Dr. T. Jordan Redresses the Misrepresentation of LOVE in the Media
Hoping to redress some of the complications our society faces about love, taugh to the society by popular media, Dr. T. Jordan founded the Love Life Workshops in New York City. His workshop is the practical application of the ideas in his new book, “Principles of Mature Loving.” Dr. T. Jordan is a psychoanalyst practicing on the upper west side of Manhattan.
April 25th, 2003 (PRWEB) April 25, 2003
There are three main channels of instruction on life: family and friends, formal educational institutions and the media. With the recent media frenzy over “Married by America,” “The Bachelor/ Bachelorette”, “Joe Millionaire”, etc., I’d like to explore the impact of what the media communicates to us about love in our society.
Falling in love is a spontaneous chemical interaction and certainly beyond human control or manipulation. Loving, with an “ing,” on the other hand, is a learned experience and as such can be unlearned and something better relearned. Loving is a learned experience. As an adult, learning to be loving should be an essential adult developmental objective.
What role does the media play in teaching us the ABCs of love? Fundamentally, the media represents our culture. Through example and suggestion, the media teaches us how to think about ourselves, and how to relate to each other. Each time we open a magazine, turn on a station, or surf the net, we are exposing ourselves to a multitude of messages about what we should expect from others and how we should react to each other.
Now that we have established the broader context for this essay, I propose that our culture is currently doing a questionable job of teaching us how to be loving. Love and loving have become a business. We learn quite a bit about what attracts us to each other. We also learn a lot about how people are different, and get a bunch of prefabricated messages about what those differences should mean to us. We are exposed to and, as a result, learn a lot of “immature loving” through the media. By immature I mean ways of relating that originate from and are applicable to childhood and adolescent experience.
Sensationalism, superficiality, and materialism are commonly substituted for love. The lost message is that matured loving requires some skills in human intimacy and an enduring interest in consciousness. At present, there is an absence of maturity in what the media is teaching us about love and loving. We are taught how to think mostly of ourselves in a relationship, as if competing to fulfill oneÂ’s own needs is the primary purpose for making a love commitment in the first place.
The other day, a single woman in her 30s said to me, “Dr. Jordan, your ideas are unusual simply because you are counseling people to tolerate vulnerability.” She went on to say that most authorities on love and loving are urging people to get and maintain control at all costs. I can only wonder, how does love grow in a climate of interpersonal control? Well, it doesn’t.
True giving is foreign to many people in love. Instead, we are taught to build ourselves up at the expense of others. So what? So the emotional differences between the sexes are emphasized, and further than that, we capitalize on those differences. We teach people that men and women are from different worlds and therefore lose sight of what precious ground we share in common.
Then there is the issue of honesty. I think the media is less ambivalent about this human value than most others. Honesty sells less than all the other things people can do with the truth. When a person lies about who he or she is to a prospective lover, the foundation for their relationship is dishonesty, and they have stopped developing intimacy.
Physicality and sexuality are the other great complications in love. Quite frankly, love is not sex and can never be reduced to sex without dire consequences for human beings. Love is about individuals and their commitment to be loving with each other. Nonetheless, as physical beings, sensations such as sexual attraction are immediate and highly stimulating. Some things will never change, and that is one of them. Hence the challenge, before a person is capable of, or is ready to, make a loving commitment there is sex, a form of built-in entertainment at best, and a tragic irresponsibility at worst. I believe that the natural desires are too often exploited to influence us in one direction or another away from learning human intimacy.
It is quite a thing to free oneself from the suggestion, supported by our media, that physical attraction, such as sex appeal, plays the primary role in loving. So many people have and will marry someone they like looking at but can’t be intimate with. When we “learn” such a lesson, supported by our mediated Hollywood role models, critical thought and reflection ceases. Cycles of disappointment and frustration take over. Many single, separated, and divorced men and women can attest to this. Thankfully, we are very spirited beings. In our own unique ways, most individuals challenge the limitations. After a breakup, a person can discover something new about him or herself, and something else he or she does not want in a future mate. We are all trying to learn something useful from our painful experiences.
As adults we have a serious opportunity to learn something new about ourselves and the art of loving. The best way to do this is to let go of what we have already learned and tried, an act much easier said than done. Beyond taking this initial step to conscious loving, the rest is learning something more useful and effective about love with people who can and will support this kind of change.
For those who ask, what do I need to know about love and loving? First and foremost, know that a love grows and satisfies if it is founded on intimacy. Loving should be based on close friendship. Intimacy is what you get when two people deepen their friendship with each other. Loving is intimacy plus. The plus is that good old “chemistry” that can never be man-made. If you have a spark and a dedication to friendship, you have all the necessary ingredients for an enduring and satisfying love life. Nevertheless, developing an intimate friendship is a skill. There are certain “principles” involved in its cultivation and maintenance. Certain conditions are required for its growth. For example, when a relationship is equal, honest, and free, intimacy grows naturally. Mutual respect and compassion are also useful, especially while learning how to forgive and forget. Understanding the relationship between our unique individualities and our capacities for loving another is important as well. Loving one’s own way instead of automatically establishing the same kind of love life our parents had is a great thing to learn. There is also the matter of defensiveness. The ways we have all learned to react against hurt only interfere with the experience of love. Lastly, there are those expectations. We suffer more from expectations than anything else. Expectations are what we expect to find in our love lives. What happens if we cannot find what we are looking for? Learning how to revise our expectations is necessary for a relaxed and satisfying adulthood. We should anticipate that a lot of what we expect going into our love lives, at least at the beginning, is baggage from our past experiences. To continue expecting the same old things into adulthood does nothing but ensure misery. Keeping our expectations current helps settle our past experience, and free us up for new and more satisfying experiences of love in the present and future.
The countless misleading messages we are receiving, promoted by recent media campaigns, are growing increasingly complicated. People are desperately trying to understand what love is. The absence of a responsibility among the major channels of instruction in our society has left a gap closed only temporarily and on occasion by the mental health profession. In this case, you have to get sick first to learn something new, obviously unacceptable as a long-term solution. While becoming more conscious of the way love is portrayed to consumers and feeling more responsive to the role the media plays as teacher, my wife Victoria and I founded the Love Life Workshops, to begin a redress of the misrepresentation love as undergone for profit and exploitation.
In response to this critical need, I developed a series of workshops whose sole purpose is to introduce people to the idea that loving is learned. At my workshops, one can stop in for a couple of hours and contemplate one’s love life in a supportive and professional atmosphere with other interested peers. Love Life Workshops are where we can learn the skills required for a more “conscious love life.” We offer a safe place to learn the principles of love and loving that will help open people to a sustained interest in a healthy romantic involvement with another.
Love Life Workshops are affordable and are conducted by a fourteen Manhattan psychologists with an expertise in love relationships and the issues of single living. Each Love Life Workshop is conducted in the private offices of our workshop leaders throughout Manhattan. My book, “Principles of Mature Loving,” is also available as a reference manual for participants of the workshops. For workshop registration or more information, contact Dolce Vita Marketing & Events at 212.253.6878 or via email at Events@nyc. rr. com. You can also visit our website at http://www. lovelifeworkshops. com (http://www. lovelifeworkshops. com).
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Hoping to address some of the complications our society faces about love, Dr. T. Jordan founded the Love Life Workshops. His workshop is the practical application of the ideas in his new book, “Principles of Mature Loving.” Dr. T. Jordan is a psychoanalyst practicing on the upper west side of Manhattan.
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Edited by Mindy M. Yang
Dolce Vita LLC
Integrated Communications, Marketing & Events
194 East 2nd Street, Suite 2F
New York, NY 10009
T 212.253.6878 f 208.475.9915
