…partner doesn’t find out, it’s okay. As one therapist I know reports, when patients ask him if a certain behavior constitutes infidelity, he replies “would your partner consider it infidelity?” I agree that if you are unsure or uncertain about what is okay or not you should clarify it with your partner, rather than use any ambiguity in your agreement to slip into deception. 5. Don’t Give Up Aspects of Yourself No matter what, your relationship sho…
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…because it stirs up old feelings of hurt, loss, anger or rejection. As Dr. Pat Love said in an interview with PsychAlive, “when you long for something, like love, it becomes associated with pain,” the pain you felt at not having it in the past. 3. Love challenges an old identity. Many of us struggle with underlying feelings of being unlovable. We have trouble feeling our own value and believing anyone could really care for us. We all have a “criti…
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The Highs, the Lows and How You Can Make It Last Forever. Pat Love, Ed.D. – The problems that pervade relationships are more predictable and less puzzling than one may think. This book helps explain the stages of falling in love, why it makes us feel so good in the beginning and so bad in the end, how it builds our partners up and, eventually, tears them down. By understanding the physiological and psychological elements in ourselves that often l…
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…though it’s almost always unconscious, when we grow up, we tend to repeat patterns or live out our parents’ prescriptions for our lives. We can break this chain as parents by seeing our child as a separate person. We can acknowledge our kids for real traits they have and support what they love to do. For example, instead of saying, “The picture you drew is amazing! You are the best artist,” we could say, “I love all the colors you used in that pi…
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…d of looking at what they are giving in the relationship. I appreciate Dr. Pat Love’s definition of love as both “a wish to make someone happy” and taking the actions that will make the person you love happy, because really loving someone means making your actions match your words. Real love may seem less exciting than our shiny fantasies, but it is a million times more rewarding. Here are the qualities that I believe make up a truly loving relati…
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…to relate differently, it is easy to fall into our old familiar, negative patterns. Childish communication can involve deferring and submitting, looking for direction or definition, being servile or subservient, seeking approval or criticism. Parental communication can involve directing and dominating, being condescending and aggressive, acting judgmental and critical. None of these qualities has a place in the communication between two independe…
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…parenting involves how we feel about ourselves. As psychologist and author Pat Love has said, the best thing adults can do as parents is to have their needs met by other adults and not by their children. Our kids need us to be the best, most developed, and most fulfilled versions of ourselves in all areas of our lives in order to feel independent and secure in theirs. That way, they can emulate and learn from us without feeling they must fill the…
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…Dr. Pat Love says, “Feel your feelings, then do the right thing.” Identify patterns When people feel close, they react. Sometimes these reactions are positive, and sometimes they are negative. The reasons for this are complex and have a lot to do with how we’ve learned to see ourselves and the world around us throughout our lives. We may respond perversely to positive treatment, because it conflicts with negative ways we’re used to being seen or r…
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…the tough start texting. This problem is one that has been explored by Dr. Pat Love, the acclaimed author of “The Truth About Love” and “Hot Monogamy,” and it’s one I discussed with her recently when we were recording our upcoming webinar, “Love in the Time of Twitter.” We wanted to explore how interpersonal relationships have been impacted by new media and explore how love can be preserved in the face of such colossal distraction. As Love recentl…
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