Love & the Capacity to Love
>.
There is but one topic to write about on this day…, “Relationships can involve more than one type of love. For example, best friends may love each other in both a child-parent and a parent-child way in the sense that each leans on as well as looks out for the other. Relationships can involve different types of love at different points in time. For example, people may gradually shift from a child-parent to parent-child form of love as they grow up, and their parents get older. Relationships can begin with one type of love and acquire other types over time. For example, dating couples may initially love each other only in a romantic way but eventually begin to love each other in child-parent and parent-child ways as well. Mate relationships are unique in being the only social tie that encompasses all three forms of love” (pg. 304).
Peterson and Seligman go on to explain, “Humans have theorized about love and relationships for as long as they have theorized about anything. Surprisingly, it has only been in the last 30 years or so that the methods of empirical science have been applied to the task of understanding and explaining love. And for much of this time research proceeded along two separate pathways, with developmental psychologists investigating parent-child bonds and social psychologists studying adult romantic relationships. Recently these two areas of inquiry began to merge, and the integration has thus far proved fruitful. The capacity to love and be loved is now viewed as an innate, species-typical tendency that has powerful effects on psychological and physical health from infancy through old age. It has also been established that this capacity can be affected in deep and lasting ways by early relationship experience” ?
Images
Big Heart of Art – 1000 Visual Mashups courtesy of qthomasbower….
Hi!
My number 1 strength of the test of Seligman was also love and the capicity to love. Strength 2. Learning, 3. Beauty en excellence, 4. creativity and 5. curiosity. (lowest strengths or weaknesses are self control en hope/optimis) Since a half year I have a wonderful relationship with my girlfriend, so in that case, the result of nr. 1 is not surprising. Remarkable is that I am much of my time struggling and not happy. This is because I am struggling with my current job , managing daily life and facing all the responsibilities en stress of the future ( i am not that optimistic). Two questions of the meaning of the capicity to love:
1. In what sense is love different than doing something for your neighbor or somebody passing by?
2. We should use our capacity in all aspect of life: relationship, work, bring up children. Love is of course useful in relationship en raising children….What do en how to work out the capacity of love in work? Especially in the sector of business, engineering, consultancy where I am working now….
I consider a carrier switch…so any idea’s/links for my question is welcome!
Kind regards,
Peter
p.s. sorry for my bad English, it’s not my nature language.
Doing something for a neighbor or passserby as you say would fall into another strength in my mind: Kindness and Generosity. To me, the difference between this strength and Love & the Capacity to Be Loved is the depth and longevity of the relationship.
I do think you can apply your strength of Love to the workplace by asking yourself some questions: What would it be like if I really loved the people I work with? Would I treat them any differently? Would I be more compassionate when they were having a bad day?
As the Wheel of Life exercise points out, the 8 slices of your life all fit together,are interdependent, and can have a contagious effect – be it positive or negative. Sounds like you recognize how your career/work are impacting the other parts of your life. Good for you! Thanks for writing.