How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

by David Richo

A relationship can force us to revisit every feeling and memory in the legend of ourselves. In our psychological work of addressing, processing, and resolving emotional blocks and problems, we pay attention to feelings, explore their implications, and hold them until they change or reveal a path that leads deeper into ourselves. In our spiritual practice of mindfulness, something very different occurs. We let feelings or thoughts arise and let go of them. We do not process them, nor do we hold them. Each of these approaches has its proper time, and we need both of them. Paying attention and letting go are the twin tools that will be presented throughout these pages. Therapy without mindfulness takes us only to the point of resolving our predicament. Mindfulness with therapy helps us to dissolve the ego that got us into it in the first place.

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But once we commit ourselves to experience divested of ego wishes and attachments, we begin to act straightforwardly, becoming truthful with one another. We relax into the moment, and it becomes a source of immense curiosity. We do not have to do anything. We do not have to search in our bag of ego toys for something to face the moment with. We do not have to put our dukes up. We do not have to become the pawns of our fixations or our fixed conceptions of reality. We do not have to find a pigeonhole. We do not have to go on the defensive or devise a comeback. We can simply let things unfold, attending to reality as it is and staying through it as we are. This is a lot more relaxing than our habitual reactions, and we use the original equipment of the human psyche rather than the artificial contraptions concocted by ego over the centuries. This is why mindfulness is also called waking up. A

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Being a fair witness requires a healthy ego, because distance and objectivity are unavailable to someone with poor boundaries, no tolerance of ambiguity, and no sense of a personal center. Meditation may be threatening to someone who is unstable and in need of mirroring, the reassuring and validating reflection of one’s feelings by another person (see chapter 2). The Buddha’s ruthless commitment to acknowledging impermanence will be terrifying and destructive to someone without a firm foundation as a separate and autonomous and intelligently protected self. Finally, the call to live in the present comes at the wrong time for someone who needs first to explore the past and be free of its stubborn grip. This is why both psychological work for individuation and spiritual practice for egolessness will always be required as dual requisites

The desire for attention is not a desire for an audience but for a listener. Attention means focusing on you with respect, not with contempt or ridicule. When you are given attention, your intuitions are treated as if they matter. You are taken seriously. You are given credit when it is due. Your feelings have such high value to those who love you that they are on the lookout for them. They even look for the feelings you are afraid to know and gently inquire whether you want to show them. When others give you attention, they also confront you directly when they are displeased, harboring no secret anger or grudges. But they always do this with respect and a sincere desire to keep the lines of communication open.

Part of the pain of letting go of someone who really loved you is letting go of being loved in that special way.

Most controlling people cannot help themselves; they are not in control of the controlling. They are not insulting us by trying to control us; rather, they automatically take charge and dominate people and situations. They do this because of a chilling fear that they cannot handle letting the chips fall where they may. It takes a spiritual program to be liberated from the compulsion to be controlling and to become compassionate toward controlling people. A higher power than ego has to kick in, because

• Fear of or worry about situation or of this person: “I perceive a threat in you or am afraid you may not like me so I am on the defensive.” • Desire that this moment or person will meet our demands or expectations, grant us our needed emotional supplies, or fulfill our wishes: “I am trying to get something from this or you.” • Judgment can take the form of admiration, criticism, humor, moralism, positive or negative bias, censure, labeling, praise, or blame: “I am caught up in my own opinion about you or this.” • Control happens when we force our own view or plan on someone else: “I am attached to a particular outcome and am caught in the need to fix, persuade, advise, or change you.” • Illusion overrides reality and may occur as denial, projection, fantasy, hope, idealization, depreciation, or wish: “I have a mental picture of or belief about you or this and it obscures what you are really like.” (The central illusion in life is that of separateness.) Any

The practice sections in this book consist mainly of leading questions meant to challenge you to face and admit your own truth. They are meant to be answered in your journal and, when appropriate, aloud to your partner. If specific agreements for change can emerge from the responses, so much the better. But do your own work only. Do not attempt to design your partner’s program of change or even judge what she should do or say.

The practices show us our vast potential to be healthy adults who know how to love. They also show us where our constrictions in and resistance to love may be lurking. The practices raise our self-esteem as we observe ourselves activating our potential for love and letting go of our barriers to it. No matter how inadequate or flawed we imagine ourselves to be, we have it in us to find wholeness. The words and practices in this book offer moments of repair and new adjustments that can make pain less impinging or intimidating.

Finally, be sure to notice your bodily sensations as you read this book and work through the practices. They tell you so much about where your work may be, what holds you back, and what holds you.

LETTING GO OF CONTROL • Healthy control means ordering our lives in responsible ways—for example, by maintaining control of a car or our health. Neurotic control means acting on the compulsive need to make everything and everyone comply with our wishes. Control is what we decided to seek when we noticed the implacable givens of our existence and felt helpless in the face of them. We were not yet able to say, “I will stay with this predicament and see what it has to offer me. I notice I seem to get stronger this way.” Saying yes to our experience in this mindful way leads to empowerment. Can you make a decision, a commitment to be less controlling and to dedicate yourself to this as your present project?

I see my partner in these same old ways: Angry at men Neurotic Unable to handle her anxiety and her rage I believe s/ he will never change these behaviors: Untrusting Anger and anxiety when she believes she is wrong or at fault

As long as we believe a partner to be the same as always or to be what we imagine her to be, we operate from that image and not from consciousness of her needs. We can change this mental habit by giving her the five A’s and really hearing her needs. A person who knows we have pigeonholed her in our minds will not trust us and will therefore not show us her needs.

identify the need behind each of these and ask him to hear it. For instance, behind the desire to be listened to may lie the need for authentic attentiveness, an undistracted focus on your words and feelings with respect and sincere appreciation.

FEELING LOVED • Begin this exercise by recalling memories of feeling loved in childhood, and notice any connections to the kinds of love you seek as an adult. Then ask your partner what feels like love to him and share what it feels like to you. You may not feel loved by someone who truly loves you because she shows it in ways you do not understand as love. This is like hearing a foreign language and presuming it is gibberish.

What feels like love to me? An appreciation for what I do, and my kind gestures. Who makes me feel that way? Shevira when she tells people how much I do or how I fix things. Do I feel loved in bodily resonant ways by my partner? Yes. When she hugs me, hugs are special to me. Who was the first person in my life to make me feel loved? Have I thanked him/ her enough? Can I tell my partner what feels like love to me? Yes Can I ask her the same question? Yes What will I do with the information? Give her love in that way. Is the love I offer childlike, parental, or adult? Adult Is the love I seek childlike, parental, or adult? Adult When we feel little or no love coming our way, we may look for proof of love. The more proofs we seek, the more our partner feels threatened, tested, and on the spot. Am I in either of these positions? Tested and on the spot

In some abusive relationships we feel we cannot live without the other. When drama is all we know, we imagine that’s what relating is all about. We may train our partners to play our unique game of drama and uproar, which may take the form of continual abandonments and reconciliations, seductive and then withholding behavior, argumentativeness, triangulation, infidelity addiction, and so on. When things are quiet and running smoothly, we may feel bored, even insecure.

Mindfully loving partners never consciously engage in hurtful behaviors toward one another. They police themselves and place under arrest all the pilferers from the ever so pregnable hope chest of intimacy: vendetta, violence, ridicule, sarcasm, teasing, insult, lying, competition, punishment, and shaming.

Lack of this from others Can be a door to Attention Looking within myself Acceptance Exploration of both positive and negative aspects of my shadow self Allowing freedom Finding my own deepest needs, values, and wishes and taking responsibility for living in accord with them Appreciation Cherishing myself and the Self that embraces me and all the world Affection Unconditional love for myself and others, the generosity to love before I am loved—in other words, true initiative

Our ego searches for love, but we are meant to find love within ourselves first. Once we have done that, we can reach out to others as rich people looking to share the wealth, not as paupers seeking to commandeer it.