Repairing Your Disappointing Love Life
I created a highly effective psychological method of improving a disappointing love life. I call it the Love Life Consultation. A telehealth consultation that focuses exclusively on identifying and changing what was unconsciously learned about love relationships that is unhealthy. Telehealth is ideally suited for working on one’s love life given its convenience, reduced social inhibition, and privacy. Once the unhealthy learning has been identified it can then be changed. The Love Life Consultation was created and developed over 35 years of study and clinical practice in New York City.
The average person learns quite a bit about themselves and relationships in the family of origin. Much if not most of that learning is unconscious, meaning we don’t know that we are in fact learning, or what we have in fact learned. If what was learned is healthy, we will tend to recreate the healthy relationship experiences that taught us in the course of our lives, especially in our love lives. If what we have learned is unhealthy, we will tend to recreate the unhealthy relationship experiences that taught us, resulting in an unhealthy disappointing love life. What we have learned about love relationships from the relationship experiences we have had in our lives enstablishes our Psychological Love Life, the part of our minds that controls our love life experiences.
Most of us never really work on our psychological love lives. When a psychological love life is unhealthy it produces what I refer to as a Disappointing Love Life. A love life dominated by repeating love life disappointments caused by unconsciusly making the same mistakes over and over again. In addition to repeating disappointments, the unhealthy love life is also characterized by defensiveness, formed in order to cope with and/or prevent more disappointments and the hurt that results. Love life defensiveness can range from denying a love life problem exists while blaming another, keeping a distance in love relationships, recurrent conflicts in a love relationship, avoiding love relationships altogether, trying to change the person you love, or misrepresenting yourself in a love relationship. When someone is defensive in relation to love, they may be successfully protecting themselves from further disappointment and hurt, but they are also inevitably limiting their ability to be emotionally intimate at the same time.
The Love Life Consultation invites a participant to review their disappointing love life experiences starting from when they were young. Since our love lives begin the day we were born, what is learned in the “classroom” of the family of origin about love relationships is an important part of the review. This first step starts the process of unlearning what was learned that’s problematic. I call this part of the consultation the Love Life Review. As with any kind of change in our lives, the first step is always becoming aware of what we need to change. As a result of my love life research, I have been able to compile a list of unhealthy relationship experiences and what they teach us about love relationships that can be used as a guide to identify the experiences that can dominate our love lives.
The next phase of the Love Life Consultation is to disrupt the unconsious repetition of disappointment in our love lives. Unhealthy learning tends to automatically repeat experience from the darkened regions of our unconscious mind. You can also think of it as a mental “habit” that functions without forethought or deliberation. Using awareness to disrupt that repetitive replication of past unhealthy relationship experiences, essentially means, you’ve identified something as unhealthy and practice keeping it from controlling your current love life experiences. You are essentially keeping out of your love life what you now know is unhealthy.
From there, the final step is to correct what has been learned that’s unhealthy and substitute “opposite” healthy learning about love relationships. At this point in the Love Life Consultation, awareness of what is unhealthy is being used to challenge the dominance of unhealthy learning in a love life, allowing a person to practice looking for and finding healthier alternatives instead. You now know what to keep out of your love life and what to get into your love life to make it healthier and more emotionally intimate. A Love Life Consultation is highly effective simply because each consultation, and its defined particulars, is tailored to the unique individual’s particular love life.
If you are interested in arranging supervision to conduct Love Life Consultations or to schedule a Love Life Consultation for your particular love life, I can be contacted at drtomjordan@lovelifelearningcenter.com or 212-875-0154. I am also available for speaking engagements regarding my Love Life Seminar, an illuminating and entertaining PowerPoint presentation that further details my theory and method of working with the Disappointing Love Life. Visit my speaker page at lovelifelearningcenter.com/speaker
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Dr. Thomas Jordan, clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychological disability consultant, speaker, and author of the award-winning book, Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life. Love Life Seminars and telehealth Love Life Consultations available upon request. Contact: 212-875-0154 or drtomjordan@lovelifelearningcenter.com for inquiries.
