Love Is a Capacity, Not Only a Feeling

Posted on by helpingsoul

What Eighteen Years of Clinical Work Have Taught Me About How the Capacity for Love Is Built, Blocked, and Restored

A substantial revision of a 2009 post on love. The original was a young writer’s reflection. This version draws on what clinical work has taught me about why the capacity for love develops easily for some and is significantly compromised for others, and what kind of work restores it.

Most writing on love treats it as a feeling. The intoxicating rush of new attraction. The steady warmth of long partnership. The fierce protectiveness toward a child. The bond with a friend who has known you through years. The reverence for whatever you understand as larger than yourself. All of these are real. All of them are part of what we mean by love.

What is less often written about is that love is also a capacity. The feelings we call love require a particular kind of internal architecture to be felt, received, and given fully. The architecture develops, or fails to develop, based on the conditions a person has lived through. Some people arrive in adulthood with the capacity for love largely intact. They can feel love when it arises in them, receive it when it is offered, give it without the felt sense that doing so will cost them something dangerous. Others arrive in adulthood with the capacity significantly compromised. They may experience strong feelings that resemble love — attraction, longing, attachment, even devotion — without being able to fully receive love when it is offered or give it without protection.

This article is for the second group, and for the clinicians and partners who love them. The capacity for love is not a fixed trait. It can be rebuilt, slowly, in adulthood, when it has been compromised by early conditions. The work is real. It is also possible. What follows is what I have come to understand about why the capacity for love is compromised in some people, what blocks it specifically, and what kind of work restores it.

What love actually requires of the nervous system

Before discussing what blocks the capacity for love, it helps to name what love asks of the body. This is more than feelings. It is the specific somatic conditions that allow love to occur.

Love requires the capacity to remain present in your own body during emotional contact with another person. When someone you love looks at you with care, your nervous system must be able to receive that look without flinching, dissociating, or deflecting. The eyes meeting the eyes. The face responding to the face. These small relational moments are not decorative. They are the substance of how love is communicated between bodies.

Love requires the capacity to feel emotion long enough for the emotion to be received and integrated. The warmth that arises when someone you love walks into the room must be allowed to be felt. If the system reflexively dampens warmth before it can fully register, love does not land. The feelings may exist briefly. They do not accumulate into the felt sense of being in love with someone.

Love requires the capacity to remain in connection during difficulty. When the other person is distressed, your nervous system must be able to stay near them rather than fleeing into protective distance. When you yourself are distressed, you must be able to reach for the other rather than withdrawing into self-sufficiency. The capacity to remain in relationship during the hard moments is what distinguishes love from preference. Preference is easy when conditions are good. Love is the willingness to stay in connection when conditions are difficult.

Love requires the capacity to receive what is offered. The compliment that lands rather than being deflected. The hug that lasts rather than being cut short. The act of care that is allowed to register rather than being countered with reciprocity. Many adults who have spent their lives giving but not receiving find that the capacity to receive is the part that needs the most work. The giving is familiar. The receiving feels foreign or even dangerous.

Love requires the capacity to give without expectation of immediate return. Not in some saintly self-sacrificing way. In the simple sense that love offered with the felt requirement of being returned in kind is something other than love. The system that has learned to track every act of care to make sure it is reciprocated cannot fully love. It is in a state of chronic accounting that love cannot survive.

What blocks the capacity

Several patterns can produce significant compromise in the capacity for love. The patterns often overlap. People rarely show only one. Recognizing the patterns is part of how the work begins.

Insecure attachment from childhood. The infant who was reliably met learns that reaching produces reception, that the other is available, that connection is safe. This learning becomes the somatic foundation for adult love. The infant who was not reliably met learns something different. The system that learned, in childhood, that reaching produces inconsistent or harmful response carries that learning into adulthood. The capacity for adult love is shaped by what the original attachment relationships taught the body to expect.

Trauma that has not been processed. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, severe neglect, witnessing of violence, sustained emotional cruelty, and other traumatic experiences produce specific compromises to the capacity for love. The body that has been hurt by intimacy learns to defend against intimacy. The capacity for love can remain, but it operates under the constant supervision of a protective system that interrupts love before it can fully arrive. EMDR, somatic experiencing, internal family systems, and other trauma-focused approaches address this directly when the underlying material can be processed.

Defenses against affect. Some people develop, in childhood, a phobic relationship to feeling itself. The protective system intervenes preemptively to prevent any emotion from becoming fully felt. The dissociation, intellectualization, performing, or somatization that results blocks not only difficult feelings but also love. You cannot fully feel love if your system reflexively dampens feeling itself. The work of building affect tolerance, which I have written about elsewhere, is a precondition for the capacity for love to develop.

The parentified child or deity child pattern. The child who was assigned, explicitly or implicitly, the role of caretaker for a parent who could not be the caretaker often grows into an adult who cannot fully receive love. The internal architecture is organized around giving. Receiving has not been allowed to develop. The capacity to be loved, in this pattern, is compromised even when the capacity to love others may be intact. The work involves the slow restoration of the capacity to receive.

The internalized critic that interrupts love. Many adults carry an internal voice that responds to moments of being loved with shame, doubt, or the conviction that the love will be withdrawn if the loved person learns the truth about them. The voice was usually learned from a parent or caregiver who treated love as conditional, who criticized rather than supported, who communicated that the child was lovable only when performing acceptably. The adult version of this voice interrupts love in real time, often before the love can be felt. Working with this voice — naming it, understanding what it is protecting, eventually softening its automatic activation — is part of the work of restoring the capacity for love.

Performing identity. The adult who has lived in conditions that required constant performance — professional contexts where evaluation is continuous, families where being lovable required being impressive, relationships where love was conditional on output — often loses access to the part of themselves that could be loved without performing. Love that requires the beloved to keep producing in order to deserve being loved is not quite love. The performing identity has to learn to relax for love to be fully received.

What restores the capacity

The capacity for love can be rebuilt in adulthood. The work is slow. It is also genuinely possible. Several elements support the work.

Therapeutic work that is itself loving. The therapeutic relationship, when it works, is one of the most reliable conditions under which the capacity for love can be rebuilt. The therapist’s consistent presence, the reliability of being received without judgment, the willingness to stay in connection through difficulty, the genuine care that is professional and bounded but real — these provide the corrective experience that the original conditions did not. Many of the most meaningful changes in my clinical practice over the years have happened not because of any specific technique but because the client has experienced, over time, the felt sense of being loved by a therapist whose care for them was genuine and reliable. The therapeutic relationship becomes the laboratory in which the nervous system learns that love is possible.

Somatic work that builds the underlying capacity. Hand on heart practice. The slow rebuilding of interoception. The deliberate practice of remaining present in the body during emotional contact. The capacity to feel without dissociating, to receive without deflecting, to give without immediately needing return — all of these are developable through somatic practice. The body learns what it was not allowed to learn in childhood, in adulthood, with patience.

Trauma processing where unprocessed material is blocking the capacity. When specific traumatic experiences are interrupting current relationship, processing the underlying material through EMDR or other trauma-focused approaches often produces noticeable shifts in the capacity for love. The work is not about love directly. It is about clearing the protective system’s continuing alarm response to material that has not yet been integrated. As the alarm quiets, love becomes more available.

Parts work that addresses the internal architecture. The critic that interrupts love. The protector that defends against intimacy. The caretaker who cannot stop giving. The deity child who cannot receive. Each of these parts has its own history and its own protective function. Recognizing them, naming them, developing relationship with them rather than trying to eliminate them, allows the system as a whole to soften. The parts that have been blocking love do not have to be destroyed. They have to be heard, honored for what they have been protecting against, and slowly released from the protective duty they no longer need to perform.

Corrective relationships in adulthood. The friend who consistently shows up. The therapist whose care is reliable. The partner who remains present through difficulty. The community that welcomes you without conditions. Each of these relationships is a small repetition of being received. The repetitions accumulate. Over months and years of being consistently met, the system updates. The body that learned not to expect love begins to expect it. The capacity grows.

Time. The work of restoring the capacity for love is not quick. The protective system that has been running for decades does not soften in weeks. The body that learned, early, to defend against love does not relearn in months. The capacity grows over years of sustained work. Patience with the timeline is part of the practice. The work is real. The capacity is genuinely developable. And it requires the kind of patience that the protective system itself often makes difficult.

What love looks like when the capacity is functioning

People who have built or rebuilt the capacity for love describe specific qualities to their experience of it.

Love arrives without effort. The warmth toward the beloved is just there. It does not have to be summoned or produced. It is the steady underlying quality of the relationship rather than an intermittent state that has to be regenerated.

Giving does not deplete. When you do something for someone you love from a place of full capacity, you often notice that you feel more connected and alive afterward rather than less. This is the signature of love operating from genuine fullness rather than from depleted reserves.

Receiving is possible. You can be cared for without immediately reciprocating. You can hold a compliment without deflecting. You can be the recipient of attention without managing it. The body has learned that receiving is allowed.

Difficulty does not collapse the connection. When you and your beloved are in disagreement or difficulty, the connection remains underneath the conflict. You can fight and stay in relationship. You can disappoint each other and still know that the relationship holds. The capacity to repair rather than to flee or destroy is built in.

Presence is available. You can be with the person you love without performing, without managing your appearance, without monitoring how you are being received. The capacity to simply be there with them, in your body, fully present, is one of the gifts that comes from doing this work.

Love feels like coming home. This is the phrase that many of my clients have used over the years, after years of work, when they finally arrive at the felt experience of being able to receive and give love from a capacity that is genuinely present. The home is in the body. The home is in the relationship. The home is in the capacity itself, which once felt foreign and now feels native.

A closing thought

If you have read this far and recognized yourself as someone whose capacity for love has been compromised by the conditions of your earlier life, the work is real and worth doing. You are not broken. You were not made in conditions that allowed the capacity to develop naturally. You have lived a life in which love has been complicated, difficult to receive, difficult to give, or different in some way from what you have read in the books and seen in the films.

The capacity can be rebuilt. Not perfectly, not all at once, not in a way that erases the original conditions. In a way that allows you to experience, over time, what love can be when the architecture is functioning. The patience the work requires is real. The reward is also real. And the experience of being able to fully love and be fully loved, in adulthood, after the work has done its slow rebuilding, is one of the genuinely sacred experiences available to a human being who has done the work to deserve it. You deserve it. You always did.

Love is not only a feeling. It is a capacity. And the capacity is yours to build.

Further reading: Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score. Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts. Stan Tatkin, Wired for Love. For clinical work in California or Florida that addresses the capacity for love specifically, visit thecourageousself.com.

April Wright, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Florida specializing in EMDR, sex therapy, and couples counseling. She trained in sex and couples therapy at AACAST at UCLA. She blogs about attachment, healing, and the courageous arts of becoming oneself at courageous-arts.com and sees clients at thecourageousself.com.

What Actually Builds a Lasting Partnership

Posted on by helpingsoul

A Therapist’s Reflections on What the Research and Eighteen Years of Clinical Work Have Taught Me

A substantial revision of an earlier 2009 post on meeting and marriage. The original used a prescriptive timetable that real relationships rarely follow. This version draws on current research and clinical experience to describe what actually produces lasting partnership across many forms.

In 2009, I wrote a post that mapped what I thought of as the path from meeting someone to marrying them. The post laid out an eight-step timeline — meet, build friendship, set boundaries, develop respect, love revealed at nine months, marriage at one to two years. The framework reflected what I believed at the time about how the strongest relationships developed.

Sixteen years of clinical work later, I would not write that post the same way. Several things have changed.

The most important change is the recognition that relationships do not follow timetables. The couple who knew they were going to marry within three weeks of meeting can have as durable a partnership as the couple who took five years to decide. The couple who lived together for a decade before committing to marriage may have stronger fundamentals than the couple who married within months. The timing varies. The fundamentals do not.

The second change is the recognition that lasting partnership takes many forms. Marriage is one. Long-term cohabitation without legal marriage is another. Partnerships within queer relationships have their own histories and forms. Polyamorous and non-monogamous structures, when they work, work according to similar fundamentals as monogamous partnerships. The legal and cultural form of the relationship matters less than the underlying dynamics. The work of building something that lasts is recognizable across forms, even when the forms differ significantly.

This refreshed essay describes what I have come to understand about those underlying dynamics, drawing on current research and on the work I have done in my practice with couples across many configurations.

The conditions that produce lasting partnership

Several conditions, present together and developed over time, produce the kind of partnership that endures.

Friendship as foundation

This was true in the 2009 post and remains true. The strongest partnerships have a deep friendship underneath them. The capacity to enjoy each other’s ordinary company. The genuine interest in each other’s inner lives. The willingness to spend time together that is not about romance or sex but simply about being with this particular person.

John and Julie Gottman, who have studied couples in their laboratory at the University of Washington for decades, identify friendship as the foundational element of relationships that last. Their research consistently shows that couples who maintain what they call a sound relationship house — the underlying friendship and shared knowledge of each other — weather conflict and transition far better than couples whose connection is primarily passionate or primarily logistical. The friendship is not opposed to romance. It is what allows the romance to continue across decades.

Secure attachment within the relationship

Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy and has spent her career applying attachment theory to adult couples, identifies the felt sense of secure connection as the central work of lasting partnership. Each partner needs to know, in their body, that the other is reliably there — that emotional reach will be met, that need will not be dismissed, that distress can be brought to the other and will be received.

Building this kind of security is the work of years. It develops through small repeated experiences of being met. The partner who turns toward you when you reach out, even when they are tired. The partner who returns to repair after a conflict rather than letting the disconnection settle. The partner who notices when something is wrong before you have named it. These small moments accumulate into the felt sense of being securely held by the relationship itself.

For partners who arrived in the relationship with insecure attachment patterns from childhood, the work is more demanding. The nervous system that learned not to reach has to learn to reach. The nervous system that learned to defend against connection has to learn to receive it. The relationship itself, when it is functioning, becomes the corrective experience that updates the original conditioning. This is slow work. It is genuinely possible, particularly when both partners understand what they are doing.

Respect as daily practice

Respect is the felt experience of being treated as someone whose thoughts, feelings, and choices have weight. It is not the same as agreement. Two partners can disagree substantially and still treat each other with respect. They can fight hard about what matters to them and still convey, throughout the fight, that the other person remains worthy of consideration.

The Gottmans’ research identifies contempt — the felt sense of looking down on the partner, dismissing them as beneath you — as the single most reliable predictor of divorce in their studies. Contempt is the opposite of respect. When it enters a relationship and is not addressed, the relationship is on a trajectory toward dissolution that is statistically very difficult to reverse.

Maintaining respect requires daily attention. The small ways you speak about your partner when they are not in the room. The small ways you respond to them when they share something with you. The small ways you handle conflict when you are tired or activated. Respect is built or eroded in these small moments. It is rarely built or eroded in dramatic events.

The capacity for repair

All relationships experience rupture. The strongest relationships are not the ones in which rupture never occurs. They are the ones in which both partners have developed the capacity to repair after rupture has occurred.

Repair is its own learnable skill. It involves the willingness to recognize when something has gone wrong between you. The capacity to take responsibility for your part without becoming defensive. The willingness to make a genuine acknowledgment of harm caused, however unintentional. The patience to let the other person have their own response to the repair attempt without controlling how they receive it. The follow-through that demonstrates the repair is more than words.

Stan Tatkin, who developed the psychobiological approach to couples therapy, writes extensively about repair as one of the central practices of lasting partnership. His framing — that secure functioning couples treat each other’s regulation as their joint responsibility — points to something important. The repair is not just about the specific rupture. It is about the ongoing maintenance of the relationship’s underlying safety. Each successful repair tells both partners that this relationship can hold difficulty. Each failed repair, particularly accumulated, communicates the opposite.

Differentiation alongside connection

Esther Perel has written extensively about the tension in long-term partnership between connection and otherness. The relationship needs both. Partners who completely fuse — who lose their individual identities into the relationship — often lose desire for each other over time. Partners who remain too separate, who do not actually allow themselves to be known and to know the other, miss the depth that long partnership offers.

The work is holding both. Maintaining your own friendships, interests, and inner life that are separate from the relationship. Continuing to develop as an individual across the years rather than freezing into your role within the partnership. And also doing the work of genuine intimacy, allowing yourself to be known and to know the other deeply, building the shared history that only long partnership can produce.

Differentiation is not coldness. It is the capacity to be fully present in the relationship while remaining recognizably yourself. Partners who maintain this capacity often find that their desire for each other endures across decades, because the other remains genuinely other rather than dissolving into a version of the self.

Shared sense of meaning

Lasting partnerships typically develop a shared sense of what the relationship is for beyond the immediate enjoyment of being together. This may be raising children. It may be building a business or pursuing creative work together. It may be participating in religious or spiritual community. It may be navigating significant challenges — illness, loss, large life transitions — that the partnership has helped both partners through.

The shared meaning is not always articulated. Sometimes it lives in the unspoken understanding that this relationship has been the container for the life both partners have lived. The relationship is not just a source of pleasure or companionship. It is the structure within which a life has been built. That kind of meaning, accumulated over years, produces a depth that newer relationships cannot match no matter how passionate they are.

Commitment as ongoing choice

The 2009 post talked about hundred percent commitment as the defining feature of marriage. I would say something slightly different now. Commitment in lasting partnership is not a one-time decision made at the altar or at the moment of agreement to be exclusive. It is a daily choice that gets remade across the years.

Every long-term partnership goes through periods when one or both partners genuinely consider whether they want to continue. This is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that the partnership is real and consequential. The partners who continue across these moments do so because they have made the choice to continue. The choice is not always certain. It is often made in conditions of doubt. But it is made, and remade, and remade again across the years.

This framing changes how we understand commitment. It is not the absence of doubt. It is the willingness to act in the direction of the partnership despite the doubt, and to bring whatever the doubt is about into the relationship rather than carrying it alone. The strongest partnerships have rooms in them for the difficult conversations about the partnership itself.

What I would tell a younger version of myself

If I could speak to the therapist who wrote the 2009 post, I would tell her several things.

The timeline does not matter. What matters is what happens within whatever timeline the relationship actually unfolds along.

Marriage is not the goal. The goal is a partnership that allows both people to live in a way that feels genuinely theirs, with someone who knows them and is known by them, across the long arc of a life.

Friendship matters more than passion. Passion comes and goes in long partnership. Friendship, properly tended, deepens.

Repair matters more than avoiding conflict. The couple who never fights is rarely the couple whose relationship lasts. The couple who fights and repairs is.

The work continues. There is no moment when you have arrived at a lasting partnership and can stop building it. The building is the partnership.

If you are in the early stages of a relationship

If you are in the early period of a relationship and trying to determine whether this person could be a lasting partner, here are the questions worth asking yourself. Not on a timetable. Whenever they become relevant.

Is there a genuine friendship underneath the chemistry? Do you actually enjoy this person’s company when you are not romantically engaged with them?

Can you imagine being known by this person at the depth that long partnership requires? Are they capable of receiving you, and are you capable of receiving them, beyond the surface?

How do they handle conflict and repair? Are they capable of taking responsibility for their part in difficulty? Can they offer genuine acknowledgment without becoming defensive?

Are their values and life goals genuinely compatible with yours, or are you assuming compatibility that has not actually been tested?

Do you feel respected by them in the small daily moments, and do you respect them similarly? Is there any contempt in either direction that has begun to enter the interaction?

Are there patterns from their family of origin or yours that you can see playing out in the relationship, and is there room to work with those patterns together?

Do you both have the capacity to maintain your individual lives within the partnership, or is one or both of you losing yourselves into the relationship?

These questions take time to answer honestly. The relationships that last typically allow the time for these questions to surface and be addressed. The relationships that move too quickly past these questions often arrive at the larger commitment with answers that have not been earned.

If you are in an established partnership

If you are in an established partnership and reading this article, the questions are different. The work is not whether to commit. The work is how to sustain what you have built.

The same elements apply. The friendship needs continued tending. The attachment security needs daily renewal. The respect needs to be protected from the small erosions that accumulate over years. The repair after conflict needs to remain a practice rather than something that has become rare. The differentiation needs to be preserved so that you do not lose yourself into the relationship. The shared meaning needs to be allowed to evolve as the lives you are living evolve. The commitment needs to be remade rather than assumed.

Couples therapy can be useful at many points in lasting partnership — not only when the relationship is in crisis. Working with a clinician who understands attachment, who can hold both partners’ nervous systems at once, who can address the somatic dimensions of long partnership rather than only the verbal ones, often produces real growth in relationships that are already functioning. The work is not about fixing what is broken. It is about deepening what is already real.

A closing thought

Lasting partnership is one of the most demanding things a human being can attempt. It is also one of the most rewarding. The partnership that endures across decades does not endure because it was easy or because both partners are uniquely well-suited to each other. It endures because both partners have done the daily work of building and rebuilding it across the years.

If you are in a relationship that is working, honor it. Tend to it. Notice what makes it real, and continue investing in what makes it real. The relationship is not a destination you arrive at. It is the daily practice of choosing to remain in it, to develop with it, to be changed by it across the years.

And if you are searching for a lasting partnership and have not yet found one, the search is real and worth doing. The conditions that produce lasting partnership are recognizable. With enough self-knowledge and enough willingness to do the work, the conditions can be met. The path is rarely linear. The destination, when it is reached, is worth the journey.

Further reading: John Gottman and Julie Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work and What Makes Love Last. Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight. Stan Tatkin, Wired for Love. Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity. For clinical work with couples in California or Florida, visit thecourageousself.com.

April Wright, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Florida specializing in EMDR, sex therapy, and couples counseling. She trained in sex and couples therapy at AACAST at UCLA. She blogs about attachment, healing, and the courageous arts of becoming oneself at courageous-arts.com and sees clients at thecourageousself.com.

Your Brain on Love: The Surprising Neuroscience of Attachment

Posted on by helpingsoul
Dopamine, oxytocin, neural synchrony — discover what your brain is really doing when you fall in love and how neuroscience explains why some bonds last a lifetime.
Have you ever drifted into a dreamy thought of someone you recently met? You can’t explain why, but they just pop into your head. You feel a surge of joy, a slight queasiness in your stomach, and your face lights up with each playful thought of your new mate. A rush of neurochemicals stimulates this euphoric behavior.

Is this stage of love fleeting or can long-term committed relationships uphold blissful adoration?

The Stages of Modern Relationships

Whether you identify yourself as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual, there are various stages to each relationship. According to research, during the initial meeting, it takes between 90 seconds and 4 minutes to decide if you want to move to dating and/or sex and not always in that particular order. During this lustful stage, testosterone and estrogen drive your behavior.

As your attraction deepens and you decide to become sexually exclusive or not, your stress response stimulates the release of the neurotransmitters; adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine, and serotonin.

Throughout this stage, your stress response is activated. Blood levels increase with adrenaline and cortisol, hormones secreted by the adrenal glands. The secretion of adrenaline and cortisol provide that rush of energy, increase in heart rate, sweaty palms, and dry mouth when you suddenly think of or startlingly bump into your new attraction.

What Neuroscience Has Added 

Recent advances in Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), pioneered by Dr. Dan Siegel, reveal that our brains are literally shaped by our closest relationships. The attachment patterns formed in early childhood — secure, anxious, avoidant — are encoded in neural circuitry and predict how we show up in adult love.

Even more striking: cutting-edge hyperscanning research shows that the brains of romantic partners actually synchronize with each other. When you feel truly seen and held by your partner, your nervous systems are resonating together. This is co-regulation — and it’s as biological as a heartbeat.

“Our relationships really shape how we feel, how we think, how we remember things, how we tell the story of who we are.”  — Dr. Dan Siegel

The Good News

Attachment styles can change. Bonds can be repaired. The brain’s plasticity means that with the right support — and the courage to stay present — long-term love is not just possible. It’s neurologically wired for it.

Dopamine

The neurotransmitter, dopamine is increased with ‘love struck’ mates. Dopamine stimulates an intense rush of pleasure, triggering desire and reward. A brain on cocaine has the same effect.

“couples often show the signs of surging dopamine: increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention and exquisite delight in smallest details of this novel relationship” ~ Helen Fisher

Serotonin

Serotonin plays a key role in this early stage of love. Low levels of serotonin explain those constant thoughts of your lover. According to Dr. Marazziti from the University of Pisa, blood samples of couples that claimed to be madly in love for less than six months were comparable to the blood samples of patients who have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Furthermore, newly love-struck couples often idealize their partner, magnify their assets and overlook flaws.

“It’s very common to think they have a relationship that is closer and more special than anyone else’s.” ~ Ellen Berscheid

Oxytocin

Next, a couple decides upon exclusivity, engagement, living together or marrying. The attachment of the twosome instigates the powerful hormone, oxytocin.

Oxytocin is released during childbirth and creates the bond between a mother and her child. The chemical is also secreted by both of the sexes during cuddling, hugging, and sex.

Oxytocin is important because couples that exhibit high doses of oxytocin have a strong bond and attachment that can withstand the ups and downs of life. For the release of oxytocin, it takes between 19 and 23 seconds. Thus to ensure your couplehood survives the test of time; hug, cuddle and have sex regularly.

Vasopressin

Finally, vasopressin sets the stage for long-term committed couples. The hormone is released after sex and like oxytocin creates stable bonding with your partner. Vasopressin also creates the actions of devotion and protection.

The stages of a relationship change as do the release of chemicals in the brain. The surge of dopamine in the initial lustful state creates a rush of pleasure that stimulates, even more, desire and reward. Adrenaline causes the physical reaction of sweaty palms, racing heart, and dry-mouth.

Serotonin creates those compulsive, idealizing thoughts of your partner and oxytocin makes for strong bonds. Finally, vasopressin deepens the connection and generates long-lasting love.

Therefore it is possible to love and to be in love with your partner ‘til death to us part.’ Give your loved one a 30-second hug every day to ensure your love lasts.

If your bond is broken, your trust shattered, or your connection lost, couples counseling can help to mend bonds, build trust and connection again. Email april@thecourageousself.com and let’s get started.

Want to go deeper into the neuroscience of love and attachment? Read the full article over at The Courageous Self ↓

🔗 thecourageousself.com | 📧 april@thecourageousself.com

 

Design Your Ideal Partner with this Game

Posted on by helpingsoul

doves_heartDo you have a partner with a habit or flaw you’d like to eliminate, tweak or fix? Let’s play a game about that.

Part One

You can now design your ideal mate. Pick from any of the traits described below and even add a lot more. Go wild. Create a list of all the positive traits you wish for in your mate. Your dream partner can now be assembled like ordering a new car.

It might be easiest to print this list so you can circle your favorites and add others.

  • Intelligent
  • Sensitive
  • Interesting
  • Fun loving
  • Wants as many kids as I do
  • Great parent
  • Has many exciting interests
  • Attractive
  • Values good health
  • Enjoys their work
  • Likes animals
  • Honest
  • Loves me for who I am
  • Great sense of humor
  • Enjoys sex about as often as I do
  • Loves taking care of others
  • Gives me all the space I want when I want it
  • Sparkling conversationalist
  • Loves cooking for me
  • Enjoys the same foods, movies, music and sports
  • Manages money well and is a great investor
  • Extroverted and fun in social situations
  • Introverted and likes quiet, serene romantic settings
  • Likes to exercise
  • Great travel companion
  • Has the same sense of adventure
  • Loves what they do professionally and the sky is the limit
  • Knows just how much to tease me
  • Trustworthy
  • Wants to talk when I do
  • Is interested in my day if I want to talk about it
  • Is willing to go to therapy (just in case)

Wow, what an ideal partner. And he or she is all yours. Just keep reading.

Part Two

Now that you have described your dream partner, let’s do part two. For every four positive traits, you now need to include one irritant. Because we are all flawed creatures, we have to balance the picture.

Look at the list below and choose one characteristic for every four on your original list. What are you willing to live with in order to have all those juicy positives? In this scenario, the negatives are fixed and pretty permanent. Remember the ratio is 4:1. Count your list of positive traits and divide by 4 to see how many traits you need to select from the list below.

  • Insecure
  • Bi-polar
  • Narcissistic
  • Passive aggressive
  • Conflict avoidant
  • Hairy back
  • Lazy
  • Not interested in sex when I am
  • Addicted to TV or video games
  • Doesn’t want the same number of kids I do
  • Poor kisser
  • Loves eating junk foods
  • Messy
  • Forgets birthdays and anniversaries
  • Unmotivated
  • Stingy
  • Jealous
  • Insecure
  • Really embarrassing fashion style
  • Nags
  • Chews with mouth open
  • Snores loud enough to scare small animals
  • No sense of humor
  • Watches way too much T.V
  • Rarely expresses emotions
  • Trapped in go nowhere job and doesn’t mind it
  • Spends way over the budget
  • Interrupts and doesn’t listen well
  • Swears a lot
  • Tendency toward chronic depression
  • Too much overweight or underweight
  • No common activities
  • Has unpleasant friends
  • Bad health

There you have it – a real live human being who is complex, annoying, loving, and full of contradictions.

Part Three

Make a Valentine’s Day Commitment. For the day before, the day of and the day after, experiment with accepting your partner’s irritating traits. Increase your positive recognition of your partner’s pluses and overlook their negatives.

Valentine’s Day has become way too commercial. Isn’t this better than any box of candy?

Also, do your best to evaluate yourself against these lists and look at the ratio you bring to your relationship. Do you see the same plusses and minuses as your partner sees in you?

If you do part three, congratulations. Please share any discoveries or how hard it is to resist blaming and criticizing for those 3 days.

Please share what you discover.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Written by The Couple’s Institute

Grief and Loss

Posted on by helpingsoul

A sudden loss is like being ran over by a Mack truck. You are left shocked, paralyzed, and dead in your own tracks. It can lead to disorientation, disbelief, anxiety, outrage, and tremendous sadness. When you learn to stay with the resulting emotions, over time a new reality can slowly emerge.

Some endings are marked by celebrations and happy congratulations while others are met with sad departures and disappearances. Mark endings regardless of their circumstances with symbols of remembrances, memorials, services, or celebrations. It helps to carry you forward into the future while retaining the value of what ended.

I lost two very special people in my life within a one month time span. It is coming up to the first year anniversary of their abrupt death. Thus I am reminiscing of the events that took place over this past year. During this time, I maintained many rituals that have helped heal my heart and maintain their existence to my soul. The established pattern of observances helped to ward-off total devastation with their loss.

Cherish Past Communication:dove

I reflected upon old times when our communication was expressed with warmth, nurture, and support. I recollected on their values and character.

I saved all forms of correspondence including voice messages, text messages, and emails. I reflected back on their words numerous times to reminisce and allow myself to cry and bask in my love for them.

On a daily basis, I wrote about shared experiences. I wrote about the lessons I learned from their presence and admired morals that I aspire to become.

I bridged the gap between past communication to the present by reaching out to them and asking for their guidance and wisdom. I brought their feelings to life by handwriting my experiences as thoughts of them came to mind. I developed a new relationship with them as I opened my mind to a spiritual realm of connection to the present. My connection served its way through symbolic forms while I encountered pairs of animals, plants, and rainbows.

Connected with Nature:

I hiked the same nature trail weekly and sought signs of their existence. I watched for birds since they were pilots and loved to fly. Given that they were identical twin brothers, I became more conscious of things in pairs as I walked up and down the trails. I saw two branches that stood out from the rest of the vegetation, two birds flying together, or even one large majestic bird gliding high in the sky. I followed their direction of flight with my eyes and heart until I could no longer see their existence.

On one of my walks, a rattle snake crossed my path. It was the first of such a sighting upon my many brisk strolls along the gravel pathway up the mountain. I took the sighting as a symbol of new beginnings and rebirth and of course turned around and walked the other way. While on another hike, I walked to a secluded area on the top of the mountain and arranged a memorial of similar sized rocks in the impression of their names.

Upon another nature outing, I walked along the shoreline and again looked for birds flying in pairs. On a couple of strolls, I saw imprinted in the sand, “I love you” or “I miss you” and I believed it to be a message from them. Whether it is true or not, it comforted me to think that they found clever ways to communicate with me.

One day while walking along the shore, a playful sea lion surfed the waves in and then back out. He continued his surfing in the same direction I was walking until we came upon the end where the rocks block the channel. I instantaneously thought it was Alex who wanted to learn to surf. I believed he found his way.

Another encounter of nature happened while I sat in my office with a client. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw a double rainbow. It was such a long time since I had seen a double rainbow. I immediately knew they were communicating to me their new found relationship and continuance in my life. With the height of the building’s window, I could see the beginning and ends of each rainbow. They were beautiful and glorious to see. My client and I stopped in mid-session to stand up and peak out the window. At that moment I knew one was looking down protecting and guiding me from the sky and the reflection was caring for me from beneath the earth. I was surrounded in a protective bubble by the wisdom, strength, and courage of two fellows whose lives were to serve, protect and honor.

Shared Continuity:

I reached out to an old professor who has a PhD in Thanatology. She listened openly and with understanding. Due to her professional background working in a hospice and personal communication with the deceased, she provided a unique perspective and insight that enlightened and opened my own spiritual pathway. Our long talks and emails comforted me in my confusion, sorrow, and feelings of abandonment.

I increased weekly therapy sessions from one to two meetings a week for several months. The added support and safe outlet to express my sorrow was met with compassion and empathy. I cried openly knowing my tears were presented in front of a comforting and accepting soul. My experiences were validated and normalized which is extremely important in the healing and grieving process.

I remained in contact with family members of the deceased to have continuity and continued connection knowing we have a common bond and love.

Permitted Unrestrained Emotions:

I let go of anger by taking a boxing class. I punched sparing pads as hard and as fast as I could. I vigorously struck left to right as the poor girl holding the pads braced herself from my rage. I continued to beat the bags until I fell limp with exhaustion. Afterward I felt relief and lighter as the weight of my anger was let go.

I often had cyclical bouts of anger, sorrow, and appreciation for their existence in my life. As I deeply missed their living body and nurturing voices near me, I bargained to have their return to what I once knew of them and to take another instead. I felt horrible in the thought but eventually understood the thought process and was compassionate to myself. I allowed myself to cry profusely on many occasions. I endured and accepted my tears to freely and forcedly flow without judgment or ridicule.

It has been a difficult journey grieving their loss. I am reminded of their departure every day but my pain has lessened over time. I have accepted they are no longer here as I once knew them to be. Yet I remain grateful for the short time we shared and their new found presence in my life. Their death prompted the fact, we are all here temporarily. I am reminded to live my life fully, gratefully, and with compassion. I am encouraged to nurture relationships and maintain close bonds. I let people know I care, treat them with kindness, and with an open heart. I have now embraced that every ending marks a new beginning.

Gratitude is the Heart’s Memory

Posted on by helpingsoul

Gratitude_Mandala“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”  – John F. Kennedy

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”  – Melody Beattie

 “Gratitude is a mark of a noble soul and a refined character. We like to be around those who are grateful. They tend to brighten all around them. They make others feel better about themselves. They tend to be more humble, more joyful, more likeable.”  – Joseph B. Wirthlin

Gratitude is being grateful! Thankful! Appreciative! Obliged!

Life can feel so negative. Whether it is family quarrels, friends who aren’t there when you need them, media attention on the latest school shooting, co-workers or supervisors critical of your work; whatever it may be, the world is induced with negativity. You can increase your own feelings of gratitude by keeping a daily journal in which you list up to five things for which you are grateful.

Gratitude is being aware of and appreciating good things that happen and taking the time to express thanks.

 Positives of gratitude:

  • Less burnout
  • Higher job satisfaction
  • Motivates pro-social behavior
  • Corporate social responsibility
  • Affect perception of the work place
  • Positive bias in remembering life events
  • Promotes effective coping skills

Dispositional and situational gratitude may impact different aspects of well-being. Thus if you are more grateful for social aspects of your life but not your work environment, you may benefit by focusing your gratitude journal on workplace aspects.

To ensure consistency consider:

  • Timing
  • Frequency
  • Place
  • Environment

Choosing a convenient, consistent time and location may increase the likelihood that you will follow through on maintaining a gratitude journal.

Things to consider:

  • Time span

Daily journaling is the most effective. Regardless, research shows entries made daily, over a short period of time (two weeks) or longer; weekly over a longer period of time (ten weeks) had a positive impact.

  • Focus

Professional. Intimacy. Family. Social. Personal. Recreation. Spiritual. Career. You may choose to pay attention to a different aspect of your life each day of the week or to center on only one facet over a particular time span. It is your choice.

  • Method

Use pencil and paper, audio recording, word processing, or a smart phone or tablet computer application. Does one method differ in effectiveness versus another? Choose the one that enables you to maintain consistency.

  • Letter writing

Write a letter expressing your gratitude to a particular person, supervisor, colleague, friend, or loved one could impact the recipients’ attitudes and behavior in the workplace, home environment, or social settings. It can also help you cope more effectively with conflict even if the letter isn’t sent.

References

Lanham, Michelle E.; Rye, Mark S.; Rimsky, Liza S.; Weill, Sydney R. Journal of Mental Health Counseling. Oct2012, Vol. 34 Issue 4, p341 – 354. American Mental Health Counselors Association.

Froh, Jeffrey; Emmons, Robert; Card, Noel; Bono, Giacomo; Wilson, Jennifer. Gratitude and the Reduced Costs of Materialism in Adolescents. Journal of Happiness Studies. Apr2011, Vol.12 Issue 2, p289-302.

The Secret of Love (Spoiler Alert)

Posted on by helpingsoul

journey by Deepak Chopra, MD

The Internet has taken up the slack from print media by offering tips on love and relationships, which pop up on home pages, in tweets and in news teasers many times a day. If the secret to lasting romance could be shared like a recipe for cinnamon buns, our problems would be over. But love isn’t a fact, formula, or definable in words.

Love is a process, perhaps the most mysterious one in human psychology. No one knows what creates love as a powerful bond that is so full of meaning. If romance was only a heady brew of hormones, genetic inheritance and sex drive, all we’d need is better data to explain it. But love is transporting. It carries us beyond our everyday selves and makes reality shine with an inner light. The reverse can also happen. We crash to earth when the wear and tear of relationships makes love fade.

The process of love is kept alive by evolving and not getting stuck. Infatuation is an early stage of the process. You bond with another person as if by alchemy, but in time the ego returns with the claims of “I, me, and mine.” At that point love must change. Two people must negotiate how much to share, how much to surrender and how much to stand their ground. It would be tragic if romance faded into everyday familiarity, but it doesn’t have to.

Beyond the stage of two egos negotiating for their own interests, there is deepening love. It doesn’t try to turn the present into the past. A married couple of twenty years isn’t still infatuated with one other. So what keeps the process alive? For me, the answer was revealed by reading a startling sentence from the Upanishads, which are like a textbook of spiritual understanding. The sentence says, “You do not love a spouse for the sake of the spouse but for the sake of the self.”

At first glance this seems like a horrible sentiment: We all love on a personal basis and we expect to be loved the same way, for ourselves. But if “self” means your everyday personality, there is much that isn’t very lovable about each of us and as a marriage or relationship unfolds, there’s a guarantee that our partners will see those unlovable things more clearly. Even a knight in shining armor might want to save more than one damsel, and even saint must use deodorant once in a while.

In the world’s wisdom tradition, “love” and “self” are both universal. They exist beyond the individual personality. The secret of love is to expand beyond the personal. When people say that they want unconditional love, they often imply that they want to be loved despite their shortcomings, issues and quirks. But that’s nearly impossible if love remains at the personal level. At a certain point, if you begin to see love itself as your goal, universal love is more powerful and secure than personal love.

The poet Rabindranath Tagore described the spiritual side of love in a single expression” “Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.” The gift of human awareness is that we can locate the source of creation in ourselves. By going deeper into the self, asking “Who am I?” without settling for a superficial answer, the ego-personality fades. A sense of the true self begins to dawn, and it is this self that exists in contact with love as the only reality.

The journey becomes more fascinating if someone else travels with you. Life isn’t about abstractions; it’s about experience. If you have a beloved who stands for the feeling of love, bonding, and affection, your journey has a focus that can’t be supplied merely by thinking. The experiences that love bring include surrender, devotion, selflessness, giving, gratitude, appreciation, kindness and bliss. So if the phrase “universal love” seems daunting or improbable to you, break it down into these smaller experiences. Pursue them, and you will be traveling in the direction of your source, where the true self and true love merge.

That’s where my spoiler alert comes in. Announcing the secret of love cuts short the actual experience. It doesn’t always help to know what’s coming, because you might fall into exaggerated expectations and fall short. It’s better and more realistic to become aware that love is now your personal project. Show kindness and gratitude. Speak about what your beloved means to you. Every step on this journey works on behalf of the two of you but also on behalf of the self that unites you at the deepest level.

Finding Love

Posted on by helpingsoul
A new map of the path to intimacy by Ken Page, LCSW

Four Signs That Healthy Love Is On Its Way

How to find love that can last

I’ve found that four conditions often forecast the advent of real and healthy love. Love’s arrival feels like magic; a gift of luck. Yet we can invite that luck by approaching our dating life differently. If these shifts are happening for you, be encouraged. You’re probably well on the way to finding the kind of love that can last.

You lose your taste for “attractions of deprivation”

It’s easy to become attracted to people who can almost commit; people who treat us wonderfully–and then diminish, demean or ignore us. These relationships are usually highly charged and gnawingly addictive. Like a slot machine, they keep us coming back for more. We long to get it right, to get our partner to love us. We struggle to improve ourselves. We play hard to get. We try giving more, or we practice giving less. We try to be funnier, more successful or more in-shape, so that our desired one will finally want us as much as we want them.

At a certain point, (and usually as a result of tremendous pain) we begin to lose our taste for relationships that chip away at our sense of self-worth. We find we just can’t stomach the thought of being hurt like that again. And this is a great thing. When we become less “sticky” to these kinds of attractions, a dead-end era of our dating lives is finally coming to an end. Now, we can begin the real work of intimacy–cultivating our attraction to relationships that feed and nurture us.

Kindness and availability become more important to you

As we lose our taste for attractions of deprivation, we usually experience a temporary void in our dating life. We know we don’t want the pain of past relationships, but nothing else seems as exciting. In time, (and often with guidance) we begin to seek what I call attractions of inspiration.

These attractions are based upon a (basically) consistent quality of shared kindness, generosity, and emotional availability. They often unfold slowly. They get richer as time goes on. They make us feel love, not desperation.

We can measure the very quality of our lives by the relationships of mutual inspiration we’ve cultivated.

The joy we feel in these relationships doesn’t come from conquest or momentary validation, but from an essential quality of contentment we feel with our partners. We don’t feel consistently bigger or smaller than the object of our affections. In some basic way, we feel what the twelve-step programs call “right sized.” But most of us have never been taught that these relationships have a trajectory of their own. They need to be cultivated and nourished in different ways than we might be used to. It may seem that they are not as exciting at first, but in fact, they are much more so.

There is a thrilling risk available to us in these relationships—the risk of revealing our authentic self. If we take that risk with our partners and find that we are accepted and embraced, the erotic and emotional charge of the relationship deepens and intensifies. These are the people who deserve to see the real us: our wild self, our kinky self, our unshared ideas, our tender soul.

And by the way, that’s precisely why these are the scariest relationships of all. Our fear may do anything to save us from the risk of vulnerability. It’s best strategy is to trick us into fleeing by shouting “Next! Back to the hunt!” But if we don’t flee, we may find that the fear passes, and a deeper, more passionate love shows through on the other side.

If you find that you are seeking these relationships and ignoring the thrill of your attractions of deprivation, then celebrate. You’re on the path to a relationship that can sustain a future of love.

You become willing to give up your “flight patterns”

All of us, single or coupled, flee the heat and the risks of true intimacy. All of us. Any single person who wants to find love would do well to become a student of his or her own “flight patterns.” There are so many ways to flee intimacy, even as we seek it:

Staying home and watching TV every night. Surfing the net, instead of going to places where people with shared values can be found. Wasting time on attractions of deprivation. Not being authentic. Chatting online but never taking the steps to meet. Playing it cool. Looking for hookups instead of dates. Drinking too much on our dates.

At a certain point, we really start to mean it in our search for a life-partner. We realize that time is ticking, that we are growing tired of living and sleeping alone (Please note, this isn’t true for everyone. Many of us are quite happy living solo.)

When we’re willing to let go of our flight patterns; when we find ways to meet people who share our values; and when we only have second or third dates with people who hold the promise of becoming attractions of inspiration, then things really begin to change.

You lead with your authentic self.

Leading with your authentic self may seem on the surface like an easy thing, but it’s not. We get most wounded around the places we care the most. These are the parts of us that I call “core gifts.” Because our authentic self is so vulnerable and because most of us have incurred profound wounding around our core gifts, we tend to either suppress them or create air-brushed versions of them for the world to see. But these versions of self lack the vigor, soul and magnetism of our authentic self, so we find we are less successful in attracting the very people who would accept and treasure us for who we are.

I’ve found that the key does not lie in simply accepting our authentic self, in all its humanity. The key lies in treasuring it, in all its timidity, imperfection and excess. We have the right to honor our core gifts, and to only choose people who can do the same.

When we do that in a non-defensive way, our world begins to change. That’s when we somehow find ourselves dating people who accept us for who we are; people who are kind, generous of spirit and available. I can’t explain why this happens, but I’ve see it occur so many times that I’ve come to accept it as a happy truth in the frequently treacherous world of dating.

Instead of helping us embrace our core gifts, the singles world teaches us to dishonor them—in ourselves and in the people we date. Like those ugly fun-house mirrors, the prevailing singles culture flashes distorted, haunting images at us–images of our own flaws and inadequacies and of the inadequacies of the people we date. The solution is not to find our self-esteem within the walls of that hall of mirrors. It is to get out, and to find a better path.

Borderline Personality, Codependency, and Love Addiction

Posted on by helpingsoul

cycle of addiction

Borderline Personality tendencies, codependency, and love addiction are self-destructive behavioral patterns. Each personality seeks constant approval and love from others while abandoning themselves. Through people pleasing, compulsivity, and dependent patterns of behavior, a sense of self is lost. Relationship dynamics runs the extremes from idealization and domination to being controlled. The extremes create a false sense of safety, self-worth, and identity. This articles covers the characteristics of all three behavioral types and relates it to the cycle of addiction.

Everyone embraces some cycle of addiction, whether it be the way you towel off after a shower or mindlessly move through the grocery aisles. Regardless of the activity, the ritual involves unconscious thoughts, feelings and actions that repeats cyclically.

There are four parts to the cycle of addiction. The first stage is preoccupation, the second is the ritual, the third is acting out, and the fourth phase is feelings of guilt and shame.

Many dynamics of relationships exist but for the purpose of this article, codependency, borderline tendencies, and love addiction will be discussed with an emphasis of the cycle of addiction.

During the first stage, thoughts begin to preoccupy themselves with a lover. Persons consume the majority of their time and attention toward their imago. The imago is the image we place on our partner who mirrors our original caretakers. The psychological term for this is transference. The image feels right because it is familiar much like eating macaroni and cheese. Admiration for their partner is comfort food that feeds the attraction to excitement, chaos, and emotional intoxication.

The intense attraction is due to an unconscious drive to heal and resolve childhood wounds. This overwhelming state of infatuation is part of the first stage of addiction called preoccupation. During this phase, the love addict feels high (emotional intoxication) as parental fantasies to heal the abandonment, emptiness, and lack of self-worth are perceived to be met even if for a splitting moment. Thoughts and energy of their partner preoccupy all the love addict’s time. The majority of the day is conceiving ways to hold onto them and bring them closer so that they don’t abandon them.   Love addicts relinquish total control and power to their partner.   Any sense of spiritually becomes impaired as a grandiose persona transfers to their image.

Love addicts relation to family, friends, and personal care begin to change during the second phase of addiction. This stage is called ritual. Compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of their partner override any sense of independence.   Control completely transfers to other. Love addicts become dependent with learned helplessness and neediness. Trust and judgment projects on their partner and smashes their personal values and feelings. Love addicts give up control while abandoning themselves and becoming dependent on their lover to make personal decisions.   Over time love addicts’ careers, relationships, and personal care diminish.

Love addicts deny and refuse to open their eyes to the reality of their false, fantasy love. Similarly, codependents do not acknowledge their partner’s defensive wall, inability for real connection, and love themselves. Codependent relationships create enmeshment just as love addicts take on their partner’s morals and values and blur boundary lines. Relationships are viewed through unconsciously filtered fantasy. Relational dynamics continues between colossal cycles of intense passion and extreme anger. The sense of excitement in the emotional extremes is drunken in like an alcoholic drinks whiskey. The high of emotional intoxication deepens to obsessiveness that then is mistaken for authentic love.

The third period is acting out. Negative consequences of lost identity, irresponsible behavior, and diminishing life conditions are overlooked. Symptoms of loneliness, despair, and self-hatred continue in a downward spiral of intolerable circumstances. Self-worth bottoms and depression creeps in.

As the spiral continues downward, bottom hits with feelings of guilt and shame making up the fourth stage. Love addicts feel stuck as if they cannot cope on their own. Codependents feel they need their partner to survive just as a dependent child. Guilt, shame, internalized anger and resentment grow until the pain is too great, and the hurt is too much to bear. Finally, a glimmer of hope emerges, and awareness unfolds. Denial slowly lifts as light shines down on their partner’s defenses, emotional unavailability, controlling, and manipulating behavior. Further consciousness arises in financial and career sacrifices if they still have a job. Understanding of their isolation surfaces the notions of little contact if any with family and friends. It’s a rude awakening to the mess.

Shame and guilt stage causes love addicts to feel like failures, remain hopeless and lose sight of their discovery. Consequently, they fall deeper into depression. Denial sets in again to lighten the pain, and the cycle begins again.

Borderline personalities obsess again about their partner thinking they will save them from their misery. Codependents shift independence to dependence and as they stay in the relationship; prolonging the cycle of addiction.

Commonly borderline personalities, codependents, and love addicts develop from an alcoholic family or dysfunctional family who are narcissistic, unable to allow another to have an independent self, and cut-off emotionally. The personality types yearn for real connections and intimate relationships yet don’t know how and continue to play cat and mouse.

Childhood hurt and rage from parental abandonment, neglect, and emotional abuse leads to internalizing thoughts of being bad. The child splits the image of his desire internalizing it as bad and places a good internal object-image onto their caretakers.

If a child’s needs of nurture, mirroring of feelings and thoughts, and care lack, the child continues to split parts of themselves; internalizing they are bad, and their parents are good. This pattern is a defensive survival technique so that the child can tolerate the abuse in an environment where he is dependent.   As adults, a bad internalized image persists as a worthless and inadequate identity thus the perceived need to latch on to others for an identity. The wounded adult attracts partner’s who replicate their parents and place the externalized fantasy image of real parts onto their partner ultimately giving them all power and control.

Awareness of the similarity of borderline personalities, codependents, and love addicts can shed light and understanding of internal emotional drivers of behavior. New knowledge brings more choices and the more power and control for healthy, respectful, and loving thoughts, feelings, and actions. Understanding how one’s personal cycle of addiction originated can then begin to find ways to break the cycle and healing can begin. The goal is to feel whole (independent) while having the capacity to give and receive love.

Love, Jealousy, Rejection and Control

Posted on by helpingsoul

Love is an expression of our emotions, feelings and affection toward someone. When it comes to a spouse, love can bring to life our full potential and creativity. When love proceeds with abuse, it can be debilitating and demeaning. Love is a choice followed by action. Our personal values, beliefs and actions determine what is real love versus fantasy and abusive “love.”

Love is not ownership. Humans are not pieces of property, objects, nor possessions. When mates consider lovers “theirs”, it leads to abusive, imprisoning and damaging behavior.

In moderation, jealousy can be healthy. Suspicion can signal we feel threatened. Feelings can be useful to alert us that we need to investigate and evaluate the particular situation at greater length. Healthy love involves asking questions and honestly sharing concerns and fears with our loved one.

Jealousy becomes destructive when assumptions overrun any reality or truths. Envy overrun goals of connection and real intimacy. Jealousy usually comes from hurt, neglect, or sense of abandonment. When we react to those feelings with jealousy and don’t address core issues, pain continues to spiral downward.

Further investigation into understanding our jealousy may reveal personal insecurity, unworthiness, fears, unhappiness, and false beliefs projected on our partner. The solution begins when we become aware of our reactions and instead response mindfully. Confront jealousy by labeling and noticing feelings and thoughts and then nurture those feelings of hurt with self-care and finding the facts.

First gain personal power and gain control of your emotions by acknowledging them. Refrain from reactive, abusive behavior.

Second, shift the focus and examine other perspectives. As we look at the situation from the other person’s point of view, we give ourselves time to access the condition from several outlooks.

Next identify core beliefs that are creating the reaction and determine any truths and falsehoods. Remember insecurity and low self-esteem can create false images.

Call a friend, talk to a therapist, or contact a neutral, unbiased person to aid in awareness and broaden perspectives. Communication with uninvolved friends, family, or professional can help us validate reality, confront inadequacies and develop control. Finally, we can consciously choose the most logical approach for the most effective and kind response.

If it comes to fail, our jealousy is warranted, and we feel rejected, it hurts. Rejection stings and it burns a lot. However, it is no excuse to cause harm or react with vengeful words. It is an opportune time to practice self-love and nurture. Most times rejection is not personal even though it may feel that way.

When we are enmeshed rejection feels like abandonment, primarily when we abandon our truth and feelings. When we deny our thoughts and feelings, we usually then say hurtful things. We may blame our partner and portray the image that their decisions control us. However, we are responsible for our actions, our feelings, and our choices. Sometimes it is difficult to bear personal responsibility but turmoil only succeeds. Many people falsely assume that “she makes me happy” or that he “needs” her to be happy. Enmeshment presents this falsehood and limitless boundaries.

Our most intimate relationships often, trigger childhood memories of abandonment, hurt, or abuse. Enmeshment and no individuation position our lover on a pedestal to control how we feel about ourselves.

It takes time to build self-esteem, self-love, and acceptance to be entirely independent. We no longer need someone else to show us our value and worth. We know that we matter and treat ourselves respectfully and create healthy boundaries and tolerances of weakness and strengths. We mature into an independent, loving, kind and accepting adult. We can regulate our emotions by reaching out to a friend and taking care of ourselves with kindness.

Jealousy can be useful and with awareness we can use this natural feeling to our advantage by practicing self-care, reaching out, and exploring alternatives. We can choose to be happy independently regardless of how someone else behaves. Don’t let jealousy enter unhealthy false beliefs, and controlling behaviors enacted through fears and hurts.

If we feel jealousy or rejected, it is a good time to reflect upon ourselves, analyze and access the events. Evaluate from different perspectives, outlooks and points of view. It can be painful emotionally but also a time for growth and maturity.

We all make choices for many reasons. They may be due to a means of survival; to learn, to grow, to experiment. Whatever the reason, it is not a time to judge or demean.

We all make mistakes, and different choices than what we think are best, regardless it is not a time to judge. Our best solution is to look within and control the one thing we can; ourselves. We are all independent. Our happiness and emotions are independent of anyone else. We choose how we respond and not react. Choose with awareness and calmness. Remember, no one makes us do anything. Accept responsibility for our actions, emotions and behavior. There are always consequences when emotions such as jealousy, anger, and envy act outward or inward negatively. Focus on the positive and have the courage to ask for help when feelings reach adverse outcomes with drugs, alcohol, overeating, workaholism, gambling, and abusive relationships.