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The Real Reasons We Do, and Why It Doesn’t Last On this page:
There are few conditions to which more books and movies have been devoted—and few subjects that fascinate us more—than falling in love. We think about it, talk about it, hope for it, fantasize about it, go to great lengths to achieve it, and feel that our lives are incomplete without it. But we really don’t understand it. Research has revealed which parts of the brain are stimulated when we’re “in love.” Most of us know how it feels to fall in love. But we don’t understand why we fall in love or—perhaps more importantly—why we seem to fall out of love with distressing regularity. In order to understand falling in love, we must first understand the most important human need. The most important requirement for our emotional health and happiness is to feel loved. Our souls require feeling loved in just as real a way as our bodies require air and food. A NEW DEFINITION OF LOVE: REAL LOVE But not just any kind of love will do. The only kind of love that can fill us up and make us whole emotionally is Real Love. Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves. It’s also Real Love when other people care about our happiness unconditionally. With Real Love, people are not disappointed or angry when we make our foolish mistakes, when we don’t do what they want, or even when we inconvenience them personally. When I use the word happiness, I do not mean the brief and superficial pleasure that comes from money, sex, power, and the conditional approval we earn from others when we behave as they want. Nor do I mean the temporary feeling of satisfaction we experience in the absence of immediate conflict or disaster. Real happiness is not the feeling we get from being entertained or making people do what we want. It’s a profound and lasting sense of peace and fulfillment that deeply satisfies and enlarges the soul. It doesn’t go away when circumstances are difficult. It survives and even grows during hardship and struggle. True happiness is our entire reason to live, and it can only be obtained as we find Real Love and share it with others. With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough. Conditional Love Sadly, few of us have sufficiently received or given Real Love. From the time we were small children, we observed that when we didn’t fight with our sisters, didn’t make too much noise in the car, got good grades, and were otherwise obedient and cooperative, our parents and others smiled at us, patted our heads, and spoke kindly. With their words and behavior, they told us what good boys and girls we were, and we felt loved. But what happened when we did fight with our sisters, made too much noise, got bad grades, and dragged mud across the clean living room carpet? Did people smile at us then or speak gentle, loving words? No—they frowned, sighed with disappointment, and often spoke in harsh tones. Just as the positive behaviors of other people communicated to us that we were loved, we could interpret the withdrawal of those behaviors only as an indication that we were not being loved. Although it was unintentional, our parents and others taught us this terrible message: “When you’re good, I love you, but when you’re not, I don’t—or certainly I love you a great deal less.” This conditional love can give us brief moments of satisfaction, but we’re still left with a huge hole in our souls, because only Real Love can make us genuinely happy. When someone is genuinely concerned about our happiness, we feel connected to that person. We feel included in his or her life, and in that instant we are no longer alone. Each moment of unconditional acceptance creates a living thread to the person who accepts us, and these threads weave a powerful bond that fills us with a genuine and lasting happiness. Nothing but Real Love can do that. In addition, when we know that even one person loves us unconditionally, we feel a connection to everyone else. We feel included in the family of all mankind, of which that one person is a part. WHAT WE DO WITHOUT REAL LOVE: IMITATION LOVE If we don’t have enough Real Love in
our lives, the resulting emptiness is unbearable. We then compulsively
try to fill our emptiness with whatever feels good in the moment—money,
anger, sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, and the conditional approval of
others. Anything we use as a substitute for Real Love becomes a form
of Imitation Love, and they all fall into one or more of four categories:
Let’s discuss how we use these forms of Imitation Love, how they affect our individual happiness, how they affect our ability to participate in relationships, and what they have to do with falling in love. Praise In the absence of sufficient Real Love, praise feels pretty good. From the time we were small children, we all experienced the exhilaration of hearing, “Good boy,” or “Good girl,” or “Nice job” when we behaved in the ways other people liked, and most of us have devoted the remainder of our lives to duplicating that feeling. The pursuit of praise is so widespread that it’s accepted as normal, even desirable. We’ve all heard, for example, the expressions “Put your best foot forward” and “Always make a good first impression.” Without realizing it, our parents, teachers, and others taught us that earning praise was a good thing, and we accepted their counsel. Putting your best foot forward, however, has significant drawbacks. After two people successfully establish a relationship based on their best foot, they eventually discover that their partner is a lot more than his or her best foot—that, metaphorically, there is also the other foot, bad breath, and numerous other imperfections—and the resultant disappointment can be overwhelming. Both partners feel deceived, cheated, and betrayed, and it’s understandable that they vent their frustration on their partner. Relationships fail because we create them on a foundation lacking the one ingredient—Real Love—most essential to happiness and fulfilling relationships. Without sufficient Real Love, neither partner has the tools to create a healthy and mutually rewarding relationship. Without enough Real Love, the foundation of any relationship will be fatally flawed, and no amount of time, effort, and worry spent on the windows, doors, and carpets will ever create a healthy relationship. With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough. Tragically, although Real Love is essential to happiness, most of us have never had consistent experiences with it, as we discussed earlier. In our emptiness and pain, we’re only too eager to reach out for anything that makes us feel better, however superficial and fleeting that relief might be. We use Imitation Love—praise being just one form—because it does feel good for a moment, even though it never really fills our emptiness. As we vigorously engage in the pursuit of praise, however, we come to the terrible realization that the satisfaction it provides never lasts for any significant period. After you’ve worked for an hour, or a day, or a week, for example, to complete a project at work or elsewhere, it’s quite satisfying to hear the approving words, “Nice job,” but that feeling soon wears off, and then you have to work all over again to get another dose of it. The effects of praise are always short-lived, leaving us empty and desperate for more. People who consistently use addictive drugs soon discover that the effect becomes increasingly brief, and more of the drug is required in order to achieve the same outcome. All the forms of Imitation Love are like addictive drugs. Despite all the effort required to earn Imitation Love, the beneficial effects of praise, power, money, and sex become increasingly brief. We also have to work harder to get the desired effect, and eventually we become exhausted and frustrated. Moreover, no matter how successful we are in obtaining Imitation Love, we never get the feeling of connection to other people that comes with Real Love, so we’re still painfully alone. Power When we don’t have enough Real Love, we feel empty, alone, helpless, weak, and afraid. We get some measure of relief from these intolerable feelings, however, when we can control the behavior of other people. That sense of power feels much better than the helplessness we often endure. As we control people—as we convince them to agree with us, or to do what we want—we also get a sensation of connection to them, which relieves our loneliness. In the absence of sufficient Real Love, power can be quite satisfying, and we get it in so many ways: with money, authority, physical and verbal intimidation, anger, violence, and sex. Pleasure When we don’t feel loved unconditionally, we use physical and emotional pleasures—sex, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, driving fast, and so on—as welcome distractions, and we often pursue them with great devotion. The enjoyable effects of pleasure, however, are fleeting, and they can never make us genuinely happy in the absence of Real Love. If pleasure could produce the kind of happiness we all want, sex addicts, for example, would be the happiest people on the planet—but they’re not. As with all the forms of Imitation Love, pleasure wears off, and eventually no amount of it will give us even a brief relief from our emptiness and pain. Safety Without Real Love, we’re already in the worst kind of pain, and we’ll go to great lengths to keep ourselves safe from experiencing more pain. If we can’t have genuine acceptance, we can at least do everything in our power to avoid more disapproval. Toward that end, we avoid doing anything unfamiliar. We stay in the same boring, dead-end jobs, attempt to learn nothing new, and continue in stagnant, unrewarding—but predictable—relationships. If we’ve been hurt consistently by all our past relationships, but finally we’re with someone who simply hurts us less, we can confuse that relative safety with love. Or we might avoid dating and relationships altogether. FALLING IN LOVE: THE NATURE AND EFFECT OF IMITATION LOVE Even though Imitation Love cannot give us genuine, lasting happiness, it does feel good, and if Real Love is either unknown to us or unavailable, we’ll go to great lengths to get enough Imitation Love to feel good temporarily. In the absence of sufficient Real Love, we’re strongly attracted to anyone who gives us Imitation Love, and it is therefore the pursuit of Imitation Love that governs how most relationships begin and end. We’ve all observed that if we give enough praise, power, pleasure, and safety to another person, he or she will be more likely to return some of the same to us. In order to get the Imitation Love that can feel so good, therefore, we buy it from others with whatever forms of Imitation Love we have to offer. We trade Imitation Love with those around us. If I praise you enough, for example, you will be more likely to say something kind to me in return, or to do something else I want. Without thinking about it, almost all of us tend to establish relationships based on the trading of Imitation Love. Let’s arbitrarily measure Imitation Love in dollars, and we’ll suppose that when you give a dollar of Imitation Love to someone, that person gives you twenty cents in return. To a second person you also give a dollar, but this time you receive fifty cents in return. Without being aware of the reason, you naturally prefer the company of the person who gives you a fifty percent return on your investment—it’s that better rate of return that determines why we “like” some people more than others. Eventually, you give a dollar’s worth of Imitation Love to someone who gives you a full dollar in return. Excited about this dramatic improvement in the return on your investment, you give him or her two dollars, then three, then more, and to your delight, you are rewarded equally each time. This is so exciting that you are now “in love.” Falling in love is rarely anything more than the relatively equal and abundant exchange of Imitation Love. That may not be romantic, but it’s nonetheless true. When a guy sees a girl across a crowded room and says to his friends, “I think I’m in love,” is there anyone on the planet who believe that his true meaning is, “I’ve fallen into a sudden unconditional concern for her happiness”? No, he’s expressing a belief that he’ll get more Imitation Love from her than he would from anyone else he can think of. We tend to start our relationships on the basis of how much Imitation Love we anticipate we’ll receive from that partner, and that’s a disastrous foundation for a relationship. We can see the effects of Imitation Love in the following account of the relationship between Michael and Susan. Falling in love is rarely anything more than the relatively equal and abundant exchange of Imitation Love—a formula for disaster. Michael had said complimentary things to other people all his life, but when he gave them a dollar’s worth of praise, he rarely got a dollar of praise, power, pleasure, or safety in return. Then he met Susan. When he gave her a dollar of praise—verbal and non-verbal—she immediately responded by accepting him (praise), expressing a willingness to do what he wanted (power), and physically touching him (pleasure)—at least a dollar’s worth all together. So he gave her even more Imitation Love—the best he had to offer—and when she responded generously, he was so thrilled with the exchange that he called the feeling “falling in love.” Susan was attracted to Michael because he was good-looking, funny, smart, and kind to her, and because he had a good job—all of which gave her a sense of praise, pleasure, and safety. They fell in love because the exchange of Imitation Love was abundant and relatively equal. Susan and Michael began their relationship because they found in their partner the qualities that would entertain them, make them feel worthwhile, and give them safety, not because they unconditionally loved one another. Most of us pick our partners for the same reasons—we look for someone who has qualities that will temporarily make us feel good, and in return we’re quite willing to do the same for that person. As I’ve said before, however, the effect of Imitation Love always fades, as Michael and Susan discovered. They really enjoyed the initial exchange of Imitation Love, but it wasn’t long before that level of praise, power, and pleasure wasn’t as rewarding as it once had been. When people say the “excitement has worn off” in a relationship, they’re just describing the fleeting effects of Imitation Love. As we experience less “happiness” with Imitation Love, we naturally turn to the people closest to us to supply what we’re missing, and understandably our partners feel resentful of our increased demands. Most of our relationships begin based on an unspoken understanding of how much Imitation Love our partners will give us, and how much we’ll give them in return, and when we change the rules—when we give less or demand more—our partners don’t like that one bit. As couples discover the transient effect of Imitation Love, they also invariably find that the exchange of Imitation Love becomes unfair. We can roughly quantify the trading—and fading—of Imitation Love over the course of Michael and Susan’s relationship. In the beginning, they exchanged Imitation Love as summarized below: Imitation Love (in dollars) Received in the Relationship by Michael and Susan
In the beginning of their relationship, they both received five dollars of praise as each of them complimented the other for a variety of qualities, including sexual desirability. They were equally successful in getting the other to do the things they wanted (five dollars of power each). Michael got more physical pleasure from the relationship (mostly from sex) than Susan (six dollars versus two), but Susan got a greater sense of security (safety) from the relationship than Michael did (five dollars versus one). Because they experienced more Imitation Love from one another than with anyone else they had known, they were in love. After several months, however, the trading had changed: Imitation Love (in dollars) Received in the Relationship by Michael and Susan
They both discovered that the effects of flattery had quickly worn off, and that constantly earning it was exhausting, so neither of them was willing to continue their initial efforts to praise one another (down from five dollars to a dollar apiece). Susan discovered she could hardly get Michael to do anything she wanted (one dollar of power vs. the five dollars she got in the beginning of their relationship), so she tended to reward him with nagging instead of praise. Without sufficient praise and appreciation, Michael had even less motivation to keep doing what Susan wanted. Susan, however, still did errands and other acts of kindness for Michael, so he got three dollars of power from getting her to do what he wanted (compared to the five dollars he once got). He still got four dollars of pleasure from the relationship (mostly from sex), while she got only one dollar (virtually nothing from sex but some from other forms of entertainment they enjoyed together). Susan’s sense of safety had been reduced to a single dollar, because he often criticized her (attacking) and because she wasn’t sure of his fidelity when he looked at other women. Michael felt no safety at all as Susan nagged him about everything. What a miserable state of affairs. When they first met, what Michael and Susan both needed was Real Love, but neither of them had ever felt much unconditional love, so there was no way they could have loved one another as they needed. We simply can’t give what we don’t have. In the absence of Real Love, they offered one another what they did have—Imitation Love in its various forms—and they gave all they had. Imitation Love does feel good, and because they were both giving it with all their hearts, they were satisfied with their relationship in the beginning. When the effects wore off, however, and they each gave one another less of the various forms of Imitation Love, they felt like the rules of exchange had been violated. They were both faced with the horror that they were not going to get the happiness they’d hoped for all their lives. Later in their relationship, Susan experienced more disappointment than Michael did. Not only was she disillusioned with the decline in her overall happiness (four dollars of Imitation Love versus seventeen in the beginning), but she sensed that their relationship was unfair (four dollars for her versus eight for Michael). It’s common for one partner to believe the relationship is worse than the other partner does, because although both partners are far from genuinely happy, one of them—in this case, Michael—is getting more Imitation Love than the other. In addition, although Michael wasn’t ecstatic about their relationship, he was relatively satisfied, because even though his total was down from seventeen dollars to eight, it was still better than what he enjoyed before finding Susan. Sex as a form of Imitation Love deserves special attention, and that is addressed in detail in Chapter Seven of the book Real Love in Dating. THE REAL REASON RELATIONSHIPS FAIL I have counseled with thousands of couples, most of them married. Remember that people usually get married only after they have sifted through many potential partners, finally choosing the one they believe will provide them with the fulfillment of their dreams. Ideally, marriages should be the cream of all relationships, the best of the best. And yet 60% of these dream relationships end in divorce, and the vast majority of those who remain married are settling for far less than they had once hoped for. When troubled couples come to me for counseling, invariably they ask some variation on the question, “What happened?” Both partners are absolutely befuddled, wondering how they could possibly have moved from being soulmates to being combatants. In their attempts to understand what happened, it’s unavoidable that each partner would blame the other. After all, they reason, their partner once “made them happy,” and now that happiness is gone. The inescapable conclusion is that their partner has somehow failed them, somehow withdrawn the joy they once magically dispensed at the beginning of the relationship. But you understand the real reason relationships fail. When two people enter into a relationship without sufficient Real Love, their relationship is virtually doomed from the beginning. Most relationships are guaranteed to fail from the word “Hello”—no matter how wonderfully they get along in the beginning—because both parties lack the one ingredient most essential to genuine happiness and fulfilling relationships. In the beginning of their association they achieve the illusion of happiness only because they give one another enough Imitation Love. It’s better than anything they’ve had before, so it seems real. Then, when the effects of Imitation Love begin to wear off—as they always do—they’re left with the horrifying realization that their dreams have turned into so much dust. Relationships fail not because of what each partner does or does not do. Relationships fail because they are not built on a foundation of Real Love, but instead are based on a counterfeit currency—Imitation Love—that can never buy happiness. In order to learn much more about Imitation Love and falling in love, read the book Real Love in Dating. In order to learn much more about how to find Real Love—unconditional love or true love—and with it genuine happiness and richly fulfilling relationships:
With literally hundreds of hours of Real Love online education at your fingertips on RealLove.com, we provide new content and instruction on finding happiness in your life. Learn to look at life through the clarifying lens of Real Love and eliminate the confusion and frustration in your life. |
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