Capacity to be loved

…and be loved

Capacity to Love and Be Loved: Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated; being close to people. Personified for example by Romeo and Juliet (Source: VIA Institute on Character)

The Noel Strengths Academy defines it this way:

Includes the capacity to love
Also includes the capacity to receive love
Values close relationships with others
Especially appreciates when others are reciprocal in sharing and caring
Comfortable expressing affection in words, deeds, and touch

Yes, strengths can be overused…or underused

Underuse: Emotional Isolation
Overuse: Emotional Promiscuity

Key Research:

Rank order of Love in populations from:
- US : 7;
- European: 6
- Asia: 6
- Latin America: 7
- Sub-Saharan Africa: 6
- Middle east: 6
In a study of character strengths and adolescent peer relationships, the strengths deemed most desirable/important in a friend were honesty, humor, kindness, and fairness, and those most connected with higher peer acceptance were perspective, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, leadership, and humor (Wagner, 2018).
The most prevalent character strengths in very young children are love, kindness, creativity, curiosity, and humor (Park & Peterson, 2006a).
In a study of character strengths and adolescent peer relationships, the strengths deemed most desirable/important in a friend were honesty, humor, kindness, and fairness, and those most connected with higher peer acceptance were perspective, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, leadership, and humor (Wagner, 2018).

Tayyab Rashid and Afroze Anjum offer 340 Ways to Use VIA Character Strengths including these four for Love:

Engage in a favorite activity together, such as hiking, going to an amusement park, biking, walking in the park, swimming, camping, or jogging. If you can’t think of a mutual favorite activity, pick one to try together.
If you want to help your loved ones, first consider their strengths. Design your help around their strengths.
Tape record your parent’s earliest recollections and share them with your children. Help your family record their cherished memories in a similar manner.
Make a family blessing journal in which everyone writes good things that happen to them daily. One night a week, read aloud some of the best things from the previous seven days.

Learn more about Love

Daniel Goleman, author of “Emotional Intelligence,” asks why we aren’t more compassionate more of the time.

Why do we crave love so much, even to the point that we would die for it? To learn more about our very real, very physical need for romantic love, Helen Fisher and her research team took MRIs of people in love — and people who had just been dumped.

In love, we fall. We’re struck, we’re crushed, we swoon. We burn with passion. Love makes us crazy and makes us sick. Our hearts ache, and then they break. Talking about love in this way fundamentally shapes how we experience it, says writer Mandy Len Catron. In this talk for anyone who’s ever felt crazy in love, Catron highlights a different metaphor for love that may help us find more joy — and less suffering — in it.

Love 2.0 by Barbara Fredrickson. Here is a wonderful article to get you started.

Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3-to-1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life by Barbara Fredrickson

Gary Chapman conceived of a a variety of ways people express and experience love. Discover your Love Language using this self assessment. Check out one of his books