Self-Love - What Is It?

Synopsis: This mini love lesson starts with the many contradictions and confusions concerning self-love; healthy, real self-love defined; the operational definition of self-love; and ends with the functional definition of self-love, plus a few important questions; more.

Contradictions and Confusions

“I’ve been told again and again I need to learn to love myself but I don’t know what that means.  I also have been told that before I can successfully love somebody else I first have to love myself, and until I love myself no one else will be able to love me enough or right.  Is all that true?  How can I figure all this out?

“As a kid I was told self-love was a bad thing.  It seemed to mean being selfish or self-centered and egotistical, conceited and even narcissistic.  Sometimes it seemed to mean doing something with myself that was sexual and bad but I never figured out what all was included there.  I knew I was supposed to put others first and myself last, and if I loved myself too much no one would like or love me.

“My religion taught me to love others and not myself, then the opposite by quoting Scripture at me telling me to love others as I love myself.  Isn’t that contradictory?  I don’t know what to think.  I’m so confused about ‘self-love’.  What am I to do?  I know I’m supposed figure all this out on my own but I don’t know how.”

This lament is echoed by a large number of people whose mental and emotional health, indeed, will greatly improve if they come to have greater, healthy, real love for themselves.  Not only that personal enrichment, but their relationship life, likewise, probably will show lots of improvement if they learn what healthy, real self-love is all about, how to do it, and practice what they learn.  But how are they to do that if they don’t know what it is?

Loving Those Who Don’t Love Themselves

There is another perplexing problem related to this confusing and contradictory self-love situation.  If you are trying to love someone who doesn’t know what healthy self-love is, who doesn’t know how to practice healthy self-love, and who even may practice anti-self-love, you possibly are going to have a very problem-filled love relationship.

If you’re trying to love someone whose healthy self-love is low, or someone who is indifferent to themselves, or who even hates themselves it is likely you are in big trouble and are going to need help.  Oh, loving these troubled people can be done and it can turn out well but it sure isn’t easy.  However, if you can encourage them to learn about healthy, real self-love, and to practice it, your love relationships with these un-self-loving people can get a lot easier and way more successful.

Getting A Sense of Healthy, Real Self-Love

You might be thinking, so Dr. Cookerly, are you going to tell us what self-love really is?  Yes I am and rather exactly, but first let’s try to get a sense of self-love before we more precisely define it.  Let’s examine several important ways to get a feel for what self-love is really all about.
First, understand that ‘self-love is healthy, real love’ going from the self to the self.  It’s sort of like feeding yourself healthy, tasty, nourishing food.  Next, be aware that loving yourself may involve some psychological actions you may not be used to.  For instance, it may involve your ‘adult self’ talking to your ‘inner child self’ in very loving ways.

The more scientific may prefer thinking of this as your neocortex sending composed messages to your brain’s limbic system in very loving ways.  Brain research shows that this positive internal dialogue accomplishes real neurochemical improvement, which you experience as feeling better and increasingly thinking more positively about yourself.  Some prefer to say it is your ‘cognitive, conscious mind’ choosing to speak lovingly to your subconscious mind.

Then there is a behavioral component.  Healthy self-love involves treating yourself well, taking good care of yourself, doing yourself favors, taking yourself into good experiences and enjoying them, being sure you surround yourself with good people, and a host of other actions which demonstrate you acting with love toward yourself.

People who do the actions of love toward themselves tend to experience the feelings of happy, healthy self-love which usually follow.  At the emotional level healthy self-love can mean feeling really good about yourself, glad to be you, feeling upbeat and positive about and toward yourself, highly honoring and highly valuing yourself without getting into the forms of false self-love like egotism, arrogance, overbearance, insolence, vanity, ostentation, conceit, self-pity, grandiosity, etc.

Awe and Joy

Healthy, real self-love can involve becoming awed, thankful and joyful about the one-of-a-kind, unique bundle of miracles that you are.  Deeply becoming aware that you are a product of a miraculous creation system that got you started, and keeps you going, and is all part of who you really are – and this, I suggest, is truly awesome.  Therefore, it is worth being joyous (occasionally or even often) about these aspects of yourself.

Regrettably, if you have been brought up only on ‘product’ valuing yourself instead of ‘essence’ valuing yourself, in response to these self-love messages you may think something like “But I didn’t do anything to earn that”.  You are much more than what you earn.  You are born with high-value and you maintain your essence-value as a part of your core whether you do anything productive with your essence or not.

Perhaps you have been trained to discount your value by thinking something like “But there are so many humans; I’m just one of the many millions.  There’s nothing special about me”.  Not true!  You are an individual work of art.  No one is exactly like you.  You are unique and, therefore,  special.  No one thinks exactly like you, has exactly the same emotions, or behaves exactly the same way as you do.  We all are just like our fingerprints –  totally one-of-a-kind, though somewhat similar to others.  So, you can value yourself, especially your essence and core self.  Consequently, the experience of awe and joy about yourself, your essence and your core can be part of healthy, real self-love.

Self  Delight

Do you delight in yourself when you figure something out?  Do you get a little spark of happiness when your wonderful, incredible memory system brings to you the memory you have been searching for?  When you appreciate anyone or anything do you appreciate yourself for a few seconds for having an appreciation system which brings you happiness?

When you fix something broken, or make something new, or cause someone to smile, or help someone in any way at all do you also take just a little bit of time to appreciate yourself for being able to accomplish what you just accomplished?  Do you ever look back on the best experiences of your life and think something like “Good for me, I got and let myself experience that, and it was good”.
Do you take joy into yourself when you see, or touch, or smell, or taste or hear something beautiful and then have a good feeling about being able to do that?  When you have a really good time with another person are you also glad about your own ability to have that good time?

All these things and much more are (and can be) part of healthy self-love.  Actually, when you were a young child you did all these sort of things naturally (baring some disabilities).  Young children around the world do ‘self delight’ unless and until they are taught anti-self-love.  Your own natural tendency to do this may be deeply buried but it’s there, and you can resurrect it.  If this ‘self delight’ mechanism is active in you, but a little rusty, you might polish it up with awareness and experience it more.

Self Care

Part of healthy self-love comes from valuing yourself enough to take good care of yourself.  Diet,  exercise,  good medical attention when useful or needed– developing a very positive, mental/emotional attitude about life and yourself with lots of healthy empathy for yourself so that you are really in touch with your inner messages – healthy, positive, strong relationships full of love of many different types (a couple relationship, friends, family, pets to name a few) – and keeping yourself psychologically growing and actualizing your potentials, all are part of the healthy self-love and the self-care picture which you can develop.

Self-Love and Other Love

Self-love involves a lot of ‘loving others’ and this is how it differs from what might be considered selfishness.  A great deal of research shows us that when you love others well you do yourself a lot of favors.  Those who are good at loving others tend to have lowered bad cholesterol, better brain functioning, stronger community connections, greater longevity, get treated better by others, and a host of other benefits.

Those who live by the great commandment “love others as you love yourself’, in fact, do the best at succeeding and being benefited in life.  Those who don’t love themselves, or don’t love others, or don’t love both themselves and others are much less happy and much less benefited in life.

Healthy, Real Self-love Defined

With all the above in mind, I hope you have a sense of what healthy, real self-love actually is.  So, let’s now define it more accurately.  We will use this site’s working definition of love, found in the left column as “The Definition of Love”.

Healthy self-love is defined as:

Healthy, real self-love is a powerful, vital, natural process of highly valuing, desiring for, often acting for, and taking pleasure in the well-being of the self.

I will now, with healthy self-love, brag that this site’s definition of love recently has been acclaimed in places as diverse as Egypt and China and the US.

Let’s take a look at the elements in this definition. Powerful, yes, healthy self-love is powerful.  It is something you can greatly change your life with, for the better and it can make you much more powerful in beneficially influencing the lives of others.  Vital, means it is important to life and for enhancing life functioning, and that’s exactly what healthy self-love can do.

Natural, demonstrates that it is part of nature and essential existence biologically, psychologically and relationally.  Process, refers to healthy self-love being an active succession of systemic changing operations, all aimed at natural well-being.  High valuing yourself in a deep, emotional sense is the key factor which leads to desiring for and acting for your own well-being and taking pleasure in your own well-being.  It is by this that healthy self-love brings you to thriving wholeness and joy.

The Operational Definition of Self-Love

One of psychology’s ways to define something psychological is to describe its operations.  This usually means to detail the observable actions or behaviors which bring it about, or which occur when the phenomenon being discussed is occurring.  For example, smiling, laughing, animated movement and other such behaviors are acting in ways called happy.

This gives us the operations or behaviors that occur with happiness.  Therefore, those actions give the operational definition of happiness.  Healthy, real self-love can be operationally defined as doing ‘to or for’ yourself ‘one or more’ of the eight major groups of behavior which operationally define healthy, real love.

These behaviors can include things like talking to yourself out loud or silently with loving words, using loving tones of voice and feeling yourself smile as you do this; lovingly caressing or holding yourself; affirming yourself with praise and compliments and accolades; exploring and, with ‘insight’, self disclosing yourself to yourself with appreciation and acceptance; tolerating your shortcomings, failures, etc.; receiving deeply inside yourself praise, compliments, thanks, etc. from others; giving yourself both ‘object gifts’ and ‘experience gifts’; and a host of similar actions.  To learn more about the operational definition of love consult the “Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love” in the left column on this site.

The Functional Definition of Self-love

Another way to define something is to give its functions, or describe what it does or what it accomplishes.  There are five major functions accomplished by healthy, real love.  There also are the same functions found in healthy, real self-love.

Healthy, real self-love functions to:

1. Connect you to yourself and, thereby, harmonize all your parts
2. Safeguard yourself

3. Works to improve yourself in many different ways

4. Causes you to act and be self-healing if you become physically, or emotionally, or relationally damaged or ill

5. Rewards you for doing any or all of the above with joy and other highly pleasurable feelings.
To learn more about the major functions of healthy, real love study “A Functional Definition of Love” found in the left column of this site and in “Self-love and Its Five Healthy Functions”.
Some questions for you to consider: Are you highly valuing yourself in a deep, emotional way?  Are you acting with the behaviors of love toward yourself?  Are you living by the functions of good, healthy self-love?  If not, are you going to learn these things and practice what you learn?  Are you going to inform and maybe teach those you love about healthy self-love?

Special Note: There are many other kinds of definitions of love and self love including poetic, biological, psycho-neurological, phenomenological, recursive, nominal, mathematical, linguistic and a great many more.  Interestingly, the word ‘definition’ in a good dictionary has a very long entry!

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Have you been trained in anti-self-love thinking and acting and, if so, are you practicing those actions and thoughts more than practicing the actions and thoughts that go with healthy, real self-love?

Related posts:

1. A More ‘Ample’ Definition of Love
2. The Definition of Love
3. A Functional Definition Of Love
4. An Introduction: What is Love Dr. Cookerly? 

Smiling With A Mask On: A New Love Skill

Mini-Love-Lesson  # 274

Synopsis: The importance of smiling your love to others and smiling effectively even though wearing a mask; plus ways to behaviorally accomplish that; along with certain significant communication research findings are the topic of this Mini-Love-Lesson.

A Most Important Love Behavior

Smiles may be our most important expressional (non-verbal) communication behavior.  Smiles certainly rank right up there with touch, tones of voice, eye contact and probably even above gestural messaging.  Now that the pandemic has so many of us wearing masks covering our smiles what can we do to not be robbed of this great tool for conveying human warmth?  Well, here are a few ideas.

When your smiles are hidden behind a mask, be mindful of the fact that you would do well to compensate for having your smiles hidden.  Know that you can make up for this smile denial by using your multitudinous other communicating behaviors like words spoken with extra happy sounds, head nods and bobs, hand and arm gestures, posture changes, voice volume inflection and modulations, speed of speech changes and the host of other expressional behaviors we non-consciously use to get our emotional messages across (see “How to Talk Love Without Words”).

Do Some Consciousness-Raising

Being mindful involves raising into consciousness awareness what communicating behaviors are available to us and deciding to consciously and purposefully use them.  Doing this means you can make up for your smiles being robbed from you by a mask and the pandemic.  By giving this a little thought and working at it, you will make better contact with everyone you encounter while wearing a mask.  That will probably get you better responses coming back your way.  And, in turn, that will help you feel better in this troubled time in which we all live.

Actions That Smile

A thumbs-up, a friendly wave, moving just a bit closer, lifting your eyebrows a bit and a host of other micro-moves may do the trick for helping others feel smiled at.  Open arms gestures with the palms showing to whoever you are talking to tends to send some human, emotional warmth toward that person.  With a little work on our expressional communication behaviors, we still can get friendliness and even love across in spite of a mask.  These gestures and movements are called non-verbal communication but we call them expressional because in face-to-face communication they account for as much as two-thirds or more, of what is being communicated.  Communication research seems to show spoken words account for only 7% of what actually is being communicated in verbal, emotive messaging.  The term expressional communication refers to a lot more than what is usually meant by non-verbal, although technically it covers everything else besides words.  Some communication researchers classify as many as 16 other expressional or non-verbal communicators being behaviorally active in face-to-face interactions (see “Emotional Intercourse”).

Can You Make Your Voice Smile?

You can make the tones of your voice nearly have the same effect as smiling.  Whether you know it, or not, you probably already do some voice smiling by altering the lilt variations in your voice.  How you pace and pause, emphasize or de-emphasize and accent your words can also accomplish this.  The next time you talk on the phone pay particular attention to what is going on with voice modulations and you may learn more about this because many people who enjoy phone-talking do this quite well.  Your tones of voice and other voice variables can convey friendliness, empathy, compassion, cheerfulness and a great many other emotions, all conveyed by variations in how you say what you say rather than what you say.  Generally speaking, the more you vary your voice the better you communicate verbally (see “Behaviors That Give Love: The Basic Core Four”).

Words From Behind The Mask

Even though words may be only 7% of the communication which goes on in face-to-face personal communication, they still can have good effects.  Imagine saying to someone while wearing a mask “you can’t see it, but I’m smiling at you right now”.  In the course of talking to someone, you might also say something like “I’m feeling a bit happy dealing with you right now and I thought I’d tell you that since you can’t see my smiling face!”

New situations can cause us to invent new ways of getting things said as well as come up with new ways to get our emotions across to others.  So, start thinking about talking differently.  Do this with words: create differences in vocalization (which accounts for about 35% of the communication value and, maybe, most of the kinetics or movements (which account for about the 55% of our message meaning and impact).  What do we mean by movements?  Well, facial motions are the biggest thing but with a mask on not so much.  So, attend to your gestures, stance and posture shifts, proximity alterations, and the speed of your motions.  All of these factors are constantly getting registered and interpreted in our subconscious minds as we non-consciously perceive them, but not so much in our conscious cognition (thinking) (See “Say It with Love”).

Animate to Communicate

Since the research shows that our kinetics, or in other words, our many movements and especially facial movements account for so much of what we are communicating emotionally, pay attention to how you can get your message across by moving more.  If you are talking on Skype or Zoom, or any of the others, do more hand gesturing, up close to your face where your gestures will be better seen.  Here is a little secret that many sermon givers know.  The more you move, the more you are listened to.  That includes the more you move your voice also: louder, softer, slower, faster, higher pitch, lower pitched and all variations increase attention and help to improve the focus of the listeners.  Leaning forward, leaning back, shifting right or left and especially head movements while being verbally quiet helps convey that you are really interested and care about what someone is saying.  You see, in face-to-face communication you always are talking whether your voice is saying anything or not.  The more you do not alter your kinetics, the more you may be interpreted as uninterested and uncaring.  That is only a maybe, not a certainty.  There are so many more variables to good communications than most people realize.  However, the more you learn and use this information, the better you probably will do.

ONE MORE THING:  you are likely to plant all this in your head a little bit better if you talk it over it with someone else and see what they think about it.  If you do that, please mention where you got this info from and the many, many mini-love-lessons here.  Thanks!

As always – Go and Grow with Love,
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Are you mindful of the nourishing/nurturing value of your love messaging to your loved ones?  (Please, include in your thinking, ideas about your love message frequency and your love message potency, along with possible improvements you might make).

Age Differences and Romantic Love

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson discusses what is too much age difference; should age matter in love; loves many battles and many victories; why some get so upset and others don’t; love against age prejudice; love theory and age difference.

What Is Too Much Age Difference?

What do you think about a 30-year-old man marrying a 15-year-old girl?  Did you know that for many years marrying at those ages, and with that age difference, used to be considered quite proper and highly desirable.  A man at 30 had had time to establish himself financially and then could properly take care of a ‘sweet young thing’ and their subsequent children.  She was freshly ready for pregnancy.  Even a 20 year difference, if the man was wealthy enough, was seen as quite acceptable.  In those days if he and she were close to each other’s age it was seen as indecent and problematic.

Also, age differences where the woman is older and independently wealthy made it quite acceptable for her to take a younger man as her protégée and lover.  Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, can be said to have ‘set the standard’ for this by having a string of young, officer lovers.  Royalty all over Europe followed suit, as did wealthy courtesans and the wealthier members of the rising middle class.  Twenty, thirty and even forty-year differences in people having affairs with one another and/or marrying was not infrequent.

In the developed nations of the world, the acceptance of wide, age range difference varies greatly.  Nowadays, big differences in age cause many couples to be met with disapproval and condemnation in some social spheres, societies and countries.  To this day in various other parts of the world, romantic love relationships and marriages between people of surprisingly large age difference occur and meet with local acceptance and approval.  Such unions also quite often are seen in those places as working quite well.  I once worked with a Superior Court judge who on following a US supreme court judge’s example, came to love and wed his law clerk, a woman 31 years his junior.  Years later both reported being ideal for one another and their union extremely happy.  Of course, this is not always the case.

Should Age Difference Matter in Love?

Some argue that any two, single adults who profess love for one another, no matter what their age difference, should be treated with acceptance and respect as they carry out their relationship with one another.  Others argue that there is something unseemly, indecent or pathological about people of greatly varying age trying to romantically love each other.  There are those who hold a five-year difference to be questionable, an eight year difference to be dubious and anything more than a ten year difference to be reprehensible.  Still others think we should celebrate any two people trying to do real love with one another, no matter what their age or other differences are.

I once counseled a couple in which she was a vivacious 60 and he a very mature 32.  Their big problem was that their families were not able to accept the age disparity.  With love, time, work, plus a lot of family therapy they got most, but not all, of their respective family members acceptance.  I have seen other families expel and reject a family member because of who they wanted to wed and the age disparity issue.  I also have dealt with a few families in which the adult children were horrified that their widower father wanted to marry a woman younger than the father’s oldest child.  Eventually those situations also turned out okay for all concerned, with a lot of therapeutic help.

Love’s Many Battles and Many Victories

In the history of love, time and again love has battled social norms, changed customs, overcome prohibitions and altered or abolished laws aimed at restricting love relationships.  Often at great cost, love usually eventually wins.  In a great many different places and times, it has been deemed wrong and even unlawful for people to attempt to love one another and get married if they were of different social classes, religions, ethnic backgrounds, races, clans, casts, political ranks, handedness, types of disability and just about every other kind of classification you can think of.  Getting married to a redhead or someone who had too many freckles was even once considered a ‘big no-no’ and, Heaven forbid, if they should also be left-handed – all signs of Satanic involvement you see.

Royals could not marry commoners, mulattos, octoroons and quadroons could only marry others of their same or lesser classification, and Roman Catholics should never get romantically involved with Eastern Orthodox Catholics or, even worse, with Protestants.  And until quite recently, homosexuals should not marry anyone unless it was a heterosexual and part of their attempt to change into the same.  Still to this day, in some places around the world marrying someone who has a prohibited difference can get you jailed or even killed.  Age differences have been one of the few prohibitive factors to have more recently developed in certain areas of the world in the last hundred years.

Why Some Get Upset and Others Don’t

In some parts of the world a lot of people get very upset and even nauseated seeing or hearing about people of large age differences loving each other.  In other parts of the world no one thinks anything about it except “how nice, they love each other”.  What makes the difference?  There are the Freudian theorists who talk about Oedipal conflicts and mommy and daddy fixation.  Some think it is just social conditioning.  Here is another concept that seems to have considerable merit for answering this question.

Some cultures are very age integrated and others much more age segregated.  Generally the more a society or nation operates to keep its people age group segregated from each other, the more people in those age groups do not understand or do well with people in the other age groups.  In such places, age group prejudice grows, misconceptions abound, and it is more likely that differing age group cooperation and coordination becomes much more problematic.  Wherever elders are not frequently mixed with adolescents and children, conflicts between these classifications are seen as much more likely.  The reverse also is seen to be true.  The more people of different ages mingle the more they do well together, come to respect, like and love people in other age categories.  People in age integrated societies are thought to tolerate and accept age differences in romance far more readily.

Love Against Age Prejudice

If you romantically love someone considerably older or younger than the norms of those you associate with, you likely will meet with at least some disapproval, rejection, possibly ostracization, and in some instances even hate.  What can you do?  Well, actually you can do a lot.  First, you can work to understand that ‘rejection usually is a form of self protection, brought on by fear’.  Fear of change, difference, the unknown, being wrong, and a fear of deep, unacceptable forces emerging from within the self,  all are possible

Next, you can love your enemies, rejecters, nay-sayers and doubters, knowing they probably somehow feel threatened by your love choices.  Then, you can seek out and ally yourself with those who are more openhearted and open-minded.  Another thing to do is to really work hard to learn and practice the skills of love and use them to really succeed at your major, love relationship.  After that, and with love, keep showing your detractors how happy and successful you and your chosen are with one another.

In cases of family dissonance about age differences, a proficient, well trained and experienced family therapist has been known to make all the difference.

Love Theory and Age Difference

Among adults, love is not seen as being bound by age.  Once people have attained sufficient maturation, any two people can healthfully and romantically love each other.  There always are special drawbacks and challenges to every kind of difference in a love relationship.  However, that also is true for couples with many similarities.  With sufficient healthy, real love, skillfully given and received, handling age and every other kind of difference can be managed and accomplished significantly well.  When loving couples custom tailor their relationship, instead of trying over-hard to fit themselves to outside, social norms, they can do especially well if they work at it.  It does seem true that the greater the difference, the greater the need for love to be done well.  At least that is a postulated love theory position (see also “Elder Love”).
Now what do you think?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Could you romantically come to love someone a good bit older or younger than yourself, and might that actually work better than someone closer to your own age?

Related posts:

1. Does “Cougar” Love Work?
2. Marriage By Love or by Law
3. Are Love and Marriage Getting a Divorce?
4. Virginity Surpassed and Parental Love 

Do and Don’t Love Talk

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

“Do” May Send Love, “Don’t” Won’t!

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

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

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

Don’t’s and Their Build-up Effect

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

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

“Don’t” and Its Disastrous Effect on Sex

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

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

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

Other Ways to Say “Do” and “Don’t”

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

Censuring, Silence and Stifling

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

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

Can We Make Every Don’t Into a Do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Related posts:

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

Cuddling for Greater Love and Better Sex - a Love Skill

Mini-Love-Lesson #189

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

Cuddling around the World

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

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

What’s Special about Cuddling?

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

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

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

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

What About Cuddling Reluctance And Resistance?

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

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

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

Starting and Re-starting More and Better Cuddling

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cuddling with Others

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

Getting Yourself Cuddled More and Better

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

As Always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

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

Related posts:

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