The 3 Types Of Sexual Passion

By Mark Travers

Sexual passion refers to the sexual desire individuals experience either independently or with a partner. It encompasses the intense emotional and physical attraction, excitement and arousal partners often feel towards each other in romantic or sexual relationships.

Sexual passion can vary in intensity and importance for different individuals and relationships. In relationships where mutual sexual desire holds significant importance, one’s “sexual passion style” has a vital influence on the well-being of the relationship.

A 2019 study suggests that there are three types of sexual passion that affect individuals and relationship outcomes in distinct ways. Here they are, along with their unique consequences for relationships.

1. Obsessive Sexual Passion

Obsessive sexual passion represents an intense preoccupation with sexual thoughts and desires, potentially to the detriment of other aspects of a relationship. Individuals with this style may prioritize sexual attraction and fulfillment over emotional connection, which can lead to relationship conflicts or dissatisfaction.

Here, an individual’s behaviors and sexual motivations feel externally controlled rather than driven by internal values, desires or autonomy. Often, the sexual norms or scripts they follow are shaped by environmental influences rather than authentic personal preferences. Such individuals may feel controlled by their sexual passion rather than in control of it. Unsurprisingly, the obsessive sexual passion style has been associated with compulsive levels of pornography consumption.

2. Inhibited Sexual Passion

Like the obsessive style, inhibited sexual passion is also primarily determined by external influences. This style is characterized by a suppression or inhibition of sexual desires and thoughts.

Individuals with inhibited sexual passion styles may experience difficulty or discomfort expressing their sexual needs or desires due to personal insecurities, societal pressures or past negative experiences. For instance, their sexual passion may be controlled by a fear of rejection or sexual stigma as a result of their upbringing. This inhibition can lead to a lack of sexual fulfillment and potentially strain relationship dynamics.

3. Harmonious Sexual Passion

Harmonious sexual passion signifies a healthy, balanced integration of sexual passion within a relationship. Unlike obsessive and inhibited types, this style is based on internal motivations while experiencing a strong desire for intimacy and connection with one’s partner.

Individuals with harmonious sexual passion styles view sexuality positively, are comfortable with and open about their desires while being respectful and attentive to their partner’s boundaries and preferences. The emphasis here is on a mutually satisfying sexual connection that complements the emotional bond within a relationship without becoming overpowering or detrimental.

Research shows that harmonious sexual passion is associated with lower levels of impulsivity and shyness. This style emerges when individuals consciously choose and internalize sexual norms, values and scripts that align with their sense of self.

Why Harmonious Sexual Passion Is The Best Kind

A harmonious sexual passion style is the healthiest approach for couples as it is driven by self-awareness, true consent and mutual respect. The understanding of one’s own sexuality and sexual desires makes sexual intimacy an empowering activity rather than a space of limited personal agency.

Additionally, researchers of the 2019 study found that harmonious sexual passion is consistently associated with higher levels of sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction, whereas inhibited and obsessive styles are associated with comparatively lower levels of both.

A 2022 study also found that in relationships where men had an obsessive style and perceived their partner as being inhibited, both partners experienced lower levels of sexual satisfaction and negative relationship outcomes.

Notably, according to a 2020 study, higher levels of obsessive and inhibited sexual passion are linked to insecure attachment styles, which refer to patterns of relationship behavior and emotional responses characterized by difficulties in forming trusting and stable connections with others. Research findings indicate that attachment insecurity is associated with lower levels of sexual satisfaction, while demonstrating that harmonious sexual passion is connected to reduced levels of insecure attachment.

Research also suggests that obsessive sexual passion is associated with a tendency for infidelity, an inability to delay gratification, instances of aggression, jealous behavior and intrusive thoughts about sex. In contrast, harmonious passion is associated with experiencing flow states, positive emotions, a higher quality of interpersonal relationships, mental flexibility and a lack of defensiveness or inner conflict.

Conclusion

A harmonious sexual passion style allows individuals to experience personal autonomy and express sexual desire based on internal value systems rather than conditioned attitudes that are not entirely their own. Cultivating harmonious sexual passion requires inner reflection as well as open communication with a partner regarding values, beliefs and desires related to sexuality. It is also essential to prioritize emotional intimacy and connection outside of sexual activities. This harmony not only enhances sexual satisfaction but also contributes to a healthier attachment style, fostering personal growth and laying the foundation for mutually fulfilling and enduring relationships.

Complete Article HERE!

Understanding The Science Of Attraction

— The sensation of attraction in those who experience it can feel powerful and mysterious, but researchers have learned some illuminating things about how it works.

By BetterHelp Editorial Team

The feeling of being attracted to someone involves your physical senses, your hormones, your nerves, and even your immune system. It can be sparked by a wide variety of cues, from the shape of another person’s face to the particular way they smell. Keep reading for a more detailed look at what science can tell us about the factors that may draw two people who experience romantic and/or sexual attraction together.

The Science Of Attraction: The Basics

To start, let’s take a closer look at what’s actually happening in your body when you feel that first rush of attraction to someone else. The initial surge of excitement appears to involve a complex balancing act between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic system is the “fight-or-flight” mechanism, and it’s what makes your heart race and your pulse pound when you’re looking at someone you desire.

Research suggests that a moderate amount of sympathetic nervous activity may be necessary for the initial stages of arousal, but that too much or too little can suppress desire. This might explain why watching a scary movie when you know you’re safe can be a fun date night, or why activities that make your heart race can increase feelings of attraction. The parasympathetic system, then, is more associated with relaxation and pleasure. It’s involved in many of the physical changes in the body during sex, such as genital swelling and releasing of sexual fluids.

The early stages of arousal also often cause your blood to pump faster and your pupils to dilate. They may increase your skin’s conductivity too, which is perhaps why attraction can feel so electric. Then, as two people become better acquainted and their intimacy deepens, dopamine-mediated pathways in their brains may become more active. These systems are associated with rewards, habit formation, and even addiction, and they may be what prompts people who are falling in love to obsess over their partners and feel a rush of pleasure just from being near them.

Specific Factors Involved In Attraction

Extensive research has been done into why people are more attracted to some individuals than others. While there’s still plenty to learn, you can read on for an overview of some key research in this area.

The Role Of Immediate First Impressions

We’ve all seen cartoons or movies where a person spots someone they find good-looking and their jaw drops and eyes widen, conveying instant attraction. Though it doesn’t normally happen quite like this, research suggests that our brains do make very rapid judgments about who we find attractive.

In a study conducted at Trinity College in Dublin, researchers briefly showed participants images of possible dating partners. Later, they were given the opportunity to actually interact with the people in the photos during a speed-dating event. Their snap judgments during the four seconds they spent looking at the photos turned out to be good predictors of who they would go on to click with in conversation.

Brain scans pointed to two areas that seemed critical for making these judgments about attractiveness. One is a structure called the paracingulate cortex, which appears to be involved in social evaluation. It tended to light up when viewing photos of people that the majority of participants rated as attractive. Another area, the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, seemed to activate more for people that weren’t attractive to the majority but sparked a particular viewer’s interest.

The Role Of Eye Contact

While a quick glance at another person’s face may be enough to spark attraction, a long, soulful gaze may be important for deepening it. Prolonged eye contact can provoke an experience of intimacy and vulnerability that may be important in forming interpersonal bonds. In a pair of studies conducted in the 1980s, one found that those who exchanged a mutual, unbroken gaze with a participant they didn’t know for two minutes reported a “greater liking” of them than any of the other subjects. The other indicated that existing romantic partners who were assigned the same task reported a “significant increase in feelings of passionate love, dispositional love, and liking for their partner”.

In a related study, researcher Arthur Aron developed a series of 36 increasingly intimate questions that a pair of strangers could ask one another to generate a sense of closeness, which they were to follow by four minutes of prolonged, silent eye contact. His goal was to figure out how to craft the sense of intimacy that can make strangers fall in love. In this initial study, participants left with more positive feelings for each other—and one pair famously went on to get married.

The Role Of Scents

There seems to be a lot more to the science of attraction than visual appeal; smell appears to be another important piece of the puzzle.

Research suggests that, while humans were long considered to have an underdeveloped sense of smell compared to many animals, pheromones may actually play “an important role in the behavioral and reproduction biology of humans”.

Pheromones are chemicals humans naturally secrete that may serve as a form of “olfactory communication”, especially when it comes to attraction.

For instance, androstadienone, a compound present in male sweat, seemed to improve the mood, emotional focus, and sexual arousal of heterosexual women in some experiments. Meanwhile, chemicals called copulins that are found in vaginal secretions seem to provoke higher ratings of female attractiveness to heterosexual males. Copulins also caused men to rate themselves as more attractive to women, suggesting that they might play a role as confidence boosters.

>Another potential component of scent-based attraction may be the immune system. Some studies have indicated that heterosexual women may be more likely to be attracted to the body odor of men whose genes for certain types of immune cells are different from their own. There could be an evolutionary advantage in this behavior, because a child with more diversity in their immune system may be able to fight off a greater variety of diseases.

Attraction And Fertility

From an evolutionary perspective, all sexual behavior is aimed at producing offspring. That may be why studies have found that people of multiple genders find women’s faces more attractive when they’re ovulating. There appear to be subtle changes in appearance associated with this part of the menstrual cycle that can be detected even in photos. Another experiment showed a similar effect on body odor, with men preferring the smell of women’s clothes during the most fertile part of their cycles. Even women’s voices may shift during ovulation, sounding more attractive to heterosexual men.

Similarly, experiments suggest that women’s preferences for more masculine facial shapes and their corresponding body odors change with their cycle. Heterosexual women might be more likely to feel attraction in response to symmetrical faces and masculine-coded looks when their fertility is at its peak. However, these preferences appeared to be strongest when considering people for short-term relationships; fertility didn’t appear to have an effect on perceptions of possible long-term partners.

If the menstrual cycle can affect perceptions of attractiveness, however, can birth control pills do the same? There is some evidence that by changing the body chemistry of ovulation and menstruation, hormonal birth control can affect a person’s preferences for romantic partners. Scientific evidence on the topic includes:

  • Its effects on facial feature selection: A study of 170 heterosexual couples found that women taking birth control pills were more likely to pair up with men whose faces were less stereotypically masculine
  • Its effects on selection for body odor: Other experiments found that heterosexual women’s preferences for male body odor depended on whether they were using hormonal contraception. 
  • Its effects on sexual satisfaction: There’s even evidence suggesting that some women who start or stop using birth control pills during a relationship could be more likely to become less sexually satisfied and less attracted to their current partner.

Getting Support For Your Romantic Life

If you’re facing challenges in dating or in your romantic relationships, you may benefit from professional support. Many people find that meeting with a therapist is a helpful way to uncover patterns of attraction, sort through emotions related to a partner, and develop useful dating and relationship skills such as boundary setting and conflict resolution. A cognitive behavioral therapist in particular can also help you unearth any distorted thoughts you may have about your own attractiveness or ability to form relationships and shift them in a healthier direction for better potential outcomes.

If the thought of meeting with a provider in person for support with your romantic life seems awkward or intimidating, you might consider seeking guidance virtually instead. With a virtual therapy platform like BetterHelp, you can get matched with a licensed provider who you can meet with via phone, video call, and/or in-app messaging from the comfort of your home. Since a comprehensive analysis of past studies including more than 10,000 participants concluded that there was “no difference in effectiveness” between face-to-face and web-based counseling, you can feel confident in whichever method you choose.

Takeaway

Romantic and sexual attraction may involve countless subtle factors, from the sound of a person’s voice to the makeup of their immune system. The initial spark can happen in a matter of seconds, while lasting intimacy and compatibility take more time to develop.

Why do I feel so drawn to someone I barely know?

Although “love at first sight” may not always happen in real life, scientific research has found that we tend to judge people’s attractiveness quickly based on first impressions. For example, in the Trinity College study mentioned earlier in this article, scientists led an experiment to study the role of first impressions in attraction. They briefly showed participants pictures of potential partners before letting them interact at a speed dating event. They found that people’s brain activity from seeing the photos for just four seconds tended to predict who they would connect with during the actual date. This may explain why it’s possible to feel instantly attracted to someone you don’t know very well.

What causes strong physical attraction?

Certain features of people’s bodies, like facial symmetry and youthfulness, can play a role in physical attraction, but physical beauty is not the only component. Chemicals like sex hormones, pheromones, and neurotransmitters can also cause you to become physically attracted to someone. Although these factors may not be consciously noticeable, they can play a large role in sexual desire and perceptions of physical attractiveness.

Can you sense when someone is attracted to you?

Although there may not always be an easy way to tell if someone finds you attractive, a few physical cues that may be signs of interest include:

  • Using open body language
  • Maintaining eye contact
  • Seeking physical touch
  • Smiling
  • Asking you about yourself
  • Looking for ways to spend more time with you

That said, it can be important to avoid making assumptions about someone’s interest, as different people may show attraction in different ways.

How do you know if you’re actually attracted to someone?

Some common physical signs that you may be attracted to someone include:

  • Jitters or restlessness
  • Blushing
  • Sweating
  • A rise in body temperature
  • Rapid breathing or a rapid heartbeat

If you’re attracted to someone, you may also experience feelings of anticipation or excitement. You might notice a desire to spend more time with them or find yourself thinking about them often. Spending more time with them can also provide insight into your level of attraction. That said, not everyone may experience attraction the same way.

What happens in your brain when you are attracted to someone?

When you’re attracted to someone, certain brain regions, like the hypothalamus, the nucleus accumbens, and the ventral tegmental area, tend to activate. This can cause the release of oxytocin, the so-called “cuddle hormone,” and other chemicals related to physical desire and sexual gratification. Growing closer to someone can also trigger dopamine release, leading to feelings of pleasure and making you want to spend more time with them. Serotonin and norepinephrine, two other chemicals, may be responsible for the sense of well-being and excitement you might feel when you’re together.

These are just a few examples of the role the brain can play in attraction.

Why do we fall in love scientifically?

A complex set of factors can contribute to feelings of romantic love.

It may be worth remembering that humans originally evolved to find romantic partners to reproduce and raise offspring with. Therefore, initial attraction is often tied to a partner’s fertility and the survival chances of their potential offspring.

Through spending time with a possible partner and getting to know them better, other factors may come into play, such as personality traits, interests, and common principles. Hormones, pheromones, cultural norms, and timing may also play a role over the course of a romantic relationship. That said, love can be highly individual, and not all these factors may affect people the same way.

Complete Article HERE!

Can You Be Addicted To Love?

— Here’s What We Know

Being ‘hooked’ on love can cause unhealthy relationship patterns and obsessive thoughts

When you hear the term ”love addiction,” you may think of a storybook character who gulps down a pink, sparkly love potion and suddenly finds themselves instantly infatuated with someone.

In most cases, the spell or potion doesn’t last long, and these folktales leave us with a cautionary message: Love, in excess, can become harmful. Rather than be consumed, it’s better to strive for a healthy, balanced relationship where love is reciprocated.

In real life, we navigate love in different ways by going on dating apps, managing the odds of being ghosted or dodging love bombs. But can a passion for someone else actually become addictive? While there’s no definitive research on this topic, psychologists do point out that love — or the pursuit of it — can be the root of other issues like anxiety, depression and unhealthy relationship patterns.

In other words, if you feel like love can make you obsessive, you’re not alone. Real-life love can be complicated stuff — and it’s never as simple as waiting for the love potion to wear off.

Postdoctoral psychology fellow Gina Gerardo, PhD, talks us through “love addiction” and how you can strengthen your relationship with love.

What is love addiction?

There’s no precise definition for love addiction because it’s not an actual condition as much as it is an abstract concept. After all, you can’t really test love in a lab and see how someone reacts.

But as some research has explored, you can make note of how relationships affect our lives, both physically and mentally. A 2023 review described love addiction — sometimes called relationship addiction or obsessive love disorder — as an overwhelming and compulsive longing for love, attention and affection from others.

It can look like developing feelings toward specific people in an unhealthy or extreme way, or as constantly seeking out romantic partners.

While love addiction isn’t an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), Dr. Gerardo points out that the term can help define certain relationship problems or emotional issues you could experience.

“If someone finds that love is becoming particularly distressing or disruptive to their lives, it’s worth asking more about it and potentially treating,” she explains. That means while you might never get a diagnosis for love addiction, you can treat the associated behaviors.

In fact, love addiction may not always come across with the behaviors typically associated with addiction. It can also go hand-in-hand with a mood disorder, an obsessive-compulsive disorder or even an impulse-control disorder.

Signs and symptoms of love addiction

If you’re a fan of love songs and romance novels, you may have an idea in your head of the symptoms of love addiction: Feeling empty when the person isn’t there, having to be in touch with the person constantly, having an overwhelming physical reaction when the person is in the room.

And, according to the current research, that’s not too far off.

“One distinction from other types of addictions is that there’s a love object,” clarifies Dr. Gerardo. “As opposed to a substance that people feel is addictive or find that they are dependent on, this would be an object, whether that’s a person or something else, they start to become obsessed with.”

For example, a 2023 study examined how love addiction and unhealthy attachments between adults can lead to intense negative emotions and feelings of low self-worth.

Another study from 2010 study found similarities between extreme passion and substance dependence — from feelings of euphoria when near one’s love object to a negative mood and sleep disturbances when separated.

Symptoms of love addiction can include:

  • Obsessive thoughts. Feeling constantly preoccupied with thoughts of love and romance or the object of your affection. This becomes obsessive when it’s challenging to focus on other aspects of your life.
  • Fear of abandonment. An intense fear of being alone or abandoned, leading to clinging behavior and a constant need for reassurance. You may also experience a sort of “withdrawal” or intrusive thoughts when the significant other isn’t around.
  • Unhealthy relationship patterns. Repeating cycles of intense, short-lived relationships or staying in toxic relationships despite obvious red flags.
  • Neglecting self-care. Prioritizing the needs and desires of the partner over personal well-being and neglecting your own goals, interests and needs.
  • Emotional turmoil. Experiencing highs and lows depending on the state of the current relationship. “You may feel a euphoric feeling that is more than what is normally experienced in romantic relationships,” says Dr. Gerardo.

How love addiction impacts your well-being

When it comes to matters of the heart, it can be difficult to recognize when the love in your life is doing more harm than good.

While symptoms of love addiction can weave into other mental health disorders, they can also magnify existing problems. Some mental health issues associated with love addiction include:

Dr. Gerardo also warns of love addiction affecting your day-to-day life.

“If it’s harming your other relationships with friends and family or if it’s keeping you from other responsibilities like work, taking care of children, keeping up with bills or medical appointments, that’s a sign that there could be a problem,” she says.

How to get help

When dealing with love addiction, you might consider quitting cold turkey, swearing off love and moving to the woods alone. But just like other addictions, an obsessive need for love should be treated with care.

Plus, love is something that’s very important to make us feel fulfilled in our lives. Rather than trying to let it go completely, you can work to find a healthy balance.

Some coping strategies that Dr. Gerardo suggests include:

Open communication

As symptoms of love addiction will usually involve another person, communication is key when it comes to resolving any issues you may be having. You might realize that you’ve been avoiding communicating because of fear or anxiety — but having an open dialogue about your feelings can ultimately bring clarity to your relationship.

“This includes communication with the partner, with yourself and even with friends and family before entering a relationship,” explains Dr. Gerardo.

Specifically with a partner, it’s good to be honest with some of the complicated feelings you’ve been having. This can help you feel more open about what you’re feeling and can clue them into what you might be working through and why.

For example, maybe to deal with feelings of love addiction, you decide to spend more time alone. Communicating this change in your behavior with your partner so they know what your motivations are can help maintain a healthy bond. And if you’re having trouble putting your emotions into words, couples counseling can also be a good option.

Seek other perspectives

One common red flag of any relationship — romantic or otherwise — is if it puts blinders on you from the rest of the world. When this happens, it can be hard to notice any problems or toxic behaviors. Dr. Gerardo recommends popping this “love bubble” by seeking out people in your life to get their points of view.

If your friends and family notice that these problems are persisting for a long period of time and are getting in the way of all your normal responsibilities and behaviors, then that would be a cue to pump the brakes and communicate your needs with your partner,” she says.

Therapy and counseling

Individual or group therapy can help address underlying issues and learn healthier relationship patterns.

If you feel like love addiction might be affecting your personal health or the health of your relationship, talking with a therapist can help you work through your concerns. A session with a couples counselor or some other kind of group therapy can also help get you and your partner to a healthier and more balanced place.

The bottom line

An addiction to love can definitely have an effect on your well-being. If you find yourself completely engrossed by someone and something to the point that it’s affecting how you eat, sleep or react to stressful situations, it might be time to assess your relationship with love. With focus, outside perspectives and counseling, there are ways to find peace with feelings of love and turn them into a more positive force in your life.

Complete Article HERE!

The Psychology of Love

How we love one another varies greatly

Like hunger, thirst, sleep and sex, love is essential for human survival. It can often feel so primal and mysterious that it may be hard for some of us to define. For thousands of years, we’ve tried to understand how love works by studying it and writing about it in songs and poetry. We’ve seen love play out so many times in movies and television shows that we find ourselves time and time again rooting for our favorite couples and wishing to live out our own wildest dreams.

But if love has the ability to inspire entire nations to act in the name of love — after all, Helen of Troy was said to launch a thousand ships based on her beauty alone — can we ever hope to understand the breadth and depth of true love and all of its qualities?

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, psychologist Susan Albers, PsyD, breaks down the various types of love based on one popular psychological theory, how we move between different stages of our relationships, and how love languages can impact the way we support each other when we need it most.

Different types of love

There are a number of theories that categorize the kinds of love we experience in our lives (and some that even stem as far back as the ancient Greeks). Dr. Albers points to Robert Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love, in particular as one theory that’s inclusive and easy to understand no matter the kind of relationship you’re in.

Sternberg’s theory proposes that all relationships are fundamentally based on three key components that function as the three points of a relational triangle: intimacy, passion and commitment.

  • Intimacy is based on an emotional bond and a feeling of closeness and comfort.
  • Passion includes sexual and physical attraction and that feeling of romance.
  • Commitment is the decision or choice to love another person and the efforts that someone is willing to do to maintain that relationship.

“Attraction is more like a magnetic force you can feel,” says Dr. Albers. “When those fun butterfly feelings evolve into a warm sense of commitment and care for someone’s needs, this is a sign of love developing.”

There are eight kinds of love that can occur based on varying levels of each key component. Each kind of love is different enough that you might find yourself maintaining relationships in several categories, but sometimes, a single relationship will evolve over time, transitioning among the types along the way.

Non-love

This type of love is a bit self-explanatory. In this type of connection, you’re indifferent to the other person. There’s no passion, no intimacy and no need for commitment. This person may be someone you see on the street, an acquaintance or someone you know very casually.

Liking

This type of love is the basis for most friendships. In this category, you’re high on intimacy but there’s no passion or commitment. In this type of love, you’re more focused on the real close bond you share with someone else, so you strengthen that bond over similar qualities, interests or characteristics.

Infatuation

High in passion, but without intimacy or commitment, this is what most people think of when they have a crush or experience love at first sight. You may not know someone on a deeper level, but you’ll experience real physical changes like the feeling of butterflies in your stomach or a sense of anxiousness or a flush of desire whenever you see or think about the person you’re attracted to. “A lot of relationships start out this way and then, if they’re going to be lasting, they turn over into something more romantic,” says Dr. Albers.

Empty love

If you’re experiencing high levels of commitment, but you’re without passion or intimacy, this is called empty love. Sometimes, this can be the starting point in an arranged marriage or couples find themselves experiencing this type of love if they’re staying together for their kids or not financially stable enough to leave a relationship. “Unfortunately, I think I see empty love the most in counseling,” says Dr. Albers. “This can feel like a really difficult place for people because they feel kind of stuck. They want to build more intimacy or passion because it was there initially.”

Romantic love

This type of love may encompass a few kinds of relationships. High in passion and intimacy, but without commitment, you may fall into this type if you’re dating someone but you’re not quite exclusive. Friends with benefits fall into this category, too, especially if you’ve known someone for a while and have a close bond. “Maybe they’ve been burned in the past or maybe they’re divorced and afraid of recommitting,” says Dr. Albers. “Maybe they feel that spark but they’re unsure if this is someone they want to commit to.”

Companionate love

Think of this stage as an elevated form of liking: Maybe you’ve been friends for years or you’re best friends who rely on each other through thick and thin. With high levels of intimacy and commitment, but no passion, these are some of your deepest bonds that can often lead to a lifetime of connection.

Fatuous love

This type of love burns bright and fast. High in passion and commitment, but without intimacy, this is a swift-moving relationship that evolves from one stage to the next quite quickly. Maybe you’re comfortable moving in or getting married much sooner than most. Sexual attraction is a huge driver for this kind of relationship, but perhaps you don’t know each other on a deeper level than in other relationships.

“You feel a lot of sparks toward this person and you’re committed, but all of a sudden, you might start to realize that there’s no emotional connection,” explains Dr. Albers. “It’s hard to get out of this relationship because you’ve already tied yourself in.” And, when some relationships burn too bright too fast, they may burn out quickly, resulting in someone getting ghosted.

Consummate love

This is the kind of love that’s top tier, the one all the movies, books and songs try to capture in one fell swoop. Sternberg theorized that all relationships should try to achieve this type of love, but this is the most difficult love to achieve, as it requires a perfect balance among high levels of intimacy, passion and commitment.

“This is the gold standard of relationships,” says Dr. Albers. “There are a lot of expectations or feelings in how your relationship should be, but the reality of life is that it’s hard to always feel passionate with your partner and sometimes it’s a challenge to have the time to connect with your significant other.”

Regardless of where your relationship falls, it’s important to recognize that while there’s no wrong way to build a relationship, the kind of love you’re searching for depends on the degree you work on all three key components.

“Relationships that are based on a single element are less likely to survive and keep going than one based on two or more aspects,” says Dr. Albers. “It’s helpful to know which pieces are missing or which pieces you want to build up in your relationship.”

Stages of love

So how long does it take for someone to fall in love?

For some, it takes mere seconds and for others, it could take years. If someone has had more positive experiences and knows exactly what they want, love can happen more quickly than someone who might have experienced hard breakups or trauma. But it also depends on how you’re defining love and the strength of your connection.

“Your history and the strength of your physical reactions can dictate how quickly you fall in love,” says Dr. Albers. “Some people call the first initial stage of infatuation love and other people move toward the last stage of attachment and that’s when they put the label of love on it.”

Stage one: Falling in love

Attraction comes at you fast. According to one study, it takes just one-fifth of a second for someone to know if they’re attracted to someone. That heady rush of dopamine brings on a flush of feelings, notably butterflies, intense longing and fixation. In fact, some neurobiological studies indicate areas of the brain become increasingly more excited when someone sees the face of the person they love or are attracted to.

“Love starts in the brain, not the heart,” says Dr. Albers. “When people report being in love, they have a tsunami of activity in the brain.”

Often, we’re attracted to someone that feels familiar, so if you happen to have a type, there’s probably a reason for that.

“There is a lot happening unconsciously in terms of the pull toward someone and it’s usually because they’re familiar in some way, whether it’s their mannerisms, their demeanor or their presentation of the world,” explains Dr. Albers.

However short-lived this first initial stage of love may be, there’s a certain level of excitement and drive associated with it to kickstart the rest of your relationship, should it go any further than love at first sight.

Stage two: Getting to the good part

If the first stage of falling in love is about attraction, the second stage is all about removing the rose-colored glasses and really seeing the person you’re attracted to. It’s normal to transplant expectations and desires on the person we’re attracted to in an effort to fit the mold for that theatrical romance we’ve always dreamed about. But that often means you’ll overlook red flags.

“In the second stage, there’s some disillusionment,” says Dr. Albers. “You really get to know who they are instead of who you want them to be. If you continue to bond and like who you see, that’s what moves you into the next phase.”

Sometimes, love can be challenging in that it fulfills a need in the moment, and then that need may eventually change over time. Sometimes, you might find that your needs are overlooked in exchange for prioritizing your partner’s needs, which results in a codependent relationship. But the biggest takeaway here is: If someone doesn’t love you on the same level you love them, that’s OK.

“A lot of times, people take it personally,” says Dr. Albers. “Them not loving you has more to do with them than it does with you. The people who are the most successful at love are those that can accept the other person for who they are without trying to change them.”

Stage three: Creating an attachment

Over time, your dopamine levels tend to drop off so that the thrill of love and all that adrenaline you feel during initial attraction starts to settle down. As you further solidify your connection with your partner and create an attachment to them, your brain increases its levels of oxytocin and vasopressin, which help maintain that bonded feeling you have for longer periods.

“Those feelings of lust and that wild excitement of attraction mellows and turns into feelings of connection,” says Dr. Albers. “It goes from fireworks to feeling like you care about that person’s needs and you’re interested in their future and you invest in them.”

Once you’re attached to someone, they play a pretty significant role in your life even when you’re participating in the smallest, mundane, everyday activities. You tend to grow together and partner up: It’s your team against the world.

And if at some point that attachment deteriorates and you end up growing apart from one another, you’re forever changed by it.

“When people talk about people from their past that they’ve loved, they’ve been changed by it in some ways that can’t ever be undone,” says Dr. Albers. “They still play a role in your memory and care, and those experiences change what love means to you.”

How your love languages affect your relationships

With all the physical changes that come with falling in love, and all the added pressure of expectations versus reality, it can seem a bit daunting when trying to figure out how to strengthen relationships and maintain them long past the honeymoon phase. If you’re looking to start with simple solutions, Dr. Albers suggests considering the five love languages, a concept created by author Gary Chapman in 1992.

“It’s a simple way to communicate the very important concept that there are various ways to feel loved,” says Dr. Albers.

The idea poses that there are five main love languages in which we express love and want to be loved, and while you may find more meaningful experiences by expressing one of these languages, your partner may find more meaning in others. The key here is identifying how you want to be loved, but also finding ways to love your partner through these five areas:

  • Words of affirmation: Telling your partner what you love about them, small acts of praise or giving them compliments are small ways to express this love language — but it doesn’t have to stop at words.You can send a thoughtful card, email or text, or share a meaningful memory, photo, meme or social media post to drive this one home.
  • Acts of service: This love language is about picking up responsibility in small and meaningful ways. Maybe your partner doesn’t like doing a certain chore, so you pick that up for them. Or, it could be as simple as cooking them breakfast, bringing them a cup of coffee or offering to run errands when they’re short on time or feeling sick. “Love is a verb,” says Dr. Albers. “Do one thing each day to make your partner feel special.”
  • Quality time: If your partner loves new experiences and date night ideas, this might be the area to focus on. The key here is to give your partner your undivided attention. Maybe go on a walk, watch a movie or pick up a hobby together. Whatever you decide to do, it’s important to do it fully with your partner’s focus front and center. “You can do acts of service while spending time together,” says Dr. Albers. “When your partner is talking, put down your phone and really take in what they’re saying.”
  • Gift giving: Roses, jewelry or any small token of your affection — this one is pretty straightforward and tends to be amplified when important events, holidays or anniversaries roll around. And you don’t necessarily need to go big or go home — a gift can be something as simple as picking up their favorite snack for your next movie night.
  • Physical touch: This could be as simple as holding hands, cuddling, a kiss or a hug. If physical touch is high on your partner’s list, sexual intimacy may also rank high on their priorities. “The person who uses words to express their affection instead of touch may have to work a bit harder to get out of their comfort zone and think about connecting through touch,” notes Dr. Albers.

The sooner you communicate with your partner, the easier it’ll become to love, elevate and support them. And if there is ever a lull in the relationship, turning to these love languages as life rafts may be key in getting things back on the right track.

“You can identify what someone’s love language is at any point and it’s really a helpful tool in helping to express how you care about someone,” says Dr. Albers.

Complete Article HERE!

How to break up with someone you love

— 11 tips from relationship therapists

You shouldn’t try to keep close tabs on your ex’s life after your breakup.

By

  • Breaking up with someone you love will be painful, so you should prepare yourself for it.
  • After the breakup, you shouldn’t try to be friends right away or consistently stalk their social media.
  • You should also try to surround yourself with your friends — rather than jumping into a new relationship.

Regardless of if you’re the one being broken up with or if you’re the one ending a relationship, breakups are never fun. Sadly, love isn’t always enough to keep a partnership going, and from time to time, you may need to break up with someone you truly love. However, ending a relationship is rarely simple or cut and dry.

Here are 11 tips from relationship therapists for healthily breaking up with someone you love.

1. Give it your all before leaving

Actively trying to better the relationship – such as working on breaking unhealthy habits or trying couples therapy –before you end it for good can help you avoid “could haves” and “should haves” that you might dwell on down the line. “Knowing that you gave it your all to improve the relationship and it did not work will allow you to heal faster,” says Ana De la Cruz, LMFT, relationship therapist at Choosing Therapy.

2. Know that it will hurt

There’s no need to sugar coat it: breakups are hard, so you should keep in mind that it’s absolutely normal to feel pain during this process. While this is scary, it shouldn’t be a reason to go back on your decision to break up. “Breaking up with someone you love is probably the hardest decision of your life. You might feel that you are literally pulling a piece of your heart out,” says De la Cruz.

3. Know your “why” and stand your ground

Having a clear reason (or reasons) why the relationship needs to end can help you stand your ground throughout the breakup process, says De la Cruz. This way, you can be prepared if your partner tries to convince you to change your mind.

Stay strong and remember exactly why the relationship isn’t working out for you. Tune into the logical side of your brain rather than getting overtaken by emotion.

4. Don’t try to be friends right away

Taking time apart and temporarily cutting contact can help you heal post-breakup. Know that it’s okay that you and your ex won’t be friends right away. “Trying to jump into a friendship right away will just be confusing and painful. It’s possible to be friends down the road, but only once both parties have processed the breakup and moved on,” says Ashera DeRosa, LMFT, relationship therapist at Whole Stories Therapy.

Plus, you should make sure that you want to be friends for the right reasons if you truly want the friendship to last. A 2017 study found that people who wanted to stay friends with their ex for security or practical reasons were more likely to experience positive friendship outcomes opposed to those who wanted to stay friends due to unresolved romantic desires.

5. Set boundaries with your ex

Especially if you can’t cut contact or take time away from your ex, such as if you’re still on a lease together or need to co-parent, be sure to set reasonable boundaries with them.

For example, DeRosa says you may want to set boundaries surrounding certain topics of conversation. “Both parties will be hurting, but it’s not appropriate to process how much it hurts with one another. Likewise, it’s not healthy to share the ins and outs of your new single life,” says DeRosa. This can lead to more hurt feelings, or sliding back into the comfort of the relationship, even when you know it’s not healthy.

6. Set boundaries with your friend group

Whether you don’t want to receive new information about your ex or if you don’t want to hear them trash talk your ex, don’t hesitate to let your friends know where you draw the line. For example, DeRosa says you may ask your friends to avoid giving you updates about things they’ve seen on your ex’s social media. Decide what makes you most comfortable, and stick with it.

7. Avoid social media stalking

It can be very tempting and all too easy to give into stalking your ex on various social media platforms, but this will likely do more harm than good. A 2012 study found that “Facebook Surveillance” of an ex is linked to more distress and negative emotions surrounding the breakup, as well as more sexual desire and longing for the ex.

8. Don’t jump right into a new relationship

If you immediately enter a new relationship after a breakup, you won’t be giving yourself time to fully process your emotions. “There’s a time and a place to move on, but it’s definitely not when you’re still in your feelings about your breakup,” says DeRosa. There’s no magic number for how many weeks or months you should wait before starting a new relationship, but you should feel like you’ve fully processed the breakup and feel more emotionally healed.

9. Spend time with your circle

Of course it’s okay to spend time alone, but leaning on your other loved ones will keep you strong through the breakup. “As you heal through the process, surrounding yourself with friends and family and having a strong support system will help you move on,” says De la Cruz.

10. Feel your feelings

Breakups can bring about a rollercoaster of emotions. DeRosa says some days you might feel great and full of energy, while on other days you feel super sad –– but both states are okay and normal. Feel your emotions, even the hard ones, instead of pushing them away. Journaling, making art, or talking with friends can help you cope, DeRosa says.

A 2009 study found that spending time journaling about the positive aspects of a breakup helped people get a new perspective on their breakup and feel more optimistic.

11. Seek professional help if you need it

Breakups are a major life change, and it’s natural that your mental health may take a bit of a hit during this challenging time. However, DeRosa says if you’re having far more difficult days than good, consider speaking to a therapist.

Insider’s takeaway

Going through a breakup isn’t easy, and you’ll need to have patience and be kind to yourself during this difficult transitional time. It’s unlikely that you’ll feel better overnight, so give yourself (and your partner) the time and space to heal. Ultimately, you’ll be able to move on and experience love once again.

Complete Article HERE!

9 Of The Best Bits Of Relationship Advice We Got From Experts In 2021

By Sarah Regan

For couples who’ve navigated the past year successfully, consider that a major win. Just like 2020, the year 2021 was another case of unpredictability, trials, and tribulations. Without recounting everything that’s gone down in the past year, the point is, there’s no doubt it put relationships to the test.

With buzzwords like “gaslighting” and “codependency” hitting the mainstream, it would appear more and more people are waking up to unhealthy relationship dynamics—and healthy ones—in an effort to improve their relationships.

So, we rounded up some of the best pieces of relationship advice we heard from experts this year so couples can continue to flourish in 2022.

Never stop dancing with each other.

“Dancing is attunement. With dancing, there’s a nonverbal attunement to the rhythm of another, the body of another, the motion of another. It is the one thing you cannot do and be [sad] at the same time. You can paint and cry; you can write and cry; you can listen to music and weep, but you can’t dance and weep. It energizes you. It enlivens you. I’ve spent hours watching elderly couples dance together, and it is grace; it is elegant; it is erotic; it is alive.”

Esther Perel, psychotherapist and world-renowned relationship expert

One of the best things you can do in your relationship is find the balance between connection and autonomy.

“The two central drives for human beings are autonomy (control of our individuality) and attachment (urge for relationship). Healthy maturation means that we are able to achieve both of these and balance them in our lives. The ability to balance our needs for autonomy and attachment is called differentiation. Differentiation is a biological process that occurs in all species. For humans, it is about becoming more of an individual and a solid person through relationships with others. It is the ability to separate ourselves from others. Differentiation allows us to feel our own subjective reality—bodies, emotions, and thoughts—as separate from another person while being in relationship with another person.”

Jordan Dann, MFA, L.P., CIRT, licensed psychoanalyst

Yes, there are some instances when you can be friends with an ex—but not always.

“Being friends with your ex can be a good idea when other aspects of the relationship were valuable to your growth, development, or life goals. If you and your ex identify that you make better business partners, workout buddies, or friends, and you are able to maintain healthy boundaries with each other, then creating an authentic friendship could work. If you discover that you or your ex are unable to maintain boundaries with each other, then you should cut ties. If you truly want to move on and find that your ex is still occupying the romantic space that your future partner should have access to, then it’s a good idea to cut things off completely with your ex.”

Weena Cullins, LCMFT, licensed marriage therapist

Stop stressing about how much you have sex, and focus on how much intimacy you have.

“The point of sex, from my point of view, is to share pleasure with your partner and to feel connected in the process. Spend intimate time together, without pressure to hit a goal or do a certain thing. Sex is like going to the playground. It’s the outing that counts, not whether you go down the slide. We don’t need an agenda; we can get inspired in the moment and do what we feel like doing. The truth is that you literally cannot fail. Any shared outing like that is a success.”

Jessa Zimmerman, M.A., certified sex therapist and marriage counselor

Cultivating “aperture awareness” can help deepen your connection and resolve arguments faster.

“The problem with all of these ways of dealing with conflict is that they lack an awareness of what’s actually happening for you and your partner in the present. That’s where aperture awareness comes in. During conflict, begin to pay attention in each moment as you interact with your partner. Notice your sense of openness, or closedness, also known as your emotional aperture. Aperture awareness is a felt sensation. Just as we do not ‘see’ by consciously thinking about the information our eyes absorb, we do not become aware of our emotional openness through thought and analysis. Rather, we learn to feel it, to become aware of it, and then to pay close and careful attention. Simply asking yourself, ‘Do I feel open or closed right now?’ directs your attention to this felt experience. With practice, the experience of aperture awareness becomes more accessible.”

Kathryn Ford, M.D., licensed psychotherapist

Understand the difference between love and limerence.

“With limerence, you may find yourself hyper-focusing on the subject of your affection (the limerent object) and their positive characteristics to the point of ignoring existing flaws and directing your intense, irrational emotions toward the idea of what they represent for you instead of who that person actually is in reality. Love is rooted in connection, intimacy, mutuality, and reality, whereas limerence is rooted in possession, obsession, jealousy, and delusions. The version you may have built about the person is simply a glorified and exaggerated fantasy made specifically to represent the fulfillment of [your] unmet needs. The preoccupation with them can result in a significant decrease of functionality in your other relationships and responsibilities.”

Silva Depanian, LMFT, licensed marriage and family therapist

Show appreciation for each other every single day.

“Every successful company has a foundational commitment to ensuring that the people who are part of the culture feel seen, heard, and valued. People choose to continue to work in an environment where they know they have an impact, and the only way they know they have an impact is because someone told them so. In relationships, a robust appreciation practice is a tremendous way to ward off resentment and criticism. Making daily deposits of appreciation into the bank account of your relationship will also develop a culture of goodwill and high regard. The daily appreciations you offer your partner will create a reserve of generosity and trust, which will serve your partnership during inevitable moments of conflict.”

Jordan Dann, MFA, L.P., CIRT, licensed psychoanalyst

If you struggle with codependency, focus on releasing attachment.

“Releasing attachment to outcome requires a willingness to tolerate the unknown and live with uncertainty. It’s critical to practice this regularly when you’re trying to overcome codependency. Part of what maintains the cycle of codependent behaviors is the fear of disappointing someone whose opinion matters to you, or of being ‘disliked.’ Releasing outcome simply means learning to tolerate the possibility of disappointing important others in your life. Yes, you may disappoint people. Yes, they may temporarily have negative feelings toward you. You don’t have to be happy about this possibility, but you do need to practice tolerating it, so you can be freer to be you.”

Alicia Muñoz, LPC, certified couples’ therapist

Make a conscious effort to stay curious about your partner and continue getting to know them.

“We have this almost conceit that we know exactly how they’re going to behave in a given situation. There’s some beauty in accepting the ‘unknowableness’ of somebody and priming yourself to look for what’s different about that person rather than retreating into, ‘I know what they’re going to do, I know the end of this movie.’ Instead of looking for what you know, look for something that’s different about them in some way.”

Samantha Boardman, M.D., positive psychiatrist

Complete Article HERE!

How to Spot a Love Addict

Experts question whether we can describe a toxic relationship the way we talk about gambling or alcohol. But some have found that framework to be a helpful step in the road to freedom.

By Kaila Yu

Tara Blair Ball, a relationship coach in Memphis, met her ex on Match.com. They instantly clicked.

“He felt like my soulmate. It was the little things; we both talked about the differences in the old Spider-Man movie with Tobey Maguire and the comic book. A lot of people didn’t know about these details, and it just felt like this bonding experience.”

On their first phone call, they talked for eight hours — so long that Ms. Ball came late to work and was fired from her job at Target. “I took that as a sign that I was supposed to be connected to him,” she said, laughing.

When the red flags started to appear, Ms. Ball brushed them aside. “He started acting jealous and wanted to know where I was, what I was doing, who I was talking to, how long I was going to be there and when I was going to be back.” Instead of seeing warning signs, Ms. Ball interpreted his actions as affection.

“We were quickly talking about marriage and moving in together. I felt like I couldn’t be away from him for very long — I’d be in withdrawal.”

If the situation seems to contain some of the track marks of an addiction, it’s because it does. And like many addicts, Ms. Ball took a long time to recognize and admit she was experiencing what some call “love addiction.”

The definition of love addiction is hard to pin down. Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous calls it an extreme dependency on one person whereby “relationships or sexual activities have become increasingly destructive to career, family and sense of self-respect.” Helen Fisher, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and a leading expert in romantic love, said it’s any relationship that leads to “obsessive craving and intrusive thinking,” meaning impulsive or unwanted thoughts.

One meta-analysis looked at 83 studies and estimated that about 3 percent of the population has had a serious problem with love addiction over a given year. That number may be higher than 10 percent among young adults.

Looking at TikTok, where Ms. Ball began to share her experiences with love addiction, you might think the number of love addicts is even higher. The hashtag #ToxicRelationship on TikTok clocks in at 1.7 billion views, plus another 320 million more for related terms such as “love addiction,” “love addict,” and “codependency.” Whether telling their tales or reacting to others, people are finding healing and community on the short-form video sharing app by posting the signs of love addiction, with memes and tips.

Wherever you decide to share about your experiences, it’s helpful to be able to recognize when a dream romance strays into love addiction.

Is Love Addiction Even Real?

“Anybody who says it’s not an addiction, all I can tell you is that we’ve looked in the brain,” said Dr. Fisher.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Dr. Fisher and her colleagues have studied romantic love and found increased activity in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens, “that becomes active when anything becomes an addiction — alcohol or nicotine or cocaine or heroin or amphetamines or any one of those things,” Dr. Fisher said.

But some in the scientific community don’t even accept love addiction as a diagnosis. “Love addiction is a contested concept,” said Brian D. Earp, a Ph.D. candidate and the associate director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University who has studied love addiction. He noted that some of the disagreement comes down to the definition of love itself.

“Some feminist philosophers argue that if a relationship is toxic or abusive it shouldn’t even be labeled as love,” Mr. Earp said, adding that some prefer the label “addiction to toxic relationship behaviors.”

To make matters even more complicated, experts also can’t agree on the definition of addiction. Mr. Earp said some neuroscientists believe that something labeled an addiction must be bad for you. Therefore, “if you rely on an activity that might be classified as unhealthy but it’s totally compatible with living a flourishing life, some experts would say there’s no reason to call this an addiction,” he said.

Healthy Love Versus Addictive Love

Whether or not you believe love addiction is real, thinking of a toxic relationship as an addiction can be useful to someone dealing with the repercussions of an unhealthy partnership. “The bottom line is this: an unhealthy relationship tends to involve a search for a dopamine rush” and involves power and control, said Steven Sussman, a professor of preventive medicine, psychology and social work at the University of Southern California.

Those experiencing love addiction “have the behavioral pattern of addiction,” said Dr. Fisher. She explained that this may manifest in mood swings from despair to euphoria and a willingness to put up with abuse. Additionally their personalities may shift when they’re addicted, leading to lifestyle changes or a tendency to distort reality.

Houston-based literacy specialist, Synthia Smith, said she succumbed to those feelings with her now ex-boyfriend. “The prospect of living my life without him was unbearable — I would be emotionally dead,” she remembered.

So great was this fear that she stayed in the relationship for two and a half years, despite a fast-growing litany of warning signs, such as the time she discovered his profile on the dating website Plenty of Fish. After confronting him, he claimed that he was there to network for his business and shamed her for bringing it up before exploding in rage.

Working Through a Toxic Relationship

Becoming involved with someone who compromises your mental health can be a scary and isolating experience. Whether you believe yourself to be a love addict, or just need help getting out of a bad situation, there are resources to consult and healthy actions you can take.

Find community

Katlynn Rowland, who owns a housecleaning business in Ocala, Florida, was involved with an emotionally abusive man when she first came across Ms. Smith’s TikToks about gaslighting. “It almost felt good when I first watched the videos because it felt like I was being validated,” Ms. Rowland said, “and that I wasn’t crazy.”

Ms. Smith’s videos gave Ms. Rowland the courage to leave her ex-boyfriend — and to post about it on TikTok. “I was scared to post at first because I knew he would go insane,” Ms. Rowland said. “But since Synthia said that she didn’t care what her ex thought anymore, I was able to let go of that fear.”

Mr. Earp said this is a common experience. “It can be comforting for people to make public sense of their experience, rather than just having it be a private phenomenon.”

Educate yourself

“It’s important to educate yourself about how love addiction works for you, to understand the layers and nuances of how it plays out in your life,” said Kerry Cohen, a therapist and the author of “Crazy for You: Breaking the Spell of Sex and Love Addiction.” This may include finding a support group, like Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous or Love Addicts Anonymous, and speaking to a therapist or psychiatrist specializing in love addiction. It’s important to see a licensed professional and not to self-diagnose.

Practice healthy texting

Texting can be a potential minefield for love addicts, as there is often room for miscommunication, leading to anxiety and fear. Ms. Cohen said love addicts should refrain from talking about feelings via text with their partner, particularly negative emotions. “This will be good practice for you to regulate your feelings until you can talk in person,” she wrote, “and it may give you the pause you need to get a handle on how to respond without reacting.”

Many love addicts keep parts of themselves and their lives secret from their partner to provide what Ms. Cohen called an “artificial sense of autonomy” and a means to avoid conflict. Although having privacy is appropriate in a relationship, keeping secrets is not. Love addicts often “lie about their pasts, and try to be someone they think their lover wants them to be,” Ms. Cohen wrote in “Crazy for You.” She advised partners to share honestly with each other, especially about their struggles with sex or love addiction.

Consider no contact

After you have built a support team, you can decide if, when and how you should end a toxic relationship. With your therapist, consider what the “Cambridge Handbook of Substance and Behavioral Addictions” calls “a strict no-contact policy, avoiding any form of communication with the ex-partner that may trigger renewed feelings of craving and retard the healing process.”

Twelve-step programs often advise addicts to remove all reminders of the addiction, including all social media contact, photos, songs or memorabilia. “Somebody is camping in your head, you’ve got to get them out,” said Dr. Fisher.

Try a dating plan

It may be helpful to develop a dating plan with your sponsor or therapist, which can be a useful guide to finding a new, healthy relationship. Start by identifying one action that has brought about negative consequences in your past. Some love addicts may have sex too quickly with a partner and get too attached. In that case, it might be helpful to establish a rule to only have sex after entering a committed relationship.

“Nobody gets out of love alive,” said Dr. Fisher. “People live for love, pine for love, kill for love and they’ll die for a loved one. It’s one of the most powerful brain systems we’ve evolved.””

Whether you harness this energy for a positive or negative romantic experience is up to you.

Complete Article HERE!

The science of sex, love, attraction, and obsession

The symbol for love is the heart, but the brain may be more accurate.

  • How love makes us feel can only be defined on an individual basis, but what it does to the body, specifically the brain, is now less abstract thanks to science.
  • One of the problems with early-stage attraction, according to anthropologist Helen Fisher, is that it activates parts of the brain that are linked to drive, craving, obsession, and motivation, while other regions that deal with decision-making shut down.
  • Dr. Fisher, professor Ted Fischer, and psychiatrist Gail Saltz explain the different types of love, explore the neuroscience of love and attraction, and share tips for sustaining relationships that are healthy and mutually beneficial.

Complete Article HERE!

The Bored Sex

Women, more than men, tend to feel stultified by long-term exclusivity—despite having been taught that they were designed for it.

The “distracted boyfriend” meme gets reversed.

By

Andrew Gotzis, a Manhattan psychiatrist with an extensive psychotherapy practice, has been treating a straight couple, whom we’ll call Jane and John, for several years. They have sex about three times a week, which might strike many as enviable, considering that John and Jane—who are in their 40s—have been together for nearly two decades. Based on numbers alone, one might wonder why they need couples counseling at all.

But only one of them is happy with the state of play. And it isn’t Jane.

“The problem is not that they are functionally unable to have sex, or to have orgasms. Or frequency. It’s that the sex they’re having isn’t what she wants,” Gotzis told me in a recent phone conversation. And like other straight women he sees, “she’s confused and demoralized by it. She thinks there’s something wrong with her.” John, meanwhile, feels criticized and inadequate. Mostly he can’t understand why, if his wife is having sex with him and having orgasms, she wants more. Or different.

Despite “fears of seeming sex addicted, unfaithful, or whorish” (Gotzis doesn’t like these terms, but they speak to his patient’s anxieties, he explained), Jane has tried to tell John, in therapy and outside of it, what she’s after. She wants to want John and be wanted by him in that can’t-get-enough-of-each-other-way experts call “limerence”—the initial period of a relationship when it’s all new and hot. Jane has bought lingerie and booked hotel stays. She has suggested more radical-seeming potential fixes, too, like opening up the marriage.

Jane’s perseverance might make her a lot of things: an idealist, a dreamer, a canny sexual strategist, even—again channeling typical anxieties—unrealistic, selfish, or entitled. But her sexual struggles in a long-term relationship, orgasms and frequency of sex notwithstanding, make her something else again: normal. Although most people in sexual partnerships end up facing the conundrum biologists call “habituation to a stimulus” over time, a growing body of research suggests that heterosexual women, in the aggregate, are likely to face this problem earlier in the relationship than men. And that disparity tends not to even out over time. In general, men can manage wanting what they already have, while women struggle with it.

Marta Meana of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas spelled it out simply in an interview with me at the annual Society for Sex Therapy and Research conference in 2017. “Long-term relationships are tough on desire, and particularly on female desire,” she said. I was startled by her assertion, which contradicted just about everything I’d internalized over the years about who and how women are sexually. Somehow I, along with nearly everyone else I knew, was stuck on the idea that women are in it for the cuddles as much as the orgasms, and—besides—actually require emotional connection and familiarity to thrive sexually, whereas men chafe against the strictures of monogamy.

But Meana discovered that “institutionalization of the relationship, overfamiliarity, and desexualization of roles” in a long-term heterosexual partnership mess with female passion especially—a conclusion that’s consistent with other recent studies.

“Moving In With Your Boyfriend Can Kill Your Sex Drive” was how Newsweek distilled a 2017 study of more than 11,500 British adults aged 16 to 74. It found that for “women only, lack of interest in sex was higher among those in a relationship of over one year in duration,” and that “women living with a partner were more likely to lack interest in sex than those in other relationship categories.” A 2012 study of 170 men and women aged 18 to 25 who were in relationships of up to nine years similarly found that women’s sexual desire, but not men’s, “was significantly and negatively predicted by relationship duration after controlling for age, relationship satisfaction, and sexual satisfaction.” Two oft-cited German longitudinal studies, published in 2002 and 2006, show female desire dropping dramatically over 90 months, while men’s holds relatively steady. (Tellingly, women who didn’t live with their partners were spared this amusement-park-ride-like drop—perhaps because they were making an end run around overfamiliarity.) And a Finnish seven-year study of more than 2,100 women, published in 2016, revealed that women’s sexual desire varied depending on relationship status: Those in the same relationship over the study period reported less desire, arousal, and satisfaction. Annika Gunst, one of the study’s co-authors, told me that she and her colleagues initially suspected this might be related to having kids. But when the researchers controlled for that variable, it turned out to have no impact.

Many women want monogamy. It’s a cozy arrangement, and one our culture endorses, to put it mildly. But wanting monogamy isn’t the same as feeling desire in a long-term monogamous partnership. The psychiatrist and sexual-health practitioner Elisabeth Gordon told me that in her clinical experience, as in the data, women disproportionately present with lower sexual desire than their male partners of a year or more, and in the longer term as well. “The complaint has historically been attributed to a lower baseline libido for women, but that explanation conveniently ignores that women regularly start relationships equally as excited for sex.” Women in long-term, committed heterosexual partnerships might think they’ve “gone off” sex—but it’s more that they’ve gone off the same sex with the same person over and over.

What does it all mean for Jane and the other straight women who feel stultified by long-term exclusivity, in spite of having been taught that they were designed for it and are naturally inclined toward it? What are we to make of the possibility that women, far from anxious guardians of monogamy, might on the whole be more like its victims?

“When couples want to remain in a monogamous relationship, a key component of treatment … is to help couples add novelty,” Gordon advised. Tammy Nelson, a sex therapist and the author of The New Monogamy and When You’re the One Who Cheats, concurs: “Women are the primary consumers of sex-related technology and lubricants, massage oil, and lingerie, not men.”

Of course, as Jane’s example shows, lingerie might not do the trick. Nelson explains that if “their initial tries don’t work, [women] will many times shut down totally or turn outward to an affair or an online ‘friend,’ creating … a flirty texting or social-media relationship.” When I asked Gotzis where he thinks John and Jane are headed, he told me he is not sure that they will stay together. In an upending of the basic narrative about the roles that men and women play in a relationship, it would be Jane’s thirst for adventure and Jane’s struggles with exclusivity that tear them apart. Sure, women cheating is nothing new—it’s the stuff of Shakespeare and the blues. But refracted through data and anecdotal evidence, Jane seems less exceptional and more an Everywoman, and female sexual boredom could almost pass for the new beige.

It’s not uncommon for women to let their straight partners play in a “monogamy gray zone,” to give guys access to tensional outlets that allow them to cheat without really cheating. “Happy ending” massages, oral sex at bachelor parties, lap dances, escorts at conferences … influenced by ubiquitous pop-cultural cues, many people believe that men need these opportunities for recreational “sorta sex” because “it’s how men are.” It’s how women are, too, it seems.

Women cannot be pigeonholed; the glory of human sexuality is its variation and flexibility. So when we speak of desire in the future, we should acknowledge that the fairer sex thirsts for the frisson of an encounter with someone or something new as much as, if not more, than men do—and that they could benefit from a gray-zone hall pass, too.

Complete Article HERE!

What falling in love does to your heart and brain

Getting struck by Cupid’s arrow may very well take your breath away and make your heart go pitter-patter.

By Loyola University Health System

[F]alling in love causes our body to release a flood of feel-good chemicals that trigger specific physical reactions,” said Pat Mumby, PhD, co-director of the Loyola Sexual Wellness Clinic and professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neurosciences, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine (SSOM). “This internal elixir of love is responsible for making our cheeks flush, our palms sweat and our hearts race.”

Levels of these substances, which include dopamine, adrenaline and norepinephrine, increase when two people fall in love. Dopamine creates feelings of euphoria while adrenaline and norepinephrine are responsible for the pitter-patter of the heart, restlessness and overall preoccupation that go along with experiencing love.

MRI scans indicate that love lights up the pleasure center of the brain. When we fall in love, blood flow increases in this area, which is the same part of the brain implicated in obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

“Love lowers serotonin levels, which is common in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders,” said Mary Lynn, DO, co-director of the Loyola Sexual Wellness Clinic and assistant professor, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, SSOM. “This may explain why we concentrate on little other than our partner during the early stages of a relationship.”

Doctors caution that these physical responses to love may work to our disadvantage.

“The phrase ‘love is blind’ is a valid notion because we tend to idealize our partner and see only things that we want to see in the early stages of the relationship,” Dr. Mumby said. “Outsiders may have a much more objective and rational perspective on the partnership than the two people involved do.”

There are three phases of love, which include lust, attraction and attachment. Lust is a hormone-driven phase where we experience desire. Blood flow to the pleasure center of the brain happens during the attraction phase, when we feel an overwhelming fixation with our partner. This behavior fades during the attachment phase, when the body develops a tolerance to the pleasure stimulants. Endorphins and hormones vasopressin and oxytocin also flood the body at this point creating an overall sense of well-being and security that is conducive to a lasting relationship.

Sexual Attraction

Sexual Attraction

By Driftwood Staff

[H]ave you ever wondered why you are attracted to the people you are attracted to? Despite surface guesses, there are common generalizations of sexual preferences that seem to make sense, or are at least exhibited by the average human male or female.

Have you ever noticed that your preferences have changed or change constantly? Well, there’s an answer to that too. “Female preferences are especially interesting because they are dynamic and influenced by the individual menstrual cycle,” said Dr. Simon Lailxaux, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences and the Virginia Kock/Audubon Nature Institute Chair in Species Preservation. “Women prefer different things when they are ovulating to when they are not, and women using hormonal contraceptives also show different preferences to those who are not. Additionally, both men and women appear to look for different things in a short-term vs a long term partner.”

Despite the social connotations of sexual preferences in the modern world (e.g., the growing acceptance and understanding that gender, sex and sexuality are all different aspects of the human self), many preferences men and women have for each other come from biological occurrences.

“Evolutionary explanations for human sexual attractiveness have long fallen under the purview of ‘evolutionary psychology,’” said Lailvaux. Though it gained a controversial reputation, “The rigor of evolutionary psychology has improved over the last 20 years, but there is still a lot of misinformation surrounding questions of the evolution of human sexual attraction largely as a result of this period where evolutionary psychologists weren’t really evolutionary biologists and were still figuring out how to approach this topic.”

“Our genetic legacy predisposes us to certain behaviors and preferences but it does not condemn us to them. Culture can play a large role in sexual attractiveness as well, and it’s important to bear that in mind,” mentioned Lailvaux.

That being said, below are some common aspects of sexual selection.

HIP-TO-WAIST RATIO (HTWR)

“The ‘traditional’ explanation for this has to do with childbirth; the reasoning goes that childbirth is traditionally dangerous for both the mother and baby. Women with large hips relative to their waists have a wider pelvic girdle, which means they will have an easier time when giving birth relative to someone with smaller hips,” said Lailvaux.

“It is an innate, honest signal to men about a woman’s age and reproductive status across all human cultures and ethnicities,” said Dr. Jerome Howard, UNO Associate Professor of Biological Sciences. “The male brain has receptors that evaluate HTWR in females, and MRI studies have measured maximum responses to female silhouettes that display a HTWR of about 0.7 compared to lower values or higher values.”

Thinner waists could signify poor nutrition, which lowers fertility, and the HTWR of a woman generally increases as a woman ages and become less fertile.

“Large breasts tend to elevate attractiveness only in combination with narrower waists, and eye-tracking studies have found that men tend to look at either the bust or the waist region first, as opposed to the facial or pubic region,” said Lailvaux.

Nutrition varies due to cultural differences, and larger bodies that indicate more fat storage are sometimes more attractive in non-Western cultures where food availability is a problem.

HEIGHT AND STATURE

Height and shoulder width are signals to women about male health and nutritional status. “Women do prefer men with the traditional ‘triangle’ shape: broad shoulders, narrow waists. Women also tend to prefer men with broad faces; this is interesting because facial broadness in men is linked to high levels of testosterone,” added Lailvaux.

Women also tend to prefer men who are taller than they are, but the reason for this has not been thoroughly researched.

SYMMETRY

Both sexes generally find symmetrical facial features more attractive. There are plenty of studies to show this, but the significance of that attraction has yet to be established.

“The best supported and most widely accepted explanation is that symmetry is a measure of developmental stability, which is related to how well suited an individual’s genes are for the environment in which it lives,” said Howard. “An individual that is well-suited to his or her environment is likely to produce children that are also well-suited, and able to respond robustly to any environmental challenges they might experience in that environment.”

SMELL

Body odor is produced by Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes, which mainly work in the immune system. “We strongly prefer mates with different MHC alleles, because the more similar they are, the more likely that you are genetically related, and we avoid mating with relatives to avoid inbreeding,” said Howard.

HEAD AND FACIAL HAIR

Hair length preference is more culturally influenced than other signals, but in Western cultures, young women have a tendency to wear their hair longer on average than older women. This is less labile than HTWR for mate preference among men; it is not an honest signal of age or quality as a mate.

However, a recent study examined why beards became so popular among men in recent years. “They linked beards to male facial attractiveness and to negative frequency-dependent selection, where things that are uncommon are considered attractive, until they become too common and are no longer considered so.” said Lailvaux.

Complete Article HERE!

The Toxic Attraction Between An Empath And A Narcissist

by

toxic-relationship

We know that “narcissist” has become a bit of a buzzword recently, and some folks are quick to apply it to an ex-lover or family member or friend. While awareness of this concept is healthy, so is remembering that it is, in a mental health context, a serious condition that shouldn’t be applied to someone you’re mad at because they stole your mirror. ~ Eds. 

I am an empath. I discovered I was an empath after I got involved in a very deep and highly destructive relationship with a narcissist.

I am writing this article from the perspective of an empath, however, would love to read the view from the opposite side if there are any narcissists that would like to offer their perception on this.

Through writing about the empath personality type I have connected with many other people who class themselves as an empath and time and again I have heard people tell me how they have also attracted relationships with narcissists. There is a link. So, I decided to explore it further.

This is my theory…

From my own experience and studies on the narcissist personality type, there is always one core trait: A narcissist is wounded.

Something, somewhere along the line, usually stemming from childhood causes a person to feel worthless and unvalued and, due to this, they will constantly and very desperately seek validation.

Here comes the empath, the healer. An empath has the ability to sense and absorb other people’s pain and often takes it on as though it were their own. If an empath is not consciously aware of boundaries and does not understand how to protect themselves, they will very easily and very quickly bond with the narcissist in order to try to fix and repair any damage and attempt to eradicate all their pain.

What the empath fails to realise is that the narcissist is a taker. An energy sucker, a vampire so to speak. They will draw the life and soul out of anyone they come into contact with, given the chance. This is so that they can build up their own reserves and, in doing so, they can use the imbalance to their advantage.

This dynamic will confuse and debilitate an empath, as if they do not have a full understanding of their own or other people’s capabilities, they will fail to see that not everyone is like them. An empath will always put themselves into other people’s shoes and experience the feelings, thoughts and emotions of others, while forgetting that other people may have an agenda very different to their own and that not everyone is sincere.

The narcissist’s agenda is one of manipulation, it is imperative they are in a position whereby they can rise above others and be in control. The empath’s agenda is to love, heal and care. There is no balance and it is extremely unlikely there ever will be one. The more love and care an empath offers, the more powerful and in control a narcissist will become.

The more powerful the narcissist becomes, the more likely the empath will retreat into a victim status. Then, there is a very big change—the empath will take on narcissistic traits as they too become wounded and are constantly triggered by the damage being in the company with a narcissist creates. Before long, an extremely vicious circle has begun to swirl.

When a narcissist sees that an empath is wounded they will play on this and the main intention will be to keep the empath down. The lower down an empath becomes, the higher a narcissist will feel. An empath will begin to frantically seek love, validation, confirmation and acceptance from a narcissist and each cry for help as such will affirm to the narcissist what they are desperate to feel inside—worthy. A bitter battle can ensue.

As an empath focuses solely on their pain, trauma and the destruction of their lives, they become self-obsessed and fail to see where the damage is coming from. Instead of looking outwards and seeing what is causing it, the empath will turn everything inward and blame themselves.

An empath at this stage must realise the situation they are in and wake up to it, as anyone who is deeply in pain and has been hurt can then become a narcissist themselves as they turn their focus onto their own pain and look for others to make them feel okay again.

Any attempt to communicate authentically with the narcissist will be futile as they will certainly not be looking to soothe and heal anyone else. Not only this, they are extremely charismatic and manipulative and have a powerful way of turning everything away from themselves and onto others. A narcissist will blame their own pain on an empath, plus they will also make sure the empath feels responsible for the pain they too are suffering.

An empath will know that they are in a destructive relationship by this stage and will feel so insecure, unloved and unworthy and it can be easy to blame all of their destruction onto the narcissist.

However, an empath should not be looking to blame anyone else. An empath has a choice, to remain the victim, a pawn in the narcissists game or to garner all strength they can muster and find a way out.

Emotionally exhausted, lost, depleted and debilitated an empath will struggle to understand what has happened to the once loving, attentive and charismatic person they were attracted to.

However we allow ourselves to be treated is a result of our own choices. If an empath chooses to stay in a relationship with a narcissist and refuses to take responsibility for the dynamic, they are choosing at some level what they believe they are worth on the inside. An empath cannot let their self-worth be determined by a narcissist. It is imperative they trust and believe in themselves enough to recognise that they are not deserving of the words and actions the narcissist delivers and to look for an escape.

In an empath’s eyes, all they searched and looked for was someone to take care of and love and to ultimately fix.” That is where the trouble began and that is the most profound part of this that an empath must realise.

We are not here to fix anyone. We cannot fix anyone. Everyone is responsible for and capable of fixing themselves, but only if they so choose to.

The more an empath can learn about the personality of a narcissist the sooner they will spot one and the less chance they have of developing a relationship with one. If a relationship is already underway, it is never too late to seek help, seek understanding and knowledge and to dig deep into one’s soul and recognise our own strengths and capabilities and do everything we can to build the courage and confidence to see it for what it is and walk away—for good.

The chance of a narcissist changing is highly unlikely, so we shouldn’t stick around waiting for it to happen. If a narcissist wants to change, then great, but it should never happen at the expense of anyone else. They are not consciously aware of their behaviour and the damage it causes and in their game they will sacrifice anyone and anything for their own gain—regardless of what pretty lies and sweet nothings they try to whisper.

An empath is authentic and is desperate to live true to their soul’s purpose and will very likely find the whole relationship a huge lesson, a dodged bullet and painfully awakening.

A narcissist will struggle to have any connection to their authentic self and will likely walk away from the relationship very easily once they realise they have lost their ability to control the empath. The game is no longer pleasurable if they are not having their ego constantly stroked, so they will seek out their next victim.

The ability for these two types to bond is quite simply impossible. The narcissist’s heart is closed, an empath’s is open—it is nothing short of a recipe for a huge disaster, and not a beautiful one.

Complete Article HERE!

There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science)

Just in time for Valentine’s day!

A new book argues that the emotion happens in “micro-moments of positivity resonance.”

love story

By Emily Esfahani Smith

In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson offers a radically new conception of love.

Fredrickson, a leading researcher of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents scientific evidence to argue that love is not what we think it is. It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.

Rather, it is what she calls a “micro-moment of positivity resonance.” She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in “It’s a Wonderful World” when he sang, “I see friends shaking hands, sayin ‘how do you do?’ / They’re really sayin’, ‘I love you.'”

sad on valentine's day

Fredrickson’s unconventional ideas are important to think about at this time of year. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, many Americans are facing a grim reality: They are love-starved. Rates of loneliness are on the rise as social supports are disintegrating. In 1985, when the General Social Survey polled Americans on the number of confidants they have in their lives, the most common response was three. In 2004, when the survey was given again, the most common response was zero.

According to the University of Chicago’s John Cacioppo, an expert on loneliness, and his co-author William Patrick, “at any given time, roughly 20 percent of individuals—that would be 60 million people in the U.S. alone—feel sufficiently isolated for it to be a major source of unhappiness in their lives.” For older Americans, that number is closer to 35 percent. At the same time, rates of depression have been on the rise. In his 2011 book Flourish, the psychologist Martin Seligman notes that according to some estimates, depression is 10 times more prevalent now than it was five decades ago. Depression affects about 10 percent of the American population, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

A global poll taken last Valentine’s Day showed that most married people—or those with a significant other—list their romantic partner as the greatest source of happiness in their lives. According to the same poll, nearly half of all single people are looking for a romantic partner, saying that finding a special person to love would contribute greatly to their happiness.

But to Fredrickson, these numbers reveal a “worldwide collapse of imagination,” as she writes in her book. “Thinking of love purely as romance or commitment that you share with one special person—as it appears most on earth do—surely limits the health and happiness you derive” from love.

“My conception of love,” she tells me, “gives hope to people who are single or divorced or widowed this Valentine’s Day to find smaller ways to experience love.”

Vincent Valentine RIDEHARD

You have to physically be with the person to experience the micro-moment. For example, if you and your significant other are not physically together—if you are reading this at work alone in your office—then you two are not in love. You may feel connected or bonded to your partner—you may long to be in his company—but your body is completely loveless.

To understand why, it’s important to see how love works biologically. Like all emotions, love has a biochemical and physiological component. But unlike some of the other positive emotions, like joy or happiness, love cannot be kindled individually—it only exists in the physical connection between two people. Specifically, there are three players in the biological love system—mirror neurons, oxytocin, and vagal tone. Each involves connection and each contributes to those micro-moment of positivity resonance that Fredrickson calls love.

When you experience love, your brain mirrors the person’s you are connecting with in a special way. Pioneering research by Princeton University’s Uri Hasson shows what happens inside the brains of two people who connect in conversation. Because brains are scanned inside of noisy fMRI machines, where carrying on a conversation is nearly impossible, Hasson’s team had his subjects mimic a natural conversation in an ingenious way. They recorded a young woman telling a lively, long, and circuitous story about her high school prom. Then, they played the recording for the participants in the study, who were listening to it as their brains were being scanned. Next, the researchers asked each participant to recreate the story so they, the researchers, could determine who was listening well and who was not. Good listeners, the logic goes, would probably be the ones who clicked in a natural conversation with the story-teller.

001

What they found was remarkable. In some cases, the brain patterns of the listener mirrored those of the storyteller after a short time gap. The listener needed time to process the story after all. In other cases, the brain activity was almost perfectly synchronized; there was no time lag at all between the speaker and the listener. But in some rare cases, if the listener was particularly tuned in to the story—if he was hanging on to every word of the story and really got it—his brain activity actually anticipated the story-teller’s in some cortical areas.

The mutual understanding and shared emotions, especially in that third category of listener, generated a micro-moment of love, which “is a single act, performed by two brains,” as Fredrickson writes in her book.

valentine

Oxytocin, the so-called love and cuddle hormone, facilitates these moments of shared intimacy and is part of the mammalian “calm-and-connect” system (as opposed to the more stressful “fight-or-flight” system that closes us off to others). The hormone, which is released in huge quantities during sex, and in lesser amounts during other moments of intimate connection, works by making people feel more trusting and open to connection. This is the hormone of attachment and bonding that spikes during micro-moments of love. Researchers have found, for instance, that when a parent acts affectionately with his or her infant—through micro-moments of love like making eye contact, smiling, hugging, and playing—oxytocin levels in both the parent and the child rise in sync.

The final player is the vagus nerve, which connects your brain to your heart and subtly but sophisticatedly allows you to meaningfully experience love. As Fredrickson explains in her book, “Your vagus nerve stimulates tiny facial muscles that better enable you to make eye contact and synchronize your facial expressions with another person. It even adjusts the miniscule muscles of your middle ear so you can better track her voice against any background noise.”

The vagus nerve’s potential for love can actually be measured by examining a person’s heart rate in association with his breathing rate, what’s called “vagal tone.” Having a high vagal tone is good: People who have a high “vagal tone” can regulate their biological processes like their glucose levels better; they have more control over their emotions, behavior, and attention; they are socially adept and can kindle more positive connections with others; and, most importantly, they are more loving. In research from her lab, Fredrickson found that people with high vagal tone report more experiences of love in their days than those with a lower vagal tone.

Historically, vagal tone was considered stable from person to person. You either had a high one or you didn’t; you either had a high potential for love or you didn’t. Fredrickson’s recent research has debunked that notion.valentine's_pose

In a 2010 study from her lab, Fredrickson randomly assigned half of her participants to a “love” condition and half to a control condition. In the love condition, participants devoted about one hour of their weeks for several months to the ancient Buddhist practice of loving-kindness meditation. In loving-kindness meditation, you sit in silence for a period of time and cultivate feelings of tenderness, warmth, and compassion for another person by repeating a series of phrases to yourself wishing them love, peace, strength, and general well-being. Ultimately, the practice helps people step outside of themselves and become more aware of other people and their needs, desires, and struggles—something that can be difficult to do in our hyper individualistic culture.

Fredrickson measured the participants’ vagal tone before and after the intervention. The results were so powerful that she was invited to present them before the Dalai Lama himself in 2010. Fredrickson and her team found that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, people could significantly increase their vagal tone by self-generating love through loving-kindness meditation. Since vagal tone mediates social connections and bonds, people whose vagal tones increased were suddenly capable of experiencing more micro-moments of love in their days. Beyond that, their growing capacity to love more will translate into health benefits given that high vagal tone is associated with lowered risk of inflammation, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stroke.

Fredrickson likes to call love a nutrient. If you are getting enough of the nutrient, then the health benefits of love can dramatically alter your biochemistry in ways that perpetuate more micro-moments of love in your life, and which ultimately contribute to your health, well-being, and longevity.

Fredrickson’s ideas about love are not exactly the stuff of romantic comedies. Describing love as a “micro-moment of positivity resonance” seems like a buzz-kill. But if love now seems less glamorous and mysterious then you thought it was, then good. Part of Fredrickson’s project is to lower cultural expectations about love—expectations that are so misguidedly high today that they have inflated love into something that it isn’t, and into something that no sane person could actually experience.

Jonathan Haidt, another psychologist, calls these unrealistic expectations “the love myth” in his 2006 book The Happiness Hypothesis:

True love is passionate love that never fades; if you are in true love, you should marry that person; if love ends, you should leave that person because it was not true love; and if you can find the right person, you will have true love forever. You might not believe this myth yourself, particularly if you are older than thirty; but many young people in Western nations are raised on it, and it acts as an ideal that they unconsciously carry with them even if they scoff at it… But if true love is defined as eternal passion, it is biologically impossible.

Love 2.0 is, by contrast, far humbler. Fredrickson tells me, “I love the idea that it lowers the bar of love. If you don’t have a Valentine, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have love. It puts love much more in our reach everyday regardless of our relationship status.”

Lonely people who are looking for love are making a mistake if they are sitting around and waiting for love in the form of the “love myth” to take hold of them. If they instead sought out love in little moments of connection that we all experience many times a day, perhaps their loneliness would begin to subside.

Complete Article HERE!

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

I got email from a friend of mine that I haven’t had contact with for ages. We worked together on a couple projects in the past so I was delighted to hear from him. What follows is the exchange we had concerning his love interest. (All names have been changed.) I share all of this with you because I know other people, gay and straight, who have found themselves involved with someone they probably shouldn’t be involved with. Perhaps my friend’s dilemma will strike a chord with others in my audience.

Hello Dr. Dick
I think it’s been about 13 years now since we worked together. Ahhh the good ol’ days, and oh how I miss them.

I came across a recent post of yours on Google + and it reminded me I could use some of your professional guidance.hug in the butt

I don’t want to bias my story any or waste your time with unimportant details as to the nature of events. I would like you to hear (read) my situation word for word, exactly as it has been playing out.

I have about 50 pages of text messages compiled in PDF format over the past year or so between me and a guy I really like. I don’t want to walk away from him too soon, also don’t want to wait around for something that may never materialize (It’s been 3 years since we first started having sex).

Could I ask you to review these texts and give me your thoughts about it all?

Thanks for your time
Jackson
(PS this 40y.o. guy I like identifies as being STR8, he is a total redneck, he is married to a younger 27-year-old female, he loves to fuck me and be fucked by me, he loves to suck cock and get his sucked too, he is hard from minute he walks in my door…it is the best sex of my life no question about it. And that’s sayin’ something.)

Hey YOU!
So nice to hear from you after such a long time. Yeah, I hear ya about the good old days. Unlike you, however, I don’t really miss them.

biker I would be happy to help you. Are you sure you just want me to read what you’ve compiled? Or do you want to talk about it?

Without prejudicing my appraisal of your document, what you tell me is very indicative of a problem that I have seen over and over throughout the years. And it sounds like you’ve got it bad.

Anyhow, how do you want to proceed? We can set up a Skype call, if you’d like. I do a lot of remote counseling these days, and Skype makes that possible.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Great to hear back from you. A quick note on ‘the past’, I think what I miss the most is the social life I used to have. I had a lot of friends and always made time to see them.

The last 7 or so years have been very stressful but it’s paid off in the end. My home was foreclosed on; I fought hard, went to court many times and it took over two years but I did manage to save it. In 2010 (About a year after getting my home out of foreclosure) the state began a road construction project literally right outside my back door. It caused major damage to my 100-year-old home during the 3+ years the project went on. I am still fighting the state in an effort to resolve the issues that the construction caused.

Lol, I am not all negative like everything is all bad, or I never get a break from the weird stuff, it’s just been very unusual for me to have such a string of bad luck.hot

So back to Kevin & I. Would it be all right if you just read one short recent conversation, and then you tell me if you feel you could help? I imagine it will only take a couple minutes. Basically we are at a point where we get along amazing well in person, sex is incredible, & he loves everything the way it is. (We see each other for sex, nothing more). I, on the other hand, want to hang out sometime besides sex. This text exchange comes after not seeing or talking to him in about 10 days, which is pretty common.

Let me know Dr. 🙂

[Attached to the above email was a lengthy document that contained the contained the transcription of this latest text exchange between Jackson and Kevin. I’ll spare you the gory details.]

There’s a lot goin’ on here…beside the fact that the last part reads like a porn script. 😉

Here’s what I see. I see two men who have a “hook” in one another. One is happy on the hook the other is tortured on the hook.

Kevin, despite, or even because, of the hot sex you guys are having, is at a crossroads. If things continue as they are going, he will have to make adjustments to his life and have to make some very painful admissions about who he is at least to himself. He doesn’t sound even remotely ready for that. And even if he wanted to make this life-altering decision, he is probably ill equipped to do so. I’m guessing that he has been running from facing his true identity for decades.

Jean CocteauYou, on the other hand, know exactly what you want and how to get it. For you falling in love with this guy and living happily ever after would be as easy as falling off a log. You’re in love and you know how to handle yourself when love happens. We both know this is not your first time at the rodeo.

It’s like you’re dating a Martian. He only knows how to be a Martian. Despite, or even because, you appeal to him to stop being what he is (straight) and be this other thing with you (gay), he is petrified. And he may actually hate the very thing that you love about him.

Another thing that is really obvious is that Kevin’s sex with you is shame-based, not affection-based. He probably does get off on the hot monkey sex you guys have together, but he’s also probably crippled with guilt and shame afterward.

Stop and look over the document you sent me. Choose any one of those pages and count the words that you typed and then count the words that he typed. I’m sure that you will immediately see that you overwhelm him. You bare your soul; you write paragraphs of self-disclosure. He responds in monosyllables. I’m pretty sure he can barely stand the barrage. He’s trapped between what he wants and what he will allow himself to have and it is sheer torture.

Despite the fact that is wants, maybe even desperately wants, what you have to offer, and not just the sex, he can’t allow himself to have it. It would shake his world to its foundation. And since he can have the hot sex without the emotional attachment, he’s getting everything he (thinks) he wants. You, on the other hand, are living a life of non-to-quiet desperation. You’re at heaven’s door, but he won’t cross the threshold with you.

If I had to guess, I’d say there’s no future beyond the wham-bam-thank-you-sir part bumpin’ you’re already getting. And I also speculate that this arrangement has a half-life. I’d be willing to guess that ya’ll are already past the mid-point. Your dissatisfaction will grow and begin to manifest itself in the way you treat him. There will be an ultimatum. Then there will be an end. With a little luck it will end well, but there is also a big chance that it will end very poorly indeed. Violence is not unheard of in situations like this and I think you know this already.redneck

In his defense, I don’t think Kevin is holding out on you. He probably would if he could. But he simply can’t. And if I had to guess, he’s not ever gonna turn this around. You said he’s in his 40’s, right? That’s a lot of life lived falsely, no? I’d be willing to wager that you aren’t the first man he’s fooled around with over the years and I don’t think you’ll be the last. He’s gotta have his fix even if it compromises his perception of himself.

I don’t envy you this conundrum, my friend. You are in anguish; I hear that. This is not a happy place for you and all I can say is, I hope you don’t give up any more ground.

Let me know if you want to talk about this at some point. No need to walk through this on your own if you don’t want to.

Good luck.

That gave me chills… Its like you were here the whole time. You identified every detail exactly as I have been living it.

One part in particular, Kevin said pretty much word for word as you did. He said, “I’m not holding out on you. I would if I could, but I simply can’t.” I got to admit I don’t understand.

Tuesday I sent him this text:
“Why is this normal social shit so awkward in your mind? All I want to do is hang out sometime. Let me repeat, I want to do something other than hookup one time. That’s it, if you don’t like it I won’t ask again.

I know you like the other shit more, I likely do as well. But is it that big of a deal to just hang out like regular dudes as well?

I’m not asking for anything else whatsoever no emotional connection or expectations of any kind.”

redneck buttHis reply:
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

His response blows my mind; it makes no sense. Sounds like an adult telling a child NO! I don’t have to explain, no means NO!

I think the truth is he just doesn’t WANT to do anything, even though he surely could. Ughhhh anyway.

I want to talk more with you about this Richard. I’ll hit you up later about the Skype thing. Thanks for being a sounding board for me.

Wow, that is interesting. Poor guy!

Again, in Kevin’s defense, he does have a wife. Maybe he thinks if he keeps his sex with you on the down low it’s not really infidelity. You know, guys doin’ guy things together. An emotional attachment to you would blow that delusion out of the water. It’s like being between a rock and a hard place. He can’t win for losing.

Anyhow, thanks for entrusting your woes with me. I look forward to connecting with you on Skype in the near future. All the best till then.

The Lady Is A Tramp

Name: Paul
Gender: Male
Age: 32
Location: Seattle
I recently discovered that my GF has been cheating on me. She wants me to forgive her but it’s been really hard. Just dealing with the fact that it happened is overwhelming. It feels like I could never forgive her. I don’t know if there’s a solution or not. I know I still love her but the truth is I feel dirty being around her. It also makes me feel stupid for putting up with this and letting it happen in the first place. I feel like a total sap. I’d love any advice you could give me.

Before we turn to chastising your vixen girlfriend for her behavior, let me make a quick observation about you, Paul. You sure are a ball of contradictions, aren’t you, darlin’? How can you say that you love a person who makes you feel dirty and stupid? Simply put, you are deceiving yourself about one or the other of these emotions. And pardon me, but there’s no way that what you describe here can be love. An obsession, heart sick, wounded pride, sour grapes…absolutely. Love…ahhh, not so much! So stop saying that you love this woman, Paul, it’s just adding to the confusion.

your cheatin' heart

Here’s a tip for us all. Let’s, each of us, promise, right here and now, to save the “L” word for those feelings that are a little less desperate and debilitating, OK? Because if we don’t reserve the “L” word for feelings that are uplifting and life-affirming then we will bandy it about, like Paul here.  Let’s try not to over-use the term  to describe any and all our fixations. If what we are experiencing tears us down instead of building us up, then it ain’t love no how, no way. Period!

Ok Paul, I ’m gonna try not read too much into your brief statement, but there appears to be some important information here that we should consider. When you say your girlfriend…“is been cheating,” that suggests to me that her indiscretion may have been ongoing. Because you could have said…“she cheated on me,” which would imply a one-time thing.

And what an interesting word choice “cheat” is in this context. This makes fidelity sound like some kind of sport, or that you own something of another person. I don’t think fidelity is sport, nor do I think it is always a genital issue. Lots of couples are faithful to one another even though they have open relationships and/or multiple sex partners. But I digress.

Since you can’t supply me with more of the gory details, Paul, I’m gonna go with the first option. I’m gonna assume you’re telling me that your GF has been doin’ you wrong and it’s not a simple…“Whoops, I don’t know what came over me. One minute I was like all normal, and the next there I was with my dress over my head and some guy, other than you honey, was bangin’ me like there was no tomorrow”…sorta thing, OK?

Since I don’t know how deep or exclusive your relationship with your girlfriend is or was supposed to be, I can hardly advise you on what you ought to do next. I can, however, point out that a secret ongoing affair suggests the trouble with your relationship runs pretty deep. Maybe your girlfriend has you pegged as a sap, and she knows that you will tolerate her indiscretions. Which in turn, gives her permission to do carry on in whatever manner she might like. Maybe she doesn’t think that your relationship with her is all that substantial in the first place. Who knows!

Hey, I don’t suppose you have a cuckold fetish, do you?  Imagine the fun you could have with that.  But again, I digress.

If you’re not a total sap, and you’re serious about reigning in your wayward GF, you’d better come up with a clear, unambiguous message about what you will and will not tolerate in the future. Until you do that there’s no point in even imagining there might be a future.

If, on the other hand, the two of you did agree to live in an exclusive relationship, and she’s still taking her business elsewhere, then I suggest the bond between you is pretty busted. Is there something salvageable here? Your guess is as good as mine. What is perfectly clear is that both you and your girlfriend need to step back and take a sober look at yourselves. There is a reason for her behavior, just like there’s a reason for your response. To get to the bottom of all of this both of you will need to invest a good deal of time and energy, most likely with a professional therapist, and hope that the bank of goodwill between you, if indeed there is a bank of goodwill between you, is enough to carry the day.  However, if I had to guess from the tone in your message, I’d say there was precious little goodwill left. If so, why not be a man about it. Just call it quits and move on. No recriminations necessary.

Good Luck