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

by David Richo

Attention from others leads to self-respect. Acceptance engenders a sense of being inherently a good person. Appreciation generates a sense of self-worth. Affection makes us feel lovable. Allowing gives us encouragement to pursue our own deepest needs, values, and wishes.

Express all as gerunds to convey the continuance of the practice. -tion nominalizes and thus objectifies these practices into static objects.

Watching your every move, even if it comes from a desire to protect you, is not attention but intrusion or surveillance.

Overprotectiveness is a rejection of your power (and thus of you).

Denial of agency and independent purpose

Attuned attention creates an ever-widening zone of trust and safety.

From which one can develop an anchor or center for being in Self

When others give you attention, they also confront you directly when they are displeased, harboring no secret anger or grudges.

If we lacked acceptance in childhood, we might have felt ashamed or inadequate.

In attention, you are heard and noticed. In acceptance, you are embraced as worthy, not compared to your siblings but trusted, empowered, understood, and fully approved of as you are in your uniqueness.

Every cell of your little body knew the difference between being held supportively and being clutched to fulfill a parent’s needs. You knew when something was being given and when it was being taken.

Compassion is a form of affection. It is love’s response to pain.

Control is meant to make you what others need you to be. Limit-setting makes it safe for you to be yourself. Paradoxically, we can’t achieve freedom without limits.

Fear

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 ...

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...

Any of these five interpretations by the editorial board of ego may be accurate, but they still interfere wit...

The five mindsets are not to be construed as bad.

Practice does not mean forcing yourself to improve but trusting your potential to open.

Compassion:

Caring:

Connection:

Body-listening:

ATTENDING TO NEEDS | Using the five A’s as guideposts, ask yourself what you need most from a partner or a friend. Ask your partner or a friend what he needs from you.

Be careful not to confuse needs with requests, plans, or remedies. For example, to say “I need you to listen” describes not a need but a request. To say “I need more space in this relationship” describes not a need but a plan. To say “I need a drink” describes not a need but (your idea of) a remedy.

TOUCHING | Becoming an adult does not erase or cancel our fundamental needs. We all feel a need to be held at times, no matter what our age. This comes from an instinct for personal validation.

The Five A’s Their Opposites (based on mindfulness) (based on mindsets) Being attentive Ignoring, refusing to listen, being unavailable, fearing the truth

Being accepting Trying to make someone over to fit our specifications, desires, or fantasies Being appreciative Criticizing Being affectionate Acting selfishly or abusively Allowing Being controlling, demanding, or manipulative

Attention means consciousness of the interconnectedness of all things. Acceptance means affirming an unconditional yes to the sobering givens of existence, the facts of life. Appreciation means the attitude of gratitude. Affection means the love we feel for others and for the universe. Allowing means that we grant to others and protect in ourselves the right to live freely and without outside control.

Turn these five needs/purposes into affirmations and commitments, which you can then repeat daily or more

The opposite of mirroring is shaming.

Shaming is a form of abandonment, and holding on to our own shame is self-abandonment.

Healthy adults appreciate those who mirror what was left unmirrored in childhood.

Hence the elusive need for reciprocity

Intimacy is mutual mirroring.

It does not seem appropriate to seduce or trick another person into mirroring us.

A healthy alternative takes two forms. First, we may ask for mirroring directly from those we trust: “Would you listen to my story? Would you hold my hand as I say this? Can you appreciate what I have done?” Second, we can open ourselves to mirroring that comes to us as grace, a spontaneous gift from others and from the universe. Yes, nature mirrors us too.

Chesed from bitachon

Frustration does a child no good, but struggle is different from frustration.

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 world entrusted to me Affection Unconditional love for myself and others, the generosity to love before I am loved

They seek only about 25 percent (the adult dose) of their need fulfillment from someone else (100 percent is the child’s dose), with the other 75 percent coming from self, family, friends, career, hobbies, spirituality/religion, and even pets (dogs are expert at giving the five A’s!).

In meditation, according to Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, 25 percent of our attention goes into technique, 25 percent into relaxing, 25 percent into self-befriending, and 25 percent into lively expectancy.

FACING OUR OPTIONS | How does the following chart fit your experiences? Which phrases describe you? The unmirrored inner child may either Or Seek relationships that mirror and build trust Seek relationships that fail to mirror and that break trust Understand trauma as a bridge Experience trauma only as an obstacle Recover from the past and move beyond its pain Repeat the past and cling to it Risk what is different Do only what is familiar Wish to transcend an experience Feel compelled to reenact an experience Expect success in relationships Expect failure every time

the distinction between willing and wishing. To will is truly to want something, to choose both the goal and the means to the goal. This means accepting the work and the risks involved in seeing something through. To wish, on the other hand, is only to be enamored of the goal.

Dealing with childhood issues.

Having self-esteem.

Letting go of ego-inflation.

Giving and receiving the five A’s.

Freeing ourselves from fear.

Acting with ethical integrity.

Comfortableness with feelings.

Handling conflicts.