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.

We feel something missing when we speak and do not receive attention, show ourselves and are not accepted, ask for love and are not held, or make a choice and are not allowed to pursue

To attune to someone, we need neutrality toward all feelings, moods, and inner states, precisely the fearless openness of mindfulness and heartfulness. Only with such pure and deep attention can we see beyond his bravado to his terror, beyond his stolidity to his turmoil.

Our identity is like a kaleidoscope. With each turn we reset it not to a former or final state but to a new one that reflects the here-and-now positions of the pieces we have to work with.

Parents can accept us only after they succeed in dismantling their original representation of us in favor of the person we are turning out to be. This means not being disappointed with us for breaking a bargain we never made.

Acceptance is unconditional since it means validating someone’s choices and lifestyle even when we do not agree with them. It is the opposite of moralizing. Acceptance is a style of pure mindfulness. We see all that is and feel all that we feel about what is, but then we focus only on what is as it is.

Loving means holding each other’s deficits with mindfulness, that is, without judgment or criticism. We hold them also with heart, loving one another just as we are, with limits to acknowledge and with gifts to appreciate. This combination is true acceptance. As a special benefit to us, when we align our expectations to the limitations of the other we save ourselves from continual disappointment.

Love in adulthood is a reexperiencing of the love our every cell remembers. The way we were loved in early life is the way we want to be loved all our lives.

Here are the five fundamental mindsets of ego that interrupt our ability to be here now and that distort reality: Fear of, or worry about, a situation or 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.)

The task is not to disown the mindsets but to redirect their energies so they can serve us and others. Thus, fear can be mined for wise caution. Desire makes it possible to reach out. Judgment includes intelligent assessment. Control is necessary in most daily activities. Fantasy is the springboard to the imagination and creativity. When we find the useful kernel of these mindsets, the trespassers can become our bosom buddies.

Finally, keep in mind that it is always acceptable not to know what something is or means. This ability to allow for mystery is what John Keats called “negative capability,” or “being in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts without irritable reaching after fact and reason.” It is in mindfulness that we act in just that way: enduring our unknowing and yet sitting serenely. From that position some unique meaning is allowed to ripen over time, in its own time.

Pay attention to your breath. When thoughts or anxieties enter your mind, simply label them as thoughts and return to awareness of your breathing.

The well-being of our fellow humans matters too, and we are beaming it to them all from our awakened heart. Now there is no limit to our love, the possibility of possibilities.

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.”

Commit yourself to taking what the other person says as information, not as censure.

Finally, in mindfulness we can learn to listen to others as we listen to songbirds: no judgment, only appreciation of diversity.

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. Tell your partner your present desires, plans, and ideas for remedies. Then 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.

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. Ask for a translation: The challenge of intimacy for adults is to expand our original concept of love to accommodate a partner’s unique way of loving. We can still ask for what we want while trying to accept an approximation of it and opening ourselves to new versions of love.

Some of us fear, quite reasonably, the letdown of finding closeness and then losing it again. We want to be sure a potential partner deserves our trust, and it is always a gamble. If we can get past the inhibiting fear, we may open ourselves to the touch of others, however limited, and find it holds a healing power. Being held with tender attention—for example, in someone’s lap or side by side with arms around each other—supplies the mirroring love that may have been missing in our childhood.

The five A’s are purposes, or ends in themselves. Giving and receiving them are not only the ways we are fulfilled but also the spiritual practices by which we fulfill our heroic destiny of bringing the world the benefits and treasures we find on our path.

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.

I feel unity with all human beings and with nature. I notice their pain and their joy. I make decisions that make me feel more connected and closer to them. I accept the givens of existence, both those that seem positive and those that seem negative. I surrender to what cannot be changed and trust it to be useful on my life’s path. I am thankful for all that has been and open to all that will be. I show appreciation for everything I receive. I show my love in my every thought, word, and action. I cherish my right to live in accord with my own deepest needs, values, and wishes. I respect that right in others.

A person wishes to be confirmed in his being by another person…. Secretly and bashfully, he watches for a Yes which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another. It is from one human being to another that the heavenly bread of self-being is passed. —Martin Buber

We all have what it takes to feel, but to experience our feelings fully and safely, they have to be “validated” by someone who mirrors them. Mirroring happens when someone accurately reflects our feelings back to us with a warm welcome. We then know we are understood and it is safe to have and show our feelings. Affection-impelled mirroring includes unconditional positive regard for our unique needs, values, and wishes shown by someone who mindfully provides the five A’s. The element of mindfulness means that we feel loved without the ego’s artifacts of fear, attachment, control, expectation, clinging, biases, defenses, or judgment. For instance, if we feel fear and it is met with mindful attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing, then the fear is, in effect, fully welcomed; that is, we are able to acknowledge it and feel it safely thereafter.

Here is an example of mirroring and its alternative: A child is afraid to go to school for the first time. His mother says, “I know it’s scary, and it’s OK to have that fear. I’ll come to school with you today and stay with you for a while. When I come home, I’ll be thinking about you. Then I’ll come and pick you up right on time, and we’ll go for ice cream. You can be afraid, but don’t let it stop you from having the fun you will have at school and after school!” This child, and later the adult this child grows into, will not be likely to abandon himself later. He will trust his ability to survive fear. Fear will not mean “stop,” but only “proceed with pluck and with support from others.” The feeling of fear has been legitimized, installed safely and permanently, because it has been mirrored with the five A’s.

Mirroring can also come in response to joy. You run into the house excitedly, and tell your parents about your success at gymnastics. They respond with full attention, excitement, hugs, praise, and a plan to come and watch you. The opposite response is “Now, don’t get all excited. Take it easy. Let’s wait and see if you still like it next month.” Your enthusiasm is squelched. The first approach leads to a future of self-assuredness and exuberance, the second to a future of self-doubt and shame.

Shaming is a form of abandonment, and holding on to our own shame is self-abandonment. Now we begin to see why we fear abandonment so much. It is the absence of mirroring, and we need mirroring to survive emotionally. We also see why we fear the loss of our partner. To grieve is to feel keenly isolated and bereft of mirroring. To grieve with supportive others, however, is mutual mirroring. This is why funerals are public events: our fellow mourners mirror grief to us and we to them. Grief is healed by letting go and by contact.

When we are mindful, we are not fixing but rather supporting another in her distress or in her choices. We respect her freedom and yet stand by if she needs a hand. This is the same protocol we follow in parenting older adolescents. We do not stand by and let them be hurt; we inform them of possible consequences. Yet once they have the information, we do not stop them from making choices that may hurt them. A mother cannot prevent her daughter’s mistakes but can help her deal with their consequences.

If we receive no or poor mirroring, we may believe we have to attune to the other or lose our tie with her, a tie that feels so necessary to our continued existence. Our unconscious is therefore not just a sea of repressed memories or unacceptable drives, as Freud suggests. It contains a host of feelings that failed to attract validating attunement and so had to be scuttled or submerged.

Sometimes in life we may make choices that find no mirror of acceptance from anyone. Then, for the sake of our psychological and spiritual health, we need either to seek out a support system from which to receive mirroring or to stand alone and trust ourselves when there is no support to be found. Can I stand in the moonlight and feel its reflection as nature’s mirroring of me, and let that be enough for now? Healthy adults appreciate those who mirror what was left unmirrored in childhood. Unhealthy adults try to siphon what they need from others. In mature relating we find people who mirror us; we discover the same mirroring powers within ourselves and then show them to others as well. As you mirror me, I learn to assume your function. It is like copying a recording and still having the original of it.

When a son says to his father, “You don’t understand!” he may mean, “I can’t show you my feelings because you can’t handle them.” He is protecting his father from ever having to face those frightening feelings. We may stay in this role all our lives, implicitly believing that some people are too fragile to receive our feelings. When we despair of mirroring and of the possibility of trusting in others, we despair of the very things that make intimacy possible. Intimacy is mutual mirroring.

The five A’s, it is now clear, address one essential need and that is the need for mirroring. This is attunement, the perfect pitch of emotional acceptance and support. When our feelings as children are minimized, proscribed, or disregarded, we can’t hear the full range of feeling tones, and a part of us becomes inert and numb. Imagine the joy we feel when someone comes along who welcomes and loves us with all our feelings. A relationship with such a person opens and releases us; in other words, it works. It supports and...

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. It is holding us right now. Since we inhabit a generous universe, we are indeed receiving mirroring, and our challenge is to notice it. The kindness of the universe is reflected in the Buddha’s teachings of universal compassion. When we realize that mirroring is often a form of grace, we are freed from the despair that we will not find it.

I may have decided in the midst of the deprivation in my past that I just wouldn’t need what wasn’t there. When we have been trained to endure deprivation early on we see no problem in enduring it later on in adult relationships. When we were likewise trained to suppress our needs, to silence our “Ouch!” of pain, we may still be doing that with our partner.

The child part of us may have a split desire if we were abused or neglected as children. The healthy half of us wants to recover from the past, and the other half wants to repeat it, to reenact the past compulsively and thereby continually broadcast the unaddressed needs. When a crisis or accident befalls us, we feel compelled to tell people about it not once but many times. Such repetition is a way of absorbing the shock. Yet only grieving the past truly frees us from it.

We keep going back for more where there is only less. We keep going back to what failed us before. (“You keep hurting me, and I can’t leave you.”) If we woke up every morning in childhood thinking, “Someone here will hurt me today, and I have to stay. Someone does not want me here, and I have nowhere else to go,” how could we go easily now? Sadly, the lesson that we are powerless is reconfirmed each day we stay in a painful situation.

As mirroring (acceptance of us by another) gives us power, so abuse takes away access to our power. In an abusive relationship we may believe we cannot let go because things might get better. Our power is thereby deflated in two ways: by the belief that we can’t extricate ourselves from abuse and by clinging to an unfounded hope that the abuser will change. These are the lies we learned when we became accustomed to unhappiness and hurt. As Shakespeare said, “I weep to have what I fear to lose.”