The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

by Neil Strauss

I used to think I was a good person, but how could a good person do something so reprehensible? The answer: compartmentalization. The act of putting shameful activities in a small sealed box in our brain, where they remain safely hidden, even from our own intelligence and conscience.

I’m worried that this is a mistake. As my grandmother used to say: You can’t change a person unless they’re in diapers.

Without the intensity to keep them busy, the common enemy to unite them, or the obstacles to intensify their longing, these legendary lovers now face the biggest challenge of all: dealing with each other—and the differences, be they great or slight, in their values, upbringings, opinions, personalities, expectations, preferences, and imperfections. Especially when the aftermath of every such adventure is trauma.

Love is not an accident. It is a delicate union of two complex, complementary puzzle pieces that have inadvertently been created by different manufacturers.

the unconscious purpose of a long-term relationship is to finish childhood.

As I slide the keys around the elephant, I finally understand what the true intimacy that Joan spoke about in rehab actually is: It’s when partners stop living in the past—in their trauma history—and start having a relationship with each other in the present moment. Love, it turns out, is not something to be learned. It’s something we already have, and we must unlearn in order to access it.

The moment is so perfect, but like everything perfect, it is fragile.

“I didn’t know then that I couldn’t still love you and sneak around behind your back. I didn’t understand. But I understand now.”

The beautiful solemnity of the ritual is shattering. But this is what it means to tell the truth: It is to give someone else her freedom, to allow her to have a reaction even if it leads to negative consequences for you, to give her the voice that lying takes away.

In the past, I’ve had a remarkable gift for turning even the most minor manifestation of fear or disapproval from my partner into a personal catastrophe. But instead, I use the four adjustments to turn shame into reassurance. Shame is about being bad for someone; reassurance is about being good to yourself. And not only does it make more sense to respond with compassion instead of criticism, it’s also much easier on everyone involved. It may be the key to a longer, happier life.

As Lorraine once put it, recovery is not about perpetually living in joy and harmony, but about shortening the time it takes to return there when you inevitably fuck it up. And for this reason, I’m grateful for the opportunity that every conflict Ingrid and I have provides to practice this.

Most love stories are about two people who belong together, but are blocked by an obstacle keeping them apart: their cultures, their social standing, their families, a rival lover, a manipulating villain, an unexpected tragedy. But in real life, love stories are more complex. People want love, but after they get it, they become scared or bored or uncertain or resentful. And when they get pain instead of love, they don’t leave. They cling to it more strongly than they would to pleasure. And so in life, the real obstacle keeping two lovers apart is not external. The battle to be fought is within.

love is not about finding the right person. It’s about becoming the right person.

“These are the Good Keys, the ones you keep,” the note reads. “The Love Key is to remind you that you are worthy of love and you always have access to my love. The Heart Key is the key to the biggest heart on earth: yours. The Life Key is the key to opening our lives for each other. And the Journey Key is for the path to our happiness.” While reading these beautiful words, I notice the complete absence of my old feelings: suffocation from her love, doubt that I have a good heart, fear of opening our lives to each other, and anxiety about her expectations of me. Instead, every word rings like truth. Neither haunted by the past nor worried about the future, I’m finally grateful for the present.

It turns out that relationships don’t require sacrifices. They just require growing up—and the ability to stop clinging to immature needs that are so tenacious, they keep the mature needs from getting met.

As I take her hand in mine, I realize that before trauma healing, I always wanted more—more women, more success, more money, more space, more experience, more possessions. Not once did I stop and say, as I do now, “I have enough.”

“You didn’t come from a loving family. I didn’t come from a loving family. But now we have a chance to make a loving family together.”

Lately, I’ve started thinking of the things my parents didn’t do perfectly as variables that make me an individual rather than as trauma that makes me a patient. It’s not healthy to walk through life identifying oneself as a victim and others as perpetrators.

And I accept the fact that she is too old to change. One day soon, she won’t be here anymore.

In the notes about love that I compiled during anhedonia, one of the most important was not to date someone hoping she’ll change. So perhaps I can apply the lesson to my relationship with her also and accept her as the person she is, not the one I’d like her to be, and be grateful that she loved me as much as she knew how.

“It’s tragic. The wounds that humans get are so strong that they’re like robots operating on childhood programming. And even if they learn the truth about themselves in therapy and rehab, they still cling to their false beliefs and make choices that don’t serve them—over and over again.”

“You know, I think I blew it up into too big a deal. I hate to say this, but Joan was right: I was just throwing intellectual barriers in my way to avoid being vulnerable and committed.” In a big, connected world, it’s easy to find enough people with the same trauma profile to agree with you, then simply discount, ignore, or attack all evidence to the contrary.

“But what about the male dilemma—the whole ‘sex gets old and so does she’ thing?” Troy asks. And I’m embarrassed for ever having thought of anything so shallow and misguided. “I think that’s only true if two people see each other as objects or employees. If they’re emotionally healthy adults, then there’s no dilemma that they can’t work out together. They’re not going to even notice each other aging but just getting happier.”

As a result, we developed the relationship I’d been looking for the whole time, only I didn’t know what it was: a relationship without fear. Without fear of intimacy, without fear of suffocation, without fear of loss, without fear of speaking our truth, without fear of being hurt, without fear of boredom, without fear of change, without fear of the future, without fear of conflict, and even without fear of other people.

The opposite of fear is not joy. It is acceptance. And that is what we’ve replaced the fear with. So our commitment today is to neither monogamy nor nonmonogamy. Those are other people’s values and dichotomies. Our commitment is solely to nurturing, supporting, and honoring three important entities in our lives: me, her, and the relationship. Whatever it takes and however we may change.

“I still get tempted, but I just decide to wait a little while before opening any doors or doing anything stupid. Soon the temptation goes away, and I realize the trust I have with Ingrid—and where that can go—is much more powerful than a few moments of pleasure, followed by a lifetime of shame.”

There isn’t just one true and proper way to love, to relate, to bond, to touch. Any style of relationship is the right one, as long as it’s a decision made by the whole person and not the hole in the person.

There are no secrets. So we’d just discuss those things, like we should have in the first place. In fact, the exact things I used to be the most scared to talk about actually brought us closer together once we got past the initial awkwardness.

So many men like Adam complain that their wives won’t have sex with them, yet so few of them would be satisfied if their wives did. Because the problem isn’t actually the sex; it’s the relationship between the people having it.

It takes commitment to change. For only in commitment is there freedom.

I also recommend taking Patrick Carnes’s Post-Traumatic Stress Index test online to understand the ways your past haunts your behavior today. (Use the original PTSI test, not the revised PTSI-R.)

And remember that once the change begins, psychological maintenance, self-correction tools, and consistent self-care are necessary to keep from backsliding.

So be open-minded and try everything for yourself firsthand rather than accepting received opinions, including mine.

I’m currently keeping an open and expanding list of recommended websites, workshops, and practitioners at www.neilstrauss.com/thetruth.

heal yourself before exploring different styles.

Speaking of which, as a reward for finishing this book to the very last page, you can grab the deleted chapters there and read all the gory details of the near-murder at the love commune: www.neilstrauss.com/goodtimes.

The best thing we can do for our relationships with others . . . is to render our relationship to ourselves more conscious. This is not a narcissistic activity. In fact, it will prove to be the most loving thing we can do for the Other. The greatest gift to others is our own best selves. Thus, paradoxically, if we are to serve relationship well, we are obliged to affirm our individual journey.