Non-Defensiveness - A Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with discussing offensive defensiveness; goes on to how we “see through a glass darkly”; and take offense when none is meant; and ends with “when the best defense is no defense”.

Offensive Defensiveness

Lots of defensiveness comes across as being quite offensive and, therefore, is anti-loving. People frequently become defensive when they feel blamed, threatened, unjustly accused, putdown, judged, rejected, at a disadvantage, unfairly treated or wronged.

Often frustration, urgency and anger wells up inside them and spills out into the way they express their defense of themselves.  Mentally they are trying to present their understandings, reasons, perceptions and memories to back up, prove or excuse their version of the issues at hand.  Emotionally they are upset and it shows.

With urgency, frustration and perhaps anger showing in the way they say what they say, they are perceived as attacking.  Frequently this triggers a defensive counter-attack.  When that happens we get two people who are increasingly, defensively offensive in the way they are treating each other.  Both are trying to prove that their version of things is right and the other one’s is wrong or that they are more okay than the other person who is attacking them.  They think they are just defending themselves and they have to defend because they are under attack.  This often means that no one really is listening to the other one but rather they are trying to come up with the next thing to prove themselves right and the other one wrong.  None of this is helpful to the processes of love!

Seeing through a Glass Darkly

“I know I’m right and you’re wrong, and that’s all there is to it”.  “The way I remember things is accurate and yours is not”.  “Your thinking is stupid and you ought to be able to see that my way is the one, true and only way to see things”.  “ I’m telling the truth so you must be lying”.  “I did not do what you accuse me of, and how could you even think that I did”.  “That was not the way it happened”.  “You must be crazy to think that way”.  These are the kinds of defensive statements that are easily seen as being offensive rather than simply defensive.  They often emerge from a mindset that does not fully understand that other people’s minds work quite differently than their own and, therefore, see and understand things differently than they do.

Are you fully aware that no two minds see anything in exactly the same way?  Are you fully aware that no two people ever remember anything exactly the same way?  Are you fully aware that memories change over time?  Are you fully aware that our current needs and wants alter and influence what and how we perceive our world.  An example of this is a hungry person and someone who has just eaten, driving down the street will see the street differently.  The hungry person is likely to see many more signs for restaurants while the person who has just eaten may see none at all.

How your loved ones perceive the world, remember it and understand it will never be exactly the same as your way.  This means that when you are talking to them they will understand your actions, words and everything else at least a little and sometimes a lot differently than you do.  Some of their perceptions and understandings may upset you.  When that happens you may think they are upsetting you on purpose, or they are trying to attack you, prove you wrong, insult you, put you down or just get you upset.

When you perceive their words or actions that way you are likely to become defensive in an offensive, anti-loving way.  That produces disagreements, arguments, fights and other problematic results that can be avoided if handled differently and more lovingly.  When we expect other people to think like we do, we see into their minds and hearts very much like looking through a very dark glass.  We miss a lot and we get only blurry dark images which are easily misinterpreted.

Taking Offense When None Is Meant

Conclusions based on misinterpretation are another way that people feel demeaned, insulted or disrespected, often leading to them becoming defensive.  “How rude. He went right to bed after our company left and he didn’t even ask me if I wanted his help in cleaning up.  He must not respect me at all.  I must be totally unimportant to him.  Maybe he really doesn’t love me anymore.  If he is going to treat me that way I’m going to stop having sex with him.  I guess I will have to be cold and distant to protect myself”.

The person who said this got around to realizing she had not asked him to stay and  help her. The next day she angrily asked him if she had requested him to stay what would he have done?  He said he would have been glad to stay and help and keep her company, and he actually thought she wanted some time to be by herself after the company left.  She did not believe him and they had a fight.  Later they apologized to each other  and realized they had destructively non-communicated.  Sadly many people believe their first conclusion instead of ‘checking it out’ and hearing how the other person perceived the situation.

Learn to say things like “maybe I took you the wrong way, did you mean to say something that might make me feel bad?”.  “I think I’m hearing that you’re mad at me or maybe just upset, but I could be making a misinterpretation.  I think I need to hear you better, so could you tell me what you’re feeling and thinking so I really can understand?”  “Could you tell me a little more clearly what you’re thinking and feeling?”  These ‘check it out’ questions and statements can avoid a lot of the disharmony caused by offensive defensiveness.

When No Defense Is the Best Defense

When you feel attacked it is entirely possible that you are being attacked.  Then again, it might be that someone just wants you to show care by kindly listening to their cathartic release of bad feelings.  Maybe they just want to know they have been truly heard and are not all alone in their feelings.  If you jump to your own defense, giving reasons and explanations that counter what they are saying maybe you are not really listening to their emotions – which often is what they really want.  If you defend yourself with a counterattack they certainly won’t feel lovingly heard or dealt with.

The more loving thing to do usually is to help them get said whatever has been building up inside them and is now spilling out – often this means looking at them with love, saying responsive things like “I’m sorry you feel . . .  (whatever is appropriate)” or “I can see that really upset you” or “Ahh!”  After that there may be room for what you might want to add but by then it may not be necessary.  If your own thinking tells you that they are wrong, and you have to prove them wrong and then everything will be settled, you are likely to be wrong about that.  If a loved one is upset with you try to lovingly listen instead of defending yourself and you are much more likely to get a good outcome.

Of course, this is hard to do when something inside you is commanding you to defend yourself and is saying “if they just knew my truth they would see things like I see things and everything would get better”.  Has that approach ever really worked for you?.  Not until they get their upset feelings released is a loved one’s hearing system likely to start functioning.  It’s like they have to get something out of their system before they’ll have room to put anything new in.  So, if you just show carrying interest instead of defensiveness you are much more likely to get a better outcome.

Even though you feel an urgent need to show them the error of their thinking and how they are unjustly attacking you, don’t do it.  Try just listening with care.  You do not have to agree, or accept or acquiesce to anything.  You just have to stay okay enough to really hear what your loved one is saying and feeling.  Getting defensive really gets in the way of that.

It also is important to know that when you defend yourself by saying a lot of words to a loved one, while they are still trying to get their thoughts and feelings out, you may be doing something which gets called “feeding their fire”.  The more you feed their fire the more likely you are to get burned.  You might want to learn about ‘reflective listening’, ‘active listening’ and loving listening which tend to work a lot better then defending your point of view, your version of what happened, or your ego.
After things settle down because you have been non-defensive and have done some good, loving listening to your upset loved one, they may be able to listen to you.

Remember to say what you have got to say with loving tones of voice and democratically, not judgmentally or in an autocratic, dogmatic or dictatorial style.  It usually works best to mix a lot of love into your truths.  Loving looks and sounds, using terms of endearment and maybe some affectionate touch can make a world of difference. Not to mix love into your way of expressing what you want to say to a loved one can result in a lot of contention and disharmony.

Please remember, in a love relationship all things can be said with love and are better said with love.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who is the best listener you know, and are you copying them?

Related posts:

1. Dining with Heart – A Love Skill
2. Talking to Feelings First, Then Topics – A Love Skill
3. Checking It Out – As a Love Skill
4. Catharsis Empathy – A Love Skill 

Monogamy for Love & Monogamy for Sex

Synopsis: Two real-life, sex and love faithfulness dilemmas starts this mini-love-lesson; followed by the question ‘why monogamy’; ends with concepts and information about how monogamy dilemmas get resolved; and more.

Faithfulness in One and Not the Other

“I keep having this struggle,” Lacey said with an anguished look.

She continued, “I sincerely love my husband and I certainly don’t want to do anything to mess up our really good marriage.  However, every so often I have to have sex with somebody new and different.  My sex life with my husband is good and I know he deeply loves me, and not only that, but he always turns me on.  I wouldn’t change any of that for the world.  But then I get really attracted to other guys and sometimes gals, and I end up in bed with them.

“Sometimes I go back to the same person if we develop a real friendship, but usually the sex part slowly fades out and then we’re just friends, even good friends.  I don’t want my husband to find out because he would be really hurt and I never want to hurt him.  I’m still in love with him and think I always will be.  Outside of sex, he definitely is the one and only for me.  I mean as a life partner he is definitely the one I want to spend my whole life with.

“I struggle and keep trying to become sexually faithful and sometimes I manage it for maybe six months.  In my work I get to go and come as I please, and make my own schedule, and meet a lot of interesting people.  Some of those I bed and have a really erotic, passionate, exciting and very different experiences with.  It’s different from what happens with my husband.  With him it’s more about love with sex.  With the others it’s just about sex but it is usually great sex.  I guess my heart is monogamous but my body is not.  What’s wrong with me?  What am I to do?  This has been going on this way for years.”

It was rather the opposite for Lowell.  He came into counseling saying, “I’m in love with two women and I can’t break it off with either one.  Both of them say I’ve got to choose one of them and let go of the other.  I’ve tried that with each of them, more than once, and it never lasts.  One way or another we just get back into the same three-way thing.  It’s not a sex thing.  Sex with both of them is good.  A few times all three of us tried sex together but neither of them wanted to keep doing that.  I am really in love with both of them.  I am told I can’t really love two women at the same time so it must not be real, but I think it is.

“After all, I love my two parents, and my two children by a former marriage, and both my brother and my sister, so why can’t I love two women at the same time?  They both have tried breaking up with me but then they both have come back, and we start up again.  What am I to do?  I hate to see both of them hurt.  I tried breaking up with both of them at the same time so I wouldn’t hurt them anymore, but that didn’t work for any of us either.  Is there something wrong with me because I can’t choose?  I so don’t want to keep hurting them”.

Why Monogamy?

For ages in many cultures marriage was about the four P’s: procreation, progeny, privilege and property.  Custom ruled at first, and later religion, and then the law.  At certain times in history, love in marriage was even considered embarrassingly wrong and sinful.  In many places and times, monogamy was something married women had to do but not husbands.  That was to ensure progeny or that the man’s official offspring was actually the man’s offspring and not some other man’s.

Love had nothing to do with it.  It was with the rise of the democracies that monogamous love, sex and marriage began to get intertwined and eventually melded together in the minds of many.  Since then more and more, the idea of having a special, monogamous, life partner for love and sex and maybe for offspring has been becoming the desirable way to do things.

Around the world and throughout history that has and is, by no means, the only way.  Nor has monogamy proven to be all that successful a way.  There are those that argue that especially ‘sexual monogamy’ is anti-natural, and attempting it causes more personal and societal harm than health.  There also is evidence that the ‘monogamy of the heart’ tends to work better than the monogamy of the genitals.  In this day and age, many, perhaps most, people have to deal with the issues of monogamy or non-monogamy of sex and/or of love.

The Two Monogamies, Apart and Together

Of course, the two monogamies  do get very mixed up together and are seen as inseparable in a fair number of people’s minds.  Making love is not just having sex but is doing both love and sex simultaneously and, therefore, is one thing as many see it.  It is hard, or nearly impossible, for some to separate the two.  Therefore, to them monogamy means both marital loving and having sex with just each other.  However, it seems for a great many people, they may be monogamous in their spouse-type love but not in their sexuality.

For a large group of others, they come to have romantic or spousal love for more than one person but they remain sexually monogamous with their official spouse.  They have ‘affairs of the heart’ but not of the body.  In those social spheres, countries and cultures where love and sex is supposed to be only with a spouse, this presents many heart wrenching conflicts and dilemmas.  Those dilemmas frequently destroy relationships and even lives.

These dilemmas and their destructive outcomes don’t happen all that much or all that severely everywhere.  Monogamy related dilemmas, to a fair extent, have been resolve in a number of social spheres, cultures and countries.  Historically, polygamy, polyandry and other ‘poly’ approaches have prevailed and worked rather well for at least a sizable percentage of people.

Some cultures or sub-cultures developed a system where a person has a main life partner who is dearly loved but there are also other lovers and even in some places ‘sub-spouses’, or people who also are loved and in which sex relationships occur in an ongoing manner without there being much conflict about it.  Of course, in the monogamy-emphasizing societies, people are not raised to think or operate that way, and so most live either in faithful love and sexual monogamy or in deceit, deception, angst, ongoing conflict and guilt.  A small percentage go ‘outside the cultural box’ and make alternate life styles like polyamour and swinging succeed.

How Do Monogamy Versus Non-Monogamy Conflicts Get Resolved?

For a great many people in the monogamy stressing cultures, resolution comes at great cost.  Heart ache, agony, anxiety, depression, anger and a host of other bad feelings occur, along with breakups, divorces and fractured families.  The final resolution also frequently comes with very emotionally wounded survivors of all that.  For others they go through the same agonies but come out stronger and wiser.  Sometimes those people are much more able to discern how to create and grow real love while avoiding the traps of false love.  Still others just repeat the same, unsuccessful pattern again and again.  For those who go to a good counselor or therapist, there can be repair and improvement along with quicker resolution.

Let’s look at what Lacey and Lowell managed to do for the resolution of their monogamy dilemmas.  Lacey got interested in going back to college which she had never finished.  In doing so, she got really interested in a new career, got fascinated with advanced learning, finished her degree, went on for a Masters and entered her new field.  As she accomplished these achievements she did have sex with several men and a woman but her interest in doing so faded.

Her interest in living honestly and doing love with self-disclosure grew, and with it, a desire to risk her husband knowing a more complete truth about her.  Still, she did not want to hurt him so she remained quiet about her sexual involvement with others.  Then on a trip to Sweden where they met a number of people who practiced what might be called ‘open marriage’ he got a little drunk and let it be known that he knew about her affairs or at least some of them.

He also told her he had known for some time that she had to have others occasionally, and if that is what it took for her to be happy, and their marriage to continue being good, he decided long ago to accept it.  He did wish that she had trusted him enough to open up and tell him about the affairs ages ago.  He then confessed that he had a few involvements with other women of his own but had not wanted to hurt her or risk disrupting their marriage by telling her about them, because those involvements were quite unimportant.  In reaction to that knowledge, Lacey experienced a great, tumultuous, bundle of mixed feelings.

Relief mixed with jealousy, irony mingled with anger, confusion was contradicted by a long desired, beginning sense of closure.  Most surprising was a greater sense of intimate closeness with her husband.  All these feelings went up and down, and around and around like a merry-go-round in her heart and gut.  That was followed by long, emotion-filled talks, lots of hugging, crying, laughter and tenderness, finally ending with a fine sense of mutual serenity.

They both made the agreement with one another that if they got a strong desire to have sex with anybody else, they would talk with each other first and figure it out, sort of on a case-by-case basis.  Most importantly they would not hide anything from each other anymore.  Then together they got very involved as volunteers teaching English to disadvantaged immigrants.  The whole thing about sex with others became a sort of ‘been there done that’ and ‘might do it again, but probably not’ resolved dilemma.

Lowell came to a very different solution.  In counseling, he came to view his problem as one of ‘giving his power away’ to both women.  Like a good ‘male hero’ is supposed to do, he was automatically thinking he had to do what his two ‘damsels in distress’ wanted him to do to alleviate their pain.  He came to the point of view that ‘the difficulty’ actually belonged to ‘those who owned the hurt’.  He could be empathetic, sympathetic and even more loving to them both, but it would be acting against himself to quit either relationship.

Since the women had the pain, they owned the pain and, therefore, owned the responsibility of doing something about their own hurt and dissatisfaction.  He saw that with this approach, one or perhaps both of them eventually might go away, or they might just go on in this three-way relationship for, heaven only knows, how long.  However, as he now thought he didn’t have to sacrifice himself and what he wanted, to solve what was essentially their problem, not his; his resolution was to do nothing different.

Kindly and tenderly he talked all this over with each of them.  Both women got extremely upset, furious, threatening, crying and emotionally thrashed about hysterically, at first.  Then when that didn’t change anything, they both calmed down and they all went on as before since they both were getting some good things from the relationships.  Eventually one of the women became involved with another man, and that led to some very sad goodbyes.  Lowell and the remaining lady then went on lovingly together.

Lacey and Lowell found resolutions, perhaps different than you might want to find if you were in their place.  What I have seen in dealing with a great many of these kinds of situations, is that each individual, or couple, or threesome, with heartfelt love and careful work can find their own, unique, healthy solution.  Those solutions vary greatly but they are solutions.  Being open to multiple outcome possibilities helps tremendously.  Avoiding  the 'my way, or no way' approaches, being pressured into cookie-cutter solutions, making anybody the enemy, doing guilt trips, blaming and judgmental-ism, getting lost in feeling negative, or inadequate, inferior or at fault, clears the way for constructive and sometimes surprisingly creative solutions.

As always – Go and Grow with Love!

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Which is more important to you, monogamous love or monogamous sex, or perhaps non-monogamy for either or both?

Related posts:

1. Multiple Sex Partners and Love
2. Sex Fears Mastered with Love
3. Do You Want To Say ‘Love’ When You Mean ‘Sex’?
4. Making Love OR Having Sex?
5. Can You Talk about Sex – with Love? 

Is "I Can't Live without You" Real Love?

When a person says “I need you, I can’t live without you” does that mean they really love you?  The simple answer is NO!  This statement more likely represents someone in a dependency state of one kind or another.  It even may reveal someone experiencing the rather extreme state of infantile dependency and mistakenly thinking it’s love.  Infants cannot survive without the real love and care of adults.  Adults can.

Unfortunately in romance some people emotionally regress into a more infantile dependency-like state.  They literally feel they need and cannot live without a certain other person.  That person is to be their devoted, emotional caretaker – much like a loving mother with an infant.

If you hear someone seriously tell you “I need you.  I can’t live without you.” they actually may be subconsciously asking you to become their parent and to let them become your child emotionally.  This is not, and is not likely to become healthy adult-to-adult love.  In adult love I do not addictively and regressively ‘need’ you.  Rather, as an adult, I can live without you, and instead of needing you I choose to ‘want’ you in my life.  It’s a free will choice instead of a dependency-based compulsion.

Let me suggest that for adults being wanted is much better than being needed.  Mature adults are self-dependent, unless they are disabled or otherwise debilitated.  Adults can use help but are not dependently needy of it.  Mature adults form mutually equality-based, interdependent unions, not addictive co-dependent or infantile, dependency-based, parasitical-like relationships.

If you are an able-bodied and able-minded adult the hard but good truth is you can survive, you can take care of yourself, and if you lose a loved one you eventually can recover, and if you wish you can find another to love and to be loved by.  Yes, you may hurt enormously without a particular person you love, and you may hurt for quite a long while.  However, you also can go on to recover and get back to a state of healthful okayness even though it is extremely difficult, especially at first.  Thus, for functioning adults “I can’t live without you” is false.

Now, it must be noted that someone simply saying “I need you and can’t live without you” is not enough evidence upon which to make a judgment.  However, it may be a clue to take into account along with other evidence when evaluating a relationship.

Many suicides seem to happen in the more extreme “I can’t live without you” mind-set. These occur when the person they think they love rejects them, probably because of expanding dependency and its usual accompanying dysfunctional, obsessive possessiveness.  Evidence suggests that most of these suicides would not happen with the right kind of therapy.  Most also would not happen with greater maturity and self-love development.  Also, there is evidence that points to the fact that most of these suicides probably would not occur if people just were able to stay alive for another six to eight weeks.

However, the pain of rejection and what feels like parental abandonment can be so intense as to seem unbearable.  The person experiencing this often can be saved by the love of friends and family, by experiencing strong spiritual love, and by the unique love relationship that sometimes grows in certain kinds of psychotherapy. Additionally there are medications that can be helpful.

Most people saying the “I can’t live without you” statement probably are just trying to emphasize how much they feel love for someone.  They, therefore, are not to be taken as speaking literal truth.  They might be saying it lightheartedly or just because it seems like the romantic thing to say.  Of course, some might say it as a seduction or manipulation effort.  Usually only when said with serious literal meaning does it becomes something to worry about.

Severe “I can’t live without you” mental states can be dangerous, sometimes to the point of physical abuse or even homicide if the person who is depended upon threatens or tries to leave.  So, be careful and get professional advise if you find yourself wanting to leave a relationship with a severely needy, co-dependent person.  When there is infantile dependency in a person with an adult body there can be a danger of physical violence.

The infantile mind-set in an adult body can inflict on others very destructive temper tantrum behavior.  If alcohol, drugs or even some medicines which lower self-regulation are added to the infantile dependence mind-set the danger potential can be quite high.  With infantile dependency, misidentified as romantic love, there also can be obsessive compulsive behavior which sometimes results in stalking which sometimes ends with violence.

Therefore, if the “I love you and can’t live without you” theme is predominant extreme care is recommended.  It is important to know that what has just been described is fairly rare in adult relationships but rather more common when dealing with youth and the chronically immature.  In smaller and shorter doses it sometimes may be seen in those who have been taught to think of romantic love as something of an obsessive, possessive, insane state.

If you find yourself saying “I love you, and I can’t live without you” please examine why you want to say such a thing.  Is it just stylistic?  Is it a way to sound romantic?  Or does it represent how you really, strongly and consistently feel?  If it does you might want to consider making some changes and while you’re at it consider therapy.

Now, consider what this would mean.  Suppose you were to hear a lover say “I do not need you.  I just super, incredibly, fantastically want you!”  Or “Of course I don’t need you; I can take care of myself quite well.  I just happen to choose you above absolutely everyone else to be in my life, to share life with you, and to bring you as much joy as I can for as long as I can”.  Let me suggest that these represent healthier, and stronger, and more likely to be real, as well as healthful forms of love. 

The “I can’t live without you” statement may represent weakness, a possible destructive addiction to a person, and a general psychopathological state devoid of any true real love.  The “I choose you and I want you” rather than “I need you” kinds of statements, from this mental health professional’s viewpoint are far more desirable.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
What do you think of the ancient, love lore teaching that says “If you love someone set them free much as you would a bird held in your hand.  If they return to you your togetherness is meant to be.  If they do not return to you that too is meant to be.”?

Related posts:

1. Getting Healthy, Real Love in Your Life
2. False Forms of Love: Shadow Side Attachments
3. False Forms of Love: Relational Dependencies
4. False Forms of Love: Unresolved Conflict Attraction Syndrome
5. False Forms of Love: Limerence and Its Alluring Lies

Returning to a Bad Lover? - A Blocking Technique

Synopsis: Alicia’s return to pain; her escape; And her favorite, most powerful, love destruction-blocking technique in seven easily learned step.

With tears running down her cheeks Alicia sobbed,  “How can I stop myself from going back to him?  Every time I do it’s worse than the time before!  When am I ever going to learn?  It can never work.  I don’t even like him anymore.  If I keep going back to him I know it will destroy me.  After I’m away from him for a while I get to a point where I keep remembering the early days when everything felt good.  Then I do it all over again, except each time I’m getting hurt worse and I’m hating myself more for doing this to myself”.

That was Alicia before she learned in counseling how to escape her destructive cycle and do a lot of healthy, self-love techniques which greatly empowered that escape.  Alicia also learned how to block the things inside her that pushed her back toward that kind of false, destructive and addicting love relationship which repeatedly caused her so much agony.  She typified a lot of men and women who attempt going back to the love nourishment that they once so enjoyed, only to discover there was no nourishment and instead only poison there now.

False and addictive romantic love relationships which can destroy people’s lives abound, and they’re just as hard to overcome and recover from as any serious illness or addiction.  To help with that here is one of the techniques that Alicia and many others have found especially useful in blocking a return to a false and destructive lover.  It goes like this:

Step One Purposefully, but briefly, remember one of the most painful and destructive episodes in the relationship history you have with the destructive, bad lover you need to stay away from.  Remember the behaviors, the events – especially the pain, and anything else that made that experience bad.  Let yourself be fully aware of everything that was awful during that time; don’t deny, or dodge, or make light of any of it.  Briefly feel the agony of that awful episode.

Step Two Now think up a good, brief title for that bad experience.  Not a funny title, not a nostalgic title, not a sweet title nor a title that is in any way at all enjoyable.  It needs to be like a movie or book title that sums up or clearly points to the total, bad experience.  Here are a few examples that I am familiar with: “Raped Again”, “Broken Heart and Broken Body”, “Even When I Am with, I’m Alone”, “The Night I Found Him in Her”, “Nowhere Lower to Sink”, “Then Nothingness”, “Lost a Wife, Lost a Child, Lost Myself”, “When Death Became My Option”, “The Night of a Thousand Humiliations”.

Step Three In large, bold, dark print write this title at the top of a card that you are going to carry with you.

Step Four Repeat this process with four more of the other worst, most painful experiences you have had with the bad lover you have decided you need to stay away from.  This will give you five, impactful titles on a card.  It also will give you five titles summarizing the worst of your experiences with that person which are likely to, in some form or another, be re-experienced if you continue to go back.  Under the titles you might want to write down labels for the horrible emotions you felt in each experience.  Some examples are: agony, anxiety, betrayed, cheated, depressed, drained, empty, fake, ground down, hate, inadequate, jealous, loveless, mangled, oppressed, prideless, etc. – you get the idea.

Step Five Make several copies of this card, putting them close at hand wherever you have a phone, by your bed, at work, in your car, in your billfold and anywhere else you commonly look.

Step Six Any time you start to think about your bad lover, anytime you have any thought about contacting or returning to that lover, any contacts you receive from that bad lover, and any time anything reminds you of that bad lover take out your card and start reading those titles.  Remember the pain and ask yourself, “Am I on my way to having that agony, and probably worse, all over again?”.  If you think, “This time it will be different” remind yourself of the agony you experienced after the last time you thought that, and read the title most appropriate to those thoughts.

Step Seven Now go do a healthy act of upbeat self-love, preferably including some fairly active body movement.  Remember, motions help to change emotions.  Calling or otherwise connecting with someone who cares about you and getting some of their love would be a good idea.  Taking yourself somewhere pleasant, listening to happy upbeat music, buying yourself a self-love gift, doing something fun erotically or otherwise, and giving thanks for the fact that you are not now, right this minute, in the deepest depths of the agony you once were suffering, like in the number one titled experience, and number two titled experience, etc.

Many people have found this technique to be an excellent assistance in not going back to bad and false love situations.  However, this is only an assistance technique and other work will probably be necessary.  This technique is only one of many that may be useful to you and that you can learn for helping yourself.  Working with a good, love knowledgeable counselor or therapist is likely to get you to a healthy outcome and on the road to a new, far healthier, romantic love life when you’re ready for that.  Handling these difficulties all by yourself might not be your best way to deal with this kind of recurring difficulty.  If trying by yourself was going to work you would have succeeded already, don’t you think?

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
If you are hungry for new and better love are you taking the risk of going to truly new and different places where those who have and grow love are likely to be circulating?

(Hint: places where people are working to help others, working for the advancement or improvements of living and related things, and places where people are learning about those things might be the kind of places to consider for taking such risks).

Related posts:

1. Love Affairs: Bad?, Good? and Otherwise
2. Why Love Problems Hurt So Bad
3. Could You Be a LAT Lover and Succeed at It?
4. Are You A "Challenge" Lover ?
5. Self-Love, a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? 

Kissing with Love

Synopsis: We start with a kiss puzzle; then address a kiss learning question and give steps you might want to take along with some important things to consider about love-filled kissing; then we go on to great kiss reception; and some thoughts about what could get in the way; then we end with a personal challenge question.

A Kissing Puzzle

“His kisses are so filled with love,” Angela sighed.  “There’s something about the way she kisses me that makes me feel like I am really loved and really special,” Brad affirmed.  “The way he kisses me is totally hot and sexy, and it really turns me on.  But I don’t feel any love in it,” Claire protested. 

Donald moaned, “My lover is such a romantic kisser.  The trouble is it’s just romance.  I don’t feel any love in it”.  “Evelyn sighed and said, “I wish when I kiss or get kissed there was something more to it.  It’s nice but it’s always kind of blah; no sex, no romance and nothing I’d call kissing with love feelings”.

What is going on or not going on for the people who made those statements about kissing?  Is there a problem in the way they kiss or the way their partners kiss?  Is it that love’s magic is sometimes in the kiss and sometimes not?  Does it have something to do with the way they saw kisses done in the families they grew up in?   Does it have something to do with the mood or attitude at the time of kissing?  Is the answer in their neurochemistry?  Were they, as children, somehow traumatized with kissing?  Do some people have good kissing teachers and some not?  Are all of them in some type of false love and so they just can’t feel any real love?

The answer to the above questions is – maybe all of these things and other answers too. Biochemistry is likely to be part of it because the saliva in people who are feeling love and the people who are not feeling love is perhaps rather different.  There also may be tiny neuro-electrical differences sensed only in the non-conscious mind.  Definitive research on this has yet to be done.

Can We Learn to Make Our Kisses More Love Filled?

I think the answer to this is probably yes, and you really have to put your heart into it.  Here are three ways and some additional things to think about that may help you do the giving, the getting and the growing of real love through kissing.

∙    First, before you do anything else, take a few seconds to center yourself in your love for the person you are about to kiss. (See mini-love-lesson “Love Centering Yourself”).  You might want to use mental imaging, or something similar, and fantasize your love pouring up from your heart and across to your loved one through your kiss.

∙    Along with love centering yourself, mentally see yourself putting everything else out of your mind except your love.

∙    As a you start to kiss purposefully, tell yourself you are opening yourself to letting your love out and your loved one’s love in.  You are filling with love and pouring love into your beloved.  You both are wonderfully saturated with love.  Focus on those or similar thoughts as you begin the kiss.  Then just feel what you feel.

Here are some additional things you might want to give thought to.
Kissing with love often begins with the eyes and the facial expressions of love. Sometimes looking at someone with love, especially if they are looking back with love, is done at some distance and sometimes it starts just inches away from each other.  These looks may be of tenderness, may be intense, may be caring, or may be a sweet happy smile.

∙    How you move toward someone to kiss them is important too.  The movement toward starting a love-filled kiss often is a bit slow but very direct.  The slowness helps the other person mentally and emotionally start to psychologically connect with you before the physical kiss actually happens.  The directness helps them mentally and emotionally feel that energized intimacy is starting to happen with you.  Fast surprise kisses also can convey love but usually not with the precious, cherishing feelings of the kisses that are approached more slowly and directly.

∙    Closing the eyes first on the part of the recipient, and then the initiator, often helps.  This allows a fuller focus on the feeling of the kiss and the emotions that come with it, without visual distraction or interference.

∙    Touching with hands, arms and body are also important to creating a love-filled kiss.  With a loving embrace, the kiss becomes a total body experience.  Caresses, so long as they are not too sexual, holding hands, and light fingertip gliding touches on the back, neck, cheeks, arms, etc. can assist a person feeling this really is about being loved.

∙    The length of time the kiss takes also has importance.  Usually lingering a bit, and truly savoring the experience, and not darting away too soon helps to both convey love and receive love feelings.
∙    Be aware of lip pressure and movement.  Kissing can be very light and tender, or more firm and passionate.  It kind of depends on what a person likes and wants to feel.  In the love-filled kiss, there may be some lip movement but again it is important for it not to be too sexual so that it can be really about love first and most.

∙    Parting from the kiss is the next important part.  After lips part, it usually is important to keep looking into the eyes of the person you have just kissed and continuing to lovingly touch them with your hands for a bit, then slowly pull apart while really savoring the experience.  That often is very enhancing to the love feelings possible.

Those are pretty specific instructions.  What I want to convey is for you to make kissing a love-filled art.  You may prefer eyes open – fine.  Your partner may not like the face touched much, that is OK.  Talk about your kisses, then give and ask for what you really like, as long as ‘love’ is the main ingredient.

Receiving a Love-Filled Kiss

How well do you think you receive a love-filled kiss?  Do you respond in kind?  Do you really focus on opening to the love coming in?  Do you let yourself feel fully and really loved?  Do you think things like “I’m really being loved at this moment”?  Do you think you really savor, digest, absorb and let yourself intensely experience the kissing with love you are receiving?  Are you able to be ‘in the here and now’, and nowhere else as you are kissed and kiss back?  Remember, receiving love well is a major way to give love.

What Can Get in the Way

Lots and lots of things can get in the way and block love being given, received and generated in a kiss.  Fear and its cousins, apprehension and anxiety, can do it.  Self-doubt, self-consciousness, feeling unworthy, insecurity and allowing distraction can operate to deprive you of the love experience in a kiss.  Coming from habit instead of love may dilute the kiss for both of you.  Worry about anything, trying to impress, focusing in the future or the past, guilt, duty, work, embarrassment, shame connected to anything, feeling clumsy, awkward, inferior or superior, all can take you away from fully experiencing the kiss and the love that may be coming with it.

Letting any of these things occur can crowd your mind and prevent you from fully feeling a love-filled kiss.  That can make the experience far less than you both might want it to be.  It also can have a negative effect on the person you are being kissed by.  Any of these things might make you pull away too soon, or make you move in some less than loving way.  Such movements can be interpreted as rejection, repulsion, discomfort with intimacy, valuing the person kissing you as relatively unimportant, or in some other way sending an anti-love message.

So, as you think about these things, how are you doing at giving, getting and growing love through love-filled kissing?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who are you going to kiss next, and how are you perhaps going to make it a truly love-filled kiss?