Real Love: The Truth about Finding Unconditional Love & Fulfilling Relationships

by Greg Baer

Sadly, it’s a common pattern: If we become unhappy in our relationships, we turn our partners into scapegoats for everything we don’t like, and we blame them for all the unhappiness in our lives, including the unhappiness we carried with us for the many years before we even met them. But we are mistaken to blame our partners for our negative feelings. It’s just the excuse we use because we feel bad, we don’t know why, and we need someone other than ourselves to blame. Until we understand that, we cannot learn to have truly loving and lasting relationships.

And so it is with relationships. When we’re unhappy, our misery is not the fault of our partner. Blaming that person is therefore foolish, wasteful, and destructive, because no matter how much we demand or insist, he or she cannot make us happy. We’re unhappy because we’re starving for the one ingredient that’s most essential to genuine happiness, and it was missing long before we met our partner. That ingredient—the one thing that creates happiness and fulfilling relationships—is Real Love, unconditional love. It’s that simple. When we learn what Real Love is, and when we find it, our unhappiness disappears just as surely as hunger vanishes in the presence of food. Loving relationships then become natural and effortless. But most of us have not experienced Real Love. As a result, we’re emotionally and spiritually starving and are unable to make each other happy, no matter how hard we try.

Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves. When we give Real Love, we’re not disappointed, hurt, or angry, even when people are thoughtless or inconsiderate or give us nothing in return—including gratitude—because our concern is for their happiness, not our own. Real Love is unconditional.

Real Love is unconditionally caring about the happiness of another person.

Sadly, few of us have either given or received that kind of love, and without it we experience a terrible void in our lives, which we try to fill with money, power, food, approval, sex, and entertainment. But no matter how much of those substitutes we acquire, we remain empty, alone, afraid, and angry, because the one thing we really need is Real Love. Without it, we can only be miserable; with it, our happiness is guaranteed. When

Real happiness is not the feeling we get from being entertained or making people do what we want. Genuine happiness is a profound and lasting sense of peace and fulfillment that deeply satisfies and enlarges the soul. It doesn’t go away when circumstances get difficult. It survives and even grows through hardship and struggle. True happiness is our entire reason to live, and that kind of happiness can only be obtained as we find Real Love and share it with others. With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough.

We all have a deep yearning to feel connected to each other, and when that connection is missing, we are terrified.

In addition, when we know that even one person loves us unconditionally, we feel a connection to everyone else. We feel included in the family of all mankind, of which that one person is a part.

I make that suggestion because in an atmosphere of skepticism and fear, you cannot experience Real Love, even when it’s offered.

With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough.

And it’s true that we sometimes do have the responsibility to teach and correct people—children and employees, for example. But that never has to be done with disappointment and anger, the two signs that always reveal that our true motivation is to get something for ourselves—and that is not Real Love.

When we love people unconditionally, we accept them as they are and contribute to their happiness as wisely as we can.

Real Love is “I care how you feel.” Conditional love is “I like how you make me feel.”

Fortunately, there are two reliable signs that love is not genuine: disappointment and anger. Every time we frown, sigh with disappointment, speak harshly, or in any way express our anger at other people, we’re communicating that we’re not getting what we want. At least in that moment, we are not caring for our partner’s happiness, but only for our own. Our partner then senses our selfishness and feels disconnected from us and alone, no matter what we say or do.

If you’re feeling disappointed or angry with your partner, it’s a sure sign you’re not unconditionally loving him or her.

although we like to believe otherwise, because we have received conditional love from others all our lives, that’s what we tend to give to those around us. We naturally pass on what we were given.

Understanding is a simple, realistic assessment of how things are, but blame implies anger, which can only be harmful to both yourself and others.

you are now responsible for the decisions that will make you loving and happy, and if you continue to be resentful and angry, you will not make wise decisions in the present.

When people don’t get enough unconditional love as children, they feel terribly empty and afraid. People who feel empty and afraid can’t be happy, and they can’t have loving relationships, because they’re too busy filling their own needs and protecting themselves. You hoped your husband would love you unconditionally, but he couldn’t because he’d never been unconditionally loved himself. He, in turn, hoped you would unconditionally love him, but you couldn’t, either, because you hadn’t been unconditionally loved in your childhood. Neither of you had the love that’s required to make a successful relationship. So you tried to make each other happy with other things: praise, sex, money, control, things like that. But those things never last for long.”

You can’t build a solid house on a rotten, shifting foundation. But if you were not unconditionally loved as a child, that’s the kind of foundation you have, and no effort you put into the walls, windows, and doors will ever be fulfilling. You have to fix the foundation. Fortunately, as you find Real Love now, you can heal all the wounds of the past, repair the foundation, and build the kind of life you’ve always wanted.

Other people hurt us only because they’re reacting badly to the pain of feeling unloved and alone.

Most relationships fail because we become angry and blame our anger on something our partner did or did not do. We need to remember that our anger is actually a reaction to the feelings of helplessness and fear that result from a lifetime of struggling to survive without unconditional love. Getting angry and assigning blame may give us a fleeting sense of power that momentarily relieves our fear, but those feelings originate within us, not with our partner’s behavior.

When the man dragged you under the water, he did not cause your angry reaction. Your anger was the result of a series of many events that led to your drowning in the ocean, and also a result of your own decision to blame that man for drowning you. You weren’t murderously angry with the man in the water because of a single tug on your shoulder. You were angry because you’d been spit out in the middle of the ocean with no chance for survival and because you were exhausted and frightened and about to die. What the other man did just added the last straw to the camel’s back and appeared to be the cause of your anger.

Similarly, the anger we feel toward our partners results from past events (whether or not we felt Real Love—mostly from our parents) and present decisions (whether we choose to be angry or loving with our partners). We’re reacting to a lifetime of trying to survive without unconditional love, and anger is an understandable response because it makes us feel less helpless and afraid—for the moment. I...

We attempt to fill our emptiness with whatever feels good in the moment. We use money, the conditional “love” of others, anger, sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, and so on, all of which are variations of only four general things: praise, power, pleasure, and safety. When we pursue these things as substitutes for Real Love, they all become forms of Imitation Love.

people who feel unconditionally loving don’t require gratitude for the things they do. Their concern is for the happiness of other people.

Without Real Love, we’re already in the worst kind of pain, and we’ll go to great lengths to keep ourselves safe from experiencing more pain. If we can’t have genuine acceptance, we can at least do everything in our power to avoid more disapproval. One way to minimize the risk of criticism and pain is to avoid doing anything unfamiliar. So we stay in the same boring, dead-end jobs, attempt to learn nothing new, and continue in stagnant, unrewarding—but predictable—relationships. When we’re not being actively injured by something or someone, we confuse that safety with real happiness.

We’ve learned from countless experiences that when we inconvenience people with our mistakes, they tend to express their disappointment and anger toward us. We then feel less loved and more alone, the feelings that terrify us the most. To keep that from happening, we lie about our mistakes. We hide who we really are.

If you watch two people in conversation, you’ll see that each of them is carefully and unconsciously studying the other for any hint of disapproval—a forehead wrinkling into a frown, an eyebrow lifting into an expression of doubt, a corner of the mouth turning down, a change in tone of voice—and when that happens, the speaker immediately modifies what he or she is saying until all those signs of disapproval disappear. In most cases we don’t even know we’re doing this. However, that modification of what we say and do to please other people is lying—because we don’t tell our partners that we’re trying to get them to like us (lying as a Getting Behavior) and protect ourselves from their disapproval (lying as a Protecting Behavior).

In addition to anger, we attack by making people feel guilty, criticizing them, withdrawing approval, physically intimidating them, and using our positions of authority at work, at home, and elsewhere, all in order to get Imitation Love and to protect ourselves from fear.

We use Getting Behaviors to fill our emptiness: lying, attacking, acting like a victim, and clinging. We use Protecting Behaviors to eliminate our fear: lying, attacking, acting like a victim, and running.

But the costs of using those behaviors are much greater. Lying, being angry, and manipulating people for attention take a lot of work. And after all that effort, the satisfaction is gone in an instant. The effects of Imitation Love are brief, and then we have to start earning it all over again.

Our primary intent is not to hurt other people or do anything wrong; our real goal is only to eliminate our own emptiness, fear, and pain.

It’s a huge waste of time, energy, and happiness to wallow in excessive guilt when we make mistakes. How much more productive it is to simply see our mistakes clearly and learn from them. In most cases, the problem is a lack of Real Love,

we need to exercise our own self-control in changing our behavior, something we’ll talk about in several subsequent chapters.

Until a child—or an adult—is utterly convinced that he or she is loved unconditionally, even a small amount of doubt or fear is sufficient to destroy the effect of many moments of acceptance and safety.

Again, I choose to believe that our parents gave us the best they had. If they didn’t give us Real Love, it was only because they didn’t receive it themselves and were empty and afraid. They were so preoccupied with their own needs and fears that they were unable to genuinely care about our happiness. But the result, intentional or not, is that we are then unable to give Real Love to our own children and others, and so the cycle continues, from one generation to the next, until we learn how to change our behaviors.

We don’t realize that when we say we love our partner because of some particular characteristic or behavior, we’re also indicating that we expect him or her to maintain that characteristic or behavior in order to retain our love. Our expression of love is often an expression of expectation, and if our partner lets us down, we become disappointed or irritated and demonstrate the conditional nature of our love.

Even when we feel unloved and unhappy, it is always our responsibility to learn what we can do to change our choices. And as we make wiser choices in our lives, we will be able to avoid the unproductive decisions of the past and will find the love and happiness we seek.

Like the Wart King, most of us have learned from experience that people express their affection far less when they see our many mistakes and flaws, especially the ones that inconvenience them. So we lie by hiding our flaws, which enables us to avoid criticism; but doing that also makes it impossible for people to see who we really are.

Real Love can only be felt when it’s freely offered and received.

Only when we set aside our Getting and Protecting Behaviors and tell the truth about ourselves can we create an opportunity for others to see us as we really are. Only when we are seen can we feel genuinely accepted and believe that other people truly care about our happiness, which is the definition of Real Love.

when we tell the truth about ourselves, especially about our mistakes and flaws—can we feel unconditionally accepted and loved. The effect of Real Love is miraculous, even when we feel accepted and loved for only short periods of time: We lose our emptiness and fear, and when that happens, we gradually lose our need for those self-destructive Getting and Protecting Behaviors. Once we’ve tasted the Real thing, Imitation Love no longer has the same power to seduce and distract us, and we’re finally able to share the love we have with others and participate in loving relationships.

People who tell the truth, while not worrying about the consequences, understanding and observing

The best way to become familiar with Real Love is, quite simply, to experience it consistently so you get to know what When you tell the truth about yourself, you create the opportunity to find someone who will unconditionally accept you, just as the Wise Man did for the Wart King: Truth → Seen → Accepted → Loved it feels like.

The absence of disappointment, anger, and fear. As we discussed in Chapter One, disappointment and anger indicate that we’re concerned for our own happiness, not that of our partner. When we have these feelings, we can’t be giving Real Love to anyone. When people are empty and afraid, they can only be concerned about what others will do for them or to them. They can’t be concerned for the genuine happiness of anyone else.

The most fundamental principle of all relationships is the Law of Choice, which states that everyone has the right to choose what he or she says and does. Nothing is more important than our ability to make independent choices for ourselves. Imagine what our lives would be like if that right were taken from us. We wouldn’t be individuals at all, only meaningless tools in the hands of those who made our choices for us. A relationship is the natural result of people making independent choices.

Relationships can only be the result of the choices we’ve already made.

“You want a fourth choice, which would be to stop him from being a pig, but that’s not your choice to make, because it would be violating Tyler’s right to choose. Even when what we want is good, and other people make bad choices, we can’t make them do what we want. You only get to make choices that involve your own behavior.”

relationships aren’t based on what we want; they’re determined by the choices each of us has already made individually.