Greg's Real Love Blog

I like sunflowers. Ringed by those outrageously yellow petals, their impossibly large heads stand ten feet in the air and perform a pendular dance every day as they follow the sun’s course across the sky.

I’ve learned that if I want to grow sunflowers, I cannot plant corn, tomato, or radish seeds. I have to plant sunflower seeds—imagine that. This is the Law of the Harvest—you reap what you sow—and it applies equally in our personal lives. We tend to be mystified by the fluctuations in our feelings and relationships, but how we feel is usually a predictable result of the seeds we plant. If we choose to tell the truth about ourselves, think about the needs of others, and focus on gratitude for what we enjoy, it is absolutely guaranteed that we will harvest a crop of love, personal happiness, and fulfilling relationships. If, however, we choose to be offended, angry, and “right,” we can only harvest a crop of misery. It’s a law. We can count on it.

Regrettably, when we’re unhappy with our crop, we tend to persist in planting even more of the same seeds—anger, controlling, and being right—hoping that magically they will yield a different fruit. In our defense, we do this because the wrong seeds are the only ones we’ve ever known. Many of us have never seen the seeds that lead to love and joy.

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been planting anger—or lying, or acting like victims, or running. We can choose to stop. We can tear up the plants that have grown from those seeds: our addictions to approval, control, and pleasure, among others, along with the misery that accompanies these addictions. We can plow the field and plant something new.

With every thought and every act, we plant seeds. We plant them in our own minds and hearts, and we plant them in the lives of others. What will you plant? It’s a choice, and the harvest is predictable. Examine each seed carefully. Just as the seeds of sunflowers and corn differ dramatically in their appearance, so do the seeds we plant in our lives. Anger looks nothing like loving. Blaming has no resemblance whatever to telling the truth about ourselves. Selfish demands have no similarity to thinking about the needs of others. Think about the fruit that each seed will yield, and make a choice to plant the seeds that will fill your soul with joy. Make a conscious choice not to plant the seeds that explode into the weeds that can literally choke out the light of the sun for you. Plant the seeds you really want to grow.

I received the following letter from a member of the Real Love community, and I offer it to you without comment:

In its simplest form the path to Real Love—and the lasting peace and happiness it produces—can be summarized as follows:

Tell the truth (about yourself).
Be seen.
Feel accepted.
Feel loved.
Start over with telling the truth and repeat for the rest of your life.

When we step into the Real Love process we usually enter it because we are in pain, and because we have been in and out of pain so many times in our lives that we’re confused. We’re looking for solutions, and although we’ve received partial answers from many sources, we still haven’t found what we’re looking for. Real Love provides those answers.

We’re in pain because we are empty, alone, and afraid. In order to eliminate this pain, we then chase the only things that have ever made us feel better, even though the results are temporary: praise, power, pleasure, safety, and the conditional love of others. From birth we have also learned to use the Getting and Protecting Behaviors that help us acquire as much Imitation Love as possible. We become addicted to these behaviors and to Imitation Love, just as surely as a heroin addict is addicted to heroin. Unfortunately, we return to our drugs of choice again and again, because their appeal is all we know. We haven’t even seen Real Love, so how would we ever pursue it?

The initial steps in Real Love can be difficult, because we must have faith in something we’ve never seen. We have to tell the truth about our addictions, and few of us enjoy that experience.

I see Real Love as a path we walk, and in order to walk effectively, we need two legs. Sure, you can bounce around on one leg, like I have for a long time, or you can learn to use both of your legs and begin to walk and maybe even run down the path of Real Love, which will lead you to lasting happiness and peace.

Let me describe the two legs we walk on. The first leg is an understanding of the Real Love principles, as spelled out in numerous books, CDs, and DVDs: the power of telling the truth, the Law of Choice, the Law of Responsibility, the Law of Expectations, Event-Judgment-Feeling-Reaction, and so on. With this first leg I learned to tell the truth about myself to myself. I was able to see my Getting and Protecting Behaviors. I saw my need to control, to be right, to limit other people’s choice, and to expect others to make me happy, and I was able to see how much conditional love there was in the world. I saw that I was addicted to Imitation Love. As I told these truths to myself—and occasionally in emails to others—I began to feel a happiness I had never felt before. It was amazing and so freeing.

So I was hopping on one leg down the path of Real Love, but in time I discovered that without a second leg I couldn’t really go any farther. With only the principles and myself, I ran out of energy. My sight was limited.

I needed a second leg, which I discovered involved the use of the Real Love community. There are very few people out there in the world of Imitation Love that can actually accept us for who we are, because they are users just as we are. But the people in the Real Love community offer love that often we can’t even comprehend initially, much less feel. They have the ability not only to accept us, but to help us tell the truth about ourselves. Without their unconditional love I could not have seen more of my getting and protecting behaviors, which I needed to do in order to feel even more loved and to make different choices.

Loving people throw us a rope or show us the way to the side of the pool, so we can stop drowning in the pool of Imitation Love. They give us choices we’ve never had and actually help us to make them. They can’t make the choices for us. They can’t keep pulling us out of the pool—because then we wouldn’t learn anything—but they can teach us to swim.

What I have come to treasure is that when I do get lose—when I jump back into the pool—I can simply make a call to someone in the Real Love community, who will give me some support and sometimes directions to the side of the pool, so I can pull myself out of the water. I need that help, because my addictions are strong. The lure of Imitation Love is always with us. We are not perfect. Telling the truth about ourselves is a life long continual process. You can always discover more truth.

I’m glad I have two legs—the principles of Real Love and the people who live them—and I encourage all of us to get out there and use both of them.

“Life is hard.” “Life is pain.” How many times have we heard these words? And there’s the bumper sticker that reads, “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”

In the course of our lives, we certainly are presented with experiences that create a wide variety of potential obstacles, but the truth is, we determine how difficult our lives are by the choices we make.

Years ago I took a large group of older Boy Scouts on a canoeing expedition to the Snake River in Idaho. I was aware of the challenging reputation of this section of the river, so for many months before we left I gave the boys considerable instruction in swimming, lifesaving, canoeing, camping, and other skills they would need. I explained that what they were learning would make their adventure both safer and far more enjoyable. I did not push them to learn anything but simply said that if they chose not to learn, the consequences of their ignorance would almost certainly be unpleasant. Nearly all of the boys were eager to learn everything they could, but a few listened half-heartedly and prepared themselves poorly.

When we arrived at the river, it was everything it had been advertised to be. In many places the descent of the canyon was quite steep, so the water moved very swiftly and created violent rapids that crashed against the many rocks and boulders that lay in the river bottom. The swirling water created eddies and whirlpools that were easily capable of entrapping and submerging a canoe and its occupants. These combinations of water and stone were quite capable of killing people—by direct trauma or by drowning—and had done so on many occasions in years past.

How did the boys respond to this? It depended on their preparation and their subsequent choices. Most of the boys had thoroughly absorbed the lessons of the previous months, so they were prepared for the river and had a wonderful time. They guided their canoes expertly through the passages in the rapids and avoided the perils that thrust up at every angle in the maze of jagged boulders. Rather than being afraid, they were exhilarated as they flowed along with the great force of the river, quite aware that they were constantly flirting with the cusp of danger.

A few boys, however, had prepared less diligently and chose to make decisions that were less wise about their paddling and their course in the river. These boys had little control over their canoes and were soon slammed by the current from one rock to another until their canoes tipped over, throwing them into the fast-moving—and cold—water. We fished them out of the water and retrieved their canoes for them, only to repeat the process more than once when they fell out again.

For many boys, this trip was the greatest adventure of their lives, and they reminisced about it for years—with me, with each other, and with their families and friends. For some of the boys, however, the trip was just another in a long line of huge inconveniences and sources of discomfort and irritation.

Observing the experiences of all the boys, I couldn’t help but conclude that the river itself was not “hard.” It simply flowed, providing opportunities for people to make choices. Some of them chose wisely and had an exciting and enjoyable experience, while others chose foolishly and suffered the consequences of unhappiness and even injury. Life works the same way.

Throughout our lives, the current of time rushes on inexorably, taking us past the jagged edges of experiences that can either be exhilarating or tear us to pieces. It’s not the current itself, however, that determines the outcome of our lives but the choices we make. In the absence of Real Love, we fight and claw for every available morsel of Imitation Love. We protect ourselves from every injustice and injury, real and imagined. We bounce from one rock to another, exhausted, fearful, angry, and bleeding, and life seems “hard” indeed.

But we can learn to choose more wisely. We can choose to take responsibility for our mistakes and feelings. We can choose to find and share unconditional love, and as we make these choices we float with relative ease and without pain past the rocks that would otherwise injure us. We float past the whirlpools that would suck us in and drown us. We can choose to avoid fear and anger and choose instead to live a life of faith and love. This is not a hopeful fantasy. On many occasions I have seen many people make these wise choices. I have watched them laugh as they have sailed past the rocks and other dangers of life that previously would have tipped them over into the cold, miserable water, where they would have complained that life was “so hard.”

Happiness is a choice. If you’re finding that life is hard, that is a choice too. But you can begin to make different choices. One step at a time, you can tell the truth about yourself instead of blaming others, or acting like a victim, or withdrawing. You can choose to understand people instead of criticizing them. As we make these choices, we shed the heavy burdens of anger and bitterness. We discover that life can be beautiful and free and relatively easy. In the beginning, these decisions and this way of living may seem a little strange—even frightening—but if we exercise faith and persist, we soon experience the rewards. We begin to glide by the rocks and whirlpools of life, instead of being crushed and drowned by them, as we have experienced so often in the past.

As we immerse ourselves in the truth we discover that we create opportunities to receive unconditional acceptance and love in our lives. And it comes naturally and without any effort at all. Soon we gain the capacity to share this love with others, and under these conditions—receiving and giving love—life isn’t hard at all. It’s pure joy, even when the circumstances around us appear to be challenging, even when the current is swift and the rocks are many.

I recently spoke with a man, Louis, who had been experiencing a recurring conflict with his wife, Barbara. Her brother had asked her for a loan, but Louis believed that they couldn’t afford it and that his brother-in-law would never pay them back. Barbara, however, argued vehemently that they could afford it, that he would pay them back, and—with special emphasis—that making the loan was simply the right and Christian thing to do. Louis complained that every couple of days Barbara was pressuring him to change his position on this issue, and his frustration was rapidly growing. We arranged for the three of us to meet.

After they had both taken their seats in my living room, I asked, “Would either of you like to offer a definition of marriage?”

They each made a couple of suggestions, which included the words partnership and union. “You would both agree then,” I said, “that marriage is a kind of partnership?”

They both nodded their heads.

“Partnerships have enormous potential advantages,” I said. “That’s why we create them: between people, animals, and even objects. For thousands of years, for example, men have partnered two oxen, because they have observed that two oxen can pull twice the load that one ox could pull. In this case, 1+1 = 2. But partners can often create miraculous results, far beyond simple mathematical sums, such that 1+1 can equal far more than just 2. For example, by itself how fast can a car engine move, and what can it carry?”

“By itself an engine can’t move at all,” Louis said. “It just sits there.”

“How about a car tire? By itself, what can it move?”

“Not much.”

“By itself, a tire isn’t good for much except to roll down a hill or decorate your front yard—depending on your neighborhood. But if you attach four tires to four wheels, connect a few other parts, and then partner them with that engine we just talked about, a real miracle in transportation becomes possible. Even though an engine and a tire are quite different in their qualities, if we partner them properly, the result can be quite productive. The same is true with a marriage partnership. When two people marry, they often possess qualities that are quite different, but if they are willing to share what they have as partners, the yield to themselves and to others can be remarkable. The sum of 1+1 can equal much more than 2.”

It was obvious that Louis and Barbara were following this, so I continued. “The benefits of such a partnership are possible, of course, only if each person accepts the unique qualities of the other partner. What would happen, for example, if the engine persuaded the tires to become more like the engine, so that instead of an engine and four tires, we had two engines?”

“The car wouldn’t move,” Barbara said.

“And 1+1 would equal useless,” I said. “So it is with a marriage. If Louis tries to get you to become like him, or if you try to get him to become like you, you would lose the benefits that come from the unique assets you each bring to your marriage. Sometimes we think we want to change our partners, but we fail to realize what we’d lose in the process. So the point is that in order to enjoy the benefits of partnerships, we must also accept the principles that govern them. One of these principles—as we just discussed—is that we must accept our partners and not try to control them. But let me talk for a moment about another principle that governs healthy partnerships. I believe you’ll find it useful in resolving your conflict about the possible loan to Barbara’s brother.”

“Louis just doesn’t trust my brother,” Barbara said with considerable impatience. “I don’t think Louis trusts me either. He doesn’t believe me when I say that my brother will pay us back, and Louis doesn’t understand that it’s just the nice thing for us to do.”

“See what I mean?” Louis said. “For weeks she’s been saying stuff like, and I’m tired of it. Then she even says, ‘What would Jesus do?’ That one makes me crazy.”

I raised my hand to stop their argument. “I assume that on plenty of occasions you’ve both stated your positions on this issue, so there’s no good reason to go over them again. Would that be fair to say?”

They both nodded and shrugged their shoulders.

“So let me suggest a principle that might help you come to an agreement here. In any partnership—business, political, or marital—we potentially gain advantages or strengths, but one of the reasons for these advantages is that we agree to function as a unit with our partners. This means that, to varying degrees, we no longer function entirely separately from our partners. We agree that before we make decisions that will affect our partners or our partnership, we will consult with them. If we did not do this, there would be no partnership and therefore none of the advantages from the partnership. To illustrate, let’s go back to the car engine and imagine that engines and tires could make their own decisions. What if the engine decided to go east while the tires decided to go west? How would that work out? Or what if the tires decided to rotate in reverse while the engine decided to move in a forward direction?”

“Impossible. Or it would destroy the car,” Louis said.

“Right,” I said. “and if engines and tires could make decisions, neither would want to make decisions that conflicted with the interests of the other, because the moment they did that, the car would malfunction, and all the advantages of working in partnership would immediately disappear. The car would become useless, which would make both the engine and the tires essentially useless. The situation is quite similar in a marriage partnership.”

“Explain,” Barbara said.

“If I’m married to you—if I’m your partner—and I make a decision that will affect both of us, without your willing consent, what am I saying about my feelings for you? Am I telling you that I unconditionally care about your happiness?”

Barbara smiled sarcastically. “No, hardly.”

“Exactly. Anytime I insist on making a decision that affects you, or that affects both of us, without your agreement, I’m telling you that I do not care about you, and that will have a terrible effect on our relationship, won’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I may rationalize that what I’m trying to do is right, but when I begin to make decisions without your participation and agreement, I will have a destructive effect on the Real Love in our relationship. We will no longer be working together as partners, and from that point everything we do—together and individually—will be less effective and less enjoyable. Do you want your marriage to be less effective and less enjoyable?”

They shook their heads.

“So I suggest that couples apply what I call the Veto Principle in their relationships. The Veto Principle goes like this: Either partner has the right to stop any activity that affects him or her in an unavoidable and negative way.”

“Explain that some more,” Barbara said.

“Glad to. Suppose you and I are married, and we’re driving somewhere together. I’m the driver. Suddenly, at seventy miles an hour, I announce that I intend to drive our car into one of the oncoming eighteen-wheeled trucks that is thundering down the road at frequent intervals. Is that fair? Or would you like the right to veto my proposal?”

“I’d like the veto.”

“Of course you would. Hence the Veto Principle. No loving relationship could exist without the right of either partner to veto any activity that would injure or frighten or otherwise negatively affect him or her. And no loving partner would want to make decisions that would unavoidably and negatively affect his or her partner. If I care about you, I would not intentionally drive you into the path of an oncoming truck. I would give you the right to veto that choice. If I really cared about you, I would always give you the right to stop any activity that affected you negatively, right?”

“Right.”

“Now, notice the language of the principle: ‘Either partner has the right to stop any activity that affects him or her in an unavoidable and negative way.’ I emphasize the word unavoidable because otherwise some people might tend to use the veto principle to control their partners. For example, let’s say that I decide to watch football all day. You might attempt to veto that activity, claiming that it affects you negatively, claiming that it keeps you from spending time with me. True?”

Barbara smiled. “The thought did occur to me as you brought up watching football.”

“But my choice doesn’t have an unavoidably negative affect on you. If I choose to watch football all day, you still have hundreds of other choices to make that could make you happy. My choice does not determine what you do.”

“Let me suggest a second consideration in the use of the Veto Principle,” I continued. “Most people consider the veto as a kind of weapon they can use to stop their partner’s behavior, but that is a selfish view. Ideally, the veto is freely offered by one partner to the partner who would be inconvenienced or injured. Imagine, for example, that I’m tired of mowing the lawn, so I decide that I’m going to replace all the lawn in my yard with an enormous concrete pad. Much easier to maintain in the long run.

“One approach would be for me to simply begin work on the lawn removal and the laying of forms for pouring of the concrete. Then my wife—who would not find an all-concrete lawn attractive—would be forced to state her right to a veto. But a second approach is much more loving: Before I even finalize the concrete decision in my mind, I will talk to Donna and ask her what she would like. As I do this, I am demonstrating an interest in her feelings, and I’m offering her the veto, rather than requiring her to pull it from her holster like a gun. Ideally, this is how the veto should be used.

“The Veto Principle is not intended to be a weapon that we use against our partners in an effort to protect ourselves and get what we want. If I use the Veto Principle to control my partner, it will tend to detract from the love in our relationship. If, on the other hand, I use the Veto Principle to control my own behavior, the Veto will communicate a genuine concern to my partner for her happiness and will add significantly to the Real Love in our relationship. Now, with all this in mind, can you apply this to your situation with the loan?”

Barbara appeared thoughtful before she said, “So you’re telling me that Louis has the right to veto the loan to my brother, and that I should just tell my brother to forget it, even though I think it’s the right and Christian thing to do?”

I smiled. “You may not have realized it, Barbara, but you just went through your entire argument again, trying to prove your case. You believe that the loan is justified because he’s your brother, right? You believe you can’t refuse a request from family. You also think the loan is justified because you believe he’ll pay you back. And you believe it’s the Christian thing to do. All that, yes?”

“Yes.”

“But despite all that, Louis simply disagrees with you. And he gets to. Engine and tires, darlin’. You two are simply different, and if this marriage is going to work, you have to allow each other to be different. You have to support each other while you’re different, not just when you agree. Even though you’re different, you have to be going in the same direction, and that can only happen while you both feel loved and supported by the other. Are you with me so far?”

“Mostly.”

“How would you feel about me if you knew that I would never, ever do anything that would hurt you or frighten you or affect you in a negative way? What if you knew that if you felt the least bit afraid or even inconvenienced, all you had to do was put up your hand, and I would stop doing whatever was contributing to your negative feelings? How would you feel toward me? Would you trust me? Would you feel like I cared about you?”

“Yes.”

“That is what the Veto Principle is all about. It’s a communication of love between partners. It’s a way of saying, ‘I will never intentionally hurt you.’ We may not entirely understand the thinking of our partner. We don’t have to. That’s the beauty of the veto. If I really care about my partner, she doesn’t have to explain herself to me when she exercises her veto.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Most of the times that people vehemently object to an activity, they’re afraid of something, and—with rare exceptions—we simply don’t have a right to frighten or injure people. Sometimes people can explain their need and fears, but often they cannot, because most fears are irrational. If my partner can’t adequately explain the fears that underlie her veto, I don’t care. My love for her is enough reason for me to accept her objection.”

“So you’re saying that Louis gets to control this loan,” Barbara said.

“Oh, that would be a terrible way to see this. I’m saying this: A decision about a loan has presented itself before the Barbara-Louis partnership. You would grant the loan, but for reasons that may not be clear to you—fears you may not understand, perhaps—Louis disagrees. Compared to the importance of the maintenance and growth of the Real Love in your marriage, this loan means nothing. So the real decision that lies before the Louis-Barbara partnership is this: What will we do here that will increase the love in our marriage? You are in complete control of that. By comparison, the veto of the loan is a tiny matter indeed. It’s insignificant. So what will you focus on: a loan to your brother, or the love in your marriage? Will you see this as Louis controlling a tiny thing, or you being in control of all the happiness in your life and your relationship? It’s all your choice.”

“I recognize,” I continued, “that you also have fears around this decision. You are probably afraid not to give the loan, because if you don’t, your brother will not be happy with you.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“So you might be tempted to believe that the Veto should work in your favor, that Louis should agree to give your brother the loan so that you are not affected in a negative way. But it doesn’t work like that. What you’re contemplating is a decision whether to loan the money—which is a change from the way things are—and the Veto affects that decision, or any decision to do something. You can’t use the Veto in a twisted way, to claim that not doing something would affect you negatively, thereby forcing your partner to do what you want. If we did that, one partner could say to the other, for example, ‘I will be negatively affected by your not having sex with me, so I veto your not having sex with me, and now you must have sex with me.’ We can’t use the Veto Principle to control people and get them to do what we want.”

Several days after Barbara and Louis left my office, I learned that Barbara did decide to accept the Veto Principle, and she told her brother that they would not be giving him the loan. As a result of this demonstration of love and trust for Louis, he experienced a change of heart and decided that they could loan half the amount to her brother that he had originally requested. What really mattered, however, was not the giving of the loan but that Louis and Barbara learned to love and trust each other as a result of living a principle.

In short, the essence of the Veto Principle is that I will choose not to continue in any task or activity that unavoidably causes my partner inconvenience or harm or fear. I also want my partner to feel free to stop me from causing such a negative influence at any time, because I want her to feel my love for her. As we all choose to live in such a way, our relationships can only flourish.

Recently I was asked the following insightful question:

“Real Love sounds like a noble goal, but if we really love people unconditionally, won’t we end up loving everybody the same? I can’t imagine loving everybody the same as my wife, for example. It seems like Real Love would cheapen the love I have for my wife or my children.”

First let’s address the imprecise way we tend to use the word love. When people talk about love they’re almost always referring to a confusing combination of actions and feelings, so we need to clearly identify these components before we can understand any discussion about love.

Unconditional love is a choice we make to care about the happiness of others without expecting anything in return, and we demonstrate this caring with our thoughts, words, and behavior. Loving is something we DO, and this is possible with a wide variety of people. The question is, can we unconditionally love some people—the “special people” in our lives—more? Of course.

In order to illustrate this, let me describe my relationship with Donna, my wife and My Favorite Person in the World. I try—with varying degrees of success—to love everyone unconditionally, so how is my relationship with Donna different? How is it special? How can I love her without conditions—as I attempt to do with other people—but also love her more than I do others? If I love her more than others, wouldn’t that necessarily be conditional on some characteristic she possessed or on something she did?

First, when I married Donna I made a commitment to put her first—to share more of my unconditional love with her than with anyone else. This is a choice I continue to make, which is not conditional on anything she does. If Donna requests my time, for example, I am far more inclined to stop what I’m doing for her than for anyone else. In terms of effort and inconvenience, I am willing to sacrifice more for her than for anyone else. And, finally, there are certain activities that I will share with no one but her. In a number of ways, then, our relationship is unique, despite my efforts to unconditionally love many people.

The more often we express our unconditional love for any person, the more connected we become to that person and the more we want to love that person. Most of us have seen this confirmed on many occasions where we or others have become engaged in acts of service—when we go on medical missions, serve in soup kitchens, visit the sick in hospitals, and so on. The more I serve Donna’s needs, the more connected to her I feel, and then I care about her happiness all the more. The act of loving begets more of the same.

But now we need to talk about the feeling of love, because this is where most people get confused. When people say that they love their partners and their children more than they love everyone else, they’re usually talking about a feeling. Real Love, however, is not primarily a feeling. Real Love is a conscious choice to care about the happiness of another person. As I care about the happiness of another, though—Donna, for example—the natural result IS a feeling. When I choose to love Donna, I feel wonderful, even if she gives me nothing in return. Let me illustrate this with a story.

A couple of years ago Donna had a major surgical procedure, after which she was in pain and unable to take care of herself. I had her transferred to a special wing of the hospital where I could stay in her room and take care of her around the clock. I was thrilled by this opportunity to care for her. I got up every two hours through the night to give her intravenous pain medication, so she wouldn’t be awakened by her pain and have to ask for relief. She couldn’t get up or roll over without help, and this gave me an opportunity to serve her with no thought for what I would receive in return. The more I took care of her, the more I found that I enjoyed it.

What was going on here? What I was doing was loving her. But what was I feeling? If you had asked me during the experience about my feelings, I might have said that I was feeling “love” toward her, and this is where the confusion arises in so many relationships. We often use the word love when it would be more correct to use the word enjoyment or happiness or gratitude. With my thoughts and behavior I was loving Donna, and, as a result, what I was feeling was happiness.

The feeling that naturally results from being loving is happiness. This naturally occurs because when we’re loving we bring ourselves in harmony with the most positive and powerful force in the universe. Love is the natural order of things. It is the universal, creative force. When we’re loving, we’re at peace with the laws of the universe. When we’re not loving, however, we’re in conflict with everything that is good and true, and we can only be unhappy. Again, allow me to illustrate with Donna. As I love her, I find that I am genuinely happier. I am motivated to be even more loving toward her, because I am simply happier when I behave in a loving way toward her. I enjoy how she feels when I’m loving, and I enjoy how I feel. I can hardly help myself. This happens whether she appreciates what I do or not.

This brings us back to the original question: Is it possible for us to simultaneously love many people unconditionally but still have a special love for certain people in our lives, like spouses, children, and others? The answer is now obvious. We can unconditionally love many people, but we can share that love to a much greater degree with certain people in our lives, and, as a result, enjoy a more profound happiness with them. No matter who we share Real Love with, however, our lives are greatly enriched by the experience.

Many years ago I was out in the garden pulling weeds with a couple of our children. At one point my son Joseph asked, “Dad, what makes something a weed?”

I thought that was pretty insightful, especially since none of his siblings had ever asked that question. I replied that a weed was any plant that was growing where it wasn’t wanted, especially where it was interfering with the growth of the plants that were desired. In most cases, I added—because I was tired of pulling them—it seemed that weeds grew much faster than the plants around them. Certainly that was true for the weeds we were pulling that day, which threatened to overwhelm the beets and carrots we were trying to save.

Had we failed to weed the garden that day, we would have lost only a few rows of vegetables. Far more serious are the weeds that infest the gardens of our minds and souls, the weeds that distract us emotionally and spiritually and thereby destroy our happiness. These weeds, which come in the form of Imitation Love and Getting and Protecting Behaviors, grow quickly to the size of bushes and then trees, which take over our entire garden. Moreover, these insidious weed-trees bear a variety of fruits that we thoroughly enjoy—praise, power, pleasure, and safety—so we become quite reluctant to pull them up or cut them down.

Imagine that we’re trying to grow a field of beans and corn, which would create a diet sufficient to sustain our lives. But throughout our field are large trees that have sprung up with little or no conscious effort on our part to plant them or take care of them, and these trees have enormous branches covered with leaves that block out the sunshine needed by our beans and corn. But we are reluctant to cut down these trees, because every branch produces abundant swirls of cotton candy, which is delicious—so delicious, in fact, that we have become addicted to it and cannot live without it, not even for a few hours.

Even though the cotton candy tastes wonderful—no doubt of that—there is simply no nutritious value to it, so slowly we begin to starve to death, no matter how much we eat. If we are to survive, we must cut down the trees, to allow the sunlight to reach our beans and corn. We must tend to the real crops, which requires more effort, but which—in the long term—will save and sustain our lives.

And so it is in real life. Without any effort on our part, the seeds of Imitation Love are planted constantly, and they grow at astonishing rates—like weeds on steroids—bearing abundant fruit all the while. Oh, there’s no doubt that Imitation Love tastes good—just like cotton candy—but soon the weeds become trees that block out the sun and make the growth of Real Love and happiness impossible.

This is why we must tell the truth about the Imitation Love in our lives—and about the Getting and Protecting Behaviors we use to gather it—so we can begin the process of tearing up the weeds that are preventing us from being happy. We must exercise faith that if we give up the cheap and immediate thrills of eating cotton candy, we will harvest an emotional and spiritual feast that will be both nourishing and joyful.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit a state prison, functioning as the spokesman for a prisoner who was appearing before the parole board in the hope of obtaining parole after spending ten years in the care of the state’s prison system. Before we met with the board, I sat with this prisoner for nearly three hours, accompanied by his wife, his brother, his sister, his minister, a friend, a former cellmate now freed, and a former schoolteacher—all occupying one large table.

Much of the dining hall where we sat was occupied with tables like ours, filled with groups of family and friends, each group sitting with a single prisoner. The noise level was high, as people shared stories and talked excitedly about the possibility of these men being released from prison after extended periods of incarceration.

Because I was occupied with talking to my friend and his family, I didn’t notice for an hour or so that at one end of the large room was a group of prisoners sitting on folding chairs. They outnumbered the prisoners sitting at the tables and seemed to receive more attention from the guards.

When I asked my friend why the other group of prisoners was segregated from our group at the tables, he explained that the other men had no family or friends with them. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at this, but I still was. This was one of the most important days of their entire lives. After many years of imprisonment, these men were appearing before the State Parole Board, where a decision would be made about their release. Moreover, one of the factors weighing in this decision was the stability of the environment to which these men would be released, so often it made a difference to the Board when a man brought a group of family and friends who demonstrated their obvious support for him.

Despite the importance of family support on this critical day, however—emotionally and otherwise—the men on folding chairs outnumbered those at the tables five to one. There were fewer than twenty of us at the tables, while there were more than a hundred men who didn’t have a single soul who cared enough about them to show up on that day to offer support. Is it any mystery how so many people end up in prison? With such an obvious lack of love in their lives, they reach out for anything that will fill their emptiness, and it’s regrettable that so many of the things that fill that void—anger, violence, money, sex, power, and so on—stretch or break the limits of social and legal acceptability.

A great many of us feel tragically alone. But there is hope. We can learn to see this condition in each other, and as we reach out to connect, this deadly sense of separation vanishes. Our emptiness disappears, and we no longer act out in the ways that bring us before the courts and cause us to be taken to prison. Nor do we act out in the ways that destroy marriages and children. Wherever I go, whether I’m counseling couples or talking to children or visiting men in prison, I’m impressed with how consistently it is “always about Real Love.”

Earlier today I received a call from a man, Bob, who is engaged and making preparations to get married. He and his fiancée both own their own homes, so they made a decision that he would sell his home and move into hers. In the process of putting his home on the market, however, he discovered that the foundation had significant structural cracks that would require expensive repairs.

He called to say that he was finding it difficult to ask for help from his fiancee, Shirley. It was killing him that he would need her help with more and more things as he worked with the realtor, the contractors, the redecorating of the house, and all the other details involved with repair, selling, and moving. He was overwhelmed in either direction: if he tried to do it all alone or if he asked her for help.

“Why does it bother you to ask her for help?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

When people say they find something difficult, they’re almost always using difficult as a code word for afraid. Rarely, however, do they realize this, much less what exactly they are afraid of. I knew this when I spoke to Bob, but I was asking the question just to get the conversation started.

“Let’s look at some of the negative things that could happen as a result of your asking Shirley for help, because as you recognize them, simply bringing them into the light may make you less afraid. The unknown is usually more frightening than what we can see. And we might be able to come up with a plan for overcoming some of these obstacles. So, think about it. Picture yourself asking her to help you with the decorating, the house selling, the contractor, everything. What could happen?”

He paused for quite a while before he answered. “It might not be the way I want.”

“Excellent,” I said. “If you ask for help, you might lose some control over things, right?”

“Yes,” he said, with a tone of surprise. “I never thought of it that way. I never thought of myself as a control freak.”

“We all like to control things to be our way to a certain extent. And now you get to learn a powerful lesson. Why are you getting married?”

“Because I love her.”

“Really?”

“I think so,” he said.

“And really loving her would mean to care about her happiness, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Which would mean learning a whole new way of doing things. It would mean learning to do things in a way that contributes to the happiness of the two of you, not just the way you want to do things, which is how you’ve been accustomed to living. Being married means doing things together as a unit. It means losing some of that control you just said you were afraid of losing.”

“Hmm.” He knew there was more coming.

“So, if you ask for help here, you’re concerned about losing control, but asking for help and losing control is exactly what you need to do. You need let go of control and let someone else into your life so you can learn to love, learn to be loved, and learn to be a couple. You already know how to be alone and in control, and that hasn’t made you all that happy. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Yesss . . .”

“There’s a but in there.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re still wondering if you let her start doing things, she might just screw up and make a mess of things.”

“Yeah.”

“She might actually do that on occasion. And that’s when the two of you will learn how to work together as a loving couple. These apparently minor occasions are actually critical. They begin to establish the pattern for the remainder of your relationship. Consider what is important to you. Do you want a particular thing done your way, or do you want to build the unconditional love in your relationship? If you control everything she does, you might as well live by yourself for the rest of your life. If you control her, you’ll just turn her into an extension of yourself, and that is not a partnership. It will kill any feeling of love between you. On the other hand, you don’t have to accept every form of help she offers. If she’s helping you in a way you just can’t live with, speak up and say something. Tell her you really would prefer she do whatever-it-is a different way. You will spend your whole lives together practicing the principles of Real Love, and you start right now, by asking for help. Making sense so far?”

“Sure.”

“Now let’s talk about a second fear you might have. What if you ask her for help, and she lets you down? You need quite a bit of help. What if she just isn’t there for you as much as you need, and you’re disappointed? Does that bother you?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“How many people in your life have consistently been there for you whenever you’ve needed them?”

“Zero.”

“So it would be a significant fear for you that if you asked for help you might be disappointed. But we all live with that. There just might be occasions when she’ll deliver less than you’d like. But until you ask for help, you also won’t get any help at all. You’ll be pushing away all the opportunities for her to demonstrate that she cares about you. You’ll feel alone and unloved. So why not let her try? Why eliminate all the opportunities for love, just because there might be a few occasions when she’ll love you less than you’d hoped? That would be like deciding to never eat again because you’re afraid that an occasional meal might be disappointing.”

“I get the point.”

“Here’s a third reason you might be afraid to ask Shirley for help, and it’s a variation on the first reason. You might be afraid that she would use this as an opportunity to control you, to tell you what to do. Shirley is pretty outspoken, while you’re fairly quiet, and this would give her a chance to intrude and control you.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Who else in your life did this?”

“My mother, every chance she got.”

“So, what could you do so that you could feel less afraid of being controlled?”

“I don’t know.”

“Just tell the truth about it. Always deal with the truth. When you ask for her help, tell her about this fear. Tell her that you’re afraid of being controlled. Tell her that it’s an old fear—not about Shirley—one that came from interactions with your mother. Then propose a solution, because you don’t want this to get in the way of the love in your relationship. It’s always about keeping and building love. If an occasion arises where you feel like she’s telling you what to do—whether she actually is or not—you’ll give her some kind of indication that you’re feeling anxious. You could agree on a hand sign (raising your hand like a stop sign) or a set of words (‘I need to pause here to talk about this step’) or something that would bring everything to a stop. At that point, whatever is going on needs to stop until you feel like you’re being listened to and a course of action is being taken that you agree with.”

“But then what would I say?”

“Easy. In a calm, non-defensive way, you tell her what you need from her in the way of help. If she persists in doing something her way—where she is not listening to you—you tell her that she has three choices: (1) She can help you your way and like it; or (2) help you your way and hate it; or (3) not help you at all. Remember, she is helping you, and you really do get to decide how she helps you, or whether she helps you at all. Would that make you feel more comfortable?”

“Oh yeah. I just never thought about all those options.”

“There’s possibly a fourth reason you would find it difficult to ask Shirley for help. When you were a kid and asked people questions, or asked people for help, did people ever make you feel weak or stupid?”

“All the time.”

“Is that playing a factor here?”

“Yes. I feel like all this is stuff I should be able to handle by myself, so if I ask for help, that makes me both stupid and weak. A real man should be able to handle all this, and I’m really feeling overwhelmed. I don’t like this feeling very much.”

“That’s a huge advantage of having a partner. You now have someone who complements you, which means someone who fills out what you don’t have, who completes you. How can you take advantage of that huge gift unless you ask her to help you? Not asking would be kind of stupid, wouldn’t it? That would be kind of like getting a new car and not turning on the key, because you were afraid that you might get a flat tire, or you might wear out the engine, or you might have other problems. Yes, you might have all those problems, but so what? That just goes with having a car. You can’t have benefits without risks. Relationships are like that. Love is like that. If you want all the rewards of love and a partnership—which are abundant beyond expression—you have to start taking the risks, and it starts right now. You have to start asking her for help. You have to start getting intimate, which begins with moments like this. Are you willing?”

Bob decided he was willing to take the risks.

As we seek closer relationships with others, it is inevitable that we ask for help, ask questions, tell the truth about ourselves, and inconvenience each other. In the process we will make mistakes—lots of them. Taking risks and making mistakes, in fact, is required, and if we are willing to make them, we will be showered with the sweet rewards of Real Love and the intimate relationships we seek.

On many occasions I have defined Real Love as caring about the happiness of others without any thought of return for ourselves. It is not Real Love when I do what you want and you like me. That is simply a trading of Imitation Love. Rather, it’s Real Love when I make mistakes, when I’m stupid, and when I inconvenience you, but you don’t feel disappointed or irritated at me. It is disappointment and irritation that separate Real Love from all the pretenders.

I have been asked repeatedly, however, “Is all disappointment selfish? Isn’t a certain amount of disappointment normal? In some circumstances couldn’t disappointment be compatible with Real Love?”

The nature of disappointment varies from one situation to another. Sometimes it’s selfish and unloving, while on other occasions it is not. Let’s suppose I ask you to do something for me, say, spend some time with me. You refuse, and I am deeply disappointed. I carry this disappointment around with me for several hours, perhaps even days. In fact, I resent you a bit for refusing my “request” and feel somewhat less inclined to respond positively to any request you might make of me in the future. In this case my disappointment is selfish, and I have proven that when I “asked” you to spend time with me, I wasn’t making a genuine request. I was really making a veiled demand, with an attached expectation that you would give me what I wanted.

Now let’s imagine another occasion where I ask you to spend some time with me. Again you refuse and again I feel some disappointment, but this time my disappointment is both mild and short-lived. I also feel no change in my affection toward you, nor am I reluctant to grant any request you might make of me. This kind of disappointment is not selfish. When we don’t get what we ask for, some disappointment is natural. After all, the whole reason we ask for something is that we actually want it, so not getting it naturally involves some disappointment. But if we’re making a true request—as opposed to a demand—the disappointment we feel is slight and brief.

If we make a request, it is accompanied by a healthy hope that our request will be fulfilled. If that request is not fulfilled, it’s natural that we are mildly disappointed—although it’s possible that even mild disappointment will not be experienced. Our happiness is certainly not diminished. It should be noted that we are capable of making true requests only if we feel sufficiently loved unconditionally. If we are empty and afraid, we feel compelled by the desperation of our pain to make demands, with their attendant expectations and exaggerated disappointments.

Can we feel unconditionally loved and still have expectations? Of course. In business, if I pay you to deliver a package to my door by a specific date, I will expect you do make that delivery. Even in friendship, if you promise to meet me at a certain place at a specific time, I will expect you to be there. Both expectations are reasonable, but if I feel sufficient Real Love in my life, my happiness will not depend on your filling my expectations. Then if you should fail to deliver the package on time, or fail to meet me at the appointed hour, I would not be irritated or unhappy. I might feel disappointment, but it would be only superficial in character and brief in duration.

It is simply a part of life that sometimes we will not get exactly what we want. Because people are mortal and flawed, they often will break their promises, inconvenience us, and otherwise fail us. Sometimes our plans will be obstructed in ways that won’t involve people at all: a flat tire, rain on a picnic, a malfunctioning computer, and so on.

All of these deviations from our plans are potential disappointments, but with our preparation we can determine entirely how they affect us. If we have sufficient Real Love—which we can all find, with enough faith and a little effort—we can tolerate and even thrive with a great number of these occasions where circumstances go contrary to our plans. With enough Real Love, disappointments take their proper place as minor inconveniences, rather than sources of frustration and unhappiness. As always, it’s about love, not about the people and events around us.

With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough. People who behave badly are simply reacting with Getting and Protecting Behaviors to the painful emptiness and fear that result from a lack of Real Love. When people feel enough unconditional love, they have no need to lie, get angry, hurt other people, act like victims, or withdraw from the people around them. With sufficient Real Love, fear, anger, hate, and crime disappear.

Some people are skeptical of the central role of Real Love. They suggest that it would be unrealistic to believe that in the case of criminals, for example, we could look to Real Love as an explanation of, and possible solution for, the complex set of behaviors we see in that group of people. As just one of many possible illustrations of the importance of Real Love in everyone’s life, allow me to share with you a personal experience.

Each week, my friend Michelle serves as a volunteer counselor in a women’s prison. For several hours she helps them talk about their past and present problems, in the hope that they can acquire additional skills to deal with the situations and relationships they’ll encounter when they’re released. Some time ago I presented a seminar in the town where Michelle lived, and she invited me to speak to her prison group.

As these women filled the large room where we met their facial expressions and other behaviors painted a picture of anger, despair, loneliness, resentment, and frustration. Burdened and hardened by lifetimes of pain and frustration, they dared me to say or do anything that could make the slightest difference to them.

I began to talk about Real Love: How desperately we need it, how we behave when we don’t have enough of it, and how we can find it. As they began to understand the real reasons for the behaviors that had made them miserable all their lives—the behaviors which had put them in prison—they listened intently. And then the tears began to flow from everyone in the room, which is not the usual state of affairs in a prison, where weakness is often exploited. Individual women shared their life stories, and the women around them accepted and supported them. The anger and toughness and bitterness in their faces faded away, replaced with hope.

After I left, they organized into loving groups, where women could tell the truth about themselves and feel the love of those around them. They planned to share the love they found from each other with their families upon their release from prison.

There’s no excusing or dismissing the unacceptability of the behavior that put these women in prison, but we need to go beyond our criticism and understand how they got there, what they really need, and how very much we’re like them. We all need Real Love. We all behave in similar ways when we don’t have enough love. We all have a desire to tell the truth about ourselves and be accepted and loved by those around us. We also have a desire to hear the truth about others and to accept and love them. We just need to understand the process and begin to create those opportunities. As we do that, we’ll find the happiness we’ve always wanted.