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

by Jay Shetty

In Japanese, the term koi no yokan describes the sensation of meeting someone new and feeling that you are destined to fall in love with them, and kokuhaku describes a declaration of loving commitment. In India’s Boro language, onsra describes the knowledge that a relationship will fade.

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).

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.

Love is not about staging the perfect proposal or creating a perfect relationship. It’s about learning to navigate the imperfections that are intrinsic to ourselves, our partners, and life itself.

Do we want to choose or stay in a relationship based on insecurity and desperation or based on contentment and joy? Loneliness makes us rush into relationships; it keeps us in the wrong relationships; and it urges us to accept less than we deserve.

Paul Tillich said, “Language has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.”

Oxford Languages dictionary defines confidence as a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.

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.

When we’re alone we fully rely on ourselves, figure out what we care about, and learn who we are. We learn to navigate challenges on our own. We can, of course, welcome help if it comes along, but we don’t expect or depend on it.

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.

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.

Karma is a mirror, showing us where our choices have led us.

Even if we feel there’s nothing to heal, sometimes the wounds are so deep, we can’t see them anymore. We take a stoic approach, we tell ourselves we’re fine, but we don’t recognize that we must take stock.

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.

Even when I received authentic, positive feedback from others, I was never satisfied. And I think this is often true—that it’s hard for others to truly understand what we go through to get a good result. We first seek validation from those closest to us. Then, unsatisfied, we look for it from everyone. And finally, we find it in ourselves. It was the gap that my parents created that eventually taught me this lesson. I had to be happy with myself.

Looking in the karma mirror helps us stop chasing others who might fulfill emotional needs from our childhoods and start fulfilling them ourselves. At the same time, the more you become aware of these influences in your own life, the more you’ll be able to see how a partner’s parents impact them. This gives you greater understanding and patience with yourself and your partner.

As brain expert Daniel Amen describes it, the prefrontal cortex helps us to think before we speak and act, and to learn from our mistakes. Young people “think” with their feelings. Without a fully developed prefrontal cortex filter, much of our mental life runs through our amygdala—a brain center associated with emotional processes like fear and anxiety. As we age, our passion is tempered by reason and self-control, and we don’t feel with the same wild abandon. Those of us who felt the passion of young love may remember it as more intense than anything in adult life, even if it wasn’t ideal or even healthy.

Being fragile full-time means you lack confidence and seek validation from others. You feel broken and want someone to fix you. Being with someone who supports this side of you interferes with you taking responsibility for your own growth, joy, and success.

The Bhagavad Gita talks about six opulences: knowledge, fame, money, beauty, strength, and renunciation.

Sometimes we feel like none of the options before us are people we want to date. And then we have to ask ourselves, Why are these my options? Why are we attracting these people, and how can we attract the ones we want? Again, karma has the answer. If you put something into the world, you get it back.

Why wait for someone else to make you feel good? And that’s why it’s so deeply important that we heal ourselves, taking charge of that process instead of shifting blame and responsibility to a partner. If we’re trying to fill an old void, we’ll choose the wrong partner. A partner can’t fill every gap. They can’t unpack our emotional baggage for us. Once we fulfill our own needs, we’re in a better place to see what a relationship can give us.

If you keep telling yourself, I’m nobody until someone tells me I’m someone, it will make you more prone to insecurity, stress, and pressure. If you often tell yourself that you’re not good enough, you become not good enough. We need to disrupt those negative patterns by developing new thought patterns. It may feel forced or fake, but when you practice these new, positive thought patterns, you start living up to them.

And yet we have expectations based on what we assume it means to the other person. “I love you” doesn’t include commitment. It doesn’t promise you want to have children together. It doesn’t guarantee that you’ll put any effort into making a relationship work. It’s a beautiful start, but not a substitute for many other meaningful conversations.

Research shows that the happiest people have multiple close relationships, so, whether we’re coupled or single, we shouldn’t look to any one person to meet all of our needs. John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist who researched love and affection, told the New York Times, “One of the secrets to a good relationship is being attracted to someone out of choice rather than out of need.”

But creating something together is better than wanting the same thing. How you handle your differences is more important than finding your similarities.

I urge leaders to incorporate sentiment in order to soften the rigidity of organization and process. And in relationships, where sentiment is strong, I embed systems to help bring structure and order to the emotional landscape.

Love means that you value your partner enough to confront difficult areas.

Relationships are masterfully designed to annoy us. It’s easier on your own, when there’s nobody around to question you or bear witness to your flaws, but that’s not why you’re in a relationship.

A guru doesn’t hesitate to play any position if it helps their student. There is no ego involved. The guru is honored and grateful to support another. A real guru doesn’t want power but empowers their partner.

We take pride in noticing our partner’s potential and urging them to fulfill it, but we don’t want to impose our goals on them. Our goal is simply to help them get to the next step in their journey, not the next step in our vision of what their journey should be.

you to be mindful of the way you speak to your partner, so you don’t mislead them or shut them down. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

Yes, communicating this way takes a lot more words. And yes, it requires more effort to frame your feedback this way, but it’s worth it because it’s more likely to keep the other person engaged and responsive to your criticism.

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” It’s a symbiotic relationship.

Ego and pride end more relationships than anything else because most misunderstandings are based on ego or pride. Ego mires us in the false belief that we’re always right, that we know best, and the other person is wrong. This belief makes it impossible to learn from our partner.

Remember your own personality, values, and goals. Don’t lose the thread of your own story. Spend time in solitude.

A guru would never teach through abuse. Abuse only teaches you to fear your partner, to suppress your instincts, to ignore your own pain, and to feed someone else’s ego. Emotional, mental, and physical abuse should be deal-breakers for everyone, and that’s clear when you think about your partner as your guru. Why would your guru hurt you?

the most important way a guru can help a student grow: in pursuing their purpose.

Dharma is the intersection of passion, expertise, and service. Living in your dharma means that you’ve connected your natural talents and interests with a need that exists in the universe. Your dharma doesn’t have to be your job. You’re fortunate if you can earn a living following your calling, but that isn’t always possible. Also, your purpose doesn’t have to dominate your life.

dharma—purpose artha—work and finance kama—pleasure and connection, your relationships with others moksha—liberation from the material world, when you connect with the spirit

eudaimonia—the satisfaction that comes from having a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life.

“We are confronted with the ups and downs of life, but purpose is an active ingredient that helps us stay stable.”

People think that putting the other person first is a sign of love. We romanticize the idea of making sacrifices and devoting ourselves to another person, and there are beautiful ways to do so. But I’ve seen people who put their own purpose aside and years down the line feel lost or misled. They regret their choices and resent their partners for not helping them prioritize their purpose. And with reason—I don’t condone resentment, but if your partner can bear to watch you give up your purpose, that’s not love. Your purpose has to come first for you, and your partner’s purpose has to come first for them. Then you come together with the positive energy and stability that come from pursuing your purposes.

In every relationship there are actually three relationships: your relationship with each other, your relationship with your purpose, and your partner’s relationship with their purpose.

There is great joy in seeing the person you love doing what they love. Furthermore, you’re more aware of, and sympathetic to, the struggles they might have along the way.

Even in a household that looks ideal—where your work lives and home life check all the boxes—if either partner doesn’t know their purpose or isn’t actively engaged in it, that individual emptiness impacts the relationship. The partner without a purpose might become envious of the other’s progress, in which case both partners miss out on the joy, energy, and contentment that two people who are fueled by their purpose bring to each other.

The empathizer: Emotionally intelligent, patient, a good listener, and supportive, the empathizer is intuitive about how people are feeling.

Dreams don’t have to be big; they just have to be yours.

Help your partner to follow up on something they’re curious about. You can book a trip to a museum or find books or TED Talks to help them explore what they’re especially curious about. Take a look at your commitments and priorities, and make sure your partner has the freedom to pursue their curiosity instead of, for example, expecting that they’ll spend their spare time with you.

Your partner is your partner in love. You are each other’s guru—learning about yourselves and each other. But you don’t have to be mentors or business partners. Instead, help them think of ways to connect with mentors and come up with questions to ask when they have a chance.

As Albert Einstein said, “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”