The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

by Neil Strauss

Except if married men have mid-life crises, men who haven’t ever truly been able to commit have no-life crises. And if they’re able to see clearly for even just a moment, they start to realize that they’re losing more than they’re gaining each day they remain stalled on the scenic road of growing up.

I don’t know. But what I can do that they didn’t is make the choice to be honest, to communicate my vulnerabilities with Ingrid, and to get support if I’m struggling.

But love is not like roulette. You can’t bet on a spread.

“I told him I needed time to decide. He threw my love away when he wanted to have fun and now that he’s dying, he wants me back? I’m scared it’s going to be too painful to get close to him again and then lose him again.”

“You set out to do something and you did it. You accomplished everything you ever wanted. You had every single kind of sexual adventure and relationship you ever dreamed of. And you’re still not happy or fulfilled.”

“Because in order to return to homeostasis and have any clarity on who you are and what you need, you have to detox from the intensity of these one-up, one-down relationships. You’ve been through a constant cycle of intensity, from your relationship with your mother all the way up to your relationship with Sage.” She pauses to order a glass of wine, and for some reason I’m surprised, as if drinking is taboo for addiction therapists. “You’ll find that being committed to your authentic life supersedes the intensity.”

For a love avoidant, I’ve done a good job of constantly having some sort of girlfriend for the last eight years. Maybe that’s because there’s no better place to hide from intimacy than in a relationship.

“In life, we are born innocent and pure, beautiful and honest, and in a state of oneness with each moment. As we develop, however, our caregivers and others load us with baggage. Some of us keep accumulating more and more baggage until we become burdened by all the weight, trapped in beliefs and behaviors that keep us stuck. But the true purpose of life is to divest yourself of that baggage and become light and pure again. You’ve been searching for freedom this whole time. That is true freedom.”

The underlying cause of most unfulfilled lives is that we are simply too close to ourselves to see clearly enough to get out of our own way.

Masturbate when you want to break the rules of your relationship or your celibacy agreement—and you’ll soon discover that once your desires are fulfilled in your imagination, the need to live them out in real life suddenly doesn’t seem so urgent. Once the brain’s reward center has gotten its hit of dopamine, it doesn’t need another one—at least not for a little while.

The only problem is that after the orgasm, I’m still stuck with myself—and my mistakes.

“That’s the sad thing for women,” he says afterward, shaking his head. “You can’t be perfect enough for a man not to want to cheat.”

“So is it hard for you to be faithful?” I press. “Not exactly. I would never be unfaithful. But in relationships, I feel limited because I’m missing out on other things. It’s a bit tragic. You can be with someone that you really, really like and still feel a bit sad that you can’t have anything else.” “So you get depressed because you feel trapped?” “More or less.”

The person who is too smart to love is truly an idiot.

“Have you ever, even before your affair, been happy and content with your wife?”

This is a behavior that’s been passed down for generations. And it only takes one courageous person to stop the cycle of silent suffering and sacrifice.” “But how?” He seems genuinely stumped. “By being true to yourself. People always ask how supposedly good German people could have been complicit in the atrocities of the Nazi regime. And one part of the answer is: the family system. Children in that time were taught to be obedient to their fathers, that Father is always right, and that they must make sacrifices for the parents to whom they owe their entire existence.”

Finally, Adam crosses his arms over his chest, opens his mouth, and, to everyone in the room’s surprise, repeats Lorraine’s every word. Calvin and I stare at him slack-jawed. And this is the moment when I finally understand why I had such a hard time committing to Ingrid after rehab: Even when we see the truth, trauma still prevents us from reaching it, like a rockslide blocking the road to our future.

“is it possible to live your authentic life if you have inauthentic people around you?”

“Why don’t you think about all the different ways women get in touch with you and all the ways you seek them out, and seal those doors shut permanently?”

Because, as I witnessed on ecstasy, the feeling that I’m not acceptable as I am is so fucking overwhelming that I’m terrified to let go and just be myself with anyone.

‘You worked on the farm because you felt like you should; your brother came back to work on the farm out of choice. And that is the more meaningful of the two.’” She pauses and lets it sink in for all of us. “Love is something about a person, some connection with them, that makes you willing to change.”

Only after you’ve learned how to be alone without loneliness will you be ready for a relationship.”

I wondered in Peru what love was. That is love. It’s when two (or more) hearts build a safe emotional, mental, and spiritual home that will stand strong no matter how much anyone changes on the inside or the outside. It demands only one thing and expects only one thing: that each person be his or her own true self. Everything else we attach to love is just a personal strategy, be it effective or ineffective, for trying to manage our anxiety about coming so close to something so powerful and uncontrollable.

It’s like zoning out, except there’s nowhere to zone out to. It’s as if there’s nothing in my head. I don’t even know if I feel good or bad. I’m beyond good and bad. I just am.

When I try to sleep at night, my breathing seems light, like it’s not filling my lungs with the oxygen they need. My heartbeat seems faint, like it might stop at any time. My mind seems slow, as if my neurons are degenerating and I’m drifting into a painless death. I’ve finally emptied out. I’ve Forrest Gumped myself. I am truly in anhedonia—if not in a void beyond it.

“You have your own internal therapist that is far wiser than any external therapist you could consult. You just need to find that voice and listen to it.”

So before going to bed that night, I put the photo in a frame and place it next to my bed. And I vow that from this day forward, that child will be protected. He will be loved. He will be accepted. He will be trusted. And all this will be given unconditionally. He will not be taught to hate and fear. He will not be criticized for failing to live up to unrealistic expectations. He will not be used as a Kleenex or aspirin for someone else’s feelings of loneliness, fear, depression, or anxiety.

Suddenly I realize that the dichotomy between the false self and the authentic self that all these recovery people talk about is meaningless. It’s a value judgment that’s impossible to determine. A better way to think about it is the destructive self and the creative self: the you that damages your life and the lives of others, and the you that brings forth the best in yourself, is connected to others, and is in harmony with the world around you.

Where before I was anxious, frenetic, and nervous, now I’m more present, still, accepting. I’m hardly a Buddhist monk, but I’m more at peace with the world and with myself.

“How you do anything is how you do everything,”

“Do you see now that the way you choose to live your life affects everything about it? A cheat here and there is not just a cheat here and there. It’s a break in the continuum of who you are and the person you are in the world.”

I mean now when I tell you the secret to being faithful.” “What’s that?” “Don’t trade long-term happiness for short-term pleasure.”

“Think of intimacy as a fire,” he continues. “The more logs you add to it, the bigger it gets. And the bigger it gets, the less you want to throw water on it.” “My problem before was that the bigger the fire got, the more I wanted to throw water on it. I was so scared it would consume me.”

I’ve worked hard on who I am and on becoming a better person. And I’ve learned that with love, anything can bloom. But with ambivalence and fear, a living thing will die. So no one who truly loves and is loved can ever be in a cage.”

They place people on a graph divided into four quadrants, running from low anxiety to high anxiety on the x-axis and high avoidance to low avoidance on the y-axis. Each quadrant determines a different attachment style: High avoidance and high anxiety would be fearful-avoidant attachment, similar to love avoidance; high anxiety and low avoidance would be preoccupied attachment, similar to love addiction; high avoidance and low anxiety would be dismissing attachment, a more extreme form of love avoidance in which relationships are rejected almost altogether because no partner is perceived as worthy.

No matter what the situation may be, the right course of action is always compassion and love. “I flew in to talk to you. Can you just open the door?” I want to hide. I want to run. I can’t let this get in the way of my plans. But there are plans and then there is life. And life trumps plans every time. “What are you doing here?” I ask as empathically as I can.

As long as at least one partner is in the adult functional at any given time, most—if not all—arguments can be avoided.

Recognize when you are backsliding into a childish or adolescent behavior. Then pinpoint what old story is being triggered and tell yourself the truth of the situation. Let go of the lie.

Accept what is.

Instead of saying “I’m never going to cheat again,” say, “Today, I’m not going to do that thing that makes me feel weak and shameful about myself again.”

Perhaps the corollary to Rick’s secret is that the fantasy of other people is almost always better than the reality.

You can’t have a relationship with someone hoping they’ll change. You have to be willing to commit to them as they are, with no expectations. And if they happen to choose to change at some point along the way, then that’s just a bonus.

Communicate and maintain healthy boundaries. This means finding the proper balance of filtering and protecting your self, thoughts, feelings, time, and behaviors without either closing off behind walls, or becoming overwhelmed or overwhelming.

Until recently, this was my nightmare: having to meet other people’s expectations—especially when doing what’s right for me hurts someone else’s feelings. But it was her choice to come here, so there’s nothing to feel guilty about. This is my chance to implement the boundaries I’ve learned, to enforce them when they’re trespassed so I don’t feel enmeshed, to break old habits and reinforce new ones.

8. Ask yourself throughout the day, “What do I need to do in this moment to take care of myself?” If you can be aware of what legitimate needs and wants you’re not attending to, and then take actions to meet them on your own—or ask your partner for help if you can’t—that is the road to happiness.

9. No one can make you feel anything and you don’t make anyone feel a certain way. So don’t take on responsibility for your partner’s feelings and don’t blame your partner for yours. The most caring thing to do when they’re upset is simply to ask if they want you to listen, to give advice, to give them space, or to give them loving touch.

Love, honor, and affirm yourself. Whatever your decisions, actions, feelings, and thoughts throughout the day may be and whatever outcome they may lead to, if you are healthy, then they are ultimately healthy.

but I’ve removed what was psychological: the fear of loving, the terror of being loved, the compulsion to cheat, the cowardice of lying, the weak sense of self, the pathological accommodation, and all the defense mechanisms that kept this system in place and me too blind to see it.

I am back in the reality of relationships, where partners “bend the rules” and tell “little white lies” to get their needs met. The ideal I’ve been striving for is not the way people have relationships in the real world.

I actually have gone out and designed a new type of relationship. Yet not one in which I get to fuck all the women I want, as I’d hoped, but one in which I live in truth and without fear or guilt.