Bill and Steve are discussing the possibility of love. “I thought I was in love three times.  Three years ago, I cared very deeply for a woman who wanted nothing to do with me.  Was that love,” Steve asked? “No, that was obsession,” Bill explained. “Then two years ago, I fell for an attractive woman who didn’t understand me. Wasn’t that love,” Steve again questions? “No that was lust,” Bill replied. “And just last year, I met a woman while I was on a cruise. She was gorgeous, intelligent, a great conversationalist and had a super sense of humor. Everywhere I followed her on that ship, I would get a very strange sensation in the pit of my stomach. Well, that must have been love,” Steve implores?  “No,” Bill confessed, “That was motion sickness!”

There is a great deal of ignorance that masquerades as knowledge. Perhaps the greatest masquerade of all concerns the subject of love.

“Love is never having to say you’re sorry”

We are challenged to understand love because our models for love are problematic. The definitions handed to us by poets, parents, and pop songs indicate that love is a combination of an itchy or aching heart, a ravaging hunger of the soul, an addiction, a drug, a bleeding heart, a fluttering tummy, a weeping eye. Even my own sister Amanda McBroom who wrote the famous musical standard, “THE ROSE,” defined love as a razor that leaves your soul to bleed. Perhaps if we didn’t envision our need for love as a sickness, we could stop looking for a lover to cure us. We might then be able to find a lover who will be a partner, rather than a miracle worker.

The reason our models for love are problematic is due to their being based on a faulty premise. For something to be adequately understood it must exist. The challenge before us is addressing the question does love actually exist, and if so, could it be less important than another more primary need?

I contend that if love does exist, its significance is as compensation when the more primary need is unrealized.  I contend those who did not belong invented love.  Because this article is disruptive in the classical sense as new insight challenges established beliefs or notions, read through the article before dismissing the subject under discussion.

I contend there is only one primary psychological need in mankind, cross culturally, and no respecter of gender differences. The one primary psychological need in mankind is belonging.  The question each of us must consider, do I fit in, and am I a part of something larger than myself, do I belong? If you have ever questioned whether you were accepted?  This sensitivity is rudimentary to the need of belonging?

The human need to belong – membership – explains why we gravitate to becoming members of clubs, churches, groups, gangs, and why we have flags, and national atheism.  Why pairing up is so fundamental to our personal business and why the crisis of love is actually a crisis of belonging.  Breaking up, terminations, and divorces are so chaotic because it shakes our fundamental core to belong somewhere to someone.

When you fit, another term for belonging, a feeling arises within that is so fundamental to our security and sense of self, the daily rituals of being remembered on a special day don’t have the significance they once did. Last year I forgot my wife’s birthday. I have even forgotten why I forgot. When I remembered it was easy for me to apologize due to the fact I knew my forgetting would be considered for what it was – forgetfulness, not confirmation she wasn’t mine, or she didn’t belong.

When you belong you feel free. Free to feel whatever there is to feel, along with the freedom to express that feeling without the threat of retaliation or disapproval. When you know that you belong relationships are so much easier to navigate. Apologies are accepted, and you are less vulnerable to your sensitivities.  Remember,

“The goal in life is to become yourself and from that place make your contribution

somewhere in the world.”

Belonging enhances the self; alienation suppresses the self. To understand what shapes you today, why you are able to risk, why you don’t, you must understand your past experience with belonging. Belonging, feeling a part, fitting in, being accepted early in life means having early needs fulfilled. Touching, and caressing are as important to infancy as expressing yourself are important to later life. A growing child must be allowed to explore, to ask and complain. If a child is denied expression of their thoughts and feelings having to board up parts of themselves, it is unlikely that all later caressing by parents and others will make them feel like they belong, and they will invariable question another’s commitment. As I expressed earlier, the idea of love was invented by people who didn’t feel they ever belonged. All future conflicts with love are truly conflicts over belonging. Failing to understand this fundamental truth makes you venerable in many emotional ways.

Being remembered for special days, actually marketing days, birthdays, valentines, father’s or mother’s day, are compensating gestures offered to appease our insecurities born out of the crisis of not belonging. If you question whether you ever truly belonged, you will have challenges with love. Special days will have exaggerated significance attached to them, as do gifts given or received. Events in life are not then celebrated for what they are, but for what they represent, compensation for what is missing.

The crisis of belonging defines as love anything which fulfills our early unmet need. If it is physical touching we needed, we may try to manufacture love out of sex. Sometimes it is the search for protection; at other times it is the need to be understood.

One client of mine insisted her parents, who were openly demonstrative, loved her. She maintained that her husband’s disapproval of her saccharin behavior was the source of her problem. Shortly after beginning in therapy she felt it! All her life she never felt unloved because she became the good daughter. Her parents’ lavished support and affection on her, all she had to do was be good. Because she was good, and not herself, she never felt unloved. Pain would surface only when she was not perceived as the sweet person she masqueraded to be. When a person is allowed to be what they are, not what they pretend to be, they belong. My client was reassured she was loved, but she didn’t know if her family would accept her if she was honest. She substituted being good for being honest. No amount of reassurance, praise or lavished gifts, or cards could compensate for not belonging.

Children surrender and sacrifice in order to cover the feelings of being unacceptable. The ritual of sacrificing becomes the unfortunate sine qua non by which we measure love.  Generalizing the experience, love is measured in terms of how much others sacrifice for us.  Contrastingly, when you know you belong your support of others, especially when they fail to support you, is not considered sacrifice, it is unconditional support, freely given, a measure of nothing.

When a child belongs within their family, they are rarely concerned with love, nor do they have the need to label things love. People who are free to be who they are do not need words because they have the real experience of being a part of something so fundamental to their identity and development.

Another client of mine, a perfectionist, was highly afraid of making mistakes. I asked him, if he could choose between making fewer mistakes, or being in a safe and accepting environment, where if he made a mistake, he wouldn’t be punished, which would he choose? He chose belonging.

You live almost twice as long on Earth than the typical person did at the beginning of the twentieth century. You have an unlimited food supply at affordable prices, never the slightest worry about shortages, unlimited variety, so much to eat that overindulgence now plagues, not just the well-off, but the poor; the poor being more prone to obesity than the population as a whole. You are a recipient of incredible advances in political freedom, freedom of expression, sexual freedom, and freedom from conscription. You can talk to anyone in the world quickly, and relatively inexpensively, know everything there is to know, and think and say whatever you please. Contemporary life in the United States is the realization of utopia.

Freedom’s unintended consequence – Choice Anxiety

If you agree with the previous paragraph, I ask you, “Is all this freedom making your life easier, or are you discovering an unintended consequence of freedom – Choice Anxiety?” Now liberated from the constraint of social and economic forces, you emerge into a potentially anxious dilemma of having so many options that choice itself becomes a problem.

On the first day of the twenty-first century, President Bill Clinton declared Western society had “never before enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity combined with so much social progress.” And yet life experience teaches that pleasant living standards do not insure a broad sense that life possesses purpose. You may have conquered poverty, welcomed the arrival of leisure, and attained a material standard unthinkable four-generations earlier and still feel, “Is this all there is to life?”

If you resemble the remark I am about to make, finish this article and call me in the morning. “Somehow in the process of living with all this freedom, I realize, I’ve gotten lost along the way. I lost my sense of purpose and direction. I lost my capacity for uninhibited joy and celebration; and if the truth be told, I hear a silent suspicion whisper within me, ‘something is not right.’ But what?”

So in the absence of clarity you try making changes. You travel to new places, alter the way your body looks, acquire more, love someone new, and perhaps distract yourself long enough until convinced you feel better. But, with a capital B, the existential crisis returns and you begin to wonder if there is something seriously wrong with you? “Why aren’t I happier? Am I just ungrateful, destined to never be content?”

The truth is pieces of you have gotten lost along the way. But how, where? Some pieces of you may have been taken away, while other pieces were given away, or hidden away, and still others were simply forgotten about. Without these pieces, you are unlikely to experience the qualities of life for which you are searching.

I propose your search to find these pieces of yourself begins with new questions: “What do I want? When am I most content? How do I sabotage myself? Do I have the courage to try again differently? When was the last time I did something for the first time?”

Each Second Opinion article will provide guidance for your private journey long after the July 4th Liberty Celebrations dim. Authentic new journeys begin quitely with new questions, rarely with fireworks.

Look to next month’s article of Second Opinion to provide you with a very effective tool to chart your progress in “X Marks The Spot”.

Last month, a New York court decided a case, Marshall v. Cassano, providing further legal precedence on less emotional grounds the legal characterization of an engagement ring, and the appropriate rules governing its ownership.

John Marshall gave another woman, Delores Cassano, an $8,000 engagement ring.  Delores, in turn, promised to marry John.  John eventually broke off his engagement to Delores.  The New York court applied a Contract Theory upon the issuance of the engagement ring.  The ring is seen as consideration, a thing of value given in exchange to create a contract.  The bride is agreeing to an option contract, that is with the ring, the gift giving fiancé buys the right to marry his fiancée in the future.  She in turn promises to marry him.

Characterizing the ring exchange as an option contract on the right to marry in the future suggests that the jilted bride should not have to give back the ring.  After all, the ring-giver got what he paid for – the option to marry a particular woman who reordered her life and career in anticipation that if he did not opt out of the contract the two would be married.   She made good on her promise to marry by remaining open to the possibility; it was he who chose not to exercise the option.  Conclusion, according to the Court of New York – bride retains the consideration – the engagement ring in question.

For whatever it is worth this is what the New York Court of Law considers a legal opinion.  However, if one has to explore the legal options to understand proper etiquette, then one is already compassionately bankrupt causing others to question whether an adequate explanation could ever be found.

[quote style=”boxed”]I have decided not to move forward with our engagement, and when in the US, I’ll come over to get the ring.[/quote] Many years ago, I was privy to a similar unfortunate case of consideration default.   The jilted fiance was a woman, although equally as many men feel the guillotine of desmemberment when an engagement ends.  Most endings involve some element of shock and despair, depending on how sharp the blade.  Some guillotines fall so slowly one can hear the end of the relationship approaching.  To my unsuspecting maiden, the promise of the future life was severed without as much as a suspicion, a two line email, not as much as a call. She knew she deserved better. The email read, “I have decided not to move forward with our engagement, and when in the US, I’ll come over to get the ring.”

After literally picking herself off the floor, which for an extended time served as her mourning bed, she rose to deliver a searing speech for herself and those posthumusly served by her eloguence.

“Dear Sir for this engagement to you, I compromised my professional career, making  myself unavailable to any further personal and/or professional opportunities. I traveled at considerable physical and emotional expense to join you wherever you were in the world.  I became conversant in a new culture, I invested countless months of relationship building with your family, friends, colleagues, professional and personal staff because what was important to you was growing important to me.  On your part, you induced me into a more intimate relationship by promises and commitment of a future together, and I made serious efforts to integrate our respective families.  My engagement to you meant that much. In exchange, I accepted your proposal of marriage, which you retracted eight months later in a two-lined email breaking more than my engagement.   Now I am back home after having traveled 18,000 miles to retrieve the life I had relocated in exchange for a promise, I am left to process all that passed so suddenly in an otherwise innocent email.

You asked me as I came to retrieve my life, “had I brought the ring?” I said no.  I should have said not only did I not bring the ring with me, but I also forgot to prepare a considered response to a question I never in my wildest imagination believed you were capable of asking. My first loss was over my dream of being forever with you.  My second, perhaps more profound loss occurred as the days passed with no response from the person I considered my best friend.  Two lines in an email with no follow up contact for days?  I always felt safe with you.  Suddenly I didn’t.  Eventually, even my devotion eroded under the deafening silence removing the last romantic blinders from my adoring gaze.”

I met my heroine years later.  A fortutious passing comment assured me the solice I needed in knowing she healed without bitterness.  Without speaking she assured me the wisdom of matured experience reduces the idea of security to a supersition.  The truth we all share is that life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing much.  She never married.

Anyone who is a fan of repartee and delicious dialogue is going to love HER, playing in theaters everywhere.  The movie explores our most basic human need to connect in order to belong.  HER explores the question of “How do you share your life with another?” Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with his operating system Samantha (Voice Over by Scarlett Johansson) in a futuristic, yet feasible vision of our own present infidelity with technology.  The movie explores the human experience of breakups, letting go, sexual pleasure, and emotional attachment through Oscar winning dialogue to covet.  Alienation Syndrome is an actual diagnosis for which the treatment is language.  HER is a movie which richly displays the beauty of language as an interpersonal art form.

Many people today fear the communication process because of more or less normal fears of involving themselves deeply with others.  Some fail to pour themselves into their language nor expect others to do so.  Language must remain on a safe level for these people, void of any adventure.  They habitually put filters between what they really think and feel and what they actually say.  The result is communication that is often muddied, but safe.

Some people engage in language that is overly precise, asking too much of language, while others engage in language that is too vague, asking too little.  Both extremes are usually defensive maneuvers designed to keep interpersonal contacts at acceptable levels.

In either case, the poverty of expression results in patterns of language that prohibit the speaker from expressing what they would like to say.  Language rather than being full and alive is conversationally anemic.

Yet despite the problems with language, language is an instrument by which we examine the world around us.  If we are afraid of this world, our language will be circumscribed and feeble, but if we love the world and are challenged by it, then our language will be strong and searching.  The limits of a person’s language become the limits of their world.

The best that life has to offer invites you to experiment with the wonderful potential of language.  Identify the roadblocks to effective and lively communication.  Language is sometimes a sensitive instrument and at other times a clumsy tool of communication.  Yet, irrespective of the challenge, when we endeavor to enlarge the possibilities of our language, we enlarge our personal possibilities.

A child learning to speak is acquiring one of the prime functions supporting a sense of individual autonomy and one of the prime techniques for expanding the radius of “give and take”.  Speech defines us.  Our language becomes one of the early ways in which we declare ourselves separate and distinct, and not just an appendage of our parents, church, school or family, but a person in our own right.   I am defined by my use of language.  Through language I make myself who, and what I am.

It may be counterintuitive, but I want you to introduce him to HER!

It’s that time of year when people begin preparing their New Year’s Resolutions.  New Year’s Resolutions are essentially renunciations of old habits you have been trying to break unsuccessfully for at least the last twelve-months.  Before I provide you proven strategies to promote your success, I want to review some background on the dynamics of habit.

A habit is a thing done often, usually done easily – a practice, custom, or act that is acquired and is integrated into your behavior no longer requiring conscious effort.  How long does a behavior have to be repeated before it is considered a habit?  The simple answer is until it has enslaved or mastered you.  One truth about habits is they possess us, you do not have habits, they have you.

These conditioned responses appear to disappear by disuse; however, habits can never be entirely unlearned.  As with long-term memory, well-established habits and habit pathways do not disappear with time.  Do you really think it is possible to forget knowing how to ride a bicycle?

Life is more about better and better management not about cure.

 

The earlier in life a habit is formed the more enduring it will become.  Self-destructive habits are easier to learn, provide quicker rewards, require few delays in gratification, and less disciplined determination and self-sacrifice than self-enhancing habits.  Remember rewards reinforce behavior.  Self-destructive habits are more difficult to modify or correct for the simple reason that their existence is denied – denial being the insistence that what is, isn’t.  Remember, what you don’t acknowledge lives with you until you do.

Although it is impossible to cure yourself of a habit they can be managed.  Here are the strategies to make management possible.

1. Stop Rationalizing.

“I can’t change; You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; That’s just me; After all nobody is perfect.”  The truth is you can teach any old dog any new trick if you make the rewards important enough.

2. Apply a Strategy.

Review my article on “The Five Commandments”.

3. Be Realistic.

Learning to manage an old habit won’t happen fast nor will your resolve be consistent.  Remember, periodic failures are better than habitual slavery.

4. Be Encouraged.

Enthusiasm and encouragement strengthens self-discipline and prompts an attitude of stick-to-itiveness.  Remember, you can change the past.  What is today tomorrow? The past.  Change what you do today and you have changed the past.

5. Get Better at Recovery.

Learn to measure maturity by how quickly you recover.  Along with accepting the difficulty of learning to manage old habits, you must accept the fact that you are imperfect, and prone to make mistakes.  There is nothing sacred about any starting point.  When you slip back into an old habit the quicker you can recover the better managed that habit will become, until one day you will recover so quickly it will appear seamless.

6. Don’t Put Yourself In Tempting Situations.

Learning to manage old habits or acquiring new ones is harder at the beginning.  Therefore, the wise person doesn’t put himself or herself in tempting situations that risk sabotaging your new strategy.

7. Focus on Trying, Not on Succeeding.

You make your goals or risks too difficult to take when you over focus on the outcome.  Doing so will inhibit your progress.  A successful strategy focuses on the process of trying to succeed.  Pay attention to the efforts you are extending and the steps you are taking.  The essence of well-established habits is psychological rigidity.  Therefore, absolutely fundamental to successfully managing old habits or acquiring new ones are flexibility and slowly driving towards your objective – managing life.

Wishing you the best from every strategic risk.

There are no ten commandments for success in life.  Wouldn’t we prefer a few steps to follow than a process to understand?  In an attempt to simplify an otherwise complicated process, this thing known as personal growth, I have reduced my observations from over 35 years of private practice as a personal therapist down to 5 prominent strategies that have brought success to thousands of my clients.

If you prefer principles proven to be successful over random “hope so,” here is five growth principles of where to start for rapid progress.

Five personal growth principles to promote rapid progress.

1. Have a clear objective.  The more specific an objective the easier it is to monitor your progress.
2. Maintain a realistic expectation of the progress you desire.  Eschew magic or grandiose thinking and you will insure personal growth you can value.
3. Be honest.  Before you can succeed in personal growth you must first concede.  Growing up not just old begins the moment you confront the truth.  Remember, you are often an accomplice to the wrong doing against you.
4. Don’t wait for inspiration or motivation to start doing what you know you must.  Inspiration and the motivation to continue is a reward or by product gained from doing what you must.  Stop looking for motivation to stimulate or motivate you into action.  Progress begets progress.
5. Recognize the companion of your increased awareness is discomfort.  The way out is the way through not around.  It’s called growing pains for this reason.  Discomfort is a signal that you are doing something that is unfamiliar not wrong.  Learn to recognize growing pains for what they are.

Personal growth is a potentially powerful and delicate exercise, which although chancy and sometimes difficult is worth our best efforts.  Try the principles that others have used to catapult them through to success.