Real Love

by Sharon Salzberg

  For my student Emma, love was a lofty vision of idealism and self-sacrifice. The pattern began the summer after her freshman year of college, when she went to Italy to study Dante. “The professor focused on St. Francis as he’s shown in Dante, and we visited Assisi,” Emma recalls. “Francis was a hero of the Divine Comedy because of his ideal vision of love. He humbles himself completely, puts his face in the dirt, and renounces everything. The image our professor emphasized was that St. Francis emptied himself out like a cup—that he became an empty vessel to be filled with God.

  “My idea of love was just being a steady, reassuring, utterly forgiving, and kind background, in front of which my brilliant significant other could play out his brilliance. I wanted to be selfless.” What’s more, she says, “I was drawn to men I perceived as deeply troubled genius types. I was an English major, and historic literary relationships, like that of Véra and Vladimir Nabokov, seemed to justify my notion of love, though my friends were horrified by how much autonomy I was willing to give up. Still, giving in entirely to another felt holy, pure, and essential.

  “I remember once going on what seemed like a perfectly normal date to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts with my first serious boyfriend. It was springtime, and we went on a walk after, and he just kept repeating, ‘I can’t do this … I can’t … I can’t…’ I panicked,” Emma says in retrospect. “I couldn’t figure out what he was so upset about. Finally, he said, ‘I can’t tell what you want, what you’re thinking…’” Suddenly, Emma realized they were in actuality two separate people rather than her idealized vision of how a relationship must be: never two, only as one.

  So often we operate from ideas of love that don’t fit our reality. It was only after Emma unpacked her assumptions about intimate relationships that she was able to start treating herself with the kind of care and respect she’d bestowed on others—and her relationships gradually became more mutual and satisfying.

  Ultimately, as Jungian psychologist James Hollis writes in The Eden Project, “The best thing we can do for our relationship with others … is to render our relationship to ourselves more conscious.”

  UNPACKING OUR ASSUMPTIONS

  I ONCE GAVE a talk about equanimity, and afterward, a woman approached me. At first she mentioned the beauty of the church where the lecture took place; then she thanked me for coming. But the whole time, she seemed to be squirming inside her skin, her eyes darting around, not looking at me. “What would you say to someone you knew was being physically abused?” she asked finally, her gaze directed up at the ceiling. I didn’t challenge whether her question was hypothetical or autobiographical, and I thought carefully about how to answer, sensing that a lot might be at stake.

  “Well,” I replied, “it’s really important to have lovingkindness for oneself. When we talk about equanimity in the context of abuse, we’re talking about boundaries. Sometimes people in abusive situations think they’re responsible for the other person’s happiness or that they’re going to fix them and make them feel better. The practice of equanimity teaches that it’s not all up to you to make someone else happy.” She seemed to thoughtfully consider what I was saying, we looked deeply into each other’s eyes, and she thanked me and left.

  In fact, the practice of equanimity also makes us realize that it’s never up to someone else to make us happy either. This can be a bitter pill to swallow, especially when you’re lonely. Singer Janis Joplin famously said, “Onstage I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone.” It’s not bad to go home alone if you feel whole. But if you go home alone thinking you’re not enough without another person next to you, that can be a source of great pain.

  My student Dan, who is vulnerable to depression, used to dream that once he became a parent, his demons would somehow magically disappear. “Maybe because I always felt so harshly judged by my own father, I believed that the only way for me to heal was to have a child of my own,” he says now. “After my son was born, my most cherished hopes were realized. Being a stay-at-home dad gave my life meaning. My kid needed me and I was there, unlike my own dad. As Jake got older, we went to baseball and basketball games and on all sorts of father-son outings. I mean, we were a team, even after he started elementary school.”

  But once Jake hit third grade and became more interested in playing LEGOs with his friends than spending all his free time with his dad, Dan sank into a deep depression. “It was very painful, but the only way to climb out of that dark place was to really see the burden I’d laid on this little kid for my own happiness,” Dan reflects. “For his sake as well as mine, I had to let go and let him develop into his own person.” A combination of psychotherapy and mindfulness, with a strong emphasis on self-compassion, lifted Dan out of his codependent and depressive state, and ultimately saved Dan’s relationship with his son.

  In order to free ourselves from our assumptions about love, we must ask ourselves what those long-held, often buried assumptions are and then face them, which takes courage, humility, and kindness. Do we believe, as Dan once did, that someone else is responsible for our happiness? Or that we’re responsible for someone else’s happiness?

  Our unconscious expectations take many forms. Kathryn explained what she learned when a significant relationship ended: “I realized that one of the underlying assumptions of this relationship that I had not communicated with him was this transaction: I’m going to take care of him and try to heal him, and then he was going to take care of me. When I went to therapy, I recognized that I, like my ex-partner, was also suffering from my own acute trauma. My father is an alcoholic. He was a difficult person and abusive in various ways. But what I wanted from my ex-partner was to fix him and then fall apart and have him fix me. We invest in these relationships with so much of our own personal pain and hopes. But this is deeply unfair to oneself and to the other person.”

  Perhaps we’ve believed that if we loved a friend or child or sibling or spouse enough, our love would cure all ills. We’d suffer fewer painful setbacks, as would our loved ones. No more desperate midnight phone calls or interventions. Do we believe that we’re at fault because someone we care for is suffering deeply? Do we expect another person to complete us or fix us?

  MAKING PEACE WITH FEAR

  WHEN WE PAY attention to sensations in our bodies, we can feel that love is the energetic opposite of fear. Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves. Yet so often, fear keeps us from being able to say yes to love—perhaps our greatest challenge as human beings.

  Close relationships ask us to open our hearts and expose our innermost thoughts and feelings. Yet if you felt unseen or unappreciated in childhood, the risk of self-disclosure can seem almost life-threatening. Or if you were valued only as a “good kid” and not encouraged to express your individuality, intimacy may feel suffocating. How we felt in relation to our caregivers in childhood is the (often unconscious) prototype for our connections later in life. Becoming more conscious of those early feelings can make us less fearful of dropping our protective masks.

  This fear of loss is natural, especially if you’ve had a big loss early in life. But it can also keep you from savoring the love that’s available to you right now.

  WORKING WITH THE BARRIERS

  AS WE EXPLORE new ways of loving and being loved by others, we need to equip ourselves with open, pliant minds; we need to be willing to investigate, experiment, and evaluate as we approach a topic we thought we knew so much about.

  I imagine an internal version of a position taught in tai chi, in which the knees are always slightly bent. Sometimes called the Horse Stance, it is thought to increase the flow of energy throughout the body. It also lowers the center of gravity, increasing stability in the event of an unexpected blow.

  In the practice of mindfulness, the counterpart to the Horse Stance might be called the Stance of Inquiry. We attend to the present moment. We gather in our attention, again and again
, and open to whatever comes, humbly accepting it. In doing so, we begin to peel back the layers of conditioning and unconscious expectations. We can’t judge whether they’re realistic or not until we know we have them. We start to discern what, in actuality, is available to us, both in terms of what we can give and what we can receive. And at a deeper level, we realize that love simply, perpetually exists and that it’s a matter of psychic housekeeping to make room for it.

  As psychoanalyst and philosopher Erich Fromm said in his book The Art of Loving: “Love is not a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole…”

  CHAPTER 10 PRACTICES

  Loss and gain meditation

  This practice is one of neutralizing our fears when it comes to love for others. We can recognize that all of life’s conditions are constantly changing, which naturally includes our relationships. In any moment, we may encounter some element of change, which can be triggering for some, particularly those who have developed certain fears around intimacy.

  1. With our inhalations, we allow ourselves to engage with the pain of fear, especially surrounding the potential for change in any moment. Rather than pushing the feeling away, we welcome it with each breath.

  2. With our exhalations, we recognize the capacity we have in each moment to gain perspective, even amid discomfort. We recognize the space we have for acceptance and gratitude, and see the constant changes of our relationships with curiosity and flexibility.

  This practice is one of dis-identifying with our self-preoccupations around love for another, and empowering our fears into growth.

  Inner abundance practice

  In this exercise, we’ll examine the feelings of deficiency and self-contraction that often get confused with love for others—when we become lost in feeling like we are responsible for the happiness of others, and lose sight of our inner abundance in the process.

  1. Throughout the day, notice moments when you become overwhelmed with feelings of responsibility for others—be it a parent, significant other, child, student, or friend. You may be convinced that it’s your job to give more of yourself to this person, or perhaps you feel a sense of resentment—that this person should feel the same way and doesn’t.

  2. Try connecting to the weight of this feeling with more spaciousness, and explore what happens both in your body and to your mood as you relax.

  3. Take as long as you need to describe your experience of relating to the feeling in different ways—with self-judgment, resentment, fear of permanence, and/or fear of loss versus that state of adopting a “big mind” perspective. Look for moments of:

  ■   Anger

  ■   Desire

  ■   Judgment and/or self-judgment

  ■   Restlessness/impatience/frustration

  ■   Uncertainty

  This practice is completely portable, meaning you can try it out during any experiences of overwhelm. It particularly helps strip away those confusing and restrictive assumptions about love for others—such as the all-too-common notion that love is about recognizing our responsibility to fix others or be fixed by others in return. It is a practice of cultivating open awareness, which makes us become more curious and creative in the ways we relate to others and ourselves. Through recognizing the space we have within ourselves, and the availability of the feeling that we are enough, we make room for real love.

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  CULTIVATE CURIOSITY AND AWE

  ONE FOUNDATION OF LOVING RELATIONSHIPS is curiosity, keeping open to the idea that we have much to learn even about those we have been close to for decades. I think of the night when an old friend of mine stood up at a dinner party and launched into a rousing German drinking song. I looked at her in wonder as her hands swept the air. She had most of the table singing along with her by the second refrain. And this from a shy and soft-spoken woman who had always run from the spotlight. All these years, and she could still surprise me.

  Who knows what capacities lie dormant in those we hold dear? We have a history together that has set a tone between us, and we’ve bonded through common interests and shared experiences. We may even say to mutual friends that there’s nothing about him or her that would surprise us.

  But think for a minute. Do your children, your spouse, your closest friend know everything about you?

  Jenny was a high-powered corporate lawyer. She’d never found a partner she thought was a “fit,” even though she’d dated with deliberation for months at a time. She had never wanted children. She was brilliant, funny, generous, a great friend and traveling companion who, as she neared middle age, didn’t seem to have a shred of a nurturing instinct.

  When a mutual friend was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer, Jenny used her formidable advocacy skills to get our friend into a promising clinical trial. That was impressive—and just the kind of skillful effort that Jenny was famous for.

  But as our friend was hit by the side effects of multiple powerful drugs, I saw a new side of Jenny. She went to our friend’s house every day, anticipating provisions or gear that would give her some comfort, smoothed communications with her doctors, and stayed close as her cancer gradually went into remission.

  One day I thanked Jenny for her tender caregiving and said I was amazed at how she’d stepped into this role. Jenny then told me something I hadn’t known: right after high school, she’d spent three years as a volunteer at the hospice where her beloved grandmother had died.

  Suddenly I understood: this part of Jenny had been set aside as she focused on work, but it was there when she (and our friend) needed it. After our twenty-two years of friendship, Jenny had caught me by surprise, I was in awe of her and in awe of all the things about her I might yet discover.

  What makes awe such a powerful call to love is that it’s disruptive. It sneaks up on us. It doesn’t ask our permission to wow us; it just does. Awe can arise from a single glance, a sound, a gesture.

  Say you’re sitting with a relative and you tell him something that makes him laugh. He has a great laugh, loud and long and free. That laugh is an aspect of his generosity in its most outward manifestation. And because you’re paying attention, even though you’ve heard this laugh countless times before, now you hear it with awe.

  SEEING WHAT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF US

  FRITZ PERLS, THE co-founder of Gestalt therapy, said, “Boredom is lack of attention.” Our tendency, of course, is to seek out intense experiences in order to feel alive. If our attention is not trained to notice routine or subtlety, we simply wait for the next big hit and switch off until then. It often requires a conscious effort to take an interest in the person before us, to look past our assumptions about them, but it’s an effort that keeps us open to connection.

  I’ve met many people who have tremendous power and resources in conventional terms, people who seem to have it all, who elicit envy from almost everyone they meet. It is only by not buying into some projected persona (it could be my projection or theirs, or sometimes both) that I’ve been able to see them more deeply and to discover their vulnerability. It’s only by being fully present that I’ve been emotionally available to hear about their alcoholic brother or troubled teen, their immense frustration and anxiety, and the beauty of their undying love for their family member.

  I’ve also met many people with very few resources, who are really broke or depressed, but who reveal surprising strengths. They are buoyed up by helping their disabled neighbor or the troubled kid down the block or other people in their community who are hurting. It’s all too easy to slot someone into the category of “needing help” and not to recognize the tremendous help they are offering to others.

  THE POWER OF AWE

  IT’S TOUGH TO have an authentic relationship with awe in the age of “awesome,” a word that has become so overused as to be drained of its meaning. These days when someone says that something is “awesome,” they usually m
ean it ironically: “I had to wait for three and a half hours at the DMV. That was awesome.” Or perhaps they’re just complimenting us on the appetizer we order: “Awesome choice.” But genuine awe connects us with the world in a new way.

  A student of mine comes from a family that prizes self-sufficiency. She was brought up to be able to do things for herself; asking favors was frowned upon. When she met her husband, self-sufficiency was something they had in common. They were drawn to each other’s competence. “We’ve been married a dozen years now,” she says, “and we definitely get stuck in routines, but there are aspects of him that still blow me away. Whenever I come home from a trip, he just assumes he’ll pick me up at the airport or train station. I don’t even have to ask.” She’s reminded each time of his generosity, made even sweeter because both of them know she could easily make her way home on her own. “Each time I’m a little surprised. It always feels as if I’ve stumbled upon this tender gift.”

  LETTING GO OF FANTASY

  WHEN IT COMES to finding a partner or even a close friend, most of us carry within us an idealized image of “the one.” We search for that perfect person, often projecting our fantasy ideal onto others. And when, inevitably, the people on the receiving end of our personal Hollywood movie don’t measure up, we’re left feeling lonely, frustrated, and pessimistic about our chances of ever finding our match.

  Whatever the source of our imagined ideal—whether we’ve conjured it from books, songs, movies, real-life role models, or all of the above—it’s essential that we bring our notions into the light of awareness. It’s only when we start to distinguish reality from fantasy that we can humbly, with eyes wide open, forge loving and sustainable connections with others.