Synopsis: Here you will find: why your love needs to be done smart; important background for taking the test; test instructions; the test; scoring instructions; interpretations; love smart homework using the test; and some concluding concepts.
Why Your Love Needs to Be Done ‘Smart’
Arguably love relationships are the most important thing you do in your life. Your love relationship with your mate, family, children, friends, self, your deity, your purpose in life and life itself, all are very important and, therefore, best done ‘smart’ as opposed to dumb, ignorant, uninformed, without knowledge or stupid.Think about doing your love relationships with the teamwork of your head and your heart working together in harmony. We have some pretty good evidence that suggests people who do love this way have greater love success than those who don’t. We also have evidence that suggests a great many people do not go about love smartly. As one of my clients once said, “Putting the word smart and the word love together in the same sentence just does not happen in my head”.
Maybe you’ve been programmed dysfunctionally that way also. Well, if that’s so and you really want good results in your love relationships I suggest you explore putting love and smart together in the way you do love. Taking the following little exam will likely help you do just that.
Important Background for Taking the Test
You will be presented with a dozen questions designed to help you assess your ‘smart love’ functioning in order to do more ‘smart love’ and get more love successful. There is research showing that ‘the love successful’ act differently than those who are less love successful. There are clinical findings showing that you can learn the actions of the more love successful and in the process become much more healthfully loving and loved.There also is data showing lots of people think love is a matter of luck and, consequently, they don’t work at learning what works and what doesn’t work in love relationships, until maybe it’s too late for a current love relationship to survive.
Also there are lots of people who repeat their failures time and time again, and also those who give up trying because it’s all just too painful. If you experience a love failure the choices seem to be either to conclude you just are not lucky in love, or it’s always the other person’s fault, or you might conclude you are doing something wrong and you can learn how to do something much more likely to work. That last conclusion is ‘a smart love choice’.
If you depend on learning instead of luck you’re much more likely to have greater love success in all types of love relationships – romantic, parent/child, family, friendship, spiritual, sexual, humanitarian and self-love. The subject matter in each of the following test questions can help you start thinking more ‘love smart’.
Instructions For Taking the Test
Read each of the following questions carefully and read the four possible answers numbered one through four for each question. Decide which answer comes closest to your best estimate of the correct answer for you. Record the number of the question and then record next to it the number of the answer you have chosen. Example: If on question three you choose answer number two you would record 3 – 2., for that question. Try not to leave any questions unanswered. After you have finished the test we will tell you what to do next for scoring and interpretation. Here are the questions:1. When a loved one is talking can you repeat back to them what they just said fairly exactly, showing you’re really good at loving listening?
1 rarely 2 occasionally 3 often 4 usually
2. When a loved one is within arms reach do you reach out and give them a love touch?
1 rarely 2 occasionally 3 often 4 usually
3. When you see a written article, TV show, news item, etc. that purports to have something to tell you about love (not sex) do you dive into it, study it, etc.?
1 rarely 2 occasionally 3 often 4 usually
4. If you had a chance to go to a fairly inexpensive, three hour seminar or workshop on the psychology of healthy, real love would you go?
1 no 2 probably not 3 probably yes 4 definitely
5. If a friend or relative you respect recommended a book about how to do love well would you read it?
1 no 2 probably not 3 probably yes 4 definitely
6. If you heard that some people were studying their love history, including past love successes and love failures, and were learning a lot from doing that, would you want to do the same thing?
1 no 2 probably not 3 probably yes 4 definitely
7. Do you ask your loved ones how they want you to show them your love?
1 never 2 hardly ever 3 occasionally 4 frequently
8. Do you work at clearly understanding how you want love to be shown to you?
1 almost never 2 seldom 3 occasionally 4 frequently
9. If you have a desire concerning how a loved one treats you, do you work at discovering how to clearly and lovingly to communicate and request your desire?
1 almost never 2 seldom 3 occasionally 4 frequently
10. Do you study your loved ones working to know what pleases, assess and benefits them?
1 rarely 2 occasionally 3 fairly often 4 frequently
11. When there’s a problem in a love relationship do you work at lovingly talking it over with whoever is involved, striving to find new and better ways to love your way through the problem?
1 rarely 2 occasionally 3 fairly often 4 frequently
12. When a loved one is upset do you work to learn and find ways of showing emotional support, care and concern for the loved one’s upset feelings?
1 usually not 2 once in a while 3 most of the time 4 almost always
Scoring
Score 1 point for every time you recorded a number one answer, score 2 points for every time you recorded a number two answer, and 3 points for every number three answer, and 4 points for every number four answer. Then add up those points. That is your score on this test.
Interpretation
Scores 0 – 11 suggest you have too many “don’t know”, “not sure”, etc. answers and, therefore, you probably need to intensely study how to do successful love relationships.
Scores 12 – 24 suggest you probably are not going about love in a very smart way, and therefore, you are likely not to learn how to improve your love successes until you study a lot more how to succeed at love.
Scores 25 – 36 suggest you probably are learning a little about being love smart and love successful, but probably not nearly enough if you really want to improve your love relationships.
Scores 37 – 45 suggest you’re going about love in a fairly smart and fairly likely to succeed way, and if you keep this up and study more about love success you will succeed even more.
Scores 46 – 48 suggest you possibly are overconfident, or perhaps insufficiently insightful as to what you’re really doing, or maybe you are not giving close enough attention to your answers, and then again you could be cheating. The other possibility is you actually are quite excellent at love.
Love Smart Homework, Using the Test
Go over your lowest scores and think about what you would have to do to improve them. Each question’s content can be used as a suggestion for improvement, so contemplate the questions that way. You might want to ‘journal’ what you think. Now, go over your highest scores thinking about the content of those questions. Use them to suggest to yourself ways to go further in learning how to do smart love. Following that, look over your midrange scores and consider what it would take to improve those scores if you were to take the test again next year.Do understand that this little test is just a way to help you more closely consider how to use your brain with your heart and arrive at greater love success for you and your loved ones.
Concluding Concepts
Smart love is knowledgeable love! Smart love is done with learning and knowledge acquirement which is put into practice and continuously improved upon. Socrates and Plato worked to acquire love knowledge and gave us the famous “Symposium on Love”. Paul knew that love could be done with knowledge and gave us his wonderful description of love in the New Testaments, First Corinthians, 13. Rumi knew love knowledge must be discovered and learned and put his teachings into his grand, wisdom-filled, love poetry. Buddha gave us The Song of Compassionate Love, and Jesus gave us his teaching parables on love.Many other ‘wisdom masters’ of old implored all of us to become love knowledgeable and, therefore, bring about greater love success in our lives, in the lives of others and throughout the world. Modern science increasingly is backing up what the wisdom masters of old were teaching. Hopefully, this will boost your own ability to become more love smart and, thereupon, more love successful.
As always – Go and Grow in Love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly
So far in life have you depended more on being lucky at love or on learning about love?
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