The Characteristics of Healthy Love
Wipe your paws elsewhere!
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 3,672
The Characteristics of Healthy Love
Judy's recent post entitled "Why" got me thinking about love. How do you define love? I'll start:
Love is an emotion or an emotional state. Love is something that brings pleasure. Love is a deep, tender feeling of affection toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of oneness. Love is the gift of giving without expectations of reward.
So what are the characteristics of healthy love? According to Dr. Brenda Schaeffer, author of "Is it Love or is it Addiction?" people in healthy relationships share the following characteristics.
1. They allow for individuality.
2. They experience both oneness with and separateness from another.
3. They bring out the best qualities in self and another.
4. They accept endings.
5. They experience openness to change and exploration.
6. They invite growth in the other person.
7. They experience true intimacy.
8. They feel the freedom to ask honestly for what is wanted.
9. They experience giving and receiving in the same way.
10. They do not attempt to change or control the other.
11. They encourage self-sufficiency of partners.
12. They accept limitations of self and other.
13. They do not seek unconditional love.
14. They accept and respect commitment.
15. They have high self-esteem.
16. They trust the memory of the beloved; they enjoy solitude.
17. They express feelings spontaneously.
18. They welcome closeness and risk vulnerability.
19. They care with detachment.
20. They affirm equality and personal power of self and other.
Love is an emotion or an emotional state. Love is something that brings pleasure. Love is a deep, tender feeling of affection toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of oneness. Love is the gift of giving without expectations of reward.
So what are the characteristics of healthy love? According to Dr. Brenda Schaeffer, author of "Is it Love or is it Addiction?" people in healthy relationships share the following characteristics.
1. They allow for individuality.
2. They experience both oneness with and separateness from another.
3. They bring out the best qualities in self and another.
4. They accept endings.
5. They experience openness to change and exploration.
6. They invite growth in the other person.
7. They experience true intimacy.
8. They feel the freedom to ask honestly for what is wanted.
9. They experience giving and receiving in the same way.
10. They do not attempt to change or control the other.
11. They encourage self-sufficiency of partners.
12. They accept limitations of self and other.
13. They do not seek unconditional love.
14. They accept and respect commitment.
15. They have high self-esteem.
16. They trust the memory of the beloved; they enjoy solitude.
17. They express feelings spontaneously.
18. They welcome closeness and risk vulnerability.
19. They care with detachment.
20. They affirm equality and personal power of self and other.
Member
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: US
Posts: 316
Is healthy love and being in a loving relationship where one partner is an alcoholic mutually exclusive?
I read that list and see most of my life. Yet my husband is an alcoholic. The main thing that is missing on that list is his ability to have high self-esteem and my ability to trust his memory (it is long shot to hell).
Can an active alcoholic be capable of healthy love with his/her family? I often wonder this.
I am not in denial...trust that....just wondering if the alcoholic mind can really be for the most part abusive to itself and continue to love the family that surrounds it? Does that mind even care?
Hmmmm...
Jenny
I read that list and see most of my life. Yet my husband is an alcoholic. The main thing that is missing on that list is his ability to have high self-esteem and my ability to trust his memory (it is long shot to hell).
Can an active alcoholic be capable of healthy love with his/her family? I often wonder this.
I am not in denial...trust that....just wondering if the alcoholic mind can really be for the most part abusive to itself and continue to love the family that surrounds it? Does that mind even care?
Hmmmm...
Jenny
Wipe your paws elsewhere!
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 3,672
Very good questions, Jenny. I think the answer to your question:
"Can an active alcoholic be capable of healthy love with his/her family?" probably depends on how far the disease has progressed.
"Can an active alcoholic be capable of healthy love with his/her family?" probably depends on how far the disease has progressed.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Sussex, NJ
Posts: 1,331
I think the list is a good one and I agree with it for the most part. Problem is, is that love can be all of some of these components of the list. I also feel the the list is a good starting point, but far too generalized, too many "murky" areas that are subjective.
For me personally, I can't use a "check-off" list to determine if I love someone or not. My question was more of a "personal" nature, what someone feels in their "gut".
Love to me, should give someone a general sense of well-being, by the giver and the receiver. The words I don't see used here are "fixing, helping, pushing, moving, controlling etc", all the words and emotions that are the "staple" of the co-dependents diet.
It will be interesting to see how others view the characteristics of love.
For me personally, I can't use a "check-off" list to determine if I love someone or not. My question was more of a "personal" nature, what someone feels in their "gut".
Love to me, should give someone a general sense of well-being, by the giver and the receiver. The words I don't see used here are "fixing, helping, pushing, moving, controlling etc", all the words and emotions that are the "staple" of the co-dependents diet.
It will be interesting to see how others view the characteristics of love.
the girl can't help it
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: splendraville
Posts: 5,599
I believe that this list could be read by a person who is a good manipulator and they could arrange things to look like this on the outside.
I could say that my relationship with my H looks a lot like the list. No matter how many coats of paint we put on the elephant in the living room and how well it matches the decor when it starts doing it's elephant thing in my small living room it just ends up stinking and one turn makes the room look like a tornado hit it...
I could say that my relationship with my H looks a lot like the list. No matter how many coats of paint we put on the elephant in the living room and how well it matches the decor when it starts doing it's elephant thing in my small living room it just ends up stinking and one turn makes the room look like a tornado hit it...
Binge poster
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 561
Originally Posted by sunshinebluesky
from what ive experienced,i just dont see how anyone using any kind of brain altering substance day in and day out,can truly have and know healthy love.
I don't think they know what love is.
It's tragic.
J
xxx
Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: uk
Posts: 3,054
I think one huge mistake is to think of love as wholly there or wholly not there.
I couldn't claim to ever have loved perfectly (wholly there) or to have been without any at all.
I also think it's an absolute wrong to conclude another person is incapable of love. There's no need to do that, it requires a 1000 more judgements than we are capable of and personally I avoid that way of thinking like the plague!!
I couldn't claim to ever have loved perfectly (wholly there) or to have been without any at all.
I also think it's an absolute wrong to conclude another person is incapable of love. There's no need to do that, it requires a 1000 more judgements than we are capable of and personally I avoid that way of thinking like the plague!!
Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: uk
Posts: 3,054
Originally Posted by bahookie
I don't think she's incapable, I think that I can't expect healthy, adult love from someone with nothing to give, even to herself, just now.
J
xxx
J
xxx
been searching for the dream
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Inhaling the mountain air through my mind's eye.
Posts: 240
Lucille Ball says "Love yourself first and everything else falls into place" or something to that effect. I know that I do not completely love myself or I wouldn't put up with some of the things I do put up with. I know though that I strive for loving someone as well as I am able. Just a thought.
Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: England
Posts: 3,410
I know my problems were really based in the fact that I wasn't able to differentiate between love and need, love and dependence, love and attachment. That desperate aching and longing and wanting to be with someone so badly was not rooted in love at all.
Now that I see that and have conquered (I hope!) those dependent needs, I see that we are surrounded by images and examples of neediness instead of love. Films, songs, novels all compound this image that we are not complete without a soulmate.
I like that list - it's a nice framework. Although I do agree with Splendra and know (from experience) that things like that can be used by the unscrupulous. Hey ho, I am better at looking at the substance not the superficial now.
Now that I see that and have conquered (I hope!) those dependent needs, I see that we are surrounded by images and examples of neediness instead of love. Films, songs, novels all compound this image that we are not complete without a soulmate.
I like that list - it's a nice framework. Although I do agree with Splendra and know (from experience) that things like that can be used by the unscrupulous. Hey ho, I am better at looking at the substance not the superficial now.
Occasional poor taste poster
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 2,542
Originally Posted by minnie
I know my problems were really based in the fact that I wasn't able to differentiate between love and need, love and dependence, love and attachment..
I see that we are surrounded by images and examples of neediness instead of love. Films, songs, novels all compound this image that we are not complete without a soulmate.
Long battle to undue all the Walt Disney-esque brain washing I was exposed to at an impressionable age!
Member
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 1,358
Originally Posted by equus
I also think it's an absolute wrong to conclude another person is incapable of love. There's no need to do that, it requires a 1000 more judgements than we are capable of and personally I avoid that way of thinking like the plague!!
If I truly thought that the person I was involved with was incapable of love, I wouldn't have been there in the first place. That would be like falling in love with a chair, a wall, a door. Hmmmm wait a minute.....I'm beginning to notice the similarities LOL!
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