The Art of Loving - what is love
Healing pain
Healing begins when your pain is acknowledged and understood.
Apologies are good. Remorse is appropriate. But when you’ve hurt someone the way he had, being sorry makes the whole thing about your pain, not the other person’s. It’s actually the easy way out.
But if this is a normal person who’s been hurt, and the process is taking longer than you’d like, longer maybe than you think possible, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them. This is what healing looks like. This is the price you pay.
If your spouse is in the dark
Here the rule of thumb is a little different. Here you need to say something like this: “You know, honey, over the years I know I’ve done things that have hurt you. I just want you to know how sorry I am.” But your partner probably won’t say, “Oh, well, that’s okay then.” For the first time maybe ever, your partner will feel that there’s an opening for him to talk about his pain. Which brings us right back to the first guideline: You heal with your ears, and with all the sympathy and understanding you can muster. Take full responsibility for all the things you’ve done wrong. Bring up your own examples of hurts you’ve inflicted on your spouse. But leave out the affair.
Making amends
The best question you can ask at this point is: “What do you need from me that would help?” It’s probably not going to be about you making amends. Instead, it’s probably going to be about you making some sort of change, something that really indicates that you understand that it can’t be business as usual. And that could be anything. You going into individual therapy. You being willing to move to a new part of the country. You selling your boat. You finally putting your foot down and not letting your mother come for monthlong visits whenever she wants. Now here’s the thing. If you really have listened and understood, you’ll probably have a good sense of what the other person needs. You’ll certainly have a good sense of why she needs it. And you might be asked to make amends. If so, you’re entitled to know why your partner thinks that making amends in some particular way will promote healing between you: “How does me finally cleaning out the garage help you to forgive me?” The answer to this question will be important. It will promote more understanding between you. And that’s what healing is. Two hearts knitting back together through
Rebuilding trust
It’s often hard to tell if the possibility of trust is dead. What you can be sure of is that every time the bowling ball gets dropped and falls to the bottom, the next time the stairs are a lot steeper, and it’s harder to bring it all the way to the now further-away top without a mishap.
Re-establishing trust is actually easier than I’m making it sound, and the reason is clarity. As long as you and the other person have gotten clarity between you about what you need to do, or not do, to rebuild trust, then the path ahead of you is well marked.
Are there shortcuts in the trust-building process? Yes. The key is that you can’t be a reluctant trust builder. The shortcuts develop when you become eager, proactive. To do this you need to seek out ways to sacrifice your comfort and freedom in the short run for the sake of your partner’s happiness and peace of mind in the long run. In other words, offer to do things your partner might not have thought of or might not have wanted to ask for. For example, you could ask if it would help if you called every hour to check in, at least for the near future. Would it help if you gave your partner the password to your computer so she could check on your e-mails? We naturally resent having to do things like this. But remember, you’re judging yourself by your intentions, but you’re being judged—and can only be judged—by your actions. The best way to deal with your resentment is to decide if your partner is a nut and, if not, to accept that this is the smart way to create a shortcut to rebuilding trust.
There are two parts to healing. One is getting rid of the bad stuff. We’ve just dealt with that by focusing on dealing with the hurts and rebuilding trust. The other part is bringing back the good stuff.
Portrait of an affair
Why they’re attracted to this new person also varies. Sometimes it’s just about the other person being good-looking. But much more often it’s about how something that’s been missing in their primary relationship, something they’ve been hungry for, suddenly seems possible with this new person.
Typically they are in a committed relationship, but they aren’t perfectly happy. No one who is perfectly happy in their primary relationship gets into a second. Maybe they’re a lot unhappy, maybe just a little.
Unfortunately, as people always find out, that brief moment never lasts. It can’t. Being in two relationships is inherently unsustainable. It’s like a house of cards—the longer it keeps going, the more likely it is to come crashing down.
”It’s you”
I often ask couples who work with me to write down, on a scale from 1 to 10, how much they love their partner and how much they feel loved by their partner. It rarely fails: People almost always feel they love their partner more than they feel loved. “I love him a nine and a half. I feel he loves me a five.” Something like that.
Feeling loved
You sit down with your chosen one and say something like “I want to know what makes you feel loved. I’m really sorry; I should know it, but I just don’t. I need you to tell me. Just tell me five things that I could do to make you feel loved, whether I’ve ever done them or not. I’d like to know your language of love. And I’d like to do the same thing for you. How does that sound? That way we’ll both know exactly what makes each other feel loved.”
This tool is “daily maintenance.” Here’s the principle. Love grows strong and stays strong because of the things you do every day. It’s like being physically fit. You can have elaborate discussions about exactly what regimen will make you fittest, but the most important thing is doing whatever you do every single day. In love, as in so many other areas of life, consistency is the key.
To get started, here are the top ten most important things to do to maintain a good and healthy relationship:
- Show how much you appreciate your partner. Do and say little things that make it clear that “I love you and I think you’re great.”
- Touch. Every day there needs to be hugs, kisses, gentle stroking, holding hands, and, sure, throw sex into the mix. But it’s not about sex every day. It is about affectionate touching every day.
- Say what you need. How does this maintain love? Saying what you need allows your partner to keep the love pipeline open by doing what you need, and prevents you from feeling resentful and deprived.
- Listen to the other person. Yes, maybe they repeat themselves. Maybe you’re not overjoyed at what you’re hearing. But in many ways listening is the single most loving and affectionate thing you can do. And not just listening, but being actively involved in what you’re hearing.
- Be supportive. With few exceptions, everyone is having a hard time. Everyone’s life is tough. Everyone needs help and encouragement. That means your partner needs this. And it’s not just words. It means making food, rubbing shoulders, giving the kids a bath, taking out the garbage without being asked.
- Spend time together. You should spend at least ten minutes every day where it’s just the two of you, and you’re focused on each other, and you’re not talking about problems and chores and responsibilities. You’re just there for each other and with each other.
- Have fun with each other. Whatever fun is for you. Do something that’s just a little fun every day, and something that’s a lot of fun every week.
- Be positive. We all go through our lives vulnerable to frustration and discouragement. So when you’re negative, your partner just wants to get away from you. If you say something positive, hopeful, forward-looking every day, your partner will want to be with you.
- Put yourself in your partner’s shoes. Even if it’s just a minute, spend some time every day thinking about what it’s like to be your partner, living her life, being in a relationship with you. And if you think about this, it’s got to have an effect.
- Be open. Intimacy means being close to each other. How can you do that unless you show what’s inside of you?
And that’s really all you have to do to bring back your love: Do those things that make your chosen one feel loved. Every day do the three items of daily maintenance that you’ve both been neglecting the most.
The answer is that you focus your energy on what gives you the most leverage. Show your partner this list of items of daily maintenance. Ask her which three items she feels you’ve been neglecting the most.
Honesty
If you care that much about honesty, figure out who you want to be with, commit to that relationship, and devote the rest of your life to making it the most honest relationship you can. But confessing your affair is the kind of honesty that’s unnecessarily destructive. There are two huge exceptions to not telling. If you’re having an affair and you haven’t practiced safe sex, even if it’s only one time, you have to tell. Again, the principle is minimizing hurt. But this time the greatest risk of hurt comes from inflicting a sexually transmitted disease, and relationships rarely recover from that. You also have to tell if discovery is imminent or likely. If it’s clear that you’re going to be found out, then it’s better for you to be the one to make the confession first.
Regret-proofing the future
Not knowing how to do something isn’t what makes someone stupid. Stupid is when you won’t benefit from other people’s experiences.
In general, do you feel guilty or worried about hurting the people in your life? When it comes to your affair, do you constantly struggle to come up with a resolution to the situation that would be best for everybody? Do you just want to find your share of love and happiness, and do you hope everyone else does, too? If you answered yes to all three of these questions, then you can feel confident that you’re a good person. You have good intentions. That’s what’s so frustrating. You know you’re at serious risk of making a mess. That’s why you’re afraid you are a bad person. That’s why you feel guilty and ashamed. But you shouldn’t feel that way.
Guilt does not help
Guilt and shame are painful. And like any form of pain, they absorb an enormous amount of energy and attention. Before you know it, your top priority is to do whatever you can to minimize your guilt and shame. This provokes you into making impulsive moves. What’s more, since guilt and shame are making it hard for you to talk to people about your situation, you’re all alone with your feelings and don’t have any wise confidants. And where does that put you? It means that you’re very vulnerable to flying off in one direction or another, not because it’s best for you, not because it’s best for anyone, but because you just can’t stand the guilt and shame anymore.
Coping
An interviewer once asked me if I could sum up everything I know about psychology in ten words or less. I said, “Hell, I can do it in two words: People cope.” That means that you are able to cope, too. You are someone who has coped in the past and will cope in the future. And if you can accept this, in spite of your mistakes and blind spots, you will be a lot less anxious. And if you’re less anxious, you will be in a much better position to figure out what you should do and how you should do it.
Each problem has hidden wisdom
Underlying the complicated mess is a kind of deep and delicate wisdom that, if listened to and followed carefully, leads to the healing that was the point of getting into this mess in the first place.
Reasons for affairs
and what’s most important to you. It’s as if part of you were lost and something about the affair helps you find the missing piece.
After all, you wanted to find out if you still have it, and you found that you do still have it, so now you can take your newfound confidence back into your primary relationship and the two of you can benefit from it. With affairs like these it’s usually very worthwhile to examine closely what it is about your relationship that was making you feel that you don’t have it. This is where you can learn the most about whether to stay in or get out of this relationship. If your partner is someone who’s undermining your self-confidence, that’s very serious and needs to be addressed directly. If this can’t be remedied, it might mean you need to end your marriage.
THE LET’S-KILL-THIS-RELATIONSHIP-AND-SEE-IF-IT-COMES-BACK-TO-LIFE AFFAIR.
As another clue, is there something a little fishy about your affair—either it doesn’t feel so great, or you’re having it with someone who clearly isn’t right for you?
Aside from all the stuff that’s exciting and new, what’s the most important thing you’re getting out of it?
THE HAVING-EXPERIENCES-I-MISSED-OUT-ON AFFAIR. This is a variation on the unmet-needs affair. This time, though, the unmet need isn’t something in the present; it’s something from the past that you missed out on. And there’s a part of you that believes that to feel complete you have to have this experience. Women often have affairs like this. Even today they sometimes come into relationships without a lot of experience. They have an affair to make sure they haven’t missed out on something important.
THE TRADING-UP AFFAIR. A word of warning. I’m about to say some of the least romantic words that have ever been uttered. But I have to tell the truth: We usually marry the best person we can find. Not the best in the world. Just the best in our world. The hope that this person will make us happy in the future is one of the most powerful forces in life, and it’s called love. But it’s sometimes the case that we can do better. It might be that we committed to each other before we revealed our true potential to the world, or even to ourselves. It might be that we had such low self-esteem that we “settled” when in fact we could’ve done much better. It might be that we were in such a rush to get married or have kids that we grabbed the first person who came along.
Would you say you focus more on who your partner is as a whole, or on some specific need of yours that’s important and that your partner cannot or will not meet? Now think about your lover. Would you say that a major attraction for you is that your lover meets this need?
THE ACCIDENTAL AFFAIR. No, I understand: If your spouse catches you in bed with someone, you can’t say “I have no idea how this happened. I’m as shocked as you are.” But that’s not what I mean by an accidental affair. What I mean is that people are often too weak and stupid, even the best of us.
feel desire. Others don’t become lubricated as much or as easily. Others find greater difficulty achieving orgasm. These are the realities some of us face. But then there’s how we respond to these realities. Many go into a kind of sexual panic. They feel their powers are declining. They’re afraid their sex life is over. That’s when they look to someone new as a kind of sexual savior.
THE SEE-IF AFFAIR. In this kind of affair, the real reason people are in a second relationship is to see if being with a new person will solve their problems. In its purest form, it’s sincere, if unconscious, research. What are they researching? It might be that they’ve been in a relationship for a long time, things have frayed, and they just want to see if they can do better.
Would you say that you have an unhappy primary relationship that you feel trapped in?
Looking back carefully at what things were like before your affair, would you say that you were more unhappy about how your life was going than about your relationship? Did you feel stuck in your life but didn’t know what to do about it?
When the opportunity for having an affair occurs, do you jump in and, as it’s taking place, fixate on strong vengeful feelings toward your partner?
Fairness is important for the health of a relationship: There’s usually a problem when one person has it much better or much worse than the other. And when that happens you can pretty much predict that forces will eventually come into play to restore the balance. That’s where the revenge affair comes in. It’s surprisingly common. When I work with couples in the aftermath of an affair, it’s normal for the person who’s been cheated on to say at some point, “Well, if he got to sleep with someone, I should be able to do that, too.” And sometimes people do just that. That’s the revenge affair: the affair you
. But remember: The person you’re having an affair with is on their best behavior. Affairs by their very nature are very romantic. But in the world of relationships every new person you get involved with is like a used car without a warranty. There’s a very good chance that they’ve caused someone else headaches and will cause you headaches, too.
Once the possibility has been pointed out to you, can you acknowledge that, yes, you have been very distressed about aging, and that your distress is what’s behind your having an affair that you probably wouldn’t have had otherwise?
So here, then, are the seventeen most common kinds of affairs: see-if affair ejector-seat affair heating-up-your-marriage affair distraction affair break-out-into-selfhood affair I-just-needed-to-indulge-myself affair let’s-kill-this-relationship-and-see-if-it-comes-back-to-life affair unmet-needs affair having-experiences-I-missed-out-on affair do-I-still-have-it? affair surrogate-therapy affair trading-up affair accidental affair revenge affair midlife-crisis affair sexual-panic affair midmarriage-crisis affair
Here’s the real reason good people have affairs: You’re in a relationship that has some problems. You don’t know how to fix those problems, although you’ve probably tried. You’re frustrated and confused. You don’t know what to do. You don’t even know how to think about what’s going on. What you need are two things: information and change.
and the chance to talk to someone who understands you. And we often don’t get this from our partners, whether it’s because our relationship has deteriorated or our partners are just too busy. Think of this as a kind of important unmet need. Sure, “my spouse doesn’t understand me” is sometimes just a line, but there are plenty of situations in which it points to a real and pressing need. You may not have chosen the best place to get your need met, but there’s wisdom on some level in knowing that you have this need.
How would you feel if your partner found out about your affair? Would you be relieved?
Is what’s best about this affair the fact that you’re getting in touch with some part of yourself that you’ve been afraid was lost?
THE DO-I-STILL-HAVE-IT? AFFAIR. Both men and women report that problems in a relationship can damage their confidence and self-esteem. And so people sometimes have affairs whose real purpose is to prove something to themselves: They’re still attractive; they’re still able to be attracted to someone; they’re still good people; they still feel sexual desire; they can still have lots of fun, or be a good lover. Affairs like these become more common as we hit middle age. But even a young mother can be seriously
Is your lover someone you’re not having a great love affair with? Has your spouse found out about your affair, and has it made your spouse more sexual with you?
THE UNMET-NEEDS AFFAIR. We say it so casually: Nobody’s perfect. And of course that’s true. The problem is, there might be some way your partner isn’t perfect that ends up with an important need of yours going unmet. Then what? This is a profound dilemma. If you go outside the relationship to get that important need met, that can be seen as a betrayal. But if you end a good relationship to someone you love just to get some important need met,
Nobody dumps a loving partner for someone who’s a slight improvement. It wouldn’t be worth it, given our love, our loyalty, the children (if there are any), the costs and risks of divorce, and other things that tie us to our partners. But if we get involved with somebody who seems to be so much better that the improvement outweighs these costs, then trading up makes sense. I told you that this was going to be very unromantic. But it is what people do.
What do you find is really gratifying to you about this affair?
It’s often better to find out and be done with it than to endlessly yearn and speculate.
THE EJECTOR-SEAT AFFAIR. Any time you have an affair there’s the danger that it will blow your marriage out of the water. Most people don’t want that. They’d like to be able to decide whether they want to stay or not. But some people feel trapped in their primary relationship.
Have you been careless about getting caught? Have you accidentally left clues lying around?
This is a risky experiment. You could destroy something very important to you. Bringing your relationship back to life by having an affair is like a total amateur trying to cure a cancer patient with chemotherapy. There are many more ways for this scenario to go wrong
THE DISTRACTION AFFAIR. People have a way of displacing their needs and their energy from one thing onto another. Instead of doing what they need to do, because that’s too difficult or scary, they do what they can do. They have an affair to distract themselves.
THE HEATING-UP-YOUR-MARRIAGE AFFAIR. The effect this type of affair may have on a marriage can be surprising as this is not the way most people think things work. And it’s not the way things work most of the time. But it is the way things work some of the time. Surprisingly often, in fact.
Do you spend a significant portion of your rewarding time with your lover unburdening yourself, complaining, getting support, being coached, and doing other things that really amount
Although you feel guilty, do you also feel you deserve this affair, and do you enjoy how good it feels? And yet would you feel perfectly fine if the affair ended?
Have you felt for a while now that you can do much better than your partner? And are you involved in a new relationship because it seems like a significant improvement?
An ejector-seat affair is a way of getting out of a trap.
If you’re honest with yourself, would you say that you’ve been using your second relationship to shed light on your first?
THE MIDMARRIAGE-CRISIS AFFAIR. Like animals or music fads, marriages go through a predictable life cycle. Things are great, or at least good, or at least new in the beginning. But then, after a number of years of marriage, passion has ebbed, sex has gotten boring, and irritations have built up. It’s easy to start feeling resentful, restless, and disconnected. And this can happen surprisingly early, around the fifth anniversary, if not earlier. Another time when the midmarriage crisis may strike is later, when the kids are older, and it’s often expressed as “the marriage has run its course.” You feel out of steam. Out of ideas. Out of hope. An affair can seem like just the thing. (But it needs to be remembered that there is no marriage course. We’re always challenged to renew ourselves in any relationship. We might have run out of ideas, but new ideas are out there. We might have accumulated a lot of problems. But solutions are out there.)
a perfectly good relationship. This other person’s okay, but I have no idea why I’m risking my relationship for this”?
Fog of war
One fundamental radar-wrecking problem grows out of the very nature of the situation you’re in. I’ll be blunt. There’s something about having an affair that makes spouses look worse than they are and makes lovers look better than they are. If you understand this, you’ll have taken a big step toward improving your radar.
Imagine the unimaginable. You’re married to your lover with all the daily BS that entails. You’re having an affair with your spouse, with all the romance and fun that entails. How do you see the two people now?
Monster of your creation
Can I imagine a realistic scenario in which things would be better for us and I’d be content to stay in this relationship?
So your partner, whom you’re so unhappy with, is to some degree a monster of your own creation. I don’t mean it’s your fault necessarily. I’m just saying that your radar is off because the reality you’re looking at is off. He might be a sweeter, more affectionate guy if you were sweeter and more affectionate to him.
If my lover just disappeared, and if I put time and energy into my primary relationship, including maybe our working with a good couples therapist,
Tuning your radar
IMAGINE. In all the cases I’ve talked about so far, the person’s radar failed because she didn’t ask herself a very simple but incredibly powerful diagnostic question: What would a life under normal conditions be like with this person?
Realize this: The type that hasn’t worked out for you in one relationship is rarely going to work for you in another. If you keep being attracted to that type, you need therapy, not another hit of the same old poison. The last thing you need is to turn your life upside down for the sake of jumping from the frying pan into the frying pan.
They didn’t learn anything. What is a great person made of? Life plus growth. A great person allows himself to live, to really have a rich, interesting, and varied life. And then he allows it to teach him something, to change him. Now, it’s pretty hard to grow if you don’t have life experiences. But there are plenty of people who have life experiences but don’t grow. And that’s a danger sign for you. After all, you are another life experience for this person. What will your life with him be like if he can’t grow, change, learn in response
There’s a suspicious pattern. If your lover’s past relationships seem mostly to end in similar ways, you have to look between the lines to see what was going on.
Thinking about the two people in your life, what have they promised you, and can they realistically keep those promises?
What are the strengths in your marriage and in your life with your spouse?
Here are a couple of warning signs. It was always the other person’s fault.
Comparing
Instead, the best way to compare two people is to break the situation down into its different dimensions, and then compare the two people dimension by dimension. There are, in fact, only four dimensions when it comes to comparing potential partners: Who the people are in themselves. What your relationship is with each one. What your lifestyle would be with each. Who you are with each.
”I CAN’T SEE YOU”
You see the new person through the lens of what’s missing in your primary relationship. To avoid this trap, you need to do something most of us never think of doing. Forget how these two people have been with you. Instead, ask yourself what they are like in themselves. What you want to focus on are the kinds of things that go into making someone a good person. For a long time now I’ve realized that people who make smart decisions about who to be with tend to choose the highest quality person: the most sane, intelligent, honest, kind, reliable, sensible, generous, warm, good-natured person they can find. In other words, the person who is best for you is the person about whom you can say that he or she would probably be best for anybody. Someone who is solid and
Six critical things for a great partner
Not stupid. Not crazy. Not creepy. Not mean. Not ugly. Not smelly. You know, a good, solid person.
People sometimes feel that it’s very judgmental to be critical of a person’s looks. And that’s true. Except when it comes to relationships. When you’re intimate with someone, looks matter. They just do. I’ve known many people over the years who at some point decided that looks don’t matter. They got involved with someone thinking they could rise above the way they felt about their looks. But they couldn’t. We never can. We
As for “not smelly,” well, it sounds like a joke unless you run into someone whose smell you just don’t like. This has nothing to do with bad hygiene—that’s a sign of someone being stupid, crazy, or creepy. But there’s something about body chemistry—pheromones, hormones, diet, illness, and other factors contribute to this. Research now shows that people give out subtle odors that can be neutral or pleasant to one person and unattractive to another. You can’t be with someone if you don’t like the way they smell.
Next there’s “not mean.” In some ways this can be the hardest to see, because some really mean people have enough polish to hide it really well. One good way to detect it is to look for cutting comments. These might be framed as “the truth” or “being cute” or “I’m just telling you this for your own sake.” But in the end, you feel beaten up. And in the worst cases, you’re made to believe that it’s your own fault that you feel that way. But you want more than just “not mean.” You also want generosity of spirit, having something to give. Someone who has something extra and is willing to share it. When you’re with a mean person it feels like pulling teeth to get anything you want from them. In all kinds of subtle ways, they make you aware of their power over you.
Let’s take the first two items: “Not stupid.” “Not crazy.” These come together in one concept: The person makes good decisions. If one of the two people seems to make a lot of bad decisions, about big things or little things, then that’s a very bad sign. They’re either stupid in a way that ends up causing damage, or they’re just weird or neurotic in how they think about things, and as a result make bad choices. They screw up over and over and leave you to clean up their mess. You can’t be with someone like this. They might be fun now, but they will f— you up later.
Then there’s “not creepy.” Creepy is just my shorthand for not being normal around people. Odd. Goofy in a strange way. Off. This is someone who creates tension, who doesn’t seem comfortable in their own skin, and who makes others uncomfortable. Who just doesn’t mix in an easy, regular way with other people.
Some red flags
You see, I knew that very often when people say “too needy” it’s code for “I don’t want to have to give you the things you’re asking me for.” It’s like a waiter blaming a diner for being needy because she keeps asking him to fill her water glass.
One place you draw the line is at “too needy for me.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is too needy; it just means that there’s a mismatch between what you’re prepared to deliver and what the other person would like.
INSULTED INJUREDS. This is a cross between the bunny boiler and the fallen angel. They may not have started out as an angel, but somehow they feel that life has shafted them, and now they’ve got a chip on their shoulder. They’re a walking grievance committee. At the drop of a hat they will tell you tales of their humiliations. You can feel their anger, and their eagerness for payback. You have to watch out: This type can find you very attractive because you’re willing to listen and sympathize with them. And you’ll be rewarded for that. They’ll be so grateful that they’ll do nice things for you that will make you like them. But before you know it, you’ll somehow manage to disappoint them. Soon you’ll become just another source of humiliation to them. Soon you’ll become just another reason for them to complain.
Someone is over the line when his mood affects his ability to function and, if you’re in a relationship with him, affects your ability to function. It’s better that you not be involved with someone like that.
But with a free spirit, they’re here today and gone tomorrow. Then, just to make you crazy, they’re back again. You never know where you stand. You never really feel that you’re important to them. They don’t hold themselves accountable to you in the slightest; you don’t feel there’s any possibility of negotiating their comings and goings. And in the worst cases, you can become obsessed with trying to hold on to them, which you can never do.
MESSES AND FLAKES. We’ve talked about how wrong it is to condemn someone for making their legitimate needs known. But some people’s needs, well, who knows if they’re legitimate, but it’s clear that they’re endless. These people are messes. They may feel like victims, but you can see how they create disasters wherever they go. They make so many mistakes. They take on so much more than they can chew. And they’re always playing catch up.
You know that you’re with a power person because life with them feels like a constant struggle, you’re exhausted from dealing with them, and you don’t get your own needs met.
FALLEN ANGELS. They’re too good for this world. They’re too good for you. They’re too good for the second-rate life they’ve somehow been trapped in. Now here’s how this affects you. Being with a fallen angel means being subjected to a stream of complaints and self-pity that’s both annoying and exhausting.
Bunny boilers are people who will do anything to get their way. They’ll embarrass you, at a minimum. Mess you up. Cause endless trouble. And feel totally justified in doing so.
Delight
Relationship chemistry is the science of delight. After all, delight is an important sign of love. We get together with someone because we delight in them and have the pleasure of their delighting in us. There are only three questions: Is the delight real, or is it based on an illusion? Is the delight healthy, or does it grow out of something that will end up hurting you? Is the delight long lasting, or is it doomed to come to an early end?
Five critical ingredients for a great relationship
Feeling safe, respecting your partner, chemistry, physical compatibility
By and large, do you feel safe being with the other person? And do you feel that you’re particularly safe from being hurt, physically or emotionally?
To see if you have this, ask yourself: When the two of you are together, do things feel easy between you, and are you able to connect? There are two parts to this. There’s the easy part. You know, things are relaxed. It’s not a struggle to find things to talk about. You’re not worried about making mistakes. You’re comfortable with who you are and with who the other person is. It’s much more like paddling a canoe in the moonlight than walking on eggshells. It’s not that it’s perfect; it’s just easy. Of course, if it were just about being easy, it could quickly become boring and empty. That’s where the connecting part comes in. Along with things being easy, the two of you should really be able to connect. Let me spell out what connecting means: You talk about things that are really important to you. You’re not clueless about what the other is feeling, and not just the good feelings, either. You have empathy for each other. There’s room in the relationship for the deeper, darker parts of you.
Even though you’re aware of the other person’s flaws, do you basically, overall, respect him as he is right now? Not necessarily that he’s a fantastic genius, but that in most ways he’s solid, capable, responsible, smart, and kind, and generally makes good decisions. And does he treat you as if he genuinely believes that right now, just as you are, you’re solid, capable, responsible, smart, and kind, and generally make good decisions?
So how do you tell if you have this ingredient of chemistry, given the fact that life isn’t exactly a cavalcade of fun for most of us these days? Ask yourself this: When it’s just the two of you, no other couples, no kids, no toys (like a boat), and no props (like a party or a club), do you feel that there’s always the real possibility that the two of you will find some way to have fun together, and does this, in fact, happen fairly often?
When it’s just the two of you, and you’re able to leave the stress of day-to-day life behind, and you’re not mad at each other, does it feel easy, comfortable, relaxing to be together, and do you feel connected, not like polite strangers who happen to get along, but like lovers who are close? And is it like this more often than not?
Does the other person feel right to you physically? Their smell, their touch, the way they look. Not perfect, not necessarily great, but right for you. And do you clearly get the sense that you’re right for your partner physically? And does the amount and nature of the physical affection between you feel right? And does the way you make love feel right?
And do you feel that you’re safe when it’s most important to you, when you’re being vulnerable or personal or intimate?
But some people make the mistake of minimizing the physical part of relationships. They pride themselves on not getting hung up on something as superficial as how the other person looks or how their body feels. This is usually a mistake, because the physical aspect of relationships really does matter to us, even if we think it shouldn’t. In fact, in my clinical experience, every single case I’ve seen where someone got into a relationship while ignoring their lack of physical chemistry ended up regretting it.
Then along comes someone new, and being with them is not boring. In fact, it’s exciting. But that’s not chemistry. It’s a side effect of how wonderful it feels not to be bored. You’ve got to compare apples to apples. The question you need to ask yourself is this: Do I have a very special reason for thinking that when I settle in with this other person things will be much less boring than they are with my current spouse?
Matching lifestyles
Do you have a very special and compelling reason for thinking that two years after you married your lover your lifestyle together would be dramatically better than your lifestyle with your current spouse?
What is your lifestyle like?
How different could your lifestyle be?
Here’s what you need to do so you can get to what’s best for everyone. You two knuckleheads, you and your spouse, need to write down a list of “ways I like to spend my time.” Each of you should try to come up with five or ten items for your list. (And do this with your lover, too—you never know!)
Choosing your partner
Instead, I’ve found, choosing between two people is for many of us much more a matter of choosing between two selves: the two different selves you are with these two different
I wouldn’t do that, just like if someone came to me with AIDS, I wouldn’t yell at them for not practicing safe sex. You take people where you find them. And then you try to help them.
Do this the next several times you’re with the people you’re involved with. Right afterward, ask yourself how you felt while with each on a scale from -10 to +10, where -10 is the worst and +10 is the best you’ve felt in the past while with someone. Do this several times just to make sure that you get an accurate average reading. Don’t worry about why you feel the way you do. That might be important for working on the relationship, but how you really feel is what matters when it comes to deciding who to be with. And here’s the rule of thumb: You can’t be with someone when your feelings while you’re with that person are in zero or negative territory.
Hot and cold
There are two main ways a relationship can go wrong. There’s the “hot” way, in which you have an escalation of frustration, anger, hostility. Voices get raised. Dishes get thrown. And there’s the “cold” way. The relationship chills as there’s a slow ebb of energy and intimacy, like a bottle of champagne that’s left open overnight and loses all its fizz. Both ways are confusing. In the hot way, the anger-producing problems often coexist with very good things in the relationship. And then when you make up, you wonder what all the fuss was about. In the cold way, things are never really very good, but they’re never really very bad,
Closest to your heart
When you think about this whole situation you’re in, all the people involved, all the things you think about, what’s closest to your heart?
It’s hard to be happy in life sometimes, but in any situation, if you get the one thing that’s most important to you, if you focus on the one thing that’s closest to your heart, then that’s the way you will most likely find the happiness that’s available for you.
So now cross off the one item on your list that’s least close to your heart. They’re all important—I understand—but this one is the least important. Did you do that? Good. Now cross off the one item on the remaining list that’s now least close to your heart. Good—you’re down to four. Then cross off the next item on the remaining list that’s least close to your heart. Now you’re down to three. It’s hard, but you’re zeroing in, aren’t you? Cross off one more. I know it’s hard. But just do it. And now for the hardest step. Can you do it? Cross off one of the last two items on the list. I know. They’re both really close to your heart. But force yourself to choose. Go ahead … Were you able to do it? If you couldn’t, don’t feel bad. It means it’s harder to figure out what’s best to do about your relationships, but as long as you’re being honest with yourself and realistic about your life, you’ll be okay. But if you were able to narrow your list down to the one thing that’s closest to your heart, then you’re much,
As you think about your life right now, and the choice you’re facing of who to be with, what are the five or six things you can think of that are closest to your heart, that matter to you most, in no particular order?
Divorce and kids
But the overwhelming majority of people, by far, worry enormously about the impact of divorce on their kids, and will suffer a great deal themselves before getting a divorce. The majority is countless men and women like Emmy, grimly willing to sacrifice their happiness for the sake of their kids. There’s no question that being a parent requires sacrifice. There is a question—and it’s the question I want to talk about now— about how far this sacrifice has to go and when it stops making sense. In other words, is it really true that if there are children you should never get a divorce except if there’s abuse?
“Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.” And, using Murphy as a parenting expert, we’d better do everything we can to protect against anything bad happening. That’s fear-based parenting. The myth of selfish parents needs to be replaced by a new understanding. The reality today is that most parents feel willing to sacrifice their happiness if there’s the slightest risk of making their children unhappy. But is fear-based parenting the best way to go? Let’s
But how convincing are Wallerstein’s conclusions actually? She made a fundamental mistake. Okay, she looked at what happened to young people who were still children when their parents got divorced. But in any sample of young adults you’re going to find a lot of problems. The question is, were the problems of kids from divorced parents worse than what you’d find in a comparable sample of young adults whose parents had not divorced?
In a nutshell, it’s not perfect lives that create well-functioning people. On the contrary. The best of us have our characters forged in the pressure, heat, and challenges that come with the “normal miseries of life” that affect
The more credible research shows that it’s not divorce that hurts kids but messed-up parents. Most of the time, when you see children hurt by divorce, what you’re really seeing is children being hurt by one parent who has a significant psychological problem. It was this parent’s issues that made the marriage impossible. But these issues would have had a toxic effect on the kids whether or not there was a divorce.
There is one big risk factor. If you end your marriage to be with the person you were having an affair with, and that’s how your kids see it, too, and that’s how your ex sees it, then that is a public relations nightmare. Think about it. In a worst-case scenario, you’re giving your kids the message that they matter so little to you, and you’re so self-absorbed, that you’re willing to abandon them. At least, that’s what it can seem like to them.
By this point, most people have a clear sense of who’s best for them. But suppose that, in spite of all you’ve learned, you still aren’t sure. I’ll tell you what’s probably going on, based on my experience. I think you do know. I think you see it very clearly. But I think you find the process of acting on your choice very daunting.
You have a responsibility as a parent to be there for your kids, and to avoid hurting them. That’s obvious. But, equally, you have a responsibility to yourself to lead a life that’s worth living. You can’t neglect either responsibility. The people who decided to get divorced when they have kids, and are happy about the choice they made, all have one thing in common. They are the people who were absolutely honest with themselves and absolutely clear-sighted about the realities they were dealing with. The people who weren’t happy with their decision were the ones who kept their heads in the sand and failed to read
Cut the cord, breaking up
When you tell someone that you want to break up with them, their first response is almost always “Why?” That question contains a terrible trap. Trying to answer it is the first mistake to avoid. Don’t answer the question why, and especially don’t go into details. I want you to hear this loud and clear. A breakup is not a discussion about how you can patch up your relationship. As I said at the beginning of this book, you should have already made a serious effort to make your relationship as good as it can be. You should have already proved that
So here’s the rule of thumb. You should have already made an all-out effort to make things the best they can be. But if the help doesn’t help or if the best just isn’t good enough, then the days of patching things up are over. And then you need to break up. But you don’t need to give an explanation, and you shouldn’t give one, because it will just lead you into an attempt to patch things up. So what do you say to break up with someone? All you say is “This relationship just doesn’t work for me anymore.” And if they ask “Why not?” the answer is “Because it just doesn’t work for me.” Repeat these words as often as necessary. Don’t add any details to this clear statement. Keep trying to change the subject to when and how
In case you’re thinking “You’re just nuts if you think that all I’m going to do is say ‘It just doesn’t work for me’ and that’s going to be the end of the discussion,” you’re right. I would be nuts if I thought that. You want to cause as little pain as possible, and yet there is a lot to talk about. So how do you go about it? The principle is pretty simple: Tell the truth, but meet their need.
Quick example. “Do I look fat in these pants?” “Well, they’re not the most flattering pants I’ve ever seen on you, but I love you, and I think you’re beautiful.”
To help you, here are the most common needs people have when someone breaks up with them: To know what your future relationship will be. To know that you can still be friends. To know how the money is going to work. To know where he/she is going to live. To know how much time he/she has before you separate. To know who’s going to have custody of the kids. To know who’s going to have custody of the dog. To know what you’re going to tell the kids. To know how you’re going to explain this to family and friends. To know what the next steps are and what the timeline is. To know that there’s nothing they could’ve done to change things.
Break up with someone when there’s plenty of time and privacy for all the emotions to come out. And you should positively elicit those emotions.
It’s not only almost impossible to avoid a scene, but the things that we do to avoid a scene usually just make things worse in the long run.
The more you welcome the other person’s feelings, the more that person feels that she doesn’t have to crank up her feelings to break through your resistance to them.
And good people who have affairs share this goal. For them an affair may be the best way they know how to figure out what to do with love in their lives. It might be a mistake, but it’s also an insight— something has been missing, something isn’t working right, something needs to change.
What do you do when you’re threatened with suicide? This is delicate, and sometimes heart-wrenching, but it’s not complicated. The fact that someone threatens suicide—that they are the kind of person who would threaten suicide—is a very strong reason not to be in a relationship with them. It should loosen, not tighten, your bonds. So whatever you do, don’t stay with someone if they’ve threatened suicide. Instead, you need to make a judgment call. Is this “just a threat,” or is it a real possibility? Now this is tough, because even experienced clinicians can struggle over which it is. But here is what you should do: Always assume that there is a real possibility of suicide unless you’re convinced it’s just a threat.
Getting on the same page
The first rule of thumb is that you should never, EVER frame the talk as “I’m thinking of making a commitment to you, but before I do, I’d just like to clear up a few things.” I can’t tell you how badly it’s likely to go if you do this. Instead, in your own words, just say something like “I’d like us to have a talk about our relationship, just to check out where we’re at with each other and where we want to go. I’ve got some questions, and I bet you do, too.” Make sure you choose a time when the two of you can really talk without interruption.
The key is taking your own fears seriously. The one answer that you don’t want to hear is vague reassurance. If you have a real fear, then you have a right to know why you should feel confident that this fear isn’t going to be a problem if you commit to this person.
What is it that you’re assuming is true if you go forward with this person?
When you think about being in a committed relationship with this person, what are the most important needs, the top three, that you’re bringing to this relationship?
FEARS. A fear is just a need we have for something not to happen. It’s usually something that’s happened in the past that you don’t want to have happen again.
It is just as important that you ask questions to determine what the other person’s assumptions, needs, and fears are.
So let me try to simplify it. To look before you leap and check out what you’re getting into before you commit, or recommit, to someone, do this. Ask yourself one question: What’s important to you when you think about being with this person? If something’s important to you, you need to ask questions that will show you what’s what about the situation.
Rehab and healing
There are only two stages in a relationship. Ignorance. And rehab. You’re either in that blissful period where you don’t know everything about each other, and everything is new, and most of what’s new is delightful. Or you’ve figured out how you’ve been stepping on each other’s toes, and now you’re trying to repair and prevent damage. So, of course, almost all of us are in relationship rehab. After all, the ignorance phase can only last a few months. It might be a mostly contented, loving, happy rehab, but
The healing you need to do requires three main ingredients. You need to deal with the other person’s pain—her anger, her hurt, her loss of self-esteem. You need to rebuild trust. And you need to make the other person feel loved. It sounds like work, and it is. But it’s the best work in the world, because it’s the only work that produces both joy and intimacy.