Love
Love for yourself and others can help you survive the toughest situations
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What is Love?Love is hard to define, but we all know what it is. One of the reasons that it is difficult to define is that there are many types of love. The love that one feels for children is not the same as the love on feels for a spouse or lover. Likewise, the type of love that one feels for a parent is not the same as the love one feels for a close friend. The emotions are different, but they are all undeniably love.
An article in Monitor on Psychology suggests that love might be more than just pleasant feelings that we associate with someone. It could actually be as essential as thirst and hunger, making it a drive more than an emotion. That explains why we experience so many emotions when we love someone. It also explains why we are so devastated when loved ones are taken away from us.
APA Online: The Love Drug - More than a Feeling
Ten Steps to Building Loving RelationshipsRelationships are complicated, so every piece of advice might not relate to you. Remember that each person enters a relationship with his or her own histories and prior experiences that affect the way they perceive the events in their lives.
Pick the Brain, a wonderful online source of information for those looking for self-help, lists ten ways to help you build healthy relationships.
Emotional Intelligence and LoveHelp Guide has a short quiz that you can use to help you gauge your emotional intelligence in relationships (the quiz is about halfway down the page). They also offer skills that can help you maintain relationships, including ways to resolve conflicts and communicate non-verbally. Loving relationships are built, but you have to know the right skills to build them.
Helpguide.org: Relationship Help
Recommended Web Sites about LoveRecommended Books on Love
An article in Monitor on Psychology suggests that love might be more than just pleasant feelings that we associate with someone. It could actually be as essential as thirst and hunger, making it a drive more than an emotion. That explains why we experience so many emotions when we love someone. It also explains why we are so devastated when loved ones are taken away from us.
APA Online: The Love Drug - More than a Feeling
Ten Steps to Building Loving RelationshipsRelationships are complicated, so every piece of advice might not relate to you. Remember that each person enters a relationship with his or her own histories and prior experiences that affect the way they perceive the events in their lives.
Pick the Brain, a wonderful online source of information for those looking for self-help, lists ten ways to help you build healthy relationships.
- Speak less and listen more. Listening to your loved one helps you understand his or her thoughts and feelings. While you need to share your thoughts and feelings as well, many of us forget to stop and listen.
- Give up the fight. When you have an argument with a loved one, sometimes you need to stop and wonder if being right is more important than creating harmony in the relationship. Sometimes we let our pride get in the way of loving relationships.
- Don’t gossip. This applies to all kinds of relationships. Spreading gossip about friends or family members often weakens your relationship.
- Forgive. People will have many opportunities to hurt you when you build relationships that last for years and decades. Whether on purpose or unintentionally, sometimes they will hurt you. Forgiving someone means letting the experience go. You can’t say you forgive someone and then bring it up a month later.
- Reserve direct judgment. Sometimes our loved ones have bad ideas, but it is best for the relationship to let that person figure that out on their own. If you constantly judge someone’s ideas, they will feel that you undermine them and could become defensive.
- Know your motivation. Building a loving relationship means your motivations have to be pure. If you focus on what you can get out of the relationship instead of how you and the other person can mutually support each other, then your relationship will be unbalanced.
- Develop feelings of connection. This means letting go of feelings of superiority and inferiority so that you can think of the relationship instead of yourself.
- Laugh. Laughter brings people together and relieves tension.
- Think about, but don’t over analyze, your relationships. Thinking about your relationships can give you insight into why you love someone, but over analyzing them just creates confusion and anxiety.
- Keep some detachment. This does not mean stop caring about your loved one. It means dropping your expectations so that you are not disappointment when they act different than you.
Emotional Intelligence and LoveHelp Guide has a short quiz that you can use to help you gauge your emotional intelligence in relationships (the quiz is about halfway down the page). They also offer skills that can help you maintain relationships, including ways to resolve conflicts and communicate non-verbally. Loving relationships are built, but you have to know the right skills to build them.
Helpguide.org: Relationship Help
Recommended Web Sites about LoveRecommended Books on Love
- How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving, by David Richo
- Affirmations, Your Passport to Lasting, Loving Relationships, by Rev. Anne Marie Evers and Laurel von Pander
