Flavors of Love: A Personal Exploration

By Martin Luthke

Love in its many facets is the most essential and fundamental experience in our lives. Yet, does anyone of us really understand the forces of attraction that so often cause the greatest delight and deepest despair? How do we learn to love ourselves? How does love develop over time?

 

Written from an autobiographical perspective, the author and psychologist Martin Luthke shares his story and insights in a candid and accessible style. He explores the inner workings of lust and desire ● self-love and its challenges ● the bisexual dilemma and cultural overlays ● gender and freedom ● how we best learn to love self and others ● the addictive brain ● and love in the life-cycle. Finally, Martin shares about loving one's twin-flame ● karmic influences of our choices ● and love beyond the personal dimension.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Expansion Publishing
• Release date: Jul 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9780990502432

Book preview

Flavors of Love

A Personal Exploration

Martin Luthke

To my daughter.

Expansion Publishing

11872 Chillicothe Rd. - Chesterland, OH 44026

USA

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Copyright © 2023 by Martin F. Luthke

Cover photo by RyanJLane © iStock license on file

ISBN: 978-0-9905024-3-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, including photo-copying, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

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Thanks

I wish to thank my wonderful editor, Julianne Stein, for her most valuable contributions and encouragement.

Introduction

There is no theme more universal – and more personal – than love. It is both intensely private and the most compelling topic of the motion picture industry, popular music, literature, and the arts, to name just a few. We all have experienced some facets of love, savored its highs and suffered its lows. And we all have experienced utter confusion.

On these pages, I will be the observer and the observed, sharing some personal experiences to illustrate the autobiographical bases of my insights. However, this writing shall not be misconstrued as a tell-all tale; I am withholding much that could be highly entertaining to the reader but would add little to an understanding of the subject matter.

Of course, the text in front of you is not the definitive work on the subject; such cannot and should not ever be composed. Instead, it is one individual’s exploration of the territory, written with the intention of healing and integration, and offered in the spirit of love.

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Chapter 1

First Memories

I must have been no more than five years old when I was struck by lightning for the first of many times. There was a pretty boy in the neighborhood whom I set eyes on, for only a moment. I just fell into him in some way. Not that I have a full and complete memory of that chance encounter – after all, it happened over 60 years ago and when you are only five, your mental capacity to record one’s inner fluctuations is limited. But I do recall the effect the vision of this boy had on me because I happened to see him again once or twice when I was older. On those occasions, the impact of the first encounter echoed within me.

They say, the first cut is the deepest. I am not even sure there was a first cut, not in this lifetime, at least. I feel I was born with this wound: Feeling the sudden rush of longing, desire, adoration, and deflation of my sense of self. I admired that boy! He looked so adorable, self-confident, free of inhibitions and self-doubt. He was (in my projection at least) the way I longed to be, completing me and, at the same time, draining me of self-love – all in one instant. Of course, I had no words for my experience, nor did I share it with anyone. I just felt confused and wounded.

When puberty came upon me, at a fairly early age, the lightening strikes became more frequent and more devastating, more confusing and more charged with lust and pain. There were years in which I struggled again and again to regain my equilibrium, easily upset by as little as looking at a boy I fancied from a distance.

It did not take long for me to realize that I was at least partially gay (a bit longer to accept it), but that was not even the worst of it. Actually, looking back I was not tortured as much by shame, guilt, or fear as many other young adolescents are when they are coming out to themselves. Not that it was easy; after all, it was the Sixties and the prevailing winds were quite different from the cultural currents of today. But I always had a nonconformist streak within me that helped me cut through the fog.

Thus, it wasn’t so much my sexual inclinations that bothered me but the fluctuations of my sense of self, the sudden deflation and loss of self-love that tortured me, as they were agonizingly intertwined with lust and desire.

As many an adolescent I, too, had more than a passing acquaintance with suicidal ideations. In fact, I had decided to kill myself around my 18th birthday if things did not look up by then. Well, they did not – but I reached out to a therapist instead.

I had