard things like "He, or she, never listened to me before so why should I try to explain myself now". Then there is the "I'm not proud of my reasons so why would I reveal them now". And "They would just try to use what I said against me anyway", “They would try to talk me out of it and my mind is made up”. "It would be useless", and "I refuse to go through any more grief than I already have". "He, or she, knows, I can't believe they don't know, they must be aware of why I left. I think they have known all along and just don't care", and once in a while "I didn't know they didn't know, how could they not know?"

The truth was they usually did not know because the couple’s or family’s communication system was so poor, so phony and so lacking in honest self-disclosure that no one in the system could know the truth about what anyone was feeling, thinking or privately doing. Also, there were statements like "it's just too hard to talk to them about anything personal, I'm lousy at explaining myself, no one ever understands me, it's all my fault because I secretly knew it couldn't ever work". And "I can't tell him, or her, I never really loved them in the first place, that would hurt them too much".

Is There Someone Else?

Secret affairs, both falsely and rightly suspected, are another common reason for the bewildering, sudden, love relationship abandonment occurrence. Also, sometimes it is a desire to go looking for someone else or just for a new and different life. Those often are the hardest reasons to accept. Lots of healthy, self-love action can help the one abandoned (see “Love Affairs: Bad?, Good? And Otherwise” and “From Self-Love to Other Love and Back Again”).

Uncommon Reasons and What They Can Teach Us

 Sometimes the reasons are entirely different from what anyone would have guessed or deduced. Here are some examples. "I was surprised to find out I was pregnant and decided to get a secret abortion. That would never have been accepted where I lived. Instead, I found out I actually wanted to be a mother. I decided to have and raise the baby on my own. I'm quite certain the father would've been a terrible parent and I didn't want his corrupting interference ruining my child, so I just left".

Here is another, "I had done a good job of making sure no one knew that secretly I was a serious addict beginning to deteriorate. I knew that I would never recover if I stayed and especially if they learned of my addiction, so I left suddenly. I'm sure I would relapse if I went back and probably overdose and die soon after they learned of my addiction. And another "I finally accepted that I'm bisexual and I believe my spouse, family, old friends, church and boss never could or would let it alone. They all would just keep trying to condemn and convert me, no matter what. They might even try to have me committed like they did my uncle. So, I decided to save everybody from the hell we all would have gone through, over and over again. Alone I got it all together and disappeared. Now I'm happy with a couple of him and hers in my life and think I'm going to keep it that way."

Here is one more, "If my spouse or his family learned of my coming inheritance, I really believe they would find a way to drag me back to his country where all the laws give husbands all the power over everything a wife owns. So, I’m gone and hiding out until the divorce goes through. So far, I hear they all are glad to be rid of me except for my husband but he is too damned controlling and I was crazy to marry him in the first place. My feelings for him started changing right after the honeymoon so I guess it wasn't real love after all." So remember, the truth can be very different than you, or anyone else, suspects.

What to Do If Sudden, Unexpected Abandonment Happens to You

First, I heartily recommend finding yourself a good, hopefully love-knowledgeable therapist well-versed in relationship issues and especially divorce and break up recovery and/or couple and family reconciliation work, if that is your hope and aim. Therapists who hold advanced credentials in couples, marriage and family therapy are usually best.

Second, with the therapist’s help, decide if you want to have contact with the one who left to at least get some further information about why you were left, but understand, some people give phony reasons (see “Re-Sparking Your Love”, “Dealing with Love Hurts: A Dozen Love Hurts to Know and Grow From”, “Dealing With Love Hurts: First Aid Tips”, “Dealing With Love Hurts: Pain's Crucial Guidance”, “Dealing With Love Hurts: Shared And Unshared Pain”, and“Returning to a Bad Lover? - A Blocking Technique ”).

Third, join a support group or even better a therapy group for divorce recovery or break-up healing and repair. It is amazing how a good group can help with relationship issues.

Fourth, start learning all you can, every way you can about healthy, real, love relating and how it is done (see my book, Recovering Love: Codependency to Co-Recovery and The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman).

Fifth, start a love-relating learnings Journal. Record and review, repeatedly, everything you think, talk and read concerning love-relating for a year. Especially concentrate on the behaviors of love and practicing them (see “Love Is a Performance Art”).

Sixth, get active with others but keep it light at first. Don't isolate, don't center in, or on, just one possible romantic interest for quite a while and don't try to do it all on your own. Others can care, help with healing, offered distraction and useful input that you, on your own, might take forever to get to.

One More Thing: It is advisable to talk all this over with others because doing so helps you use other parts of your brain than when you just think silently, it gives you fresh input, helps embed and discover new ideas, knowledge, etc. And often it gives needed, empowering, human contact. When you do this, we would so much like it if you would tell others about this site and all our mini-love-lessons helping people around the world with their love-relating issues.

As always – Go and Grow with Love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: Is it not true that trying to solve love problems all on your own is a lot like trying to reinvent the wheel, the lever and the lightbulb simultaneously, when you could just learn and use what is already known and working for others?

Love Your Brain - Why and How

Mini-Love-Lesson #210

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson tells about how you can help your brain help you do love and do life better, healthier, happier, more knowledgeably and more successfully via limbic system health acts.

Better Brain Health for Better Love Health and Everything Else Too

WOW, is your brain tremendously important to absolutely everything important to you, including your love life.  Are you aware that the better you treat your brain the better your brain can help you with everything important to you.  All your thinking, all your feeling, all your doing, all your health, all your work, all your fun and especially all your love and love relationships are affected by your brain and can be affected by its health.  Do you know that if you help your brain be healthier, your brain can help your love relationships be healthier, happier and more successful.

Maybe you are asking “how can I help my brain be healthier?”  Then maybe you are also asking “how does a healthy brain make for healthier love”.  To answer those questions we need a little brain and love background knowledge.

Knowing Your Loving Brain

Your conscious thinking mind and your loving heart are actually in your brain.  Your thinking brain resides largely in your brain’s cerebral cortex and your loving heart in the circuitry and components of your limbic system.  Your cerebral cortex is thought to be your more recently developed, outer layer brain.  It wraps around and covers your limbic system which is a deeper, older, inner layer brain system sitting atop your more basic functions and oldest brain system known as your “reptilian” brain or brainstem.  It is mostly in your limbic system where love, loving and feeling loved are understood to be primarily, non-consciously processed (see “What Your Brain Does with Love – Put Simply”).

The more you can help your limbic system operate healthfully the better it can process love.  Then your limbic system can to a better job of sending its electrical and chemical messages throughout your body and the rest of your brain where they do lots of health-making good.  Those messages from your limbic system also help you feel and become consciously aware of the many different positive emotions associated with love.  When that happens you can add conscious thinking about love and use whatever you have learned and understand about love to influence your love relationships behavior.

If your knowledge-base about love is weak, poor, misinformed, contradictory conflicted, etc., as it is with so many, your actions concerning love  likely will be the same.  If instead your knowledge base about love is strong, rich and well-informed, love success becomes much more likely.  That strong knowledge base also will help you with raising into conscious awareness your subconscious bad programming about love and how it works to sabotage you.  Almost everybody has at least some bad love programming.  However, making improvements only may work well if your brain’s limbic system is healthy and operating well.  The more your thinking brain can know and work well with your limbic, non-conscious, loving brain the better.

What Your Loving Brain Needs from You to Be Healthy

Not only can your loving heart’s limbic system help you with your love relationships, it also can help a great deal with your all over health, not to mention your general happiness, creativity, energy, efficiency and life spirit.  To help your brain accomplish all that, ponder the following closely.
Your limbic system is made healthier by healthy, real, love stimulations coming into it.  That is what the research evidence increasingly points to.  So, associate and interact a lot with those you love and those you are healthfully loved by.  Then do the same with those you like and are liked by because that helps too.

Include pets and perhaps those special experts on love known as dogs.  Horses and cats are quite good too as are just about any mammal and also some birds especially parrots.
Be actively involved with an adamant love (see “Adamant Love – And How It Wins for Us All”), altruistic love, spiritual love or a passionate purpose where you are focused on doing some kind of good thing.  One of the great surprise discoveries in love research was the finding that giving love makes your body healthier in big important but different ways than does getting love.

Learn about and get good at healthy self-love (see “From Self-Love to Other Love and Back Again”)  Those who are good at healthy self-love are better at loving others and far better than the love malnourished, love starved and false love addicted (see “Does ‘Feeling in Love’ Come from Real or False Love” and our Real Love, False Love e-book).  Remember, you can live the great admonition “Love Others as You Love Yourself”.

Limit your time with the unloving, non-loving, false loving and anti-loving.  Such people can be quite harmful to your relational and psychoneurophysical health.  If you choose or have to work with or be around the less loving or those who seem to be just plain negative, counterbalance it by being with those of love as much as you can.  Nothing seems to be as good for your limbic system health as having a personal life full of getting and giving love and just being around love.  You likely will live happier, healthier, longer and be so glad you did it that way.

Negative to Yourself? Take the Cure!

If you suffer from what is known as automatic negative self thoughts, know that you probably are dosing your limbic system and maybe your whole brain with toxic and brain harming neurochemicals.  Know also this could cause your limbic system to malfunction.  And that likely would negatively influence the way you behave in your love relationships.  Also, that probably would sabotage your self love too.  So, if automatic, negative thinking about yourself is a problem, you had best learn to counter those negative self thoughts and negative self talk by replacing them with accurate, self positive thinking and talking (see “Love Positive Talking”).  It is amazing what we are discovering about how we think and feel about ourselves changes our neurochemistry and influences our body’s physical health and our brain health.

The faster cure for automatic, negative, self thoughts is time with a good counselor, therapist or personal coach along with a good bit of self positive homework practice.

Reshaping Your Brain with Purposeful Love

With the help of brain imaging technology, we can see your limbic (loving heart) system’s neural networks activate, or light up, when you do certain thinking things concerning love.  We also can see your brain circuitry begin to change as you keep doing that.  Furthermore, we also can analyze your blood before and after you do those certain love-focused, thinking things and measure the chemical changes that have occurred.

What has been discovered is astounding.  If you train and become able to do certain kinds of love-oriented meditation focused on those you love (which can include yourself) your limbic system lights up, circuitry changes occur in your brain and the neurochemical measurements get healthier.  The more you do that sort of thing the more your limbic system perhaps seems to be practicing love and getting healthier as it does so .  That in turn is thought to influence you to act more lovingly, which then in turn results in better love relationship functioning.  The work of the neuroscientist, Dr. Richard Davidson, in his studies of loving kindness and loving compassion meditation, and the research into love by ethnologist and brain researcher, Dr. Helen Fisher, are particularly impressive here.

All that is what recent and ongoing research is pointing to.  Lots more has to be learned and confirmed but that is the way it looks so far (see “What Your Brain Does with Love – Put Simply”).

A tentative conclusion is the more you focus on love, meditate on love, learn and think about love and practice the behaviors of love the better.  Most likely your brain and especially your limbic system will function better, your body will be healthier, you will live longer, you will live happier and more effectively and all your love relationships will improve, even if they already are good.
So, you meditatively might want to send your loving heart limbic system a message from your thinking self that says you love it, you are in awe of it, you respect it and are very thankful for all it does for you.  You also might want to send it the message that you are going to treat it as good as you can learn to do.

Other Big Ways to Help Your Brain’s Health

Eat for wellness.  Your loving heart limbic system does best with whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, lean meats and especially with just about anything having omega-3 in it.  Particularly do not act against your loving brain’s health by eating saturated fats and all those other things they tell you are not good for you.  For the good of your brain, you might want to check out the Mind Diet, the DASH diet, the Mediterranean Diet and also check out the colorful plate eating approach.  Limit your alcohol intake.  That is because alcohol gets in your blood and circulates through your brain where it can damage and kill brain cells including those in your limbic system.

Breathe for wellness.  Your brain needs a lot of oxygen – clean uncontaminated oxygen.  Without good oxygenation, your brain including your limbic system functions poorly or worse.  If your life is pretty sedentary, you probably are going to do better by doing short, deep breathing exercises every day unless you live where there is a lot of air pollution.  Yoga breathing exercises often are recommended.  If you are a good swimmer, you might do a lot of that using all of the different stroke styles (even if you are not a good swimmer, swimming is a good, full body, respiratory stimulating exercise).

Any kind of exercise that gets you breathing more is worth considering.  Aroma-therapy combined with deep, slow, calm breathing also is proving to be quite helpful to the brain.  Lavender and chamomile scents for relaxation and distressing, citrus and mint scents for action, energy and mental sharpness often are recommended.

Sleep for wellness.  7 to 9 hours of sleep is about right for most people.  A 30 minute, siesta nap and power napping seems to help a lot for many.  Lowering the temperature and raising the humidity has been known to improve deep, restful sleep.  Make your sleeping environment good and you are likely to be helping your loving brain to rest well.

Exercise for wellness.  Your brain including your limbic system does best with a lot of good blood circulation.  That happens with good exercise.  For figuring out what is the right exercise for you it is best to consult with those who might know.  Exercise specialists, physical therapists, sports physicians, personal trainers and of course other medical doctors and nurse practitioners who may have special positive brain health care knowledge.  Walking is widely recommended, unless there are physical prohibitions.  Many health care professionals suggest a 30 minute walk wearing good, supportive shoes most days of the week for possibly tremendous mental and physical benefits.

Do Positivity Meditation for wellness.  For at least a few minutes every day, go where things are calm and devote yourself to meditating about that which is positive.  This can be done with positive focused prayer, slow gliding movement exercise, positive visualization exercises, uplifting melodic music, any kind of beauty appreciation and most of all love focused meditating.  Fun, stimulating, challenging brain games and brain exercises can be found free and in abundance on the internet for another way to love your brain and promote brain health.

My love and I record the TV quiz show, Jeopardy, then watch an episode each day; we have great, relationship fun while not being upset when we do not know an answer and congratulating each other when we come up with the right answer.  Readings in the newer field of positive psychology also can be assistive.  To learn more you might want to read The Compassionate Brain by Dr. Gerald Huther, The Brain in Love by Dr. Daniel Amen and The Neuroscience of Human Relationships by Dr. Louis Cozolino.

Remember the song line that says “what the world needs now is love sweet love”?   Ergo, are you doing your part by being about love?  You must be at least somewhat about love because you are reading this mini-love-lesson.  Consequently, I suggest you congratulate yourself for that and do some more.

One More Thing

Perhaps you know someone you would enjoy sharing and talking to about this mini-love-lesson and this site where there is so much knowledge about healthy, real love and the how to’s of love success plus remember all these mini-love-lessons are totally free.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Do you feel good learning about love? (If so, your limbic system is probably helping and do some more.  If not, you might want to figure out what will make that better as an act of healthy self-love).

Related posts:

1. What Your Brain Does with Love – Put Simply
2. Listening With Love and IN and OUT Brain Functions
3. Limbic Love & Why You Will Do Well to Know about It
4. Brains and Love Behavior: Oxytocin and Other Healthful Neurochemistry
5. Thinking Love to Improve Love 

Love Goals and How They Can Help You and Yours

Mini-Love-Lesson  #192

Free Over 200 mini-love-lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries – worldwide!

Synopsis: The Love Goals approach, which reportedly is helping many couples, is introduced and explained, along with answers to its critics, examples of how it is used and a step-by-step prescription for putting it into your bag of love tools for improving your love relationships.

What They Are Saying about Love Goals

“Learning about setting and achieving love goals made our marriage twice as good as it was before and it wasn’t all that bad to begin with” said Mike, a ten-year married aeronautical engineer.  ”Susan, a 16 year married with three children, public health nurse told us, “Our family life and our romantic life both went to a whole new level when we started using the Love Goals approach.  It’s such a great way to teach children how to love but it’s teaching us adults a lot too.  ”Esther and Roberto both told us that using the Love Goals method was instrumental in saving their marriage, and Sophia and Jacob spoke of how having love goals got them through a very hard time.  Larry and Terry related how using love goals got them into really knowing how to succeed at doing their love and not just feeling it.

So, how would you like your love relationships to get you and yours similar, improvement results even if what you have now is really very good?  If so, be curious and read on.

What Are Love Goals

Love goals are specific love giving, conveying, sending and demonstrating behaviors that people decide to make happen so that their love relationships will be more filled with healthy, real love.  Stronger love, happier love, higher, broader and deeper love, bigger love, healthier love and more lasting love are all part of what love goals aim to achieve.  Individuals, couples, families, etc. can use them to make love happen better, bigger and more often.

Love goals can be as simple as deciding to say thank you more often and more sincerely than you usually do when talking to a loved one.  Making a goal of giving a better good morning hug to a beloved with a loving look and loving words every day for a month would be another good example of a specific love goal.

Love goals also can be a lot more comprehensive.  An example are the couples who work with Paul’s New Testament, First Corinthians list of what love is and is not (love is patient, kind, not rude, etc.) and jointly create specific goal behaviors to put into their life.  Here is a sample.  “I will make a love goal to tell myself to act with loving patience and smile lovingly at you [spouse/mate name] whenever I think you are making us run late.  I will do this instead of getting mad and critical which I now see ruins some of our time together for a while and just makes us even more late”.  Those couples work their way through all of Paul’s 16 points making specific behavioral goals to implement each of the points.  They report big improvements from doing so.

Mutual Love Goals and the Wonders They Can Work

In The Science of Happily Ever After, Dr. Ty Tashiro reports that couples who mutually make an inviolate rule to spend short periods of time together giving each other a “love fix” with words and touch every day no matter what else is happening, do far better at handling the rest of life and are physically, emotionally and relationally happier.  Dr. Carla Naumburg, author of Parenting in the Present Moment, tells of research that shows having dedicated, behavior goals of brief, daily, child involvement (and in that time making love connecting actions occur too), it results in producing healthier, happier children and better parent-child relationships.  Parents doing the same thing with each other also produce better parenting and better couple relationships.

When couples freely and jointly act to achieve mutual goals aimed at making their interactive behaviors more love-demonstrative, their relationships can be expected to move up several levels no matter where those relationships start from.  That is the conclusion of people working with the Love Goals approach.

Going from Abstract to Concrete Love Goals

Most people start with abstract ideas for love goals like being more appreciative, a better listener, more affectionate, etc.  That is good for a start but it is not going to help if you stop with that kind of broad concept that can be behaviorally enacted in too many, unspecified, different ways.  Those abstract, broad ideas have to get converted into specific, or concrete, exact behaviors before they can become exactly enacted actions.  Otherwise, they usually are just nice ideas that do not become goals that actually get achieved.

If your goal is to be more affectionate and feel closer together, you both might have to decide something like: curl up in each other’s arms, on the couch, cuddling with each other, saying only words of love, for 15 minutes, allowing no distractions or interruptions, between 7:00 and 7:30 PM Monday, Wednesday & Friday, every week for eight weeks before you evaluate the results of your love goal actions.  If this is mutually decided and agreed upon, that is an example of a well stated love goal that actually might get accomplished.  You also will need a way to calendarize, tally and track your love goal actions.  While you are at it, make it fun and enjoy it!

That is an example of what it takes to make a behavioral goal that is sufficiently clear enough to be mutually understood.  By the way, it also is good to add an alternative date and time if a cuddle time gets missed.  Then if you add an additional reward for accomplishing your goals, it is even better.
Without those kinds of specifics, most couples and families find their efforts just fade away and their love goals are not reached even though they were sincere about setting them.

In families, kids especially need these kinds of specifics in order to keep their parents on track for goal attainment which is something they are prone to do when they get really involved in love goal work.  That also is something a lot of kids are prone to do too in our experience.

Answering Love Goals Criticisms

“Why do we have to do all that?”  “Don’t we know we love each other and isn’t that enough?” “Isn’t love just done automatically?” “Doesn’t making it such an organized thing take all the fun and magic out.?” “Who has time for all that?”– These are among the criticisms leveled against the love goals approach.

The answer for all those questions goes like this.  Love works like a healthy, nourishing food.  Just think of all the purposeful, planned and organized disciplined effort that goes into getting good, healthy food from what mother nature provides all the way to fueling your own health and well-being.  It is the same for love.  Love takes behaviors to grow it, deliver it, skillfully prepare it and the actions of partaking of it.  Both food and love do not just automatically keep showing up in your life.  Somebody has to DO a lot of stuff to make that happen.  The better you can skillfully DO the actions involved, the better both food and love are.  The less you do, the more the quality and the quantity are likely to suffer.  A young client of mine once said, “I’ve learned it’s like when I don’t do enough about love, love doesn’t do enough about me”.

A Love Goals Prescription

Here is our prescription for putting love goals into your life and using them well.
Start by reading our site’s “The Definition of Love”.  Then read the mini-love-lessons that have to do with the major behaviors found to convey love “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love” .  After that, preferably jointly, decide on which of the eight categories of direct love behaviors you both might want to start with.  Then choose a single, exact set of actions to take that likely would improve the way you and your love partner show each other love.  Remember to decide where, when, how often and for how long (at least a week and preferably several months) you will work as a team to practice putting that love action into your life.  Be sure not to avoid having an end date for your goals so that they do not just fade away and so that you have a chosen time to evaluate your progress.  It is then you decide to keep going or not, or what changes to make in your goals.

Here is another way to go about using love goals for growing and improving a love relationship.  Together pick any area of your relationship that you both would like to see get bigger, better, stronger, or occur more.  Or you can, pick a more specific something that you just happen to want to be different than it is.  Then make your choice as to what exact actions you will take to go toward your love goal as described above.

You can look at things you might like to see happen less or not at all.  However, then you will need to choose what exact actions you will use to put something else in its place.  Without replacement actions, it is very hard to stop whatever has been happening and which may have become a habit.  Even then, it may be a back-and-forth battle between old habit behavior and desired new replacement love goal actions.

You can do all these things individually, even secretly, but usually it works better when your love goals involve a team effort.  Of course, having individual even secret love goals is not at all a bad thing.  After all, this is about being more loving – and that’s a very good thing.

Lots of couples, families and friends use regular love goal meetings to help themselves keep benefiting from the love goals approach.  Others keep coming back to it every so often more irregularly.  Either way, see what you might want to do with purposefully putting love goals into your awareness and into your life.

Help spread love knowledge – tell someone about this site!

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: How exactly might you want to, or need to, become more loving and thereby become more lovable?

You might also want to read: “The Definition of Love”, “A More Ample Definition of Love”, “Behaviors That Give Love – The Basic Four”, “How to Make Love Improvements Permanent” & “Learning about Love Together”. Also for the best description of the eight classes of behavior that directly show love, see Chapter 5 How Do We Grow Intimate Love, Chapter 6 How Do We Make Love Really Show & Chapter 7 What Connects Your Love with Mine in my book Recovering Love.

Attraction or Love or What?

Synopsis: Attraction/love confusion problems; understanding attraction systems; nature’s way; sexuality attracts but love bonds; insecurity issues; sharing attraction system pleasures.

Attraction/Love Confusion Problems

“Where can I go to live, where I’d like to live and where there are no redheads?  I know it sounds crazy but, you see, I fall in love with just about every redhead I meet.  I’ll never be able to settle down and stay faithful because the next redhead will come along and I won’t be able to resist this ‘falling in love thing’ I do with redheads.”

Does this person really have a ‘fall in love’ with redheads problem?  No, not really.  This person appears to have a ‘fall in’ multiple, perhaps serial, attraction issue which they are confusing with real love.  I suspect this person hasn’t gotten even close to having anything like a true ‘love’ problem.  It would seem they, like many, may not have learned to clearly perceive, understand, and think about the big differences between love (the healthy, real kind) and mere attraction.

There are lots of other ways that the love/attraction confusion causes problems.  To really see that, read a few more quotes.  “I’m getting wrinkles, getting gray hair and looking older.  I’m really afraid my husband will quit loving me when I look old, and then he will fall in love with someone who looks like I did when I was 20, and he will leave me for her.”  The woman who said that did not understand that it is not looks, but love, that best holds couples together over time.

“My wife has recently developed this thing for young men with swimmer’s bodies, you know, the long, lean, smooth-stretched muscle types.  I don’t look anything like that, so does this mean she doesn’t love me anymore and she’s really looking for somebody else?  The answer to this man’s question is “probably not”.  It just likely means that her attraction dynamics direct her toward having some enjoyment and maybe mild, fantasy fun thinking about ‘swimmer’ types, but probably she loves her husband dearly.  Her love of her husband is far more important than any simple, physical attraction dynamics, and maybe some reassurance of that fact is in order.

“My guy can’t stop staring at other women, and looking at pictures of naked females and stuff like that.  Does this mean he doesn’t really love me?  He swears he would never cheat on me, and it’s just the way he’s wired.  I want to believe him but my girlfriends tell me not to trust him”.  Usually this sort of statement suggests that the woman saying it is insecure about her own attraction power, and she is confusing her man’s ‘natural attraction dynamics system’ with his couple-type love for her.  She also may have been conditioned by society, and/or her family, to incorrectly think love always alters a person’s attraction habits.  Who we are naturally attracted to, and who we love can be two very different things.

Attraction can lead to a relationship getting started but then, in the long run, love has to take over to keep it going.  Once love is strong enough it keeps couples together into old age.  But often a couple’s attraction habits, which were established before the couple met, remain the same and operate independently.  A couple who can share what they are in the habit of being attracted to usually are a much stronger couple than those who can’t share because they fear triggering insecurity and jealousy in their mate.  One more thing.  Listening to friends advising mistrust really just may be listening to fear-based, mistaken perceptions.

“My wife keeps wanting me to watch romantic porn with her, and then role-play being the guy we just watched while she plays the female.  She tells me it’s all just sexy, fantasy fun, but I can’t help wondering if this means she is on her way to searching for love with somebody else”.  This quote suggests a man who would do well to study what love really is as opposed to attraction.  It also may point to a man who could use a little more healthy, self love and/or a little more reassurance from his wife that he is the one she really wants to love and play with, and the rest is just a way to do that.

Understanding Attraction Systems

The above examples just are a small sample of the many ways that confusion between ‘love’ and ‘attraction’ helps mess up relationships.  Here’s what research suggests explains our attractions systems and the way they operate.

A large percentage of males, and a smaller but still significant percentage of females are genetically ‘hard wired’ to be attracted primarily by sexy, visual stimuli.  A large percentage of females, and a smaller but still significant percentage of males are genetically ‘hard wired’ to be attracted primarily by sexy, verbal/auditory stimuli.  That is why men’s porn is largely pictorial and women’s verbal or written.  Other people’s attraction systems may be primarily tactile, kinetic, olfactory or a variety of balanced combinations of the above.  Of course, there are those whose attraction systems are primarily oriented to anyone, and everyone, who are in some way quite powerful, intensely feminine or masculine, highly sociable, high in status or popularity, or attracted to personal characteristics like intelligence, kindness, being humorous, artistically talented, individualistic, stable, protective, sexy, etc.

The existence of love in a relationship doesn’t necessarily change a person’s attraction system, especially if it is quite strong.  If you are strongly attracted visually or auditorily only, or in any other way, you likely will stay that way, whether or not you deeply, romantically love someone or not.  Therefore, when you encounter someone who activates your natural, inbuilt attraction system you will observe and enjoy observing what you are attracted by.  The enjoyment comes from your brain making neurochemical compounds that cause pleasure sensations when your attraction system is activated.  This is not love.  It is your attraction system at work, doing what it’s supposed to do.

Nature’s Way

Humans are built by nature to have many attraction experiences.  This seems especially true for humans with various ‘strengths’.  By strengths we mean those who have strong attributes or desirable qualities like leadership, assertiveness, the tendency to ascend and succeed, all sorts of different talents, sociability and of course ‘baby making and bearing’ potential.  We are built by nature to enjoy both being attracted to others and being attractive to others.  The enjoyment reinforces the attraction system and its operations.

Long ago when there were far fewer of us this system helped especially strong males plant their ‘seed’ in a lots of different females, and helped especially desirable females get ‘seed’ planted in them from men with lots of varying, strong qualities.  That helped mix the gene pool and create more and more humans with various strengths.  That, in turn, assisted humans in becoming the dominant species on the planet, so the system worked quite well.

Our love systems also were incredibly important for helping us to survive, cooperate, protect and nurture one another, plus a lot more.

Healthy, real love can develop after attraction brings people into contact but there are lots of times when it does not.  This is one of the ways we know that ‘attraction’ and ‘love’ are different.  Love can influence attraction to a loved one to grow, broaden, deepen and keep happening.

Sexuality Attracts, Love Bonds

Attraction can be partially defined as that which draws people or things together, or pulls toward it that which is ready and free to be attracted.  Attraction brings things together so they have a chance to form a connection but attraction is not the connection itself.  It takes healthy, real love to hold a couple together once they have made a love connection.  Mutual attraction helps people go ‘psychologically toward’ each other and want to keep going toward each other.  If healthy, real love develops a couple may become love-bonded and stay together but if healthy, real love does not develop they will, in time, likely split up.

Those who worry about losing their mates because they have ‘lost their good looks’ would do better to worry about how well they are doing love.  Those who jointly love well tend to stay together and those who don’t – mostly don’t stay together.  There is nothing wrong in doing what can be done to stay physically , sexually, or in any other way attractive, unless it detracts from the more important issue of giving and receiving of healthy, real love.  Of course, there are unions in which things, other than love, are of paramount importance.  Sex object wives, success object husbands, trophy wives, sugar daddy lovers and husbands, and status entry spouses are classical examples of other reasons people join together.

Insecurity issues

Do you have self-security and love relationship security?  These two things go together quite nicely.  Are you insecure about your desirability or your ability to give and get healthy, real love?  Let me suggest security in couple’s love is best attained by love not by looks or anything else.  Therefore, the self-secure, healthfully self loving individual has a great advantage over the insecure and the less love-able.  The self-secure tend to avoid damaging their love-mate relationships with fear-based actions, like trying to keep a spouse from looking at attractive others, enjoy flirting with others, having fun with wide ranging sexiness, being around other attractive people, having jealous fits and practicing restrictive control via religiosity, shaming or guilt tripping.  Most of those attempted restrictions usually backfire and make your chances of losing somebody larger, not smaller.

Sharing Attraction System Pleasures

In a solid, healthy, love-based relationship people can share the joys of their own and their love mate’s attraction systems.  Here’s an example.  Harriet said, “I so enjoy pointing out sexy women to my husband and teasing him about what excites him.  He is so cute when he’s both embarrassed and turned on.  I’m not threatened by other females because I know our love is strong, and sharing what excites us makes for intimate, special fun that draws us even closer together.  I really like my man being a real man.  Real men are turned on by lots of women, just like us real women can let ourselves be turned on by different guys.  It’s all just harmless, naughty fun.  Both of us get off on sharing each other’s lusting and just appreciating how others are attractive.  It makes us closer and never afraid because we create our security by sharing everything.”

Well, dear reader have you given much thought to understanding the differences between love and attraction?  Have you been getting the two of them mixed up with each other?  Have people been attracted to you and thought it was love?  Have you been flattered by someone finding you attractive or have you had your ego boosted and then thought they were in love with you, or began to wonder if you could love the person being attracted to you?  There’s lots here that you might want to consider.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question What are you going to do the next time you are rather strongly, sexually attracted to a new somebody.  Are you going to do guilt and confess it, enjoy it, fantasize it, deny it, hide it, ignore it, share it, or go after it?

Related posts:

1. False Forms of Love: Unresolved Conflict Attraction Syndrome 

Can Your Religion Help You Love Better?

Mini Love Lesson #296

Synopsis: Here we are urged to take a look at what various religions have to say about love and its doing, so as to make our own doing of love more effective.  Religious teachings on love are recommended as a great source of wisdom, although with some cautionary considerations.

Most of the major religions have a lot to say about love.  What religions have had to say about love has probably helped more people than psychology, philosophy, literature or anything else.  Religious leaders of many faiths have given love a great deal of attention, contemplated love often, taught much about love and written many words concerning love.  Most of that was in an effort to help us understand love better and do love well.  Therefore, what religions have say about love is well worth considering.

Hinduism and Buddhism share The Four Great Immeasurable Ways of Love which have helped countless millions live more loving lives.  Judaism offers the foundational law of love by proclaiming love your neighbor as yourself which has been an outstanding guide for thousands of years.  In Christianity, St. Paul uses 16 terms to tell us how to do and not do love in his famous “love chapter” in his first letter to the Corinthians” which is read at more weddings than any other Bible passage in Christendom.  In Islam all 114 Sutras (chapters) of the Koran begin with a stress on Allah’s most merciful and compassionate love which followers are to emulate in their lives.  In Taoism, Lao Tzo taught the first great treasure of all treasures is love, and to courageously attack with love, and be secure in love as the strongest of defenses.  Confucius put forward that the main guiding principles to live by is that of loving others which meant to care about and secure the welfare of those we love.

In studying what religious sages and leaders proclaim about love, we can see a common thread appearing.  It is that love must be done not just felt.  For love to have any effect, love actions must be taken.  For love to work any of its wonders, loving behaviors must be accomplished.  For love relating to occur, love must be conveyed and sent repeatedly.  For love success to be the result, doing love actions skillfully and frequently is essential.  All that suggests love is to be studied behaviorally, practiced behaviorally, improved behaviorally and frequently used behaviorally.

Whatever your religion, you can focus on what it says about love and probably learn some very helpful things to do which will make your actions of love better.  If you have no particular religion, that suggests studying them all may be helpful.  You can also do that if you are rather ecumenical and open to learning from them all, or at least more than one.

Do be a bit careful.  In actual practice the followers of many religions have not abided by their own faith’s teachings about love.  In fact, they have done quite the opposite and sometimes even have become the proponents of hate, indifference and what can be called anti-love behaviors.  Hence, the potential for being led astray does exist.

Studying what religion has to say about love has aided an enormous number of people in doing love better, being better at relating with love and from love, and in forming love connected relationships, better than they would have otherwise.  Religion could be, if it hasn’t already, be the fine source for learning to successfully, broadly, deeply and wisely enrich your dealings and doings with love.

One more little thing: Why not talk over this little love lesson and its ideas with someone else?  That might help you learn a lot more from it and from them too.  If you do that, please mention this site and its many mini-love-lessons.

As always Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: What do you think of the dictum “To get an abundance of fine love, give it in abundance and do it as skillfully as you can – often”.