Excerpts from How to Love
“Picture the alternative. In the presence of one disposed to kindness you will notice an absence of guile, an ability to listen, and a disinclination to compete. If you can reciprocate, you will experience a growing feeling of safety and trust. The need for self-protection drops away, as does the requirement to appear to be something other than you are. You are, at last, good enough. In fact, the image of yourself that you see reflected in your loved one’s eyes may be nearly perfect.
You would like this moment to last forever.
IMAGINE THAT.”
“This I have come to believe is the human condition: uncertain, confusing, often absurd, and full of anxiety in the face of an indifferent universe that can, and frequently does, crush our best hopes and dearest loves. Still we push on into a future we cannot imagine nor control, with nothing to guide us but some words we share with each other and a faith that we are not alone.”
“Since humans are less responsive to simple reinforcers like food, our relationship behaviors are learned using more complicated incentives, some positive such as money or peer approval, some negative like loneliness and humiliation. What we seldom do in this trial-and-error process of developing a personal style is to examine our basic assumptions about what people are like and how to satisfy our uniquely human need to live lives that contain both pleasure and meaning. We quickly discover that we cannot do this alone. We require the good opinion of a few others and we long for the unconditional love of at least one.”
“When we care about someone, we want to help, not reject them. Especially if they suffer what is universally accepted as a “disease.” What kind of person turns his back on a sick human being? Here is the trap. Those of us who pride ourselves on our ability to care for others are susceptible to rescue fantasies that allow us to believe that “If I love this person enough, their insecurities and need for drink or drugs will evaporate.” Many are the marriages that have foundered on this daydream. Some of my most difficult moments as a therapist have occurred when the spouse or parent or child of a substance abuser was forced to the shattering conclusion that their addict loved the substance he craved more than anyone or anything else in his life, including the people who loved him the most. If you have a choice, you do not want to face such a moment.”
“There is a group of people to be wary of who do not fit into any specific category of personality disorder. They do not, in general, seek to manipulate or disadvantage others. They are not necessarily self-absorbed or unkind, and their intentions are usually benign. And yet they are hard to be around for long. They are seldom insightful or reflective, though they may be intelligent and capable of useful work. They tend toward a certain loquaciousness and are not often good listeners. It is the quality of their thoughts combined with an irresistible need to communicate them that are defining characteristics. They are fools.”
“Of boredom this can be said: It is the primary underlying feeling in the litigants in most divorces. Often it is anger that appears most prominent. But the anger is frequently a secondary response to the sadness and disappointment of unmet expectations. Look at the smiling bride and groom in their wedding pictures. Can you imagine that they will end up some years hence bored to distraction with each other? And yet the statistics do not lie; such is the fate of most couples. Familiarity, it seems, may not always breed contempt, but it infrequently nourishes attachment. If you are bored with your partner going in and married him or her for other reasons – security, family pressures, a fear of growing old alone – odds of prolonged happiness or a successful marriage are slim. Proverb: ‘The gods gave men fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage.’”
“Tolerant people also tend to be better at that most difficult form of forgiveness, that which we must direct toward ourselves if we are to achieve anything like happy lives. We are all fallible, and if we cannot let go of past mistakes, we encumber our futures with remorse. This is why tolerance is closely linked to optimism. People who are practiced at the task of forgiving themselves and others do not hold grudges. They travel light, unburdened by hate or regret, accepting the differences in people that make of life an endless wonder.”
“So intelligence is included as a virtuous trait not because smart people have any better record of marital success. It is just another area in which people who are alike have a better chance at happiness together if they have more to share and an ability to communicate around subjects that they both find appealing, amusing, or otherwise interesting. If silence descends upon them it cannot be hostile or despairing or the product of alienation. Our need to be heard, to be understood and valued, is so strong that we either have it or we must seek it elsewhere. When I hear stories about infidelity, it is not novel sex that is customarily the driving force behind it.”
“Luck is an ever-present force in our lives. It teaches us humility. No matter how hard we work, how much money we have, how important to us is control in all we do, still we are subject to the vagaries of chance. Only fools believe that they are the sole, or even primary, architects of their fates. We are subject to cancer, to car crashes, to wayward lightning strikes, and, finally, to the ravages of time. What gives each moment its intensity is the knowledge that we are all hanging by a thread and the control that we work so hard to establish is an illusion, that the race is really not, in the long run, to the swift.”
“We all carry our parents within us. If they have loved us and prepared us to live independently in the world, we are fortunate and they are deserving of our undying gratitude, freely given. If what we feel for them instead is some mixture of resentment and obligation, then we are in need of a process, therapeutic or self-taught, that will enable us to forgive their shortcomings and think about what we need to do to meet our obligations to our children, now and when they are grown and we are old.”
“Life can be seen as a series of disillusionments. We relinquish the tooth fairy and Santa Claus early on. Our hopes for fairness in this world seldom survive our teen-age years. Still, many of us cling to the belief in the power of our love to change other people and are shocked when this turns out not to be true. The success of state lotteries is testimony to the belief that effortless wealth can be ours. Akin to this is the fantasy that the love of our youth will survive the passing of the years. No one says to us when we are young that we must learn how to evaluate other people’s character so that we can distinguish those whom we can trust. No one points out the “red flags” that alert us to personality traits that are signals of future betrayal. No one describes in any systematic way the virtues we need to develop in ourselves so that we can recognize them in others. And no one questions the conventional model of relationships as requiring hard work and continual negotiation.”
“The world is populated by many beautiful people. It is hard to credit the notion that there is one person perfect for us. What is more likely is that people who have the right combination of love and discernment become perfect for each other together. The connections we form with one another involve a process in which the tenuous bonds of physical attraction are strengthened by the ties created by the shared experiences of pleasure and sorrow that life brings to us all, and finally by the cables of love and grief and hope that bind us irrevocably to each other.
With a little bit of knowledge, effort, and luck this destiny can be yours.”
