Our Philosophy In A ‘Nut Shell’
Here at the Love-Life Learning Center (LLLC), we believe in the existence of a Love-Life Science. What this means is, there are a number of ‘invariant love-life principles’ or things that don’t change about love. These principles keep coming up in whatever love-life situation exists. We’ve discovered if you understand and use these love-life principles to guide your love life you’ll have a healthier and happier outcome.
Learning to Love
The origin of what you feel in your love life is innate. It come naturally from the inside of you. You can’t control love. What you think and do about and with those feelings is learned. This learning you can change. You can unlearn what’s not working and relearn something better.
Our objective here at LLLC is to to understand and teach the enduring lessons of love (love-life principles). We exist to support and conduct psychological research and education in Love-Life Science. We help our users tell the difference between the limited love-life beliefs learned during the course of life and love-life principles or truths about love.
Method of Researching & Educating About Love-Life Science
The Love-Life Review is the method of educating and researching love-life science. A Love-Life Review is an inquiry into the personal love life stories of people to determine what love-life thoughts, feelings, and actions are creating problems in a person’s love life. At the LLLC we educate and research Love-Life Science with our blog posts, audio downloads, and Love-Life Reviews conducted in commentary exchanges on our blog, and in the tele-workshops, and individual tele-consultations that we offer.
Ten (10) Invariant Principles of Love
1. Love is an emergent emotional experience. Where does love come from? Love emerges from what is uniquely individual in each one of us. The experience of love is innate. The way we give love and receive love, or the relationship we have with the one we love, is learned. Love is an emotional experience that we cannot control. The feeling of love emerges or departs on its own. We can take care of love by learning to prepare for love, welcoming love when it arrives, grieving the loss of love, and letting go.
2. Our families of origin teach us ‘how to give love’ and ‘how to receive love’ both directly (verbal or behavioral lessons given by adults or other children) and by example (in the form of observations). Children tend to repeat what they learn about love in their adult love lives.
3. Your relationship with yourself, commonly called self-esteem, determines and shapes the quality of your love life as an adult. Improvements in how you feel about yourself will naturally improve your love life.
4. Learning how to properly grieve will help you cope with the loss of love as well as renew your emotional availability. When grief over the loss of love is resolved, psychological barriers to loving and receiving love are moved out of the way. The individual becomes available to love and be loved. Grief is really the flipside of love. If you love you’ll naturally have to grieve. Letting oneself grieve clears the heart and prepares it for a new love.
5. Communication is the pathway to emotional intimacy in a relationship. Communicating hurt feelings and the influence of one’s family of origin allow a couple to solve problems and help each other grow. Sympathy is the emotional language of love. Words supplement this language of love. Love is first communicated without language. Developing words in love helps a couple solve problems together.
6. Your ability to be in-dependent, or take proper care of your self, will help you tolerate the experience of being in love. Learn to be by yourself in a healthy way. This growth permits you to be ‘in love,’ meaning, to love and be loved in the present without the interference of past unresolved love-life disappointments and dependency.
7. Control is the antithesis of love because it diminishes freedom. Control decreases freedom in a relationship and diminishes love as a consequence. Freedom nurtures love in a couple. Control in any form limits love. Control mixed with insecurity can lead to mistreatment or abuse (verbal, emotional, physical, sexual, or financial).
8. Equality is necessary for love to grow. Give and take is at its most mature balance when two people practice equality in love.
9. Honesty also grows love. The truth of personal experience however scary to reveal to the one you love establishes and nurtures love. Lying by omission or commission to one’s lover decreases love in the relationship by offering a misrepresentation instead of your true self in the relationship.
10. Trust in your love life is the ability to take a risk on love, to be vulnerable in the presence of someone you love. When you trust you drop your psychological defenses. Common types of trust in love are: trust of another (that love is real and committed); trust of self (faith) that you will survive the hurts of love (faith in your ability to heal).
Comments? Welcome. Dr. Tom Jordan
