lewis e. farsedakis~ 2 ~ omadamo omadamo is the name of the symbol and theory of love created by...
TRANSCRIPT
Discover love’s ingredients and, learn how to
measure and use them to strengthen your relationships
Lewis E. Farsedakis
~ 2 ~
OMADAMO
OMADAMO™ is the name of the symbol and theory of love created by Lewis E.
Farsedakis. The theory explains love and all of its manifestations as well as provides a
simple tool that provides a snapshot of your love relationship, by calculating its Love
Quotient™.
1. The name OMADAMO originates from the word "ADAMO" which in Latin means,
"to fall in love with/find pleasure in", which is directly relevant to the theory.
2. The letters "OM" were added in the beginning of the word to make OMADAMO a
palindrome (a word that reads same forwards or backwards) to symbolize the -35
to +35 Love Quotient scale outlined in the theory.
3. The seven letters in OMADAMO symbolize the seven ingredients of love.
4. The "O" in the beginning and the end of the word represent the OMADAMO symbol.
5. The symbol center stone is a Garnet stone, which is known as the stone of love &
devotion.
You will get to know OMADAMO by taking a journey to understand the ingredients of
love, continuously working on them and developing the insight to differentiate reality
from fantasy. Once internalized, you will be able to understand why "It is better than
love...it is OMADAMO."
~ 3 ~
INTRODUCTION
Love is one of the most intense and powerful human experiences. At its best, it is what
makes life most worth living. At its worst, it has started wars, ruined fortunes, and
destroyed families.
People use the word ‘love’ to describe how they feel about a person, a friend, an animal,
an object and their beliefs. Why? Can the same word that describes how parents feel for
their children also describe how one feels about a painting? Do different forms of love
exist or is there just one type?
These questions can leave one dissatisfied with how the word is defined, understood and
used. Certainly, a word everyone utilizes almost daily and so widely needed
investigation. But to do so is to tackle the same philosophical question that great minds
have pondered for thousands of years...what is love? Philosophy brings us various
theories of love, one being Plato’s that love is born of need or lack, a desire to complete
oneself. Aristotle believed that love is an intrinsic appreciation and concern that one feels
for another. An ideal example of love is difficult to identify. Surely it cannot be the love
one feels for a thing like a painting, because some people acquire objects they love and
still search for a greater love. The same holds true for our bond with animals.
Ideal love cannot be identified with the institution of marriage, given how many
marriages end in divorce and how much malice some people show towards their spouses.
Nor can it be identified with the bond between parents and children. Consider how many
children stop talking to their parents, and how many parents abandon or mistreat their
children. An ideal example of love would have to show a prolonged, complex bond,
which both people experience as satisfying. Can ideal love exist in reality—or only in
fantasy?
This question gives us a crucial insight: we must see the difference between reality and
fantasy with love if we are to attain ideal love. But how does one separate reality from
fantasy when it comes to an experience as subjective as love?
First one must understand the word ‘love’ as it is used today, in all scenarios and contexts
in order to explain how someone could say “I love my car” with the same conviction that
another says “I love my dog” or “I love my spouse.” We can find greater value in love if
we develop a deeper understanding of the emotion; only then can we truly develop
meaningful love relationships.
The theory behind OMADAMO, explained below, offers a clear explanation of what love
is and how it develops. More importantly, it establishes a methodology of how we can all
work at developing and maintaining better love relationships. Love, like anything worth
having in our universe, is something we need to work at. Just like seeds that we plant,
love can wither and die due to neglect, or they can be nurtured to blossom and flourish
through nurture. Ideal love is something achieved.
~ 4 ~
What does it mean to achieve love? Aristotle tells us that some activities help us achieve
something separate from ourselves. For example, if you build a table, you perform
actions that lead to a separate product, the table itself. If you dance a tango, the tango is
inseparable from the sequence of movements you perform. Love, therefore, is more like
the tango than the table.
“For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,
the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Poet)
WHAT IS LOVE?
Definition
Love is a complex emotion consisting of seven essential ingredients of varying quality
and intensity, such that the accumulation over time of actual pleasant experiences is
greater than non-pleasant ones. The ingredients are:
• Affection
• Respect
• Admiration
• Empowerment
• Loyalty
• Intimacy
• Appreciation
It is crucial that these ingredients be real and not fantasized, so that reality remains
distinct from fantasy. There is only one love with many manifestations. Ideal love, which
this theory calls “OMADAMO”, is the most complete, complex, real and pleasurable
manifestation of love.
~ 5 ~
Love’s Pitfalls
Love has its pitfalls, mainly because it is so hard to tell fantasy from reality. We all tend
to project our feelings, both good and bad, on to others. For example, a man who feels
intense love for a woman may believe that her feelings for him are equally intense.
Fantasized love can last a long time if reality does not challenge it. If reality does
challenge it, and people are receptive, a couple can expect their relationship to be
increasingly based on reality as time goes on.
A dangerous pitfall is the desire for a perfect mate that matches the stereotype engraved
in our minds when we are young. We are victims of the idea that there is a perfect prince
or princess out there for each of us. Thus, many throw away love relationships -- one in
which our pleasurable experiences surpass the non-pleasurable -- because it does not
conform to our fantasy, especially during a rough patch.
It is all too easy to project today’s bad feelings into the future and then to end the
relationship. It requires imagination and discipline to resist this tendency. For example,
suppose that a couple has had a good relationship for fifteen years. For ten months, one of
them suffers from depression, which makes him withdrawn and short-tempered. Some
people might find it easier to leave in this situation than to search for ways of helping
him. It could be difficult to view the current situation as temporary.
When fantasy is completely absent from a relationship that is missing one or more
ingredients, one may feel bored and look elsewhere, seeking to find the missing
ingredients in another. For example, if you are so familiar with your loved one that
admiration no longer offers intense experiences, you may seek to admire someone else to
experience intense admiration once again.
Another pitfall is allowing things that have nothing to do with love to influence it. For
example, money is the leading cause of divorce; yet money is not an ingredient of love;
however, it can reveal problems with one or more ingredients. In some cases, loss of
wealth can strengthen a couple's commitment to each other, and in others it can reveal
fundamental incompatibilities such as lack of respect, trust or loyalty.
An additional important pitfall of love is our own inherent laziness that begins to affect
relationships from the very first day. This is why in the beginning we are ready, able &
willing to make changes when asked, but as time goes on we are less willing. When we
don’t see the need for ongoing effort, our own laziness erodes the relationship. It is easy
to blame the problems on "not loving me for who I am" instead of recognizing that no
one remains static and unchanged. We need to accept as inevitable that people change,
which need not be negative.
~ 6 ~
Ideal Love
The degree of pleasurable experiences in a love relationship increases along with:
• The quantity of ingredients
• The intensity of ingredients
• The equal presence of all seven ingredients
These conditions allow for varying degrees of fulfillment. We feel dissatisfied when one
or more ingredients is missing or only insufficiently present. Then we might start to
desire to "fill in" real experiences with fantasized ones. This is why love for an object or
a pet cannot rival love for a person, because only people have the cognitive abilities that
can permit the most complex interactions. For example, a car cannot show loyalty and a
pet cannot empower a person to reclaim a lost moral compass.
It is possible to think we are in love when one or more of the ingredients are missing.
Then, to sustain the relationship, we fill the gap by fantasy or mindless acceptance. An
example of fantasy would be to imagine that a loved one appreciates things we do even if
she has said otherwise. An example of acceptance would be to settle for a loved one's
inability to show affection as he once did, because he has become disabled.
~ 7 ~
When quantity, intensity and equal presence of love's seven ingredients are coupled with
actual accepted experiences and the desire to continuously work on building a stronger
relationship, then ideal love - or OMADAMO - has been achieved.
INGREDIENTS OF LOVE
Each of the following ingredients is necessary for love, for if you feel the lack of any one,
you will be dissatisfied. To the degree that both persons feel satisfied with all seven
elements, they will at that moment have achieved the consummate relationship. Why
these elements? From the works on love by great philosophers and psychologists in
~ 8 ~
addition to interviews with a non-random sample of long-term couples and people in
other relationships, these elements in some form emerged as critical to a nurturing and
loving relationship. These ingredients are necessary for love relationships that are non-
romantic, as well. Every close relationship has the capacity to grow, whether it is
between loving partners, friends, or a parent and a child.
Affection (A): Feelings are demonstrated to you in ways appropriate to the relationship.
A child will show you affection differently than your spouse or loved one would. Normal
human beings require touch and signs of fondness. Babies need to be touched and held in
order to thrive. Affection can be expressed through touch, tone of voice, glances, acts of
kindness and thoughtfulness.
“We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.”
Tenzin Gyatso (His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama)
Respect (R): You are accepted and valued for the person you are intrinsically and
holistically, not just for how you benefit your loved one. You are respected because your
loved one cares about your values, interests, and choices, even if they have different ones.
For example, if you question a choice your loved one made, does he listen seriously and
consider your reasons openly?
“When men & women are able to respect and accept their differences then love has a chance to blossom.”
John Gray (British Philosopher)
Admiration (AD): You admire your loved one for qualities that you yourself would like
to have. You see the one you love as exemplifying a quality or combination of qualities
that you value or hold in high regard. For example, the child you love may have a quick
wit or a sensitivity to other people that makes you see her as special. A loved one may
have the insight to make you realize something about yourself. You might admire the
gracious way that your loved one deals with other people. Some qualities that we admire
are ones we do not or cannot possess. Admiration presupposes that you see the person as
other, as separate from you, for if you do not, you are seeing the person as an extension
of yourself, not as they are.
“Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the
beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (British Poet)
Empowerment (E): Your loved one wants to bring out what they believe could be, the
best in you. (S)he wants you to attain the autonomy you need to achieve your goals and to
be psychologically free to pursue your desires without interference from obsessions fears,
or unhealthy internal conflicts. This does not mean that (s)he is trying to change you to
meet their standards or fulfill their goals, but rather that they understand your standards
~ 9 ~
and goals and want to help you meet them. For example, parents who love their children
want them to become their best; they do not want their kids to be trapped by the same
fears or concerns that trouble them. If your child loves playing the piano, do you try to
find out about different teachers and educational approaches, and then find the best you
can afford to give them? Do you take the child (or loved one) to concerts that you
yourself would not go to otherwise? If you feel that your loved one has lost his moral
compass, do you try to help him reclaim it? A person who truly loves another tries to help
the other achieve his goals so that he feels fulfilled.
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two
chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
Carl Jung (Swiss Psychologist)
Loyalty (L): Your loved one is in your corner. You can count on them to be there for you.
They strive to defend you against assaults from the external world, such as gossip, unfair
treatment, criticism and life’s problems. Moreover, you’re confident that your loved one
is trying to reciprocate the emotions you are giving. Loyalty is related to empowerment in
that being loyal involves your loved one supporting and not undermining your mastery in
the world, just as empowerment involves helping you have self-mastery.
“The scholar does not consider gold and jade to be precious treasures, but loyalty and good faith”.
Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)
Intimacy (I): You exist in an emotionally safe and private place in which you express
feelings or thoughts that your loved one would not share in other arenas. You cannot
imagine your loved one telling your secrets to others. If your loved one has a criticism of
you, they express it only in private. Intimacy is an important ingredient of love because it
creates a unique bond in a relationship that is unique and exclusive to those two people.
"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."
Rainer Maria Rilke (Swiss Poet)
Appreciation (AP): You take pleasure in being with the one you love, and this pleasure
makes you feel improved by the relationship. You want to be with your loved one and
loving them makes you feel like a better human being. You want to spend time with this
person. You want this person to be happy. For example, a parent might enjoy watching
his child discovering and enjoying things, whether it's watching ants on the sidewalk or
getting his college diploma. We also appreciate and are gratified when someone likes
being with us. A father may feel that loving his child makes him more patient, more
responsible, more in control of his emotions or impulses. He feels gratified that his child
has fun being with him, while they do things together. A man who is color-blind might
enjoy accompanying his girlfriend to a museum where she gets absorbed in a painter’s
use of color and brushstroke. He takes pleasure in how she relishes the artworks and also
in his own ability to appreciate her sensitivity.
~ 10 ~
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
Voltaire (French Philosopher)
The logic of Omadamo is that we have to strive constantly to maintain the connection. A
relationship is dynamic and must respond to the inevitable changes that life brings. For
example, if a breadwinner loses a job, the other partner may have to work harder to show
affection and more creatively to empower the other. Or, if an older parent becomes
disabled, it may require a loving adult child to find new ways of showing empowerment
and appreciation. Alternatively, a partner who becomes highly successful must continue
to make the loved one feel admired and appreciated.
WHY DO WE LOVE?
Pleasure
Our lives are sequences of experiences, some pleasurable, others non-pleasurable. We
seek love, because it is the most pleasurable experience the universe has yet to offer us.
Pleasures are good not only because of the quantity, but also the intensity, quality and
variety. You can quickly erase years of pleasurable experiences with one, powerfully
intense, non-pleasurable experience. For example, consider a couple that has shared many
happy times. Those happy times can instantly become insignificant if one person
physically assaults the other.
“The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.”
Japanese Proverb
Real Shared History
We want pleasurable experiences to be as intense, varied and numerous, as possible; but
even non-pleasurable experiences, while inevitable, may be worthwhile because they may
lead to moments of intense pleasure in the future. For example, dragging your unwilling,
whining child to his tennis lessons may be unpleasant for both of you, but it may result in
many wonderful moments of shared enjoyment in the future when you can play together.
The more experiences we share with someone, the more intricate our history becomes.
The uniqueness of that history intensifies the quality of future experiences. Suppose you
are visiting the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Awed by its beauty and the aura of the
moment, you can relive it often with someone who experienced it with you. Having
someone to share our experiences validates our lives. We write the history of a
relationship by living it and keeping a mental account of pleasurable and non-pleasurable
experiences.
~ 11 ~
The greater the pleasurable experiences, the richer is the shared history. The richer the
shared history, the greater is the desire to remember, to defend, to cherish and to work on
the relationship. It is important that we could, however, have a desire to defend and to
work on that relationship when it is only imagined love, because we are projecting what
we want the relationship to be, while ignoring what it actually is. This is so common in
human experience that it is the subject of much great literature. Conversely, we can
imagine a relationship with so many non-pleasurable experiences that they overshadow
any pleasurable ones, which would lead us to abandon the relationship.
The longer we are in a love relationship, the greater the number of experiences we have
accumulated. In a close relationship, these experiences will be strongly intense. This
makes our love relationship stronger and allows for a greater degree of pleasure and non-
pleasure. Therefore, the stronger the love relationship, the more disappointed we are with
non-pleasurable experiences, and vice-versa.
Simply being together, however, doesn’t mean there is a shared history; A history with
someone may be a parallel history. For example, many couples, whether consciously or
unconsciously, opt to stay together for the benefit of their children, while leading
essentially separate lives.
CONDITIONS FOR LOVE
In order to love, we must have self-respect and a feeling of comfort in our own skin. This
requires that we be honest with ourselves. Self-regard is different from narcissism, which
is pathological.
Constant Effort
Being ready to love means understanding what love is and being willing to put the effort
into growing and nurturing a love relationship. The other person can be a catalyst to its
growth or an impediment. Our own attitudes can act like water or poison. If we want to
sustain and grow love, we must work at it, which involves open, honest communication.
Even though this is painful, we should be willing to do it because love makes us feel safe,
given the challenges we face in the world and our uncertainty about what life will bring.
People realize that we need to interact with others in order to survive. This, in part, is the
foundation of our need to love and to be loved.
The idea of two individuals becoming one sets up the wrong expectations. A better model
is two individuals being great partners. And in any great partnership, each needs to
participate equally in the effort. When one does more of the work that the other, the
inequality will eventually wear on the relationship.
However, just like the lack of effort can hurt a relationship, putting in the time and effort
can strengthen it. We should constantly reveal yet unseen aspects of ourselves to our
~ 12 ~
loved one by being creative and thus keeping passion alive. For example, consider a
couple that has been together long enough so that their lives become routine. One year,
instead of taking his wife to their usual celebratory restaurant for her birthday dinner, a
husband prepares a private sunset picnic on a beach. Surprise and thoughtfulness can add
vitality to the relationship.
Shedding Illusions
Often, passion is the initial impetus that leads to love. Initially, passion is for a fantasy
that we project onto someone, not for the person’s true self. For example, if a person is a
great kisser, we may project other favorable attributes onto him/her such as generosity
and kindness. With time, as we accumulate the essential ingredients that produce a love
relationship, our fantasy of the person will start to separate from the reality. So we may
complain that all he/she wants to do is kiss, rather than listening to me when I talk.
“Fantasized love” is often mistaken for real love. Real love is only possible when
experienced in actuality, not when experienced through anticipation, fantasy or
projection.
We continuously test reality as we live our lives; thus, our real perception of our loved
ones gradually replaces our desired perception of them. Our fantasy of the loved one is
never as nuanced or complicated as the image we come to have of the real person.
One of the delights of a relationship is the process discovering, new aspects of the person,
at least when we find those aspects attractive. The behavior of the idealized partner will
deviate from the long-term behavior of the real one. One of the great disappointments is
discovering unappealing features. So, as we spend more time with the person, we find
more features than we envisioned in our imagination. If the features we dislike are
powerful or manifested often, the non-pleasure they bring will outweigh the pleasure we
take in being with the person. Accepting and admiring the reality and shedding illusions
are important to the relationship. If we cling to the fantasy, then that person will
inevitably disappoint us when they do not do things that we expect they would. With
time, actual experiences outnumber fantasized ones. Our expectations then either force us
to adjust our picture, or they make us feel disappointed or even betrayed.
Ideals
Unfortunately, from early childhood we absorb the myth of the flawless prince or
princess. Of course, no one is flawless, so as disappointment with a person grows, we
begin to feel that someone better must be out there. The moment a problem surfaces,
people with immature expectations will simply move on and keep searching for their
prince or princess, sometimes leaving something terrific behind. It is important to identify
if the disappointment is valid. Moving on to seek another relationship should be done
only with the realization that there is no perfect prince or princess; we should be seeking
~ 13 ~
a partner who makes life richer and deeper, who helps us become more authentic in the
world.
Empathy
Love requires empathy. Empathy is a necessary precondition for love as opposed to one
of its seven essential ingredients. Contemporary neuroscience has shown that normal
human beings are wired to feel empathy. In the early 1990s, Italian researchers
discovered what are now called “mirror neurons.” These neurons fire in the same way
when we act or feel in a given way and when we observe others acting or feeling in that
way. Prominent neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran calls these “Gandhi neurons”
because these mirror neurons are responsible for connecting people to one another.
Aristotle said 2,400 years ago that human beings by nature imitate and enjoy imitations.
Contemporary science has proved him right. Empathy is a kind of mirroring or imitating.
If I see you suffer, then I can feel your suffering, through empathy. That feeling of
kinship widens my world and gives me a sense of connection. Love relationships thus
enrich life, except for those with certain pathologies.
“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”
Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)
It is impossible to measure each pleasurable and non-pleasurable experience along with
its respective quality and intensity, every second, for all the love relationships that exist
in your life. However, it is possible to produce a snapshot of how you perceive your love
relationship by calculating its Love Quotient™.
Love Quotient™ is a tool created to help you build stronger love relationships and to
provide you with insight into the gap between real and fantasized love. The objective is
not to reduce love to a score, but to get a better grasp on how you perceive your
relationship and encourage open, honest communication. By understanding the
ingredients that compose love, motivated couples can work to improve their love
relationship.
This is an intimate exercise; do not share scores with anyone other than your loved one.
Dialogue with others is encouraged to learn from and help you with ideas on how to
improve ingredient scores with your loved one – but actual scores should remain private.
~ 14 ~
You may now use the free Love Quotient™ tool here www.OMADAMO.com to:
• Calculate your Love Quotient™
• Make associated diary entries
• Track one or many relationships
• View historical ingredient scores
• View historical Love Quotient™ scores
Alternatively, you may continue below to measure your Love Quotient™ manually:
BEGIN any day keeping in mind you will most likely assign more positive scores on a
happy day and more negative scores on a gloomy day. A typical day may provide the
most relevant score, but extremely happy or upsetting days may provide deeper insight
into certain ingredients. Either way, it doesn’t matter since you are interested in the
longer term Love Quotient™, not the initial score. As you continue to make entries, the
initial score will average out over time and the Love Quotient™ will become a better
representation of how you perceive your love relationship. The more entries you make,
the clearer picture you will get. Get into a habit of making a daily entry for any
experience affecting an ingredient, whether it was pleasurable or non-pleasurable. You
will need a pen and paper OR you may use a electronic spreadsheet.
STEP 1: Assign each of the 7 ingredients one of the following scores; -5, -4, -3, -2, -1,
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Use a negative score to indicate a degree of non-pleasure, use 0 to indicate
ambivalence and use a positive score to indicate a degree of pleasure.
*Be honest with yourself. You should only give a score of +5 if you cannot think
of anything else that your loved one can do to satisfy you more for a particular
ingredient. List what is not present, or does not meet your satisfaction for each
ingredient. Remove a point for each item on your list starting with +5. For
example, if you have 3 items, you would score +2. The list can be used to explain
your scoring criteria to your loved. Nothing is set in stone; you can always edit
your list as you go along because it is what YOU perceive as important that
matters. YOU determine the score you feel your loved one deserves for each
ingredient (not what your loved one thinks they should score).
Add each ingredient score and determine your total score. The minimum total score
possible is -35 and the maximum is +35. The result is the initial Love Quotient™ you
calculated for your loved one.
Do NOT show each other your scores just yet. Consider the following:
~ 15 ~
. A positive score indicates that you perceive love at the moment.
. A zero score indicates that you are ambivalent to the relationship at
the moment.
. A negative score indicates that you do not perceive love at the
moment.
~ 16 ~
STEP 2: On separate paper, repeat step 1, however this time, score each ingredient how
YOU think your loved one should have scored you.
STEP 3: Compare Love Quotient scores with your loved one. The closer the score you
gave yourself in STEP 2 is to the score your loved one gave you in STEP 1, the more
your love relationship is based on reality. The further apart the scores are, the more your
relationship is based on fantasy.
STEP 4: Discuss the variances and clearly communicate to each other what you consider
a +5 would be for each ingredient BEFORE you begin STEP 5 (INTOX). If your loved
one brought up any issues that you may have forgotten and agree with, feel free to alter
your score (only if YOU feel you should).
STEP 5 (INTOX): Each day, for the next 28 days, you and your loved one will both
work on the same ingredient and score it daily, starting with Affection. Score your loved
one on how you feel on that day, even if the score remains the same. Over a 28-day
period, you will score each of the 7 ingredients at least 4 times, focusing on one
ingredient per day. Consider the quantity, quality and intensity of the experience when
you are scoring an ingredient. If you don’t feel an effort was made that day for an
ingredient, score it 1 point less than what you scored it on the initial Love Quotient™.
Communicate your score and its reasoning daily to open up the communication channel.
This will allow your loved one to hone in to your specific needs and do better as time
goes by, building a stronger love relationship along the way.
At the end of the 28 days, you will have scored each ingredient 4 times:
1. Add up all 4 scores for each ingredient.
2. Divide each total ingredient score by 4 to get average score.
~ 17 ~
3. Add up all 7 average scores to determine your current Love Quotient™.
4. Compare the INITIAL Love Quotient and the INTOX Love Quotient to determine
if there has been any change.
5. Schedule some alone time to discuss why the results have increased, stayed the
same on decreased. The most important question at all times is: are you both
committed to working at building a better love relationship? As you discuss
whether there is anything your partner wants you to do to improve the quality of
your life together, some things will stand out as more important than others. In
each case, you have three options:
a. ACCEPT – by accepting what your significant other is requesting from
you, an intense pleasurable experience will be added in your relationship.
b. REJECTING – by rejecting what your significant other is requesting from
you, an intense non-pleasurable experience will be added in your
relationship. This may result in your significant other seeking satisfaction
of the request(s) elsewhere.
c. COMPROMISE - by partially satisfying what your significant other is
requesting from you, a less intense pleasurable experience will be added in
your relationship. This may result in your significant other seeking
complete satisfaction of the request(s) elsewhere.
STEP 6 (MAINTAIN): Ideally you should work on an ingredient each day, focusing on
weaker ones first until they even up with the others. The more frequently and creatively
you work at each ingredient, the greater the accumulation of pleasurable experiences.
With pleasurable experiences accumulating faster than non-pleasurable experiences, your
love relationship will continue to grow stronger, provided both you and your loved one
remain committed to continuously work at it.
Remember: life changes and people change. No one in a mature relationship should have
a perfect score. A perfect score is a danger zone, where the relationship will become
boring and stagnant, or both of you become complacent. Do not assume that the
relationship that is great today will be great tomorrow. Make it a habit to periodically re-
examine each ingredient.
OMADAMO can help you move from the fantasy of love to a dynamic love reality, so
that you can encourage and share in one another’s growth, and development. Together
you can then adapt to a transforming world, while supporting one another in good times
and bad.
~ 18 ~
Remember, too, even if you initially score high with certain ingredients, there will always
be creative and enjoyable ways to work on each ingredient. This is why the author
recommends to never give a +5 score for any ingredient, as a constant reminder of the
endless possible experiences that exist if we apply ourselves and engage our creativity.
Like maintaining a healthy weight, growing and maintaining love requires discipline,
effort and math--except with OMADAMO, you count experiences...not calories.