By the time we reach adulthood, we have heard a lot of "don't" messages from our culture. This begins with our primary caregivers but quickly fans out to include other adults in our lives...and other kids who have already become agents of the culture. These are powerful shaping experiences. One of the many results is that as adults trying to actively be in a love relationship, we have lost or hidden away the capacity to express a feeling in a straightforward manner.
In our work, we frequently hear people go down the wrong road by using this phrase: "I felt that..."
What usually follows is the word "you" and a criticism or indictment of their partner. In other words,
criticism comes through masquerading as a feeling. "I felt that you disappointed me" is not a feeling.
"I feel that you are never really going to understand me" not a feeling. "I feel that you'll never do the things I need you to do so I can feel respected" not a feeling. All of these are criticisms. When you point your finger at your partner, they put their fingers in their ears.
So how do we express a feeling? Ask yourself how young children do it. They say, "I feel really hurt," "I feel sad," "I'm mad," "I'm really scared," "I feel bad," "I'm so happy!" They just say the feeling. There is no "that".
They say the feeling and feel the feeling at the same time. As adults, if we really want our partners to hear us and be empathetic and possibly change some aspect of how they interact with us, we have to unlearn the Language of Hurt which is "you, you, you," shame, blame, criticize in a variety of disguises...and sometimes undisguised contempt! We have to relearn our natural language, the Language of the Heart, the Language of Healing by owning what lives in us and is so painful. It is painful for a lot of men to say, "I'm so sad, I could cry for a week," or "I'm really afraid...I'm afraid I'm going to be alone." It's very painful for a lot of women to say, "I'm angry. I'm just so angry!" We could go down the gender difference trail further but for our purposes here, not necessary. Because, frankly, it is painful for most adult human beings to just say their deepest feeling out loud at any moment, unless they are happy...but a lot of people even have trouble saying that, as if there is an inner voice telling them it's not good to be too happy, an unwelcome residue of our Puritan founders.
Some people joke and tease about the phrase "inner child" or the phrase "how does that make you feel?"
The truth is, we make fun of them because they make us feel uncomfortable...because nearly every last one of us is carrying around an emotional heritage that includes some very painful memories. Yet, until we get fully real with ourselves and our partners, until we claim our right to express our hurt, to tell the story of what we experienced as vulnerable children, we can not experience true intimacy as adults. It is a great and sad irony that vulnerability set us up for hurt as children...but without vulnerability as adults, we cannot be intimate. We must risk telling our story in its true form, or face the greater risk of living a life under cover.
C 2011 Bob Kamm
Bob Kamm's Blog: Essays and poems on leadership, love, relationships, childhood, destiny, the sacred and the profane...anything that calls my mind and heart into action.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Love Over 60, Part IV
In my list of How to Find Love Over 60, I began with these words:
“Stay healthy and fit. However people used to look at this age a generation ago is irrelevant now. We have the knowledge to stay active. Get out and move. Eat sanely. Take care of yourself. There’s a good possibility that many of us Boomers will live well into our nineties…and what better reason than for love?”
So people ask me what I do specifically. Well, I eat a lot of fruit, vegetables and nuts. I do eat meat but fish, turkey, chicken and eggs (mostly whites). I used to love steak. I ate enough steaks for a lifetime by the time I was 50. In the last 5 years, I doubt I’ve eaten 2 lbs of red meat. I love the taste but don’t like the way it sits heavy in my gut. It’s very dense and takes longer to digest than a lot of other foods. It feels hard on the entire digestive system to me. I eat as much raw food as I can. Raw food has lots of fiber and live enzymes in it that help you digest the food itself. What a cool setup that is! When you cook food too much, you kill the enzymes so it’s harder to digest it…even vegetables. A lot of people don’t know that our stomachs have a finite capacity to produce their own digestive enzymes. As we get older, the system is less efficient…which is why most antacid commercials show middle-aged people in distress. I also generally avoid the whites—white flour, white sugar, white rice, white potatoes, white pasta (I LOVE pasta, but it loves my belly more, so I avoid it). My body turns starch into fat very quickly so I avoid it. I love bread but don’t eat much and when I do, it’s wheat or seed bread of some kind.
I generally eat a light breakfast that includes fruit. Lunch is my big meal. I often don’t eat a sit-down dinner. I prefer to graze from about 5 in the evening until 8—mostly having fruit and some nuts, generally almonds, which I love. I do snack between meals but generally it’s healthy stuff—an apple, a banana, some pineapple, a small yogurt.
This really isn’t rocket science at all. As we get older we should benefit from the accumulated experience of what serves our health and what doesn’t. You can find more detail on this if you go to www.bobkamm.com and click on “essays and excerpts” on the home page. There is very thorough piece on health and nutrition that sums up what I’ve learned over thirty years reading a lot about nutrition. Single best book on nutrition? The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.
As to exercise, I’ve always been a kinesthetic person. Even as a kid, I didn’t like board games because you had to sit still to play them. I wanted to be outside running around, climbing trees, building snow forts and so on. As an adult, I ran quite till my mid-forties. Then, my joints and lower back told me they’d had enough. I switched to biking for a while and still do some, though less now. My favorite thing to do is just walk…but especially up hill. So I guess that qualifies it to be called hiking. I live at the base of 1250 foot mountain and generally climb it at least 3 times a week. It’s about 40 minutes to the top—a good aerobic workout, and the downhill return is good for a natural cool-down and working the legs the opposite way. The round-trip is about 4 miles. Several times a year, I do longer hikes with younger clients who come out for 3-day personal retreats (see www.bobkamm.com , The Ultimate One-on-One). We’re talking anywhere from 5 to 10 miles, depending on how fit these folks are. I try to mix it up a bit in warm weather and swim some. It’s great exercise but it tends to bore me, unless I’m in the tropics snorkeling or scuba diving. Now those are fun!
I also hit the gym 3 times a week, do some free weights and some of the machines. Jack LaLanne lives in our area and I’ve run into him numerous times over the years. He counsels to do a lot of reps with light weight as we get older. So I’ve followed that advice. I generally work one or two body segments per visit (e.g. chest and back) and spend no more than 30 minutes at it. One of my other fitness gurus told me that if you’re working out right, you shouldn’t spend more than twenty to thirty minutes per day, unless you’re in training for some big event or trip. Works for me.
I’m going to turn 64 in less than a month. I’m just shy of 6 feet tall and weigh 190. I love the feeling of vitality. My legs have really benefitted from the hikes. I’m quick on my feet and can jump from rock to rock. But I’m no fool. I always take a walking stick for extra balance. I got turned onto sticks in Peru in 1996 when I did the Inca Trail. All these Europeans were marching up and down the Andes with what I thought were ski poles but soon learned were telescoping sticks specifically designed for walking. I use the Leki Photo, sometimes two.
When I travel for a consulting job, I take stairs, not escalators and walk rather than using the moving sidewalks in airports. There are some airports where I know exactly how many stairs there are from this level to that, I’ve taken them so many times. If the weather allows, I walk from my hotel to the business. In the evenings, I often will do some short bursts of push-ups, sit-ups and leg lifts. Anything just to move the blood and feel my muscles. Otherwise, with all the sitting involved in air travel and consulting, I get stiff and my back gets gamey.
I do take supplements such as C, a broad B, resveratrol, acai, l-glutamine, milke thistle, and a blend of things to keep my mind sharp.
I do take supplements such as C, a broad B, resveratrol, acai, l-glutamine, milke thistle, and a blend of things to keep my mind sharp.
All this is working for me because I deeply enjoy being active and pay attention to what my body likes. The payoff? I rarely have a cold or any other illness in the course of a year. I have a terrific sense of well-being most of the time and more energy and stamina than most people I meet who are my age. I’m also told a lot that I don’t look anywhere close to my age. My blood pressure is 120/70; my resting heart rate around 60 (was peskily stuck at 72 for decades!) I haven't had a BMI done in a long time but I'm sure my fat % is down around 20. I do take rosuvastatin for cholesterol because no matter what I did, it was frustratingly high. My doctor says it's genetics--Eastern European Jewish stock. I resisted this med for a long time, trying everything I could. Finally, I consented as long as it didin't make my legs ache, which is a common side-effect of the statins. Well, it didn't. My cholesterol at last reading was 170.
When we travel, we don’t sit on tour buses. I get out and do stuff—hiking, zip-lining, sailing, snorkeling and so on. Just two and a-half years ago, we were in Peru (my 6th visit—I’m just in love with the place!) and I did a one day hike from about 9000 feet all the way up to 12,800. I’d only been in the country for 5 days so the breathing part was challenging but my legs were good. I plan to take a group there in 2012 and have a number of hikes like that planned.
When we travel, we don’t sit on tour buses. I get out and do stuff—hiking, zip-lining, sailing, snorkeling and so on. Just two and a-half years ago, we were in Peru (my 6th visit—I’m just in love with the place!) and I did a one day hike from about 9000 feet all the way up to 12,800. I’d only been in the country for 5 days so the breathing part was challenging but my legs were good. I plan to take a group there in 2012 and have a number of hikes like that planned.
There’s two other pieces to health and fitness that are really important. I pay a lot of attention to keeping the stress levels tolerable in my life. We’re active and productive. We have a lot going on and we love our life and make sure we don’t take on too much at once.
The other thing, of course, is love. Love is the greatest health tonic. My book, Love Over 60 is testimony to that…but then, I think my previous three books are, too, in different ways.
My good friend, John Ramstetter, is my age and is built like a bull. He can still run marathons, bless his joints! He also cycles ridiculous distances. I have another friend who is 67 and plays the meanest game of squash you can imagine. His partners are all younger and he wins at least as much as he loses (and doesn’t mind losing to a talented person who makes his game better). Finally, we had a resident in town here who was a very dear man. His name was Dr. Paul Spangler. After a 3 mile run, he lay down on the couch and went to sleep forever. He was 95. I met him when he was 83…at the high school track. He shuffled his legs very quickly but he really moved. I don’t know if anyone has broken his record, but at the time of his death, he had won more Senior Olympics gold medals than anyone. Now here’s the mind-blower: he didn’t even start running till he was 67! So what more proof do we need that it’s never too late to get out and get moving. If you have a partner in life, it’s all the more joyful to do it with that person. If you don’t, you’ve got a much better chance of finding one if you are healthy, active and fit. Healthy is attractive. Healthy is sexy. And healthy will get you a lot more years to love someone…which is especially great as we age because we’re better at companionship, if we’ve been paying attention! So...that's what works for me. Howabout you? Please comment!
C 2011 Bob Kamm
C 2011 Bob Kamm
Infidelity
Infidelity is one of the fiercest hurt that one member of a couple can visit on the other. It is the most difficult from which to recover. Perhaps the major reason it is so common is that most of us have no comprehensive understanding of or set of skills for mastering the art of the intimate relationship. Somehow, we think we're just supposed to know how to do it. Clearly, a lot of us don't. At our Institute (www.slrii.com ) we work together teaching couples how to use the tools we see as necessary--most of them from Imago Relationship Therapy, developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt.
In his wonderful book, Outliers, Malcom Gladwell says it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to master something--a profession, sport, hobby. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent of 5 normal work years in America, since we work an average of 2000--making us the most industrious people on earth.
We easily invest that kind of time as children learning to master our favorite sport or musical instrument. As adults, we assume we'll have to make a similar investment to become a masterful doctor, lawyer, writer, nurse, teacher, carpenter and so on. But most of us have 0 hours on a formal path to relationship mastery. In fact, many people do not even think about the fact that falling in love is involuntary and takes no particular talent or courage. In contrast, standing up and walking in love is a choice and takes both in abundance, as well as a full commitment to go out into the world and find the kind of teachers, coaches and therapists who can nurture them through the steps to mastery.
An excerpt from my poem, The Choice, from Love Over 60 (see the video on the Videos of Bob link from the home page)
I choose you and only you,
your nightmare,
your daybreak,
your grief and glory
and no other's,
your wildness and willfulness,
your shadows and blood
and no other's
ever.
I choose Love's incomprehensible perfection
manifest in you, only you.
C 2011 Bob Kamm
In his wonderful book, Outliers, Malcom Gladwell says it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to master something--a profession, sport, hobby. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent of 5 normal work years in America, since we work an average of 2000--making us the most industrious people on earth.
We easily invest that kind of time as children learning to master our favorite sport or musical instrument. As adults, we assume we'll have to make a similar investment to become a masterful doctor, lawyer, writer, nurse, teacher, carpenter and so on. But most of us have 0 hours on a formal path to relationship mastery. In fact, many people do not even think about the fact that falling in love is involuntary and takes no particular talent or courage. In contrast, standing up and walking in love is a choice and takes both in abundance, as well as a full commitment to go out into the world and find the kind of teachers, coaches and therapists who can nurture them through the steps to mastery.
An excerpt from my poem, The Choice, from Love Over 60 (see the video on the Videos of Bob link from the home page)
I choose you and only you,
your nightmare,
your daybreak,
your grief and glory
and no other's,
your wildness and willfulness,
your shadows and blood
and no other's
ever.
I choose Love's incomprehensible perfection
manifest in you, only you.
C 2011 Bob Kamm
What is Love?
Love is an enduring active devotion to the well-being of another. Look at the origin of the word. It means "the act of consecrating by a vow". The word "vow" is not to be taken lightly here. It's not equivalent to our contemporary use of the word "promise". The brittleness of modern man is well exhibited by the saying, "Promises are made to be broken." Excuse me, but vows are not. When the word was created, a vow was something you took in a sacred setting, before the deity. You could not break a vow without serious consequences to your soul.
So when you love someone, you take a vow before all that you hold sacred, whether you're a believer or a humanist, to stand up for that person, walk with that person, care for that person, even when it doesn't suit you, even when you'd rather not.
You could call this blog, How to Find Love Over 60, Part IV...because the last item in the list of 12 things on my website is "Choose Love." Love is a choice. After you are done swimming around in the glorious neurochemical seas of falling in love, you climb out onto the shores of true possibility. There you make a choice. To love or not to love. It's that black and white. To love means you're all in. Anything less than that and you are not choosing love. You are toe-dipping or dancing. Love is not for tap-dancers. You will be tested to the limit in love. Humans are relational creatures, creatures of the bond. We need to be entwined with another, to be interdependent with them, to care and be cared for with them. But few of us have what could be called a clean emotional heritage. We have all learned about how to be relational from imperfect people, who learned it themselves from imperfect people. This is not blame. This is cause and effect. If somewhere back in your blood line your people had to survive war, natural disaster, economic calamity...they suffered and such suffering is not easily healed. We deny this generational cascade of hurt at our own risk. It has had its iimpact when we were most vulnerable...as children. A distant or angry father. An overly protective mother. All their behaviors are understandable when we know what they endured...but still, the impact was made. We carry it inside us. The past is not past, but lives in us as ongoing present, deeply imprinted in our brains, bodies, hearts and souls. We tend to see what we have learned to see; tend to hear what we have learned to hear; tend to act as we have learned to act...sometimes to reach out, sometimes to strike out, sometimes to run. All of this unfolds once we choose love. So to be in enduring devotion to the well-being of another includes embracing their imperfection and even the fact that they will inevitably touch our old hurts, sometimes inflict new ones, sometimes really get us and sometimes really miss what's going on with us. The quest for perfection is a sad affliction. To love, we must embrace the fullness of our imperfect humanity. Sunlight and Shadows (see the video of the poem by that title on my website). If we are fortunate, if we are smart, if we are "all in" we may yet gradually learn the gentle presence that will help each of us in this love to heal from that past
and ultimately love each other as the fully developed beings we are capable of becoming.
Life is too short and too fragile to do anything but get up each day with devotion on our minds. To whom am I devoted today? How will I move in that devotion? What can I learn about my partner today? What can I learn about life? To love is to live in the vow, to insist on making space for what is most dear--truth, even painful truth about myself, about my lover; and beauty different from what I was raised to see...the astonishing, pulsating reality of my lover's world as separate from mine; and bond, attachment, entwinement, deep in the eyes, tender against the body, fully devoted to protecting the sacred ground where we meet.
So when you love someone, you take a vow before all that you hold sacred, whether you're a believer or a humanist, to stand up for that person, walk with that person, care for that person, even when it doesn't suit you, even when you'd rather not.
You could call this blog, How to Find Love Over 60, Part IV...because the last item in the list of 12 things on my website is "Choose Love." Love is a choice. After you are done swimming around in the glorious neurochemical seas of falling in love, you climb out onto the shores of true possibility. There you make a choice. To love or not to love. It's that black and white. To love means you're all in. Anything less than that and you are not choosing love. You are toe-dipping or dancing. Love is not for tap-dancers. You will be tested to the limit in love. Humans are relational creatures, creatures of the bond. We need to be entwined with another, to be interdependent with them, to care and be cared for with them. But few of us have what could be called a clean emotional heritage. We have all learned about how to be relational from imperfect people, who learned it themselves from imperfect people. This is not blame. This is cause and effect. If somewhere back in your blood line your people had to survive war, natural disaster, economic calamity...they suffered and such suffering is not easily healed. We deny this generational cascade of hurt at our own risk. It has had its iimpact when we were most vulnerable...as children. A distant or angry father. An overly protective mother. All their behaviors are understandable when we know what they endured...but still, the impact was made. We carry it inside us. The past is not past, but lives in us as ongoing present, deeply imprinted in our brains, bodies, hearts and souls. We tend to see what we have learned to see; tend to hear what we have learned to hear; tend to act as we have learned to act...sometimes to reach out, sometimes to strike out, sometimes to run. All of this unfolds once we choose love. So to be in enduring devotion to the well-being of another includes embracing their imperfection and even the fact that they will inevitably touch our old hurts, sometimes inflict new ones, sometimes really get us and sometimes really miss what's going on with us. The quest for perfection is a sad affliction. To love, we must embrace the fullness of our imperfect humanity. Sunlight and Shadows (see the video of the poem by that title on my website). If we are fortunate, if we are smart, if we are "all in" we may yet gradually learn the gentle presence that will help each of us in this love to heal from that past
and ultimately love each other as the fully developed beings we are capable of becoming.
Life is too short and too fragile to do anything but get up each day with devotion on our minds. To whom am I devoted today? How will I move in that devotion? What can I learn about my partner today? What can I learn about life? To love is to live in the vow, to insist on making space for what is most dear--truth, even painful truth about myself, about my lover; and beauty different from what I was raised to see...the astonishing, pulsating reality of my lover's world as separate from mine; and bond, attachment, entwinement, deep in the eyes, tender against the body, fully devoted to protecting the sacred ground where we meet.
Why Do We Love?
Why do we love? What is love? Is it really that hard to define? Perhaps not. Perhaps the obvious has been staring us in the face for millennia. We are creatures of the bond. We’re not the only ones. Nature/The Creator has been developing variations on bonding for a long time. Some birds mate for life. Many mammals do. Bonding, attaching, entwining with another in such a way that we reciprocally provide safety, nurturance and love serves our survival. Doing the same, to a lesser degree, with a circle of other people does the same, meaning that positive community also serves our survival. There is greater security in union than in division.
Aren't we lucky?! Nature/The Creator endowed us with the capacity to experience all these incredible physical, emotional and mental experiences because Intimacy with our beloved serves our survival and thrival. When we are aligned with that design, in flow with it, we are not only happier than people who lack this bond or than people in whom it is regularly being tortured and tested. We are also healthier than them.
Aren't we lucky?! Nature/The Creator endowed us with the capacity to experience all these incredible physical, emotional and mental experiences because Intimacy with our beloved serves our survival and thrival. When we are aligned with that design, in flow with it, we are not only happier than people who lack this bond or than people in whom it is regularly being tortured and tested. We are also healthier than them.
When John Lennon wrote, “Love is touch, touch is love; love is feeling, feeling love, love is asking to be loved” he went a long way toward describing the essence of this bond. Love is bound through touch, not just sexual touch, but caressing, hugging, massaging, playfully interacting…and also through proximity without touch. You are near to me. I can reach you. I can hear you. You can hear me. I can look deep in your eyes and you in mine. We are close. We know each other’s moods and needs. Our hearts are bound one to the other. Serving your life and your happiness are matters of supreme importance to me…and that includes my embracing the love you offer…for how can you be happy, no matter how much you are given, if your love is not received? We are wired to want to give love as well as receive it. There is really no distinction in the purest moment. The language to describe it is the problem, not the experience itself.
From birth, the nature of the attachment need transforms as we develop, but it doesn’t vanish. We don’t outgrow it. As adults, we don’t need someone to hold and touch us constantly, but we do need someone to hold and touch us frequently, consistently. We don’t need someone to toss us in the air in delight over every tiny aspect of our being or every tiny accomplishment, but we do need someone to delight in our presence, in our way of being us, and to recognize and celebrate our accomplishments, even the small ones. We don’t any longer need someone to feed us, but we do need someone who cares enough about us that he or she will choose to do that for us from time to time, especially when we are ill. We don’t any longer need someone to dress us, but we do need someone who notices when we put on a new shirt or blouse. We don’t any longer need someone to come running when we cry out for stimulation, but we all need someone who will regularly come forward to play with us as adults play, to enjoy just hanging out with us doing nothing in particular.
Grownup humans need attachment in different ways than babies, but we need it nonetheless if we are to fully become ourselves. We are social creatures. We attach, bond, entwine. We need to give and receive affection, attention, appreciation, validation, compassion. Yes, these are needs, not just wants.
My grandmother (mother's side) died when I was in my early teens. I will never forget the drive away from the cemetery. My grandfather, a big, boisterous personality who could fill a room all by himself, was in the backseat sobbing like a little boy. All the way home, he repeated the same phrase over and over again: "I have no companion now. I have no companion now." The primal truth was resonating through him. His soul was a cymbal that had been given a mighty blow and could not stop trembling. Poetry and evolution were one in him.
We are wired for companionship. It's interesting to me when people object to merging poetry and science. They are both ways of understanding and being in the world. For me, there is nothing taken from the lyricism of life by knowing that Nature/The Creator designed us very carefully for this bond...and yet, with all the care, it is a fragile capacity. It is both the intense nature of connection and our tenuous ability to sustain it that I find poetic in every aspect. Perhaps Nature/The Creator isn't done with us. Perhaps we are still on the drawing board. To go further, perhaps we are the one creature fashioned to complete its own design while living on the drawing board.
What is incomplete? Most of us have not been well taught to just ask in a calm clear manner for what we need from our partners to feel secure in our bond. So when they somehow detune, we experience "attachment distress" as Sue Johnson has called it. Then we tend to attack or withdraw instead of just telling them in a straight and clean manner “Honey, I really needed you to notice me at that moment.” We play out scenarios learned in our preconscious moments of childhood, scenarios in which we blame or shame, criticize, defend, deny, go silent, walk out. We come into this world with an innate Language of Union but quickly learn a new Language of Division. For my best explanation as to why this happens, see my first book, The Superman Syndrome (available on amazon.com). For today's discussion, what is critical to know is that it is possible to reclaim the Language of Union.
Our first step in that quest is an gradually undoing what have become our default reactions one by one. We practice letting go of the impulse to act out with sarcasm, indignation or the big freeze by choosing a different language that is the essence of what we're feeling: “I’m feeling vulnerable or fragile right now” or “I miss you. I need your attention right now. I want to be connected” or “I want really want to hear you and I’m here for you” or “Could you tell me about what’s going on with you? I love you. I want to know.” Learning to give up the Language of Division for the Language of Union is not easy…but it can be done. Each of us begins by acknowledging our vulnerability, our needs and asking ourselves each day, “What am I doing to block myself from being close? How can I alter my way of speaking so that I will be heard? How do I alter my way of listening so that I can hear in return?” Yes, we gradually learn to give up blaming our partner as if “fixing” them would “fix” our issues. Blaming, criticizing, withdrawing—these are all things we do to block ourselves from loving and being loved. As long as we make it about our partner, we don’t have to own and feel how deeply we hurt and need and are confused about what to do. So step number one is becoming conscious that from the smallest spat to the biggest relationship blowout, we are at least 50% responsible because something is living in us that causes us to sabotage our own longing to be close.
People with big voices often shout their needs as demands, as if they can yell their partners into loving them. They must learn to speak of normal needs in normal voices. People who tend to withdraw, go silent, also know this does not draw their partners near. They must learn to step forward and speak simple truths without defensiveness or artifice. Turning a vicious cycle into a virtuous one. We step into the virtue by speaking these simple truths. “I'm sad when we're not close. I want to be close. I need you. I need you to see me. I need your support. I need your understanding. I just need you to listen. I need your affection. I need you to receive all of who I am. I need to know you want me as your true companion. When I doubt those things, I really hurt.” How we feel is of ultimate importance in a relationship, not how we think. As Jill Bolte Taylor has written, "We are feeling creatures who think, not thinking creatures who feel." So learning to speak our feelings without defensiveness or denial...that is the path back. Most of us have been subtly ripped off of our capacity to feel. What we experience as feeling on a day to day basis is a paltry version of what we were endowed with at birth. We have a withered capacity for feeling. The good news is, that capacity is not dead in most of us. It only needs some gentle, steady watering to flower once again.
The golden rule returns over and over in different variations. In this case, love your partner as you would have him or her love you…or as Gandhi said, “We must become the change we wish to see.” This serves our survival and our flourishing. We are creatures of the bond. This is no less true in a relationship than in the politics of a nation. We are creatures of community. And it is no less true in science than it is in poetry.
C Bob Kamm 2011
C Bob Kamm 2011
What does self-love have to do with loving another?
Let's take a look. There are two separate currents of influence in our culture around the idea of self-love. One is that we're not supposed to focus on ourselves. In fact, this point of view holds that one of the highest achievements in life is to be self-less. This influence probably has its origins way back in history when self-sacrifice was exactly what was called for in order for a family or tribe to survive. In survival mode, selflessness makes sense. As a parent, I can say unequivocally that I would lay my life down for my son. I would jumpt in front of a bullet or a car so that he could live. I have no doubt he would do the same for his son. Parental love is just that powerful. But most of us, especially in the U.S., do not live in a perpetual state of threat where this should become our dominant inner operating mode. In more recent history, the 1500's, it seems that John Calvin espoused a form of religious belief that counseled subjugation of the self. The Puritans who were among the earliest white settlers on our land no doubt were influenced by this thought and injected it into the nascent American culture. The modern day equivalent of this sort of thinking can be seen in expressions such as, "Who do you think you are?" and "Don't get too big for your britches" and "Faith before self."
There is another current of influence that is directly opposite and finds its origins, ironically, in some of the earliest Christian teachings. This is embodied in "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Think about this. We are not just counseled to love our neighbors. We are not counseled to love them more than ourselves. We are counseled to love them as ourselves. If we turn the saying around, it would read, "Love thyself as thy neighbors." In other words, there is sense to loving ourselves. The sense is that love is a general state of being, a kind of disposition or abiding energy and it is born within us, lives within us and we should welcome it and nurture it by loving ourselves, by appreciating the miracle that is me, to put it almost too cutely. So it is good to appreciate that the life force moves in me, that I am a wonder, that there is only one of me in the univerise, that I am a unique and special creation of God's worthy of adoration. The brilliance of the saying is ultimately in its balance, however. It implicitly tempers us so that we don't fall into self-indulgence or
narcissisim. After all, our love for ourselves should be as it is for our neighbors...not as it would be for a god,
because we are not gods. We are part of community engendered by the Divine.
Perhaps the critical point for us in this world today is to affirm that love is a fulsome positive and embracing energetic state. It doesn't exclude, except in degree. If I can truly love, then I love myself in the manner described above. If I can truly love, then my love tends to flow out to everyone until someone tries to thwart it. Even then, we are counseled to "Love thine enemies." This is a much tougher charge, no doubt, and worth a separate blog in the future. But for now, let's affirm that to the degree that my honest self-love falls short, to the degree that I may have self-loathing within me, I am limited in how much love I can give outwardly. My loving of my partner, my family, my friends, community, country and mankind will be tainted, distorted in some way. For whatever lives within me is eventually projected out onto the world in some way.
Bottom line? Whether you're looking for love over 60, or at any age, self-love is not an afterthought...after we find our soul-mate in the world. It is something that calls to be cultivated on a regular basis in self-nurturing, self-soothing and inner work with our own shadows with counselors, therapists and/or spiritual and life coaches. It is certainly not self-indulgence, which springs from a deficiency of self-love. Self-indulgence is an attempt to fill a hole within us which was put there early in our lives and cannot truly be filled later. But, it can be healed. People say, "Forget the past. You can't change it." But you can change how it lives in your...grieving does that. It can heal up that hole over time. And as it does, it makes more positive loving energy available for you to love your life and those in it. If you are loving being alive as you, you are far more likely to attract a vibrant companion to make your days even richer.
C 2010 Bob Kamm
There is another current of influence that is directly opposite and finds its origins, ironically, in some of the earliest Christian teachings. This is embodied in "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Think about this. We are not just counseled to love our neighbors. We are not counseled to love them more than ourselves. We are counseled to love them as ourselves. If we turn the saying around, it would read, "Love thyself as thy neighbors." In other words, there is sense to loving ourselves. The sense is that love is a general state of being, a kind of disposition or abiding energy and it is born within us, lives within us and we should welcome it and nurture it by loving ourselves, by appreciating the miracle that is me, to put it almost too cutely. So it is good to appreciate that the life force moves in me, that I am a wonder, that there is only one of me in the univerise, that I am a unique and special creation of God's worthy of adoration. The brilliance of the saying is ultimately in its balance, however. It implicitly tempers us so that we don't fall into self-indulgence or
narcissisim. After all, our love for ourselves should be as it is for our neighbors...not as it would be for a god,
because we are not gods. We are part of community engendered by the Divine.
Perhaps the critical point for us in this world today is to affirm that love is a fulsome positive and embracing energetic state. It doesn't exclude, except in degree. If I can truly love, then I love myself in the manner described above. If I can truly love, then my love tends to flow out to everyone until someone tries to thwart it. Even then, we are counseled to "Love thine enemies." This is a much tougher charge, no doubt, and worth a separate blog in the future. But for now, let's affirm that to the degree that my honest self-love falls short, to the degree that I may have self-loathing within me, I am limited in how much love I can give outwardly. My loving of my partner, my family, my friends, community, country and mankind will be tainted, distorted in some way. For whatever lives within me is eventually projected out onto the world in some way.
Bottom line? Whether you're looking for love over 60, or at any age, self-love is not an afterthought...after we find our soul-mate in the world. It is something that calls to be cultivated on a regular basis in self-nurturing, self-soothing and inner work with our own shadows with counselors, therapists and/or spiritual and life coaches. It is certainly not self-indulgence, which springs from a deficiency of self-love. Self-indulgence is an attempt to fill a hole within us which was put there early in our lives and cannot truly be filled later. But, it can be healed. People say, "Forget the past. You can't change it." But you can change how it lives in your...grieving does that. It can heal up that hole over time. And as it does, it makes more positive loving energy available for you to love your life and those in it. If you are loving being alive as you, you are far more likely to attract a vibrant companion to make your days even richer.
C 2010 Bob Kamm
Keep the Hits Coming
In our couples work at The San Luis Relationship Institute (www.slrii.com ) we are often asked, “How do we keep the love alive, the fires burning in our relationship?” People write entire books to answer that question, but I want to talk about one thing in particular here that I think is often over-looked. There is a wonderful phrase in Erich Fromm’s 1956 book, The Art of Loving. He says we ought to make loving “a matter of ultimate concern.” And was quite clear, writing 6 decades ago, that he did not believe most people were doing that.
When we’re falling in love, of course love is a matter of ultimate concern. It’s easy to feel that during the romantic phase. We are inebriated with each other. Our brains are marinated in neuro-chemicals. Sweet as that inebriation is, it doesn’t last. Fromm points out that only once can we have the exciting experience of discovering this unique person for the very first time. Only once with this person will our days be full of the delight of the unexpected. But that necessarily comes to an end. The high tide of neuro-chemicals subsides, mainly because we are actually getting to know this person. Now, as I’ve written in the opening poem of Love Over 60, The Choice, we have a choice before us. Having fallen in love, will we choose love? Will we stand up, rather than falling, and walk in love, together? Experience teaches us the obvious—that sometimes we will not feel so good about each other. Sometimes we will hurt and be hurt by each other. Just as when we were children, the person on whom we most depend for safety and who undoubtedly provides it much of the time, is also capable of wrenching it from us. We’ve worked with couples who are newlyweds and some who have been married over fifty years. The experiences follow a common arc. There's closeness and joy...but there is also pain when our connection is ruptured. The big question most of us face at some point is do we stand and work our way back to each other or go off seeking another “love fix” from someone else?
I believe there is more joy when we stand for love and walk in love and accept the reality that human nature involves a full range of emotions and experiences. "Perfect" is a concept for those not well-grounded in reality. I also believe that even in those relationships that seem stuck or parallel without a lot of connection, there are moments when people look at each other and get what I call “a love hit”. Suddenly the deep affection they feel for their partner hits them right in the heart. The question then is, do they express it or just allow it to pass silently?
I said at the outset that I just wanted to talk about one aspect of keeping the fires alive. This is it. When you get a love hit for your partner, no matter where you are, how far from you they might be emotionally or physically at the moment, find a way to let them know. Speak it directly or send a card or flowers or write a poem or letter or give them an unexpected hug for a minute. Don’t keep it a secret. Let your partner know what you are feeling. Try looking in their eyes and just saying something like, “I just got a hit in my heart about how much I appreciate and love you.” No asterisks. No qualifiers. Just say it and let it sink in. This may not be the way you normally express yourself. It may feel uncomfortable, awkward. Do it anyway. The hits are likely to keep coming so you'll have lots of opportunities to practice. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't come out right the first time...although, "I love you" is pretty straightforward.
I said at the outset that I just wanted to talk about one aspect of keeping the fires alive. This is it. When you get a love hit for your partner, no matter where you are, how far from you they might be emotionally or physically at the moment, find a way to let them know. Speak it directly or send a card or flowers or write a poem or letter or give them an unexpected hug for a minute. Don’t keep it a secret. Let your partner know what you are feeling. Try looking in their eyes and just saying something like, “I just got a hit in my heart about how much I appreciate and love you.” No asterisks. No qualifiers. Just say it and let it sink in. This may not be the way you normally express yourself. It may feel uncomfortable, awkward. Do it anyway. The hits are likely to keep coming so you'll have lots of opportunities to practice. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't come out right the first time...although, "I love you" is pretty straightforward.
It may well have been magical when one of you got down on a knee years ago to propose; but these hits are the living breathing proof that you’re both glad the answer was yes.
C 2010 Bob Kamm
C 2010 Bob Kamm
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