Greg's Real Love Blog

I received a visit one day from a woman named Heidi who was quite unhappy with her husband. “I don’t like the way he talks to me. I don’t like the way he acts. Sometimes I just don’t like him. Period. I get so mad at him I could . . .”

“Slap him?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “something like that.”

I asked her to describe his behavior, and it was nothing surprising: a fairly routine mix of Getting and Protecting Behaviors. Then I asked her if she had any children, and she said she had two sons, ages fifteen months and four years.

“Tell me about the fifteen-month-old,” I said. “I’m guessing that sometimes he can be a handful.”

She smiled. “He really can.”

“And when there’s something he wants, he can probably get pretty demanding—crying, stomping his feet, that kind of thing—right?”

“So you’ve raised children,” she said.

“Several. So when he gets like that, why don’t you just slap him?”

Heidi looked at me as though she hadn’t heard me quite right. “I wouldn’t hit him.”

By that time I was smiling, so she knew I was joking. “I know you wouldn’t slap him, but tell me why. After all, sometimes he acts like a real brat. He’s yelling and screaming and making life miserable for everybody.”

“But that’s not his fault,” she said. “He just hasn’t learned to talk yet. He just doesn’t know how to ask for what he wants.”

“Neither does your husband,” I said. Heidi was obviously thinking about that, so I let it sink in for a while before I continued. “I’m sure there are times when it seems like your husband acts about as mature as your son.”

“You’re right.”

“And I’m trying to help you see that neither of them knows what he’s doing. The problem is that because your husband looks like an adult, you actually expect him to act like one. But emotionally speaking, he’s not an adult. When we don’t feel sufficient Real Love in our lives, our emptiness is unbearable, and we react desperately to fill that emptiness and to protect ourselves. In that condition, we don’t think clearly. We don’t think about other people. We think and act impulsively, concerned primarily about ourselves. In short, we act like children, not adults. Instead of finding the Real Love we need, we grab for whatever bits of Imitation Love we can find, and we don’t ask nicely. We’re confused. We don’t even know what we need or how to ask for it. We just don’t know how to talk yet.”

Heidi got the point, and from that moment she began to adopt a more understanding and compassionate attitude toward her husband.

It is the goal of many of us who work with Real Love to teach as many people as possible “how to talk,” to teach them how to find Real Love instead of continuing in the patterns that have made their lives miserable. As we all learn to talk, we can finally begin to behave as adults and enjoy the fruits of this life.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

When I first read these words some four decades ago, I imagined that Robert Frost was referring to some single romantic moment in his life, when he made a choice that “made all the difference.” Perhaps he was, but now I understand that every day, with every thought and every action, we stand at a place where “two roads diverge.” In every moment we’re making choices: to go right or left, to tell the truth or to deceive, to be loving or to add to the contention in the world, to be happy or to be miserable, and so on.

Over the years I have spoken to thousands of people who have stood at a fork in the road and chosen to take the path that leads to lies, anger, and misery. Why would they do that? Why would they make such a choice when a happier course is available to them?

Finally, the answer occurred to me: The happier road—the “one less traveled by,” as Frost referred to it—really is not available to them. In order to illustrate what I mean, imagine that you’re on an important journey by foot, and you come to a fork in the road. I tell you that if you take the path to the right, you will arrive at your destination in half the time required by the path to the left. The path to the left will not only take longer but will take you through a nasty swamp and other unpleasant ordeals.

The problem with the path to the right, however, is a steep climb that begins immediately and continues for the first two miles. It turns out that you haven’t taken good care of your body for years—you’ve smoked, you’ve eaten too much, and you haven’t exercised—so you can’t climb for more than two hundred yards before you’re ready to call an ambulance. So even though the path to the right exists, it’s not really available to you.

Now let’s consider another scenario. Further along the path to the left, you encounter a shortcut that would cut your travel time by more than half. But again, even though the path exists, it’s not really available to you, this time because night has fallen, it’s quite dark, and you don’t have a flashlight with you.

Similarly, in life we are almost always surrounded by happier and wiser choices, but in many cases they are not truly available to us either because we’re simply not aware of them (as in the case of the darkness just described) or because we’ve made so many bad choices previously that we’re simply incapable of making a happy choice even when we can see one (as in the case of the lack of physical fitness).

The process of becoming loving and happy is much like the process of becoming physically fit. There are many steps between the realization of what we need to become and the accomplishment of it. And so we must begin to take the steps that lead to strength. We must do what it takes to eliminate the unavailability of the good choices in our lives. We can do this with knowledge and action. The more I study the principles of Real Love, and the more I practice finding and sharing Real Love, the more I become capable of loving the people around me and becoming happy regardless of the circumstances surrounding me. I become capable of taking whatever fork in the road I choose. As I become more loving, no path becomes too difficult, and that is true power.

Many years ago, I took my young children one day to the beach in South Carolina, where we lived at the time. After learning the indispensable art of building sand castles, they occupied themselves with delight for quite some time. At one point I wandered off a short distance while they continued their work, but before long I heard them pleading loudly for my return. I hurried back to find them frantic at the realization that the tide was coming in and beginning to lap at the edges of their beautiful creation. They had begun to build a wall around the castle, and they wanted my immediate assistance. I joined in with great vigor, and soon we had created a most impressive barrier that they assumed would keep out any threat.

As you might imagine, however, our wall did not intimidate the tide, which continued to inch its way up the beach. Despite our continued efforts, and especially my children’s inspiring exertions—I had never seen them clean their rooms with such energy!—the incoming flow of the sea steadily chewed up our wall, then the edges of the castle, and then collapsed the structure entirely.

My children were crushed. They wept. And for several moments I allowed them to experience the natural grief of losing something they had worked hard to create. But then I said, “I really had fun building that castle with you. Did you have fun building it?”

With that shift of focus, their look of grief began to disappear as they nodded their heads slightly.

I jumped up from the sand and said, “I’m going to go and find some crabs. Who’s going with me?”

In an instant the kids were running behind me, the memories of the broken castle already fading behind them.

When my children wept, why did I not grieve with them? Because I had a different perspective than they did. I realized that there would be other castles, other days. I knew that in the grand scheme the castle mattered very little, so I didn’t get caught up in their short-sightedness. But I didn’t mock their perspective. I just helped them see the value in the joy we had experienced together while building the castle, and then I moved on to the next experience we would enjoy as a family.

The next time we went to the beach, I explained how the tide came in and out twice each day and pointed out where the high tide left a line on the beach. I reminded them of our experience with the last sand castle and suggested some lessons we could learn from that experience. We could build our castle higher than the high tide line, for example. Or we could build at a time when the tide was going out. Our we could build the castle as we did before and simply accept the coming in of the tide as part of the fun of the experience.

In short, I didn’t get caught up in my children’s emotions because I had faith that they would learn from their experience and broaden their perspective. It is for the same reason that I avoid getting caught up in the emotional trauma of adults who are ensnared by their victimhood or their anger or whatever else is destroying their happiness. This is an important concept for anyone to understand when they are listening to unhappy people who are describing the details of their situations.

On many occasions people who are gaining experience in Real Love have asked me some variation on this question: “I’ve learned that once you allow yourself to become too emotionally involved with the person who is talking to you, you can’t really see them or love them. So how do you become more detached while you’re loving someone?”

The answer is that you don’t become more detached. The key is to achieve a condition far more profound and effective than that. When people come to me unhappy and emotionally disturbed, I don’t detach from them, just as I didn’t detach from my children when they wept over the loss of their sand castle. I simply try to see their situation in its true perspective, love them, support them, teach them where possible, and have faith that with enough love and support they will eventually broaden their perspective and lose their pain. I have faith that eventually they’ll realize that with enough Real Love and experience all their problems are little more than sand castles. This is not just wishful thinking on my part. I have seen so many people banish the unhappiness in their lives as they have grown in love and wisdom that my faith has been amply confirmed.

Every day all around us there are sand castles being eroded by the incoming tide. There will always be crises. There will always be grief and pain. We can’t change that. What we can change—what we can learn to choose—is the way we perceive the sand castles in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. We can choose to no longer live in a state of constant panic and pain but instead to look for the broader and truer perspective. We can choose to learn and grow and find the love and joy that are available in every experience.

A man named Martin recently came to see me to talk about his wife. “I’m so frustrated with her,” he said. “She’s angry and demanding, and I’m tired of it.”

“You’re frustrated with her,” I said, “only because you don’t understand her.”

“What?” he said.

“Anger is always a response to fear,” I said, “and you’re not appreciating how much her fear is distorting everything she’s seeing and affecting how she’s behaving. If you don’t understand her fear, you won’t understand her at all.”

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with my frustration.”

“Do you work with computers?”

“Sure, quite a bit. You already know that.”

“Have you ever had a virus in your computer?”

“Yes.”

“And how did it affect your computer.”

“It corrupted everything. I couldn’t work with my software, and I couldn’t get access to my files.”

“So while you had the virus, did you try to work with the files on your computer?”

“No, it was impossible.”

“What did you do?”

“I had to get the help of a technical consultant to remove the virus.”

“Exactly. Why?”

“Because until I removed the virus, nothing on the computer would work right.”

“And that’s how it is with your wife.”

“How do you mean?”

“When she’s afraid, it’s like she has an emotional virus. It affects everything. When she’s afraid, she sees everything as a threat, and all of her responses become Protecting Behaviors designed to protect herself. She criticizes you, makes demands of you, get angry at you, and so on, all to give her a sense of greater power. And while she’s infected with this virus, you expect her to behavior normally—to treat you nicely.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“With your computer, you removed the virus before you tried to work with the computer, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why not do the same with your wife? Do whatever it takes to eliminate her fear before you expect her to do anything else.”

“And how do I eliminate her fear?”

“Fear is a response to the absence of love,” I said, “so you need to learn to love her better. That will take time and practice, but you have lots of time and plenty of opportunities to practice. Mostly you need to make the decision that you’ll learn to love her better and reduce her fears instead of criticizing her for reacting to her fears. Are you willing to do that?”

Martin decided that he would take responsibility for introducing more Real Love into his marriage, and that marked the beginning of significant changes in his marriage. Fear is a virus that distorts everything we see and do. In the presence of fear, people cannot behave in loving or sensible ways. When people behave badly, we must recognize that love is the one power that will eliminate the virus of fear and make it possible for them to return to emotional and spiritual health.