Love Bytes

If You Want Intimacy, Then Find Someone Who....

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:45:07 +0000

One day in class we were discussing INTIMACY in romantic relationships, and one of the women made the comment, “I just can’t figure out why men don’t want to be intimate.” In response (obviously speaking before thinking), a young man in the back of the room blurted out: “We do too want to be intimate, but you women just won’t put out.”

Common mistaken notion --- that the roots of intimacy are to be found in sexual behavior.

It is no doubt accurate to say that intimacy and sex are connected, but the nature of this connection is not what many may suspect. It can probably best be captured by this summary statement offered by a long-term investigator of this intimacy / sex linkage: “Men are inclined to use intimacy to get sex, whereas women are inclined to use sex to get intimacy.”

If intimacy is not rooted in sex, then where can one find its roots?

A few months ago USA Today reported on the results of a survey of nearly 4,000 18-30 year old men and women in the U.S. --- 75% responded that they “would rather be alone than marry the wrong person.”

Unfortunately, no one offered a suggestion as to what “the wrong person” might look like.

Most often implied in expressed desires to avoid marrying “the wrong person” is the idea that “a right person” is someone with whom I will be able to match up perfectly (“the soul mate”). Does this strike anyone as somehow narcissistic --- that finding someone who matches ME and MY wants / needs / desires / traits / inclinations / ways of thinking is what finding a good partner for a successful marriage is all about?

Here are a couple suggestions about “the wrong person” / “a right person.”

Certainly, someone who is carrying enough personal baggage that they look like they are ready for several trans-continental excursions would constitute a “wrong person” --- people who are angry, egotistical, vengeful, overbearing, self-centered, petty, dictatorial, contemptuous, insolent, arrogant, selfish, nasty, authoritarian, wrathful, controlling (to name a few) do not make good marriage partners.

But beyond being on the lookout for such an individual, what should one look for?

If you want love [see The Bullseye Of Love], then look for someone who is capable of INTIMACY --- look for someone who is willing to COMMUNICATE.

If you would rather be alone than marry the wrong person, then make sure that you do not marry an individual who fails to communicate. As the writer and journalist Germaine Greer once wrote, “Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close proximity with someone who has ceased to communicate.”

When there are honest, ongoing efforts by both partners to communicate, then there is hope of resolving the differences that will inevitably spring up in any long-term romantic relationship. But without such sincere efforts at communication, prepare yourself to see each difference become a wedge, driving you and your partner further and further apart. Strangers living under the same roof.

COMMUNICATION IS AT THE HEART OF INTIMACY.

Poaching And The Heart Of Love

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:34:43 +0000

Deer hunting opener occurred here in Minnesota this past Saturday. Hundreds of Minnesotans out in the woods trying their best to bag a Bambi.

And for some, their best entailed poaching.

Poaching typically involves the placement of highly enticing deer delectables --- a feeder dispensing corn, a field scattered with pumpkins --- so that the unsuspecting prey will get all caught up in the moment and won’t notice that they are in a truly unhealthy situation.

A couple years ago a young man came into my office here at the University wanting to talk about his love interest of the past 5 months. He was really into this young woman, but he wasn’t sure he should be.

What he told me is this. He and his father had a conversation recently in which his father had suggested that if the sex with this woman had not been so good, then he would quickly be able to tell how truly unhealthy the relationship was. His father had tossed out the suggestion that he simply cool the sexual part of the relationship for a few weeks – just to see how things go.

This young man wanted to know what I thought – did his father have a point? We talked about it for a while and in the end, he decided to give it a shot --- no sex with this young woman for the next 3 weeks. They would spend time together, hanging out, going on “dates” – but no amorous exchanges beyond mild kissing – for 3 weeks!

About 2 weeks into this little experiment, he showed up at my office door – “We need to talk!”

He came in, sat down, and blurted out: “How could I have been so blind? She is one of the most self-centered, egotistical, and rude people I have ever known. The first night we went out, she yelled at some guy in the restaurant parking lot because it took too long for him to park, chewed out the hostess because it took too long to get seated, and then lit into our waitress because the table had some crumbs on it. At first, I thought that maybe this was an unusual night (you know, ‘that time of the month’ or something). But over the next week I began to notice that this stuff was not unusual --- in fact, I slowly began to realize that this is the way she had always been – I just never noticed it before! She was nearly always on a rant --- whether it was a roommate she was upset with or a teacher that rubbed her the wrong way or a classmate that she didn’t like – she was negative, critical, and demeaning. How could I have missed it?”

I suspect that a number of us could echo this young man’s sentiments: “How could I have been so blind about this person? How could I have missed something that is so obvious?”

Let’s face it --- we all have our bad days. Every man has those days on which he is tends to be a little more asshole-ish than others. Every woman has those days on which she tends to be a little more bitchy than others. This is not what we are talking about here – a bad day every once in a while. [And hopefully we are in love with a person who is determined to make these bad days even more few-and-far-between in their life.]

Some time ago there was a Love Bytes blog post [50 First Dates and the Nice-To-Nasty Ratio] that discussed the Nice-To-Nasty Ratio and its importance for loving relationships.

Essentially, PASSION alone does not love make. Love also requires INTIMACY.

And if INTIMACY is going to develop, there has to be more nice than nasty.

INTIMACY is built on holding your partner in high regard – and having them hold you in high regard as well.

INTIMACY is built on being able to count on your partner in time of need – and having them be able to count on you as well.

INTIMACY is built on knowing that your partner will share himself / herself, not just physically but also psychologically and emotionally – and your partner knowing that they can count on the same from you.

INTIMACY is built on getting to know your partner – and having them get to know you as well.

Given one wish, what would you most wish for? Wealth? Power? A long life? A great job? "Given one wish in life, most people would wish to be loved --- to be able to reveal themselves entirely to another human being and be embraced, caressed, by that acceptance" [Scar Tissue on the Heart].

Mistaking Passion For Love

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:03:02 +0000

PASSION is admittedly an important component of love. This can be witnessed in any long-standing relationship where the passion has been trampled to death by habituation, indifference, and neglect as people repeatedly take each other for granted over time. Same old / same old will do that to you.

As one woman told me, “He used to juggle everything in his life so that he could make time to be with me. Now he juggles me so that I don’t interfere with the stuff in his life that he really cares about --- ESPN, golf, work.”

Passion is obviously important.

But contrary to common sentiment, passion alone does not love make.

In fact, those who are vulnerable to this common cultural faux pas --- mistaking passion for love --- frequently end up loving passion rather than loving a person. They may say, “I love you,” but what they really mean is, “I love the passion I experience with you.” Their experience of love is really more about them than it is about you.

When this is the type of love someone is after --- passion = love --- then do not expect them to make very stable long-term traveling companions along the road of life.

The trick (for those of us who want a dependable, enduring, long-term, life-giving relationship) is not to find yet another trigger for our experience of passion. There are plenty of new partners (or new pornographic images) that will fill the bill for that. The trick is to make it happen (over and over again) with the one we love.

When was the last time you saw a best-selling book titled “Sex With Someone New Does Not Have To Be Dull: 10 Tips On How To Keep Your Novel Experiences Exciting”?

As one author put it, “It is no great achievement to woo someone into a short-lived passionate experience. It takes a great deal more character and finesse to make a long-term marriage into a romantic, glowing love affair.”

Have you ever thought about what happens in the brains of couples who enjoy a novel date night together? I suspect not --- this is not the type of thing that most people spend their time sitting around thinking about.

But bio-chemically speaking, what happens is that when we engage in new experiences, the pleasure circuits in the brain are activated and large amounts of neurotransmitter chemicals --- for example, dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins --- are released into the nervous system. [Please note the similarities between this bio-chemical concoction and that associated with an experience of passion --- see the Love Bytes blog post of 2 weeks ago: Is A Hook-Up Culture Going To Help Us Get There?]

And this is true not just of new couples who are experiencing a novel date night with each other for the first time. It is also true of old farts who have been married for years, but who have decided to go out and do something new and unique together. Their brains light up just like the newly-in-love-hot-and-bothered-young couples.

As was mentioned in the Love Bytes blog post of a few weeks ago [Love David Letterman Style], when married couples were asked how long it had been since their last date night, the average was over 3 months! And then they wonder what happened to the passion…….

As John Gottman (arguably the foremost love / marriage expert in the world) reported based upon years of research with married couples in his Seattle Love Lab: “The determining factor in whether wives feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is, by 70%, the quality of the couple’s friendship. For men, the determining factor in whether they feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is, by 70%, the quality of the couple’s friendship. So men and women come from the same planet after all.”

PASSION is necessary, but not sufficient, for love --- at least not for love that has any hope of surviving the tests of time.

Reference: Gottman, John M., & Silver, Nan. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. NY: three Rivers Press.

Passion Is Energizing

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:09:22 +0000

PASSION. Can a couple have love without it? NO.

PASSION. Is it the essence of love? NO.

When couples experience passion, many are inclined to interpret (misinterpret?) what is going on as love. And when couples fail to experience passion, many are inclined to interpret (misinterpret?) what is going on as no-longer-in-love.

Passion is one component of love. But it is not the essence of love.

I suspect that each of us can quickly call to mind couples we know for whom the passion in their relationship has cooled drastically from what it once was. And even though such relationships can sometimes be quite stable --- neither person is going anywhere anytime soon --- they generally don’t seem to bring a whole lot of life.

Basically, there is something about passion that is very vitalizing / energizing / refreshing.

I am a big fan of passion, and probably the thing about passion that I love the most is that when we have passion for something (or someone), then we are willing to suffer for that thing (or that person).

The first thing I ever cared about beyond my own self-interests --- in other words, the first thing I ever had enough passion for that I was willing to suffer for it --- was basketball. [To this day I experience some of the consequences of playing the game with passion --- I have several body parts (for example, hips, back, a knee) that don’t work real well. If I had it to do over again, would I do anything differently? Definitely not.]

I coached boys high school varsity basketball for 16 years, and it was not unusual for me to take some heat from some parents for playing someone who had less talent than some other players on the team --- after all, the most talented players are supposed to see the most floor time, right?

What was it that some young men brought to the game if it wasn’t talent? You guessed it --- passion! Passion has a way of bringing life. Young men with passion were able to create things that sheer (or mere) talent will not. [As an aside: those years in which we had at least one player on the team with both talent and passion, we were tough!]

Couples who have sustained the passion in their relationship have a certain pizzazz to them. They radiate life. Just being around them is invigorating.

But those couples who have failed to keep the passion alive can sometimes resemble a stagnant pond that has no fresh water coming in or going out --- the relationship just sort of sits there. It isn’t going anywhere and it certainly doesn’t have enough freshness to it to bring life.

Recent research (reported in 2008 by sex therapist Wendy Maltz and couples’ counselor Larry Maltz) revealed that the regular use of pornography has the potential to significantly undermine passion in a relationship. Did you know that those who regularly use pornography are more apt to:

- Experience difficulty becoming sexually aroused with their real partner

- Experience difficulty getting / maintaining erections with their real partner

- Experience difficulty reaching orgasm with their real partner

- Experience dissatisfaction following sex with their real partner

- Experience disinterest in sex with their real partner.

There are 4 components to healthy sexual functioning: (a) Desire, (b) Arousal, (c) Orgasm, and (d) Satisfaction. The use of pornography undermines all 4.

Did you know that the primary area of sexual struggle for couples in this country is in the area of Desire.

But should this really come as much of a surprise? If someone has difficulty becoming sexually aroused with their real partner and they have difficulty getting / maintaining an erection with that real partner and they struggle to reach orgasm with that partner and they aren’t very satisfied following sex with that partner, then why would they continue to have desire for that partner?

Passion is vitalizing / energizing / refreshing.

And as with anything valuable and life-giving, it is worth protecting.

And if a couple fails to actively protect the passion between them, it can easily be lost.

Is A Hook-Up Culture Going To Help Us Get There?

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:09:42 +0000

What happens (in the brain) when we experience the PASSION associated with a hook-up? Obviously, LOTS --- since such an experience will involve the stimulation of no fewer than several hundred thousand brain cells.

But more specifically, what bio-chemical concoction (love potion?) is brewing?

Some people may have heard of PEA (Phenylethylamine) --- this is an amphetamine-like chemical released by the brain during periods of passionate in-love-ness.

[You would probably not be surprised to find that there are currently several pharmaceutical companies attempting to mimic PEA. It would be the greatest love drug (not to mention money-maker) since Viagra. Can you imagine the shift in couples’ therapy: “Go home, take 2 of these, go to bed, and simply let things take care of themselves…….”]

Well, when we end up in the throes of a euphoric passionate experience, PEA whirls together in the brain with several other excitatory neurotransmitter chemicals --- for example, Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Endorphins. To say the least, we experience a rush!

In fact, several of these same neurotransmitter chemicals are released in the brain during the rush associated with the use of various drugs.

Did someone say Habituation? It is not unusual to find that people need “more” in order to obtain the same rush.

More novelty, more titillation, more sensuality --- in fact, sometimes more help. An article published in the “International Journal of Impotence Research” reported that from 1998 to 2002, prescriptions of Viagra had gone up 312% --- and this was not among men over 50 --- this was for men between the ages of 18 and 45!

About 10 years ago there was a report of what were referred to as DINS (Dual-income No Sex) couples. These are couples who both work outside the home and who have sex less than 1 time per month. It is estimated that approximately 20% of married couples in the United States fall into this group.

In the initial wave of research into DINS folks, the explanation given was that such couples are simply too tired to have sex --- with all the responsibilities of 2 careers, domestic maintenance, bills, and maybe children, they just didn’t have enough left in the tank at the end of the day (or in the middle of the day, for that matter) to ramp things up for a sexual rendezvous with their spouse.

I have to admit that as I read these early accounts, I found myself in a state of relative incredulity --- not that 20% of couples fall into this categorization --- but rather, that fatigue was provided as the explanation. What hardy, robust, able-bodied young man is too tired for sex? Let’s face it --- most of us men can be right on the edge of sleep and if the woman we love rolls over and gently caresses us, we will go from nearly comatose to revved up and raring to go in about 3 nanoseconds. I don’t know any healthy young men who are (consistently) too tired for sex!

Well, as you might have suspected, subsequent studies revealed that these DINS men were actually getting theirs elsewhere – sometimes through hook-ups with real people, but more often through pornographic hook-ups.

Also, I doubt that it will come as a surprise to anyone that the same bio-chemical concoction (PEA, Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Endorphins) released in the brain during hook-ups with real live people are also released during pornographic hook-ups.

Nor should it come as any surprise that once a person has become accustomed to this bio-chemical love potion, the neurological desire for more of it can be quite powerful. Once conditioned, the nervous system does not easily settle for less.

Is it any wonder that people (both men and women) who have experienced multiple sexual hook-ups (or extensive pornographic hook-ups, for that matter) typically struggle with the mundane-ness of married sex?

In last week’s Love Bytes blog [“Passion In A Hook-Up Culture”], we talked about the prevalence of hooking up in the current “dating culture.”

Some readers seemed to think that I was hoping to play sexual traffic cop. Let me make it clear – I have no intent (or desire) to regulate people’s behaviors [including (or maybe especially) their sexual behaviors.] As I frequently tell my students, I am busy enough taking care of the responsibilities that are legitimately mine – I don’t need to try to regulate anybody else’s behaviors as well – that is each of our own responsibility.

[As an aside: The same is true for each of us in every dating, cohabitating, and marriage situation. I am (still) surprised at the number of people who want to change their partner’s behavior……. But the truth is that each one of us is able to (at best) change one person’s behavior --- our own.]

People today are (desperately?) searching for love! And there are many of us who sincerely want the real thing --- not some transitory event that provides a fleeting glimpse of what love could be --- but rather, “The Bullseye Of Love” (see the Love Bytes blog post from 2 weeks ago).

There is a question that sits there like an elephant in the living room: IS A HOOK-UP CULTURE GOING TO HELP US GET THERE?

Passion In A Hook-Up Culture

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:57:47 +0000

Under the old model of courtship, you would date someone a few times, and if you found that you were really attracted to that person, you might consider having sex. Under the new model, you hook up a few times and if you find that you kind of like a person, then you might consider going on a date.

Consider the study conducted by researchers from Bowling Green University of local high school students --- 55% of juniors had engaged in sexual intercourse (most with more than one partner), and 60% of these students reported that they had sex with someone who served only as a “friend with benefits” (what is increasingly being referred to as a “f--- buddy”).

Or the 2007 data released by researchers from Florida State --- 33% of sexually-active college students reported having multiple sex partners during the previous 3 months, and among those students who stated that they were currently in an exclusive relationship, 40% reported having had sex with someone other than their partner.

In the 1980s, the predominant sexual schema among young men and women in the U.S. has been described as “Permissiveness With Affection.” Over 70% of both women and men believed that sex was an appropriate expression of one’s love for another person --- as intimacy increased between a couple, then sexual intercourse was a reasonable expression of that affection. These numbers are now down considerably from those 1980s percentages.

The Permissiveness With Affection schema is (slowly?) being replaced by a “Permissiveness Without Affection” schema. Over 40% of young women and nearly 65% of young men now believe that sex stands on its own merits --- sex should be enjoyed for its own sake and does not need to be justified by either love or commitment. [And some studies have revealed that these numbers may be quite a bit higher --- for example, a study published in “The Journal of Sex Research” reported that nearly 80% of a random sample of college-aged men and women regularly hook up.]

Maybe a line from the classic 1970s movie “Annie Hall” captures this growing sentiment. In the movie the character played by Diane Keaton remarks, “Sex without love is an empty experience;” to which the character played by Woody Allen replies, “Yes, but as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.”

The current state of our (dating) unions may provide an excellent preparation for sexual diversity, but it is probably not a very good preparation for marriage.

Consider the 2003 study of over 10,000 women which found that as the number of non-marital sexual partners went up, the probability of marital stability went down. For example, once a woman has had 5 sexual partners, the probability of pulling off an intact marriage dips under 30%; it is under 20% when the number of sexual partners reaches the upper teens.

Many of us who work with couples who are in love (or are slipping out of love), as well as many of us who study love / relationships / marriage, look at the current dating changes with (at least) a modicum of concern.

For example, more and more people are pursuing passion for passion’s sake.

And yet at the same time, passion is more and more being employed as the primary (and sometimes only) criterion to determine whether what 2 people are experiencing is really love.

Add to this the fact that a person can’t ever reasonably expect the passion in a marriage to consistently come close to matching the sort of passion that is commonly unleashed in spontaneous, diverse, novel, disparate, fresh hook-ups.

And yet, a vast majority of young people project that if they do marry someday and they experience petering passion in that marriage, they would divorce.

And this has not even taken into consideration the fact that a pattern of hook-ups-for-dates is unlikely to provide an opportunity for the psychological, attitudinal, emotional, and relational skill development that is so essential for a more authentic love experience --- where there is INTIMACY and COMMITMENT --- to go along with the PASSION.

Love David Letterman Style

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:29:51 +0000

Anybody been following the recent happenings swirling around David Letterman? Ah, the things done in the name of love.

Maybe there is no greater confusion surrounding our modern notions of love than those swirling around PASSION. In fact, for many of us, the two have become synonymous.

Without a doubt, most of us marry for love. But what this means may not be quite so obvious. College students were asked in 1983: “If you get married at some point in the future and the passion disappears from your marriage, would you divorce?” A little over half of the young men and women sampled stated that they would. A similar study completed in 1998 found that this number had gone up to almost 70%.

As pointed out in last week’s Love Bytes blog (“The Bullseye of Love”), PASSION is a crucial component of love – but passion alone does not love make.

One of the things that I have found “frightens” a number of young people whom I teach is the thought that passion can easily wane following that walk down the aisle. We have terms that we often use to describe this experience of petering passion. For example, habituation --- which is defined as a decrease in responsiveness when a person has repeated exposure to a stimulus. Or adaptation --- a change in the responsiveness of one’s senses to the quality of stimulation provided by a stimulus. In other words, we get used to the object of stimulation, whether that be a thing or a person.

Many years ago I had a unique dating experience that ended up having significant long-term consequences for my marriage. My wife (Kathy) and I were high school sweethearts and we ended up dating each other exclusively for several years. But midway through college, we realized that our relationship had gotten a little stale, and we agreed that it would be a good idea to “date around” a little bit before we made any sort of permanent decision to be with each other for life.

My wife dated a few different guys (only one of whom I trusted) where she was going to college. I, in turn, went out with a few different women (none of whom Kathy trusted – and probably with good reason) where I was attending college.

There was one particular woman that I ended up going out with several times, and one night as I was heading back to my place after an evening out, I found myself reflecting on the week leading up to that night. I realized that I had put quite a bit of effort into figuring out what we could do together that would be unique / different / interesting / out of the ordinary. [Please be aware that I was going to college in a relatively small town in Iowa and finding such a thing was no small challenge.]

In the wake of that evening, I began to suspect that my relationship with Kathy had not gotten stale because of habituation or becasue of adaptation, but rather, simply because we had slipped into same-old-same-old. We had started to simply do what we always did --- we went to the same movie theaters, we watched the same TV shows, we ate at the same restaurants, we ended up hanging out over and over again at the same places. Our relationship had begun to take on all the variety, uniqueness, and excitement of a bag of rice cake.

If married couples were asked how long it’s been since they went on their last date, what do you think they’d say? A recent random phone sample of nearly 1,000 men and women (who had been married between 11 and 19 years) revealed that the average was 13 weeks!

Is it any wonder that our passion for the one we have vowed to love for life begins to wane when it is over 3 months between dates?

As I learned years ago, if what you've got is a couch-potato relationship, then about all you can eventually expect to get is a few potatoes.

The Bullseye Of Love

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:08:26 +0000

Since this blog it titled LOVE Bytes and since the comments each week typically cover some facet of LOVE, it seems only reasonable that we spend a little time defining what LOVE actually is.

In last week’s Love Bytes blog [“Love: What Is It?”], we looked at a brief quiz about love. The 12 statements provided there are common Myths (I prefer to call them Dysfunctional Beliefs) about love.

All of them are FALSE.

Just this week in class a(nother) student asked the question: “What is love anyway?” The ensuing discussion once again revealed just how much confusion whirls around our notions of love!

Albert Einstein once stated: “Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.” This is probably nowhere more true than in the realm of love.

Applying Einstein’s wisdom within the context of love would look something like this. Admittedly, we have a relatively poor understanding of what love is --- in other words, the goal of love that we are shooting for is often not very clear. And yet, we continue to work at perfecting the means to achieving this goal which is not very clear.

If you have ever spent any time shooting arrows with a bow, you can only imagine how disconcerting / frustrating / annoying / bewildering it would be to work at perfecting your archery skills without knowing what the bullseye is. How can you ever adjust your aim if you don’t know what you’re shooting for?

The Bullseye of Love.

Arguably the best psychological theory of love out there asserts that love consists of 3 active components. These 3 components should be in fairly equal proportion to one another (something like an equilateral triangle). [This has often been referred to as the “Triangular Theory of Love.”]

If a couple has 1 of the sides of the triangle working well, then they have something going for them, but it isn’t love. Similarly, some couples may manage to get 2 sides of the triangle clicking pretty well, but without the 3^rd, they still don’t have love. Love actually requires all 3.

Furthermore, these 3 components are active. None of them are static. With love, it is never the case that we have arrived. Love is a journey to be lived with someone rather than a destination to be reached with that person.

As a result, a couple can spend an entire life together in love. Not because they are one of those lucky few who have arrived at the static / immobile / inert place called love. But rather, because they understand that love is an active / dynamic / viable encounter that is lived out with someone.

Quite honestly, I still use this Triangular Theory of Love to check out the love in my marriage. Even after all these years, I want to periodically know just how my wife (Kathy) and I are doing? How’s our love? How is this journey going? At any given point in time I am able to think about these 3 components of love and I am able to check where we’re at in each one. If we are weak in any of these 3 aspects of love, then I know that this is an area that we need to address.

How's your love?

Over the next few weeks in the Love Bytes blog, we will be taking a look at this question. For now, I would simply like to ask:

Do you and your partner have PASSION?

Do you and your partner have INTIMACY?

Do you and your partner have COMMITMENT?

Reference: Sternberg, Robert. (1988). The Triangle of Love. NY: Basic Books.

Love: What Is It?

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:23:29 +0000

Nowhere in our culture do we find greater confusion than that which whirls around our notions of love. Yes --- even greater than the confusion that surrounds health care is the whirlpool of notions surrounding love.

Let me give you a little feel for what I mean…….

“To love and to be loved is to see the sun from both sides” (David Viscott). [What?]

“Love is what happens to a man and a woman who don’t know each other very well” (M. Somerset Maugham). [I feel sorry for my wife --- either she can’t know me or she can’t love me.]

“Love is such a mystery, I cannot find it out, for when I think I’m best resolved, I then am most in doubt” (John O’Brien). [And this is a quote from a work called “Happy Marriage.”]

[The English philosopher Herbert Spencer once wrote: “When people’s knowledge is not in order, the more of it they have, the greater will be their confusion.”]

A little quiz. Below are a dozen statements. Based upon your experience with love, mark each one either True or False.

1. Love at first sight is typical of true love.

2. A man usually falls in love with someone who reminds him of his mother. For a woman, it is someone who reminds her of her father.

3. Well-adjusted people will only be happy when they are in love

4. True love only happens once in a lifetime.

5. It is impossible to hate someone you love.

6. Love is all you need to keep a relationship going.

7. Beautiful women and handsome men make the best partners for love.

8. There is only one right person in this world for you to marry.

9. If someone loves you, then they should be able to sense what your wants and desires are.

10. If what you and your partner have is true love, then you should be very satisfied with each other sexually.

11. If a partner expresses disagreement with an important idea of yours, then it is obvious that the two of you are not meant to be together.

12. Choosing someone to marry is primarily a “matter of the heart.”

Have fun with this little quiz.

In next week’s Love Bytes blog we will be discussing the answers.

Life Isn't Tied With A Bow

John R. Buri, Ph.D. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:09:07 +0000

Children were asked: “How would you make a marriage work?” Lori (age 8) replied: “If you want to last with your man, you should wear a lot of sexy clothes, especially underwear that are red and maybe have a few diamonds on them.” And Ricky (age 10) stated: “Tell your wife she looks pretty even if she looks like a truck.”

Ah, the wisdom of youth.

As an alternative, here is some wisdom that has come with age.

Regina Brett, columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, turned 50 in 2006, and she offered “50 Life Lessons.” [This is the single most popular column ever written by Regina Brett.] Here are some of those lessons.

- Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

- Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

- Make peace with your past so that it won’t screw up the present.

- Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

- If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

- Everything can change in the blink of an eye, but don’t worry, God never blinks.

- Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

- The most important sex organ is the brain.

- No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

- Frame every so-called disaster with these words: “In five years, will this matter?”

- Forgive everyone everything.

- Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

- However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

- Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

- Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it.

- Growing old beats the alternative --- dying young.

- All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

- Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

- No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.

- Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

Ah, the wisdom of age........ But as a friend of mine is accustomed to say: "Growing older happens naturally. Growing up is a matter of choice."

[Regina Brett’s book, “God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life’s Little Detours,” is scheduled for publication in early 2010.]