Archive for the ‘Relationship’ Category

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I talked about the facts and science of love in my previous post, now here’s the wiki of how to love.  Interesting article.

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Love is a strange thing. It can be the most amazing feeling in the world, or it can really hurt, but in the end love is something most, if not all of us, will face. While there are many different ways to define love and there are many different ways to love someone (even yourself), here is a general guide to loving.

Steps

1. Say it. When you say the words “I Love You”, they should carry with them the desire to show someone that you love them, not what you simply want to feel. When you say it make sure you really mean it and are willing to do anything for that special person.
2. Empathize. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Rather than impose your own expectations or attempt to control them, try to understand how they feel, where they come from, and who they are. Realize how they could also love you back just as well.
3. Love unconditionally. If you cannot love another person without attaching stipulations, then it is not love at all, but deep-seated opportunism (one who makes the most of an advantage, often unmindful of others). If your interest is not in the other person as such, but rather in how that person can enhance your experience of life, then it is not unconditional. If you have no intention of improving that person’s life, or allowing that person to be themselves and accepting them as they are, and not who you want them to be, then you are not striving to love them unconditionally.
4. Expect nothing in return. That doesn’t mean you should allow someone to mistreat or undervalue you. It means that giving love does not guarantee receiving love. Try loving just for the sake of love. Realize that someone may have a different way of showing his or her love for you, do not expect to be loved back in exactly the same way.
5. Realize it can be lost. If you realize that you can lose the one you love, then you have a greater appreciation of what you have. Think how lucky you are to have someone to love.

Video

This is a video that will explain to you how you know when you are in love and what type of a unique feeling it is.

Tips

• It does not make you a bad person to desire someone else’s love, even if they do not love you. However, to truly love someone, you must let them be free. It is selfish to blame them for your feelings.
• There are many types of love, for example: a mother-son love is different from a best friend’s love, which is different from a romantic love. Don’t be ashamed to tell anyone that you love your friends as much as you love anyone else in your life.
• You have to find someone that will suit you, someone you feel comfortable with – not just someone to make love to.
• As a word, love can be found worldwide and is often used to describe compassion and/or emotional attachment. Accepting those you love for who they are is part of love. You also need to learn to accept yourself before you can accept another. If you cannot love your self, how are you to love another?
• Love genuinely. Do not compare your feelings now to what your feelings were when you were with another mate. At times, we can experience rejection.
• Realize that love is a feeling that wikiHow can describe and attempt to assist, but ultimately, you are the one who must take action in order to discover love.
• Do things that make the other person feel good, but do not smother them with gifts and attention.
• Consider some tips about what people in love do.
  • People in love are sensitive to each other’s needs, and endeavour to meet them even when they do not feel like doing it.
  • Men and women may be equal in value but different by nature. People who truly are in love give their mates “space” to develop their potential and find their fulfilment in life.
  • Love does not brag. People who are truly in love refrain from rehearsing their good traits just to show off. Bragging in a relationship often is really defensiveness.
  • People who are truly in love do not insist that their way is best and demand that their mates give in to them.
  • People who are truly in love are considerate of each others feelings and courteous in their actions toward one another. Sadly sarcasm is a way of life for some couples. They ridicule each other, belittle each other and trade jibes with a fury. They may say it is all in fun, but it leaves wounds that will someday become festering sores.
  • People who are truly in love look out for their mates’ best interests as much as their own. Those in love should be concerned not only about their own individual interests, but about the interests of the other as well.
  • People who are truly in love control their anger when the other displeases them. We are all human, and all humans feel anger periodically, but we only express our anger in destructive ways when we counting on someone else to meet our needs.
  • People who truly love each other do not take pleasure in their mates’ disappointments or failures.
  • People who truly love each other treat their mates with absolute trust. Some husbands and wives torment themselves with groundless suspicions. If you look for trouble you will find it every time.
  • People who truly love look forward to their relationship growing more meaningful and precious. They have hope. Which is an attitude that happily anticipates the good. It isn’t being blind and denies there are problems, but it does look beyond the problems. People who truly love each other do not allow their problems to rob them of their happiness.
• Remember there is no failure in love, because once you tell somebody who you love, that you love him/her, then you have already succeeded in love.

Warnings

• You must love yourself before you can love another.
• There is always the risk of getting hurt, but that’s part of letting yourself fully love and trust some one. Being hurt could be long-lasting and could hurt more than anything in the world.
• Realize what you have while you have it, and care for the person you trust.
• If something comes to an end, try to let go rather than holding on; it’s for the best.
• The idea of love is fueled by childhood fantasies. The love shown in movies, as obtainable as it may be, is rare to say the least.
• You just may find your soul-mate sooner than you want to.
• If you feel any doubt of love your partner has for you, make sure that your suspicions are grounded in reality. If you hurt your partner as a result of undeserved mistrust, he/she may end up doubting both your love for them and theirs for you.
• Don’t ask for love – you should receive love because your partner wants to give you love, not because you want it from your partner.
• Do not force love – it will come in good time, it will come.

Related wikiHows

• How to Define Love
• How to Know the Difference Between Love, Infatuation and Lust
• How to Tame a Free Spirit
• How to Show Your Wife or Husband That You Truly Love Them
• How to Get a Man to Marry You
• How to Write a Love Letter
• How to Explicate a Poem
• How to Write a Love Poem
• How to Become Inspired to Write Poetry

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Love. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Well.  Now you know!

Every body talks about love. It’s the single most talked about subject worldwide, it’s the most used word in English language, the most frequent theme used in the creative arts and  it’s the major catalyst in interpersonal relationships.

Did you know that the word Love is both a verb and a noun?

But how do we define this word? Do we really know what it means? Can we actually describe how it feels and how it plays such an important role in our lives?

What is Love?

Love is the most difficult word to define or describe because it can refer to a diverse anthology of responses, sensations and experiences, all relating to powerful sense of emotions and affection.

The word love can be interpreted in to a variety of miscellaneous feelings, conditions and thoughts, ranging from non-specific pleasure to intense interpersonal attraction.

This variety of usage and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes it very difficult to define love appropriately.

As a hypothetical concept, love usually refers to a profound, inexpressible feeling of tenderly caring for another person.

Even this incomplete description of love includes a hoard of numerous feelings  from the burning desire and intimacy of a romantic love to the nonsexual, emotional closeness of familial and platonic love to the philosophical oneness or fidelity of a religious love.

So why is this little four letter word so important in our lives? And how do we know how and when to use it the right context?

Because of its colossal psychosomatic importance, love is one the most important attributes in physical and emotional relationships and even though it is hard to define what love really is, it  is beyond doubt different from liking and the difference doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the presence or absence of physical or sexual attraction.

The Science of Love

“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love”
Albert Einstein

We’ve all been there, fallen madly in love with someone without even knowing how or why.

Contrary to common belief, it is not our heart that is responsible for this most exhilarating of human emotions though it is the heart that feels the effects the most.

It’s actually our brain which produces an irresistible concoction of chemicals that lure us into falling in love. This cocktail is made of three major chemicals: Adrenaline, Dopamine and Serotonin.

Adrenaline

The primary stage of falling in love with someone sets in motion your reaction to stress, which increases the levels of adrenaline and cortisol in your blood. The effects of this increase in the two chemicals is what makes your heart race when you see your new love, makes your mouth dry and makes you sweat.

Dopamine

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which incites ‘desire and reward’ by promoting an intense rush of pleasure. It has the same effect on the brain as taking cocaine!

Serotonin

This is one of love’s most important chemicals. It has numerous functions in the human body including the control of appetite, sleep, memory and learning, temperature regulation, mood, behaviour, cardiovascular function and muscle contraction. This may explain why you keep thinking of your new lover.

It’s not a matter of words

Research has shown that it takes less than five minutes to decide whether or not you fancy someone and this has very little to do with what they talk to you about. Physiologists have shown that it is more to do with body language, tone and velocity of the voice and eye contact than the spoken words.

It is commonly believed that there are three stages to falling in love.

Desire

The first stage of love is desire or lust and this of course is driven by the sex hormones, Testosterone and Oestrogen.

Magnetism

This is the stage that involves the three neurotransmitters named above. Magnetism or attraction is the wonderful time when you feel completely infatuated and can’t think of anything else.

Dr Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa, conducted some research to compare the brain mechanisms that cause you to constantly think about your lover, with that of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

She analysed blood from twenty couples who’d been madly in lover for less than six months and discovered that the levels of Serotonin in their blood was indeed equivalent to that of patients with OCD.

Attachment

This is the link that keeps couples together for long enough to enable them to marry and have children. Scientists think there might be two major hormones involved in this feeling of

attachment: Oxytocin and Vasopressin.

Oxytocin, nicknamed the cuddle hormone!

This is a powerful hormone that is released after sexual arousal. Recent, ongoing studies are investigating the role of Oxytocin in various behaviours such as bonding, anxiety, trust, social recognition and maternal behaviours.

Vasopressin, also known as Arginine Vasopressin (AVP)

One of the most important roles of AVP is to control the body’s water retention; it is released when the body is dehydrated, causing the kidneys to preserve water, thus concentrating the urine and reducing urine volume, but in high concentration is also raised the blood pressure. Vasopressin also has various neurological effects on the brain. An experiment on prairie voles showed that it influences their pair bonding.

What the heck have Prairie voles to do with us?

Prairie Voles are very similar to humans in that they are mostly monogamous and therefore they are studied for monogamous behaviour and social bonding. The male and female partnership in prairie voles is very similar to human partnership.

They are known to indulge in far more sex that is required for mere reproduction purposes, which is usually the case in most mammals apart from humans.

They form life-long pair bonding, they group and groom each other, share nesting and pop raising tasks and generally show a high level of similar behaviour to humans, including not being sexually faithful though pair bonded females show aggression towards unfamiliar males, both sexes will occasionally mate with other voles if the opportunity arises!

Dynamics of falling in love

New York psychologist, professor Arthur Arun has been studying the dynamics of what happens when people fall in love.

In his research, he asked a number of strangers to reveal intimate details about their lives to each other for about an hour and a half. Then they were made to stare in to each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes. Afterwards, many of his research subjects confessed to feeling deeply attracted to their opposite number and two of his subjects even married later.

And now for the final word…

February being the month of Love, Do you want to know how to fall in love?

Conduct a test of Arthur Arun on your own by doing the following:

·     Find a total stranger

·     Ask them to tell you the most intimate details of their life then Talk about yours, do this for one and a half hours.

·     Then sit in front of one another and stare in to each other’s eyes for four minutes!!

If this doesn’t work, contact Arthur Arun!  I’d give you his address but he begged me not to!!

Can it work?

 Remember “The Graduate” the 1967 coming of age classic? Didn’t you just hate Mrs Robinson? I know I did.

I hated her not because she was an older woman seducing a younger man but because of her attitude that she thought he was OK for her but not good enough for her daughter.

But I know that most people hated her just because she was an older woman dating a young boy and everyone saw her as a cougar.

And what is this seduction theory anyway? Why is it that if an older woman dates a younger man it’s seen as seduction or man-hunt yet when older men date or even marry younger women no one raises an eyebrow?

Do I detect double standards here or is that putting it mildly? I am strongly opposed to any kind of discrimination but more than anything else when in comes to gender inequity.

I don’t say this in defence of women just because I am a woman myself. I would defend men’s rights just as fiercely. There is no problem with older women having a relationship with younger men Just the same as there is nothing wrong with older men having a relationship with younger women.

I think people who frown at relationships like this are closed minded and possibly ignorant. What I believe is that age difference is an adolescent problem.

When you are a kid or a teenager, a year or two makes a lot of difference in your understanding and viewpoint of life, which can greatly influence your ability to communicate and relate to important aspects of life and relationships.

As you get older and have more experience of life you become more aware of your emotions and your position in life, you acquire skills and resources to deal with relationships and improve your problem solving abilities so a 10 years or even more difference in your age makes little or no difference to how you behave in a relationship.

To be quite honest spotlighting a random numbers difference in a couple’s ages is shallow mindedness as far as I am concerned especially if they get along well and are both emotionally and intellectually compatible and more importantly if they love one another.

Personally, I prefer younger men because since the age of 40 I have not found a man a few years older than me or even of my own age who didn’t look like my grandfather!

Of course there can be some difficulties when the age gap is really great. But I think as long as you are both adults and know where you are and what you want in life there should be no problem in having a fulfilling relationship with an older partner.

I  wouldn’t date someone who is 20 years younger than me. But as long as I am not old enough to be a man’s mother, I am quite open minded about the age difference thing.

What do you think?

How to Get Over Breakups

For the last eight weeks I have been trying to console my friend who is experiencing a painful break up from a recent love affair.

So painful that it has completely changed her personality from a cheerful, outgoing and sociable individual to a miserable, introvert and depressed spirit.

I’ve been talking to her almost everyday but it’s as if everything she hears from me goes in from one ear and comes out of the other. I suppose that’s why you have two ears!

To be quite honest it made me feel I am not saying the right things so I started researching on the subject and just by chance I came across this site.

Not only great content but beautifully done as well with pictures, suggestions, quotations and instructions.

To my amazement, a lot of points that are made here are similar or even the same as mine. Seems like I have a lot in common with the author.