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FEBRUARY 2005 -------
Happy Valentine's Day! It's coming up! A good time to express love to those important to you. Your Birth Order can determine how you express love. It's different for each Birth Order. Onlies express love through worry. When an Only says to you "I was worried about you" that means "I love you." One woman forgot to worry about her boss when he had surgery. Afterwards, she felt that she had let him down by failing to worry about him. Conversely, an Only will feel unloved if you do not worry about him or her. The Only may lament that "I was having a hard time and you did not even worry about me" meaning "you didn't love me." First Borns express love by agreeing with you. When you are chatting with a First Born you may notice that the First Born nods in agreement with what you say or may give verbal cues such as "uh-huh" to let you know he or she agrees with you. Agreeing with a First Born makes the person feel loved but disagreement is taken as lack of love. A married First Born craves agreement from the spouse as an expression of love. Second Borns express love by offering suggestions for improvement because they subconsciously think of others as perfectionists. Their suggestions for improvement are meant to enable others to move ever closer to perfection, a loving act in their eyes. On the other hand, if a Second Born receives praise with no suggestions for improvement he or she may feel unloved. If you cared, he or she reasons, you would have shared how do something better. Third Borns express love by doing things for others. It is easiest for them to express love to someone who shows a need, is a victim in some way or looks helpless. To help by rescuing others without being asked is their expression of love. The Third Born feels loved when someone takes the initiative to do something for him or her without being asked. When others miss opportunities to do something for the Third Born the Third Born feels unloved. Fourth Borns express love by giving gifts. The more extravagant, unexpected or unusual the gift the better the expression of love in their thinking. Routine gifts given for special occasions do not count like special gifts given for no particular reason. Early in a courtship the Fourth Born may give extravagant gifts that seem inappropriate but are their expression of love. Likewise, the Fourth Born feels loved when gifts are given sacrificially by the other person - such as a wife making supper even though she has the flu. The Birth Order expressions of love generally do not make the other person feel loved. The worrying Only Child may make the other feel belittled for not being able to care for self. The agreeable First Born may make the other feel patronized. The Second Born offering suggestions may make the other feel criticized. The rescuing Third Born may make others appear helpless to their discomfort. The gift-giving Fourth Born may make the other person feel obligated. To make the other feel loved we need to get beyond Birth Order behavior. We can do this by defining love in a way that goes beyond Birth Order. A definition of love that serves that purpose says love is the desire to do good for someone. This definition contains the three elements of love: feeling (desire), action (do good) and recipient (someone). This kind of love grows out of a relationship in which two people are making each other feel good. Out of those good feelings comes the desire to do good things for each other. When they do good things for each other they are expressing their love. That, in simplest terms, is a loving relationship. Unfortunately, people are often drawn to others who do not make them feel good making the expression of love difficult. We will deal with this issue in a future newsletter. Birth Order and IQ There is little correlation between Birth Order and IQ with one notable exception. That exception is when the oldest child is a girl with a Third Born personality. This exception to Birth Order comes about because of special circumstances when this girl was about two years old. She had a Second Born mother who was under extreme stress at that time causing the mother to interact with her child in a way to make her become Third Born. I have discovered IQ scores ranging from 135 to 185 among these women. However, their superior intelligence does not spell success in life often because they also have problems associated with their Third Born personalities. To others it looks like they are very intelligent but lack common sense. Because of their high intelligence these women can benefit greatly from counseling. If the oldest child is male the child will become Second Born in reaction to mother rather than Third. This does not result in superior intelligence as it does with the Third Born woman. This phenomenon of high intelligence in this Third Born may give insight into the nature of intelligence, especially how intelligence is developed in the child. It's worth researching. Tip to clergy: Parents often teach their children to be unselfish, to put others first and to share. The effect of this can be to make the child learn to neglect self in serving others. This can happen with any Birth Order but seems to be most prevalent among Third Borns and to a lesser extent with Second Borns. You can see this especially in domestic situations when these people make sacrifices to their own detriment. Let me share some therapy with you. You can tell the person you want their subconscious to "Forget the memories that make you do good for yourself" because those memories are linked with taking care of others first. Next, Tell the person you want their subconscious to "Remember the memories that let you do good for yourself" so the person can do good for self. The therapy creates a balance between caring for others and caring for self. Counseling Birth Order based counseling/consulting is available by telephone. If you are interested send an email to cliff@birthorderplus.com
Cliff Isaacson, BA, BD
Web site: www.birthorderplus.com The following books by Cliff are available by calling 1-800-214-0795:
The Birth Order Challenge Hardback $19.95 Credit Card payments are accepted.
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