Conceptualizing Love

While researching for evidenced-based journal articles about how to make love last, I came across an article by Beall and Sternberg (1995) about the social construction of love.

I will summarize the four conceptualizations of love they have mentioned for you. Let me know what you think by leaving your comments in the Comments section below.

1. Love is a universal emotional experience that is defined similarly in all cultures. This means that people in every culture experience love in the same way and all cultures share the same definition of love. Therefore, the definition and experience of love in Italy is the same in the US, in Canada, and in the Philippines. No real differences.


2. Love is a universal emotional experience that is defined differently in all cultures. In this view, people in every culture experience love in the same way, but cultures interpret the experience in different ways. Hence, some cultures might define love as infatuation while other cultures would define it as romance. 
   
   
3. Love is not a universal emotional experience. It changes according to its cultural background; however, all cultures share roughly the same view of it. This means that people in different cultures experience love differently but define it similarly. 
   
   
4. Love is not a universal emotional experience. It changes according to its cultural background and is viewed differently in various cultures. This means that love is experienced and defined differently in cultures across different times and places.

Beall and Sternberg argue that there can never be a universal definition of love because any definition must reflect its time period and place. In short, love has to be defined, understood, and contextualized culturally. And when cultures define love differently, they experience it differently. Hence, two people who have different conceptualizations of love will experience love differently.

I would beg to disagree with Beall and Sternberg. I think human beings share some commonalities despite cultural differences and one of these is love. In fact, people of all cultures understand love, not because of a formal, universal concept, but because they live it--they feel it, they breath it, they dream of it. People understand love when they see lovers hold hands or kiss, regardless of what epoch or place these lovers are from. They understand what love is when they see a mother cuddle her baby, regardless of her color or belief. Photos of lovers taken in the 16th century evoke feelings of tenderness or passion in all of us in the 21st century. 

That is why Shakespeare is still read about today as he was during the Elizabethan period. His love sonnets depict passionate, tender feelings of people who are in love. There is nothing different in the understanding of love in Shakespeare's time and our time, even though he wrote about it from a different cultural milieu. An example of his love sonnet is below, telling us what love is:

...Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or Bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark,
whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

What Shakespeare meant in this excerpt is that real love (one that has evolved from romantic love) does not change when certain aspects within or outside the relationship become different. It is dependable and tenacious despite hard times. Love is like a star that guides every traveller regardless of who he/she is.

If the definition and experience of love is culturally determined, there would be no shared universal values about love, marriage or family. There would be confusion, chaos and a lot of misunderstanding. 

I was once married to a person who shared the same culture I have. That marriage, despite my attempts to save it for the sake of my two sons, did not endure. I am now in a relationship with a Canadian person, whose culture is different from mine. Yet we have a solid and loving relationship despite my constant complaining of the cold weather during winter and regardless of his aversion to  durian and smell of salted fish. 

It is the praxis of love, not its essence, that might be culturally defined. For instance, here in Canada, the age of consent (when one can engage in sex) used to be 14 but it has now been changed to 16. During my mother's time, a kiss could result in a quick marriage because it was considered scandalous. During my time, a kiss was okay but premarital sex was still disgraceful.

Let me end this writing with Singer's (1984) essentialist notion of love, cited by Hegi and Bergner (2010):

“The lover takes an interest in the other as a person, and not merely as a 

commodity ...He bestows importance on her needs and her desires, even 

when they do not further the satisfaction of his own ... In relation to the 

lover, the other has become valuable for her own sake” (1984, p.6). 

I am inviting my readers to write their comments below.

Watch for my next article on how to make love last. This is a Valentine's Day special article.

Until then, have a wonderful day and take care!

References:

Bealle, A. E. & Sternberg, R. J. (1995). The social construction of love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 12(14). doi: 10.1177/0265407595123006.

Hegi, K. E. & Bergner, R. M. (2010). What is love? An empirically-based essentialist account. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 27(620). doi: 10.1177/0265407510369605.

Beyond Romantic Love

"One never steps in the same river twice."

~Heraclitus

Relationships are temporal in nature. Like rivers, they flow through time and space and change as the properties of their environment, in which they are embedded, change. Therefore one of the truths we have to accept about romantic love is that it does not last. And it should not, because it is impossible to perpetuate the elation, excitement, obsession, and mood swings associated with it. 

People who pledge that their love be "forever" is also vowing that the kind of love they feel today will stay the same. But relationships are affected by social and physical environments, economic components, and the biological changes associated with age, to name a few but important variables. Hence, you change, your partner changes, your interaction changes, and your love for each other changes.

Is love then doomed because of all these changes? 

Numerous research in developmental psychology show that romantic love can progress and deepen into something like a semblance of "forever". When the sexual fervor gradually wanes, a comfortable, affectionate, and trusting love can begin to develop. Some psychologists call this "companionate love." It is also called "strong liking," "friendship love," "philias," and "conjugal love." It is called the "stuff of life" for many relationships and is considered as a better basis for a fulfilling marriage than romantic love (see Bercheid, 2010).

John Gottman's extensive research on marital relationships (read Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last) led him to conclude that the foundation of what he calls "a sound marital house" is friendship laced with fondness and admiration.

We therefore need to reconstruct our relationships from time to time in order to cope with the ongoing changes around us and within us. We need to be flexible in our love because this is a source of strength amidst the flow of life. Remember Aesop's fable of the mango tree and the bamboo tree? We should strive to be the bamboo tree when we love--pliant yet strong. The bamboo can bend close to the ground but can survive a storm. This is the nature of companionate love borne out of romance.

If you observe older couples whose love has survived, you wonder if your relationship will also survive 10 years or more from now. Ask people who have been married 20 years or more the secrets of their successful relationship. Chances are they could be any of the following: respect, mutual admiration, good communication, honesty, faithfulness, balance of similarities and differences, ability to resolve conflict, emotional intelligence, and commitment, to name some.

There is still so much to learn about love. In his book, If Love Could Think: Using Your Mind to Guide Your Heart, Alon Gratch quoted Rainer Maria Rilke that young people "must not forget, when they love, that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love,--must learn love." When it comes to love, we are all young and we are all beginners.

I am inviting my readers to write their comments or questions below. Better still, I would be delighted to receive short stories of love from you. 

Watch for my next article about why love fails. Until then, I wish you the best!

References:

Bercheid, E. (2010). Love in the fourth dimension. Annual Reviews of Psychology, 61, 1-25.

Romantic Love's Deception

"Falling in love is not the most stupid thing that people do

but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it."

~Albert Einstein

Have you ever fallen in love in the past and wondered why it didn't last? You thought about the reasons for its failure: Perhaps you were worlds apart. You were more intelligent than the other person. He drunk too much. She was the gold-digger type. He womanized behind your back. She was a shopaholic. He was irresponsible. She was a nagger. And the list could go on.

This "falling in love" experience, which is the early stage of romantic love, happens not just to young people but to middle-agers as well. No one is immune to the magic of this type of love, which has many aliases, including "romantic love," "passionate love," "erotic love," and "obsessive love".

Falling in love is like an accidental tumble which you have little control of. Yet you feel so sure that he/she is the only one for you. You pledge your undying love. You cannot live without this person who has become the center of your world. Your world expands to allow this person to become an inner dweller and the rest of the world recedes when you are with this person. He/she is the only one that matters.

Theories of romantic love link it to sensual feelings, sexual desire, and attraction. Helen Fisher, whose research on romantic love is focused on the brain using a functional NMR brain scanner, has characterized romantic love as an intense craving, an "intolerable neural itch". She found out that those who are madly in love are obsessed, they lose their sense of self, and  it's like "somebody is camping on your head."

In her book, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, Helen Fisher describes romantic love as lust and attachment. When you are romantically in love, your brain releases dopamine (the liquor of romance) which in turn stimulates the release of testosterone (the hormone of sexual desire). Novel experiences increase levels of dopamine in your brain that triggers the chemistry of lust. This explains why a new relationship can feel so wonderful and you feel giddy with happiness and desire.

However, romantic love has a time limit. You cannot always be sexually excited and passionate. As time goes by (a few months, a year or more), predictability grows, erotic satisfaction becomes readily available, and the sexual stupor, characteristic of falling in love, wanes. For instance, studies show that sexual activity in married couples declines with the partners' age and length of marriage (see Berscheid, 2010).

It is no wonder that some married people engage in extramarital affairs. They think that because their relationship no longer brings excitement and unabashed sexuality that they have "fallen out of love" and that the whole thing was a mistake. Enters the new person in the extramarital affair who brings novelty and excitement. Again, the same thing happens--they fall in love. However, if they live with their lover for some time, the same thing happens afterwards--love wanes. The newness disappears and in it familiarity sets in. The falling out of love happens again.

Romantic love's deception gives us a false perception of eternal love. This perception of eternal love is really clothed in temporality. Romantic love gives us a false sense of security, and a flawed belief that the other person is the only one.

Perhaps romantic love is necessary for the propagation of the species. Or to make us feel intensely about another human being, knowing that we can die sooner or later. If it were not for death, we would not have hungered for love, even the romantic kind.

What to do to evade romantic love's deception? Or how do you go beyond the "falling in love" stage into the "standing in love" level?

That is my next article. Watch for it.

Meanwhile, I am inviting readers to participate by sharing their ideas or stories about their experience of romantic love. You can now post your comments below without awaiting moderation from me.


References:

Bercheid, E. (2010). Love in the fourth dimension. Annual Reviews of Psychology, 61, 1-25.

How To Become An Excellent Lover (Republished)

Dear Readers: I am re-publishing a short article I wrote 11 years ago, in 2000. It was published as one of the Weekly Tips in my website which was then hosted by Bizland.com. My Bizland website is now gone but I thought I would like to share this article with you hoping that the tips here will contribute to your relationship in a positive way.

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1. Begin by loving, accepting, and trusting yourself.

2. Know that  being a lover is not about sex and love-making alone but it  is primarily what you do to yourself. 

3. Develop your character.  The inner patterns of the self determines your relationship with your beloved. Honesty for example goes a long way in creating an exciting sex life.

4. Recognize your beloved's worth as a person.  Valuing him/her  extends to the bedroom--every kiss and every caress becomes  a meaningful discovery of your beloved, savored and enjoyed to the fullest extent because you validate his/her preciousness and uniqueness.

5. Learn to read your beloved's body language. Be sensitive to every word, look, moan and quiver.

6. Know your lover's sexual needs and be bold in fulfilling each other's sexual fantasies for as long as they are not demeaning and painful.  

7. Be creative.  Explore and seduce each other. Try to achieve various erotic moods--tender, romantic, languid, passionate, intense, and sizzling.

8.  Read and  research about sex to be informed but don't be bookish. The best source of sexual knowledge and skill is still your beloved. 

9. Continue to tease and seduce each other in various settings and in many ways.  Use your senses and be sensuous.  Use all parts of your body to give and receive pleasure.

10. Let go and be free.  Give and receive pleasure without fear, doubt and guilt.  This presumes that you have the right motive, the right time, the right situation, and the right person. 

Watch for my next article on romantic love next week. As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and contributions. Please feel free to write them in the Comments section below.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Re-publishing: Asbestos - Repeat Call for Universal Ban Is Issued

I am re-publishing the article I wrote, which appeared  in NaturalNews last Nov. 20, 2010,  about the repeat call for a universal ban on asbestos. This is an urgent matter of great importance to our health and to the health of our children and grandchildren. I have done a few revisions here and added links for more information. ~Amy Chaves

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The Collegium Ramazzini, an independent, internationally renowned academy comprising of 184 top-notched scientists in the fields of occupational and environmental health, has issued a repeat call for a universal ban on asbestos. The first universal ban was issued in 1999. The 2010 repeat call for a universal ban is based on numerous research over the years which indicated that all forms of asbestos are proven human carcinogens and exposure to any type carries health risks, most notably, cancer. The Collegium Ramazzini, whose headquarter is in Italy, has termed all asbestos-related cancer as a pandemic.

Asbestos is a natural mineral, strong enough to resist high temperatures and chemical attack,  yet so flexible that its crystals can be made into yarn, woven into cloths, or braided into ropes. Historically, it has been used for over 4,500 years. It has been used in buildings for insulation, and also widely used in transportation and electrical appliances, mixed frequently with other materials.

Asbestos has been known to cause asbestosis, a progressive and debilitating fibrotic lung disease.  All forms of asbestos also cause malignant mesothelioma and lung and laryngeal cancers. They can also cause ovarian, gastrointestinal, and other cancers. 

The Collegium Ramazzini report mentioned that worldwide, cancer deaths in workers exposed to asbestos is estimated to be 100,000 to 140,000 yearly. In Northern America, Western Europe, and Japan, 20,000 new cases of lung cancer and 10,000 cases of mesothelioma yearly are caused from exposure to asbestos. In 2006, death from mesothelioma was highest in Britain, with 1,740 deaths in men and 316 deaths in women, compared to other countries. It is expected that Australia's high incidence of mesothelioma will reach 18,000 by 2020.

There are two studies worth mentioning that illustrate the ill effects of asbestos, based from the Collegium Ramazzini report. One was a historical, cohort mortality study conducted in 2007 in Libby, Montana, which showed that Libby workers who were exposed to asbestos-contaminated vermiculite were more likely to die from asbestosis, lung cancer, cancer of the pleura, and mesothelioma. Another study conducted in Canada in 2005, revealed a sevenfold increase in mortality rate from pleural cancer of women residing in Canadian asbestos mining communities.

Although asbestos has been banned in 52 countries and safer products are now being used to replace it, a large number of countries continue to use, export, and import asbestos and asbestos-containing products, according to the Collegium Ramazzini report. In developing countries, where asbestos is imported in large quantities for construction purposes, dust contamination has been found to accumulate in thousands of communities. It is almost impossible to control exposure once asbestos settles in various buildings and places.

One country that has used its influence in international organizations to protect its export market for asbestos and has aggressively promoted the use of asbestos in developing countries is Canada (LaDou, 2004). It is the largest asbestos exporting country in the world, next to Russia and China, based on a US Geological Survey in 2000. With the asbestos multinational corporations gone, Canada stands out as the most powerful opponent of international efforts to ban asbestos, according to LaDou.

The Collegium Ramazzini considers the asbestos-related illnesses and deaths as a tragic pandemic that can be prevented. Since the risks of exposure to asbestos cannot be controlled by technology or work practices regulation, an international ban on the mining and use of asbestos is urgently needed. The Collegium Ramazzini is therefore asking all countries of the world to join in the international endeavor to ban all forms of asbestos as an obligation to their citizens.

References:

Collegium Ramazzini (2010). Asbestos is still with us: Repeat call for a universal ban. American Journal of Industrial Medicine. DOI 10.1002/ajim.20892.

LaDou, J. (2004). The asbestos cancer epidemic. Environmental Health Perspectives, 112(3), 285-289.

Sullivan, P. A. (2007). Vermiculite, respiratory disease, and asbestos exposure in Libby, Montana: Update of a cohort mortality study. Environmental Health Perspectives, 115(4), 579-585.

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Watch for my next article next week about romantic love in its early stages. As usual, I welcome comments, questions, and contributions from readers!

Hardships Can Be Good For You

If you are bemoaning and complaining about some hardships you have to endure, don't. Behind the success of every person could have been a series of hardships endured and obstacles conquered.

Hardships may refer to adversities, misfortunes, troubles, hard times, problems, or something that cause suffering. They accompany us from birth to death, along with our joys and memorable peak moments.

Hardships can come in many forms. The common types are: physical (illness, disability), material (poverty, bankruptcy), psycho-emotional (experience of abuse), and social (racism, bullying). There might be some other kinds of hardships but these are the general ones I can think of at the moment.

The following are some of the reasons why hardships can be good for you:

Character development. Depending on how you look at hardships (with optimism, pessimism, or realism), they can be your road to character development. They can yank you out from your comfort zone, sometimes with no solid ground to stand on, and can lead you to make some much-needed changes in your life. They could make you suffer and in the process give you the grace to be strong. They can prune your pride and prejudice to make you humble. If one adversity could make you develop at least one virtue, then imagine how a number of adversities can develop your character and make you a better person.

Life lessons. Hardships can teach you valuable lessons: to never take your health for granted (in case of illness), to spend below your means (in case of bankruptcy), to learn to let go and walk away (in case of abuse), to stand up for your rights (in case of racism). Behind every adversity is a lesson waiting to sit on your lap and be recognized as a friend and as a teacher.

Empathy. Hardships enable you to walk in the other's moccasins so you can understand better the other person's world. If your mother has died of cancer (as mine had), you will empathize more deeply with anyone who has suffered from it. If you had experienced emotional and economic abuse from your spouse you will understand why some wives leave their husbands. What defines our humanity is our ability to feel another person's pain. It is therefore from hardships that we learn the gift of inter-connectedness and the realization that "we are in this together". 

Resilience. You gather invisible scars as you grow. Each scar is your badge of a problem solved, of a personal adversity triumphed,  of an inner war won. These invisible scars stem from hardships that you have endured and overcame, making you a resilient person, capable of "bouncing back" (and not "flattened") when confronted with life's slings and arrows. 

Looking to the New Year, we can be inspired by some of the most successful people who  overcame hardships and became successful. There are many of them but I chose the following five remarkable people:

Soichiro Honda: Born in rural Iwata-gun, Japan in 1906, Honda was the first son of a blacksmith. One of several hardships he had to endure was developing a piston ring which he intended to sell to Toyota Corporation. This was in 1928. He pawned his wife's jewelry, worked day and night, slept in his workshop, always believing that he could perfect his design, only to be turned down by Toyota Motor afterwards because his model did not meet their standards. He finally succeeded in refining his piston rings, some of which were eventually sold to Toyota.  He then went on to create the motorbike and then the motorcyle in the 1940s. He introduced the Honda Civic  to the American market in 1972, combining quality, efficiency, and economy. From his humble beginnings and ability to persevere despite hardships, Honda has built a billion-dollar car business. His company, the Honda Corporation, is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world. You have some hardships? Be inspired by Honda!

Albert Einstein: He wasn't born a genius and had plenty of hardships. Einstein did not speak until he was 4 and did not read until he was 7, making his teachers and parents think that he was mentally handicapped and anti-social, and that he will not amount to something. He was expelled from school and was refused admittance at the Zurich Polytechnic School. However, Einstein persevered, and by age 12 he showed remarkable mathematical ability and learned algebra and geometry by himself, and even tried to prove new theories such as the Pythagorean theory. Although judged to be a slow learner as a young boy, he succeeded in changing modern physics and is considered the smartest man in the 20th century, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

Thomas Edison: Hardships? He seemed to have plenty of it. As a boy, he was branded by his teachers as too stupid to learn anything. He also suffered from poor hearing which prevented him from attending secondary school. Edison was fired from his first two jobs because he was not productive enough. As an inventor, he failed 1,000 times at making his light bulb work. Yet he became one of the greatest inventors of our time, creating the practical light bulb, the phonograph, the motion camera, and other 1297 inventions, too long to innumerate here.

Oprah Winfrey: This remarkable woman had her own share of hardships. Considered as one of the most successful and richest women in the world, Oprah had to endure a rough and abusive childhood. She was born into poverty and was sexually abused when she was nine years old by her uncle, a cousin, and a friend. Although she struggled with drugs as a young woman, she finally found a way out after being awarded a university scholarship. She then became a news anchor and a reporter for a television station in Nashville. The Oprah Winfrey show, which earned the highest ranked television talk show in history, has gained multiple Emmy Awards. Oprah has been ranked as the richest African American and the most philanthropic African American of the 20th century.

Steve Jobs: There was a story that before Steve Jobs became "somebody" he was a nobody who experienced rejection. Aside from being rejected by his parents (he was later adopted), he was a college drop-out who was trying to figure out what he wanted in life. He had his own share of hardships when he was young. While enrolled in calligraphy classes (after dropping from college), he would  sleep on the floor in his friends' rooms, return Coke bottles for money, and get free meals from the local Hari Krishna temple. He later became fascinated with computers and he eventually established, together with his friend, Steve Wozniak, the Apple Computer (later renamed as Apple). His biggest contribution to computer technology was the McIntosh computer with its graphical user interface. Apple has become a leader in consumer technology with its iPhone, iPod, iPad, iTunes, and its Apps. Forbes estimated Jobs' net wealth in 2009 at $5.1 billion, making him the 43rd wealthiest American. 

Hardships are problems, adversities and misfortunes that make you suffer most of the time. However, hardships can be good for you, depending on how you take it, because they can develop your character, make you learn more about life, provide you with the skill to be empathic of other's suffering, and make you stronger and more resilient. In short, hardships make you a better person--one who is wiser, more compassionate, and tenacious.

I would love to hear from you and your experience of how hardships contributed to your personal success. Share your own story with other readers by writing a paragraph or two and placing it in the Comments section, just below this article. I will post your write-up  in the page marked "Readers' Contributions". Let me know if you want to write your real name or not.

Happy New Year, my dear readers!

Schizophrenia Drugs Ineffective

If you know a loved one, a friend, or somebody taking drugs to treat schizophrenia, you might want to pass along an article I wrote which was published in Natural News, December 28, 2010. Below is the link:

http://www.naturalnews.com/030847_schizophrenia_drugs_side_effects.html


Watch for my next article on hardships and how they might be good for you.

Until then, enjoy the remaining holidays!