8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It Go

by Jay Shetty

Alone, we learn to understand ourselves, to heal our own pain, and to care for ourselves. We acquire skills like compassion, empathy, and patience (Rule 1). This prepares us to share love because we’ll need these qualities when we love someone else. We will also examine our past relationships to avoid making the same mistakes in relationships going forward (Rule 2).

We tend to oversimplify love, thinking of it as just chemistry and compatibility. Romance and attraction are indeed the initial connection points, but I define the deepest love as when you like someone’s personality, respect their values, and help them toward their goals in a long-term, committed relationship.

In the first ashram, Brahmacharya, we prepare for love by learning how to be alone and learning from our past relationships how to improve our next one. Alone, we learn to love ourselves, to understand ourselves, to heal our own pain, and to care for ourselves. We experience atma prema, self-love.

Loneliness makes us rush into relationships; it keeps us in the wrong relationships; and it urges us to accept less than we deserve.

When we learn to love ourselves, we develop compassion, empathy, and patience.

The difference between loneliness and solitude is the lens through which we see our time alone, and how we use that time. The lens of loneliness makes us insecure and prone to bad decisions. The lens of solitude makes us open and curious. As such, solitude is the foundation on which we build our love. Solitude is not a failure to love. It is the beginning of love.

There are three stages on the way from loneliness to solitude: presence, discomfort, and confidence.

Confidence is important in a relationship because it helps us talk to the person we like without seeking their approval or hinging our self-esteem on their reaction.

Solitude helps you recognize that there is a you before, a you during, and a you after every relationship, forging your own way even when you have company and love.

Self-control is the time and space you create between the moment when you’re attracted to something and the moment you react to it.

Partners actually do coregulate each other—changes in your body prompt changes in their body, and vice versa.

“The best thing for your nervous system is another human. The worst thing for your nervous system is another human.” Synching with other people can log us in to their bad vibes as well as their good ones. This is why we need to self-regulate, comforting ourselves, calming ourselves down, or pepping ourselves up.

The way you speak about yourself affects how people will speak with you. The way you allow yourself to be spoken to reinforces what people think you deserve.

When you come to a relationship as a whole person, without looking for someone to complete you or to be your better half, you can truly connect and love. You know how you like to spend your time, what’s important to you, and how you’d like to grow. You have the self-control to wait for someone you can be happy with and the patience to appreciate someone you’re already with. You realize that you can bring value to someone else’s life. With this foundation, you’re ready to give love without neediness or fear.

You want to go on a journey with someone, not to make them your journey.

Perhaps the most important lesson solitude offers is helping us understand our own imperfection. This prepares us to love someone else, in all their beauty and imperfection.

Karma is the law of cause and effect. Every action produces a reaction. In other words, your current decisions, good and bad, determine your future experience. People think karma means that if you do something bad, bad things will happen to you, like someone breaks up with you because you broke up with someone else. But that’s not how it works. Karma is more about the mindset in which we make a decision. If we make a choice or take action with or without proper understanding, we receive a reaction based on that choice. If you hide that you’re going to a party from your partner, and then you run into their best friend at the party, and that person tells your partner they saw you, and your partner is upset—that’s karma in action.

Samskara is the Sanskrit word for impression, and when we are young, we collect samskaras. The impressions that we carry from these experiences influence our thinking, behaviors, and responses. As an impression grows stronger, it starts to shape our decisions.

Understanding our impressions is the first step to freeing ourselves from the samskaras planted by a childhood over which we had no control.

If a child has the right parents, he learns the right principles—that love means protection, caretaking, loyalty, sacrifice.

If there is a gap in how our parents raised us, we look to others to fill it. And if there is a gift in how our parents raised us, we look to others to give us the same.

We first seek validation from those closest to us. Then, unsatisfied, we look for it from everyone. And finally, we find it in ourselves.

The promise of a happily ever after turns out to be an obstacle to happily ever after.

The Chase. Sometimes we’re drawn to someone who is emotionally, even physically unavailable. They keep moving, but sometimes pause just long enough to keep us hoping. We are enchanted by them, so we convince ourselves that they will stop in their tracks and suddenly give us their time and attention.