The love sickness, Jealousy, teaches maturity

One day before Friday the 13th and two days before St. Valentine’s Day, February 14th, Thomas Moore writes about the purpose of jealousy, "Schooled in Jealousy" for WebMD. Based on his own experiences, Moore suggests "Jealousy forces you to consider one of the great conundrums that every person faces: how to want another person madly and at the same time grant her her freedom as a person with her own life and fate. You can't learn this from a book or a counseling session. Jealousy can teach you, but only if you are able to go through it to the end."

Moore’s advice is under the heading, "Modern Love: Sex, Relationships & Your Health — Psychology Today experts talk, share and give advice on mating, dating, and relating." Readers are invited to post comments about Moore’s observations.

Public invited to free lecture in Keene, NH

An earlier Barque post noted Moore's appearance in Keene, New Hampshire, hosted by Antioch University New England. The university announces, on its site, this evening with Thomas Moore as the concluding presentation of its Fall Speakers Series. The public is invited to attend these free events.

Thomas Moore’s talk, "Building Successful Relationships Using Spiritual Principles" is at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday 4 December 2008 at:
Best Western Sovereign Hotel
Grand Ballroom,
401 Winchester Street,
Keene, NH

The next day, Moore participates in a program restricted to psychotherapists.

Spiritual principles to guide relationships

The Greater Keene Chamber of Commerce lists Thomas Moore’s Thursday 4 December, 2008 appearance at:
Best Western Sovereign Hotel
401 Winchester Street
Keene, New Hampshire
7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The Chamber's description for "Building Successful Relationships Using Spiritual Principles," says Moore "believes the only way to deal effectively with emotional problems is to include intelligent and open-minded explorations of spiritual life. Some aspects of spirituality are eternal and never change; others shift with cultural developments. According to Moore, we are in serious need of a spiritual intelligence equal to the complexity of life in the new century."

Sponsors of this free event are Antioch University New England's Applied Psychology Department and MAPS Counseling Services. For more information, contact:
Jan Fiderio
Telephone: 603 283-2107
janet_fiderio@antiochne.edu

Practice independence within your marriage

Thomas Moore responds to a question about marital fidelity for Beliefnet. A female reader wonders what may be wrong with her since she married two men who may have become involved with other women after marriage.

Moore recommends,

"... get in touch with any feelings you have for freedom: not necessarily freedom to be with other men, but freedom to have some life experience that is not associated with your husband. You can live a monogamous lifestyle within your marriage, but practice freedom in another area of your life. Ask your husband to do the same – to imagine an area of his life outside of the marriage where he wants to feel a sense of dedication and "monogamy."

From this exercise, you will probably discover that the desire to be monogamous and the desire for freedom, from too tight a coupling, can exist in each member of a relationship. It can even be an aspect of the relationship itself. Then these two polar emotions influence each other, keeping the relationship from being too cramping and at the same time allowing livable limits. If you are moralistic about monogamy, feeling righteous in your purity and judgmental about your partner, then you risk sending him off into the extremes of "freedom," which to him means cheating."

He concludes,

"I think it's also important for you to listen to your thoughts and honestly ask yourself if there is anything you are doing to contribute to a stifling or jealousy-based feeling [in] the relationship.

The desire to have one faithful lover and the longing to experiment and explore are two natural emotions that any good person might feel. You don't have to push either to extremes. You can tweak each one, allowing a little room in the definition of commitment and allowing some limits on the need to explore. Keep each feeling subtle, interesting, flexible, complex, and forgiving."