Love, Sex & Intimate Relationship... 

Shadow Issues of the Heart..!  Love Addiction. Are you a Love Seeker Addict?  or a Love Avoidant Addict?  Or perhaps you oscillate between the two...Some cannot seem to avoid getting into hurtful and abusive relationships. 

When many clients think about it, they find themselves returning to Bad relationships, even though they are aware they are not healthy and even destructive. WHY? You may ask. We do have some useful understanding and offer answers that apply in personal therapy to gain more experience of behaviour patterns. Traumas may also play a part in this unhealthy co-dependent action.

Couples relationships, working at understanding of how to be in relationship in a healthy way, is a specialised area of work and usually needs a lot of experience, wisdom and psychological understanding, to bring any real help to heal and resolve issues that hurt or wound us deeply. 

We also do heart 'passion' work and goal setting. We deal with Co-dependency and Love Addictions and unhealthy relationships to bring about new ways to love and live, in relative peace.... We have offered several one day seminars in Milton Keynes (half an hour from London) covering this work in the past. These will no doubt be uploaded for distance learning as separate short courses on our College training platform soon. We supply course notebooks with relevant information to perhaps help you find some of your answers, or the key that you may be looking for.

Couples work & Relationships

Relationships are very difficult to work out sometimes and can be like a jigsaw puzzle and we cannot work something out because pieces of the jigsaw are missing... For an example - Love Addiction issues cause many problems and this new area of work and the various Day Seminars help to uncover and treat the underlying inner child issues affecting relationships, which could be abandonment / attachment related issues, or could be trust issues including jealousies to name just a few. Why suffer in Silence?

Sex

Sex, Yes please, some may say...!  But 'acting out' in personal sexuality, or promiscuity, or pornography related issues, are often an expression of something underlying and to many, a complete mystery.  Humans are often pressured into a monogamous relationship, according to, traditional English, cultural, or Christian principles, of our Westernised society today and the rules would say we are meant to stay faithful to one partner. It is certainly more healthy as a lifestyle. 

For some, that are caught in a cycle of sexual addiction, a monogamous relationship appears difficult or seemingly impossible and is therefore not an option for this type of person, Why? - Many reasons, but we acknowledge here that extreme promiscuous behaviour can even be a form of distortion, as a form of love addiction, or a sexual addiction, it can be seen even in the desire for various forms of compulsive dating, pornography, or sexual conquests. The good news is that It can be understood and dealt with.

This acting out can be many things and could be a simple form of desire for affirmation, or approval from the prospective partner, the acknowledgement of attraction and admiration can be seen by a needy person as love rather than sex, and is common in those who have unmet childhood needs and the accompanying and affirming expressions of love towards them.  It is therefore treatable to have more control over it, once it is established where it comes from and there are methods to sublimate the needs and may be established with patients.

It is often affected by emotions and it can often be affected by problems within a specific relationship/type of relationship drawn to, or even outside of relationship in promiscuity,or  when unable to perform different acts, due to blockages, or when a person does not allow oneself to experience the joys of sex in an uninhibited way. 

The old saying that most marriage problems stem from the bedroom, has a ring of truth to the common sense wisdom of the day, And the truth is, most sexual problems within a marriage can be overcome with understanding and patience, but they may be attributed to child sexual abuse issues, or possible love addict/love avoidant behaviour, or through guilt blockages in the psyche, or psychosomatic issues, but can also be sexual orientation problems, or physical medical conditions.  Some issues may be helped with a specialist in Sex therapy.  This also may need work for both sexes. 

Gender:  Sexual Identity Issues - Transgender, gay, lesbian, bi-curious or confused clients may wish to explore their sexuality with us at a deeper emotional levels, prior to clinical operations, or irreversible decisions taken, whilst in an emotionally charged state of mind; often these situations or operations can be slowed down for safety sake, to take stock of the underlying issues, or simply to ensure the right decisions are taken from a patients perspective, as a duty of care to the patient. Many change their minds after having irreversible or difficult to reverse operations.

Love & Pain 

When we experience hurt, perhaps by the rejection from a loved one, or perhaps the loss of a loved one through accident or worse, or an illness that can take away human dignity and functional capacities, we experience feelings in the heart. 

Those feelings are often quite extraordinarily painful to bear and can need some extra help to deal with. There is no shame in asking for help whenever you feel you really need it.

Divorce or Separation from a loved one, or even an untimely Death, can be so destructive and painful. The tragic effects to a person in that scenario, we find, is that the wrench in their heart can be so powerfull and destructive, that they may even lose the will to live.

We wish to try to alleviate some of that pain here at Talk Therapy by offering ways to perhaps bring the pain under control and that, in turn, may simply help to try to make life bearable while a person mends and repairs the Ego and emotional life. 

Remember... whatever the problem psychologically, there are usually always fast solutions to help to lessen, or in some cases, even remove the pain, or at least gain control of the pain and move on in life... to find a better way for the future...  if it works out to be a slow process, nothing is lost!

Love sayings  -  Adapted by George...

The Journey of the Soul experiencing LOVE. 

 “You came here to learn and master unconditional love as a soul trying to live and integrate in this world.  The divine source of love is where your Soul came from, as it was born of love. And therefore your Soul’s essence, that which makes you uniquely You, came from The Divine – Your Higher Being and is where you will eventually return, when you master love. When you find the love of the divine you will be drawn to engage with the divine and the divine inside of you will manifest the fruit of true love and consequently true life. You came here to learn personal love:- universal love, messy love, sweaty love, crazy love, broken love, whole love, loveliness  with divinity, lived through the grace of The Divine and tumbling into life through confusion and mistakes.

Love demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up.  You did not arrive here to be perfect, but your soul will experience the pain and pleasure of life which will veil its purity and beauty and begin to manifest in the world. You came here to be gorgeously human, flawed and fabulous.  And then to rise again into remembering your origins from the divine the love and the grace you were forged and created with.  You are not sourced from conditional love? Stop believing in and telling that old story. Love truthfully does not need any other adjectives. Love does not require modifiers and change. Love does not require the condition of perfection.  Love only asks that you show up and do your best.

True love demands that you stay true to yourself and present in the moment and feel fully. Love calls you to shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as yourself, the pure Soul on its journey to the circle of life, drawn to return to the divine. And to experience,  to express, to endure,  to nurture, to explore ways to love others and capture the essence and the purity of love and life. Loving is what we all need and what we must offer to be true to the creator who called us all into being. Then we shall really know as our Soul is unveiled once more and will be fully known. That is enough. That is our plenty.”   
 ~ +++George.

HAPPINESS:

The model of Happiness and the myth exploded... Three views on aspects of Happiness that reflect our views in relationships. Can your partner make you happy?

Thinking of Co-dependency and intimate love issues, virtually all researchers in the field of human psychological development agree that our human need for 'relationship' intimacy is central to our existence. Fairbairn suggested the most important relationship a human has is mother. This impacts all other relationships. 

It was also a British psychoanalyst John Bowlby who wrote that, intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person's life revolves. Let us without prejudice look for a moment at what others say about happiness in this context.

In his book The Art of Happiness, His Highness the Dalai Lama quotes Erich Fromm, claiming humankind's most basic fear is the threat of being separated from other humans. He goes on to quote that Fromm also believed that the experience of separateness, first encountered in infancy, which is the source of all anxiety in human life and suggested that John Bowlby agreed. He goes on to say that Bowlby cites a good deal of experimental evidence and research to support the idea that separation from one's caregivers - usually the mother or father - during the latter part of the first year of life inevitably creates fear and sadness in babies. He feels that separation and interpersonal loss are at the very roots of our human experience of issues of fear, sadness and of course sorrow. (HH Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler, 1998).

Abbott Christopher Jamison in his book Finding Happiness suggests, the origins of the word Happiness comes from the word 'hap', as a derived from words such as perhaps, hapless and haphazard. And Happiness was associated with 'luck', which was usually referring to fertility and wealth and this rested with the pagan god's. Whose goodwill had to be retained through ritual and sacrifice. He goes on to say that Plato saw love as contemplation and Aristotle saw love as living virtuously. Yet Aristotle still felt Luck has a hand in it somewhere. Contemporary meanings of happiness mainly involve feeling good, emphasis on 'feeling'. platonic contemplation is on 'knowing' the good, the sense of knowing here as the sense of knowing a friend rather than knowing a fact. Whereas Aristotelian virtue involves 'doing' good, as in living out these virtues. (Abbott Christopher Jamison. 2008).

Bishop: Rev Dr George A. Booty, of the Convergence College, Faculty Head, says: We know from the Benedictine teachings that St Benedict taught these experiences of ‘knowing the good’ and ‘doing the good’ as a joy and delight. A Benedictine monk for example 'delights in virtue' we recall the desire to know God is described by Benedictine as joy when he invites a monk to look forward to Easter with joy and spiritual longing!

Our world view of ‘joy’ (happiness) then, is being in a sense of merely ‘feeling’ good which is fleeting and has no real substance, whereas the path that leads to knowing the good and doing the good is stronger than those siren voices that would distract us away to our lower senses. We have something enduring in our way of happiness as a joy and delight which is so enduring and lasting that it can even make death happy.

The ‘keys’ are all here: Therefore when we transfer these spiritual principles of Benedictine behaviour in doing good and choosing the virtue of purity in selfless loving of our partner we may learn to gain and retain an inner joy even when our partner does not love us back in the way we previously selfishly needed (our soulish spirituality always determines the physical—whereas the physical can only affect the spiritual by veiling the soul and therefore distraction away from it). We decide to Love (regardless) though not in a co-dependent way, which becomes the key to our own happiness in a relationship. It does not depend on our own unreasonable expectations of the other.

Love then becomes a choice. When you ‘choose’ to love someone something happens inside of you as it does not depend on the other party to make you happy, it is internal. It becomes a deep well or reservoir of joy inside you. Your happiness cannot depend on others to make you feel good about yourself, because people will always let you down in their flaws which is human. “..to make mistakes is human, to love is divine..” You need to feel good about yourself internally and be happy in your own skin. This is why you need to find a healthy way to love rather than a co-dependent interpersonal relationship experience. We need to deal with issues that block or prevent our internal happiness and expectations in all manner of resolutioncompulsions, co-dependent issues and subsequent ongoing intrapersonal stress.

Permanent happiness does not come from outside of you. If we blame our partners for our own stuff—the internal insecurities we set the relationship up to fail. Do we have Love or tied into Attachment? Are we attracted to a person because we admire them and want to love what we see in them or are we attracted to the shadow on trying to resolve early needs in resolution compulsion? Are we Love Addicts and therefore get caught up with the romantic notion of love and the wonder of relationship and the prospect of happiness from outside of us, or are we, in some cases consumed by our love , either as a Love Seeker or as a Love Avoidant? We are totally in fear of abandonment though driven to the siren of loving intimacy with the perfect one that God may bring along—eventually!

We need to deal with our demons in these areas because we hurt others with our consuming jealousies and unreasonable expectations. We must honour first which is the practical outpouring of love and grace in Jesus Christ. Our Souls are veiled by the unloving experiences in life from birth to the grave, yet our soul is born out of love from the divine and we are love inside of ourselves if we can only find it. God is love… We are of God when our spirit is revived and cleansed by the love of Christ, we live and love and can give unselfishly in love, unconditional love, Grace the free unmerited love of Agape.

When we love our spouse like that and glorify them through the choice to love them regardless, then we have touched the divine. We may even let a potential partner/spouse... go and walk away and let them come to terms with their own issues that prevent them from loving in a stable and unselfish way. It should not be the case of (you must jump through hoops). I will love you if you do this or that for me.. If you love, you must truly love from the heart, not from the mind. It is a choice to choose virtue and do love to others.

Unless you love yourself in the light of God’s love you cannot honestly love others because you are simply too needy and need to be rescued by love yourself. You are looking to the outside for your love and you need to look to God and then inside yourself for His love freely given you, so you could freely give to others. Amen.

Seminar:  Love Issues 3—Finding the ideal partner. One day Seminar. Scheduled to be offered again for the future at Convergence College of Psychotherapy. Central Milton Keynes, Bucks, England. UK.

(Rev Dr George A. Booty. 2013). http://www.convergencecollege.org/Copywrite 26^th June 2013 - we will allow reprinting if the author and source is acknowledged, as it forms part of a new literary work.