Love and Personality

In the ancient times of incomplete personalities, monogamy was impossible; but since the coming of Christ completed personality has been presented to our view and we have become incapable of bigamous love. Yet, naturally, as I have just stated, the principle of monogamy breaks down if there is more or less of abnormality in the character.


Quite recently, in many parts of Japan, lovers, finding this whole-souled love unattainable, have sacrificed themselves; and there are certain thinkers who dispute the eternal validity of the principle of monogamy, regarding these cases as disproof of it.

However, I think quite otherwise, for in situations where lovers attain control over their environment, mastery of their passions, and consciousness of true human nature, their character union will, in any period whatever, be recognized necessarily as valid, and therein a perfect monogamy is realized. I therefore do not say, add one and one, and arrive at unity, but rather, that that which is essentially one cannot be divided into two. The two souls aflame will be perennially ardent. This is what I term monogamy.

Man's Degeneracy

When desire is separated from love and from marriage, it becomes that divisive love which is real lust, that which draws men's lives down to the horrible bottom of hell. For example, a man who upon marrying makes lust his sole aim, no matter who his mate may be, descends along the way of least resistance, so long as he can satisfy his own lust. He cares not a whit what the character of his mate may be or how society regards his conduct. He lives solely to indulge his own selfish desire, and is a mere slave to mean, mechanical instincts. Marriage to such a man is a sort of private prostitution: when he tires of his wife or the prostitute with whom he is familiar, his lust demands new means of satisfaction. He is reduced to seeking for more stimulating, defiling practices.

Love Requires Relationship

Bis Art Print
Hanson, Pamela
31.47 in. x 23.6 in.

Buy at AllPosters.com
Framed   Mounted


There are quite different understandings of the nature of loving. Monastics throughout the world, for example, have held that the most fundamental experience of love comes not from relations with other people but from an inward experience of Being itself. Such an experience has been described as bliss, enlightenment, mystery, or light. Within Christianity the term agape is used to denote the love of God for human beings. It is a Christian contention that we are obligated to love others—indeed, that we can be commanded to love others because we have been loved by God.

Our present Western understanding of love, however, is more strongly sociopsychological. Whatever self-love we have acquired depends on our having been loved by others. Our parents, friends, and lovers have significantly shaped, if not totally determined, our capacity to love. Thus, our experience of having been loved provides us with inner prescriptions as to how we should go about our own loving. It is not possible for us to grow and develop unless our basic human need for love and acceptance has been met adequately.

To most people, love means caring for others, looking after them, seeing to their well-being, "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, . . . till death us do part" 6 People often assume that because caring is very much related to the amount of time spent with those we care for, the longer the relationship, the more caring there will be and the more loving. Thus, they ask: "Isn't it important that marriage be for life?" "Must not any partnership last a long time for it to become a deep and meaningful experience?" "After all, what do people know about love who have not had the responsibility of caring for another person over the years?"

Indeed, caring is a significant part of what we mean by "working" at a marriage, and it is an important part of any intimate partnership. For this reason this book has a lot to say about loving in partnerships. But such a conception of caring for others must be balanced by an awareness that the members of a partnership also must work toward their own self-actualization. Caring for one's partner is only half of the relationship, for it is also important to care for and nurture into being one's own creative, growing self.

Body Language in Flirting

Sounds like a catchy slogan for a new service, doesn’t it? “Body Language Flirting! Amp up your animal attraction!” See, when most people hear the term “flirting”, they think of conversation, smiles and a playful vibe before they consider the role of body language.

We don’t recognize how much it is an integral part of attraction, but beneath what we say and do, there actually lies a whole level of flirting that literally goes without saying! Body language is incredibly powerful and it’s by far the most neglected area of seduction. It mirrors your mood and emotions, and transfers them to the person you’re with. Allow me to show how you can present great body language by modifying your emotional state.

In the 1960s, the prominent psychologist Albert Mehrabian found that only 7% of communication is determined by words. He left 38% to tone of voice and 55% to body language! His distribution has since been contested, but the consensus about the powerful impact of body language still stands over four decades later.

For your flirting and attraction, body language plays a twofold role, and it’s the classic chicken-egg situation, really:

First of all, your how you feel shows in your body language, and second of all, you can use your body language to influence how you feel

Courstship as Love Involvement

Love cannot develop in a vacuum. Since every love feeling must be oriented with reference to some object, it follows that sweetheart love requires interaction with other persons. The process by which the two sexes associate and adjust together as preparation for marriage we shall call "courtship."

Courtship is both the art of making love and process of love involvement; considered broadly, it extends all the way from when boys and girls are first attracted to each other to the time when married mates bid each other farewell at the sunset of life. There is a more narrow usage of the term, however, one that views courtship as being separate from both dating and marriage.

According to this usage, dating refers to the early friendship activities of young people whereby they seek to have fun in pairs (emphasis upon friendship and enjoyment, not marriage); courtship connotes a more advanced stage in these boy-girl relationships, the stage just prior to marriage where the emphasis is upon choosing a mate and preparing for what lies ahead; and marriage is the consummation or end result of what has gone before. Dating evolves somewhat gradually into courtship as the marriage prospect becomes more real, and courtship gives way to marriage when the mates decide that the involvement process has gone far enough and has been successful enough to be made permanent. We are interested here in the dating and courting processes of the premarriage period.

Parents and teachers sometimes blunder, and young people flounder, for failure to understand adequately the customs and value systems of each other. As "time marches on," oldsters tend to lose track of the feelings and problems of the oncoming group. With males and females made differently, and trained somewhat separately, sex antagonisms are bound to develop. Consequently each generation is partially blind to the new one emerging, and each sex, to a degree at least, is ignorant of the other.

To come to any real understanding of how modern youth think and feel about the various patterns of courtship behavior, it is necessary to let them speak for themselves.