8 Rules of Love

We prepare for love by learning how to love ourselves in solitude.

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.

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 avoid solitude, we struggle to develop our skills.

Sometimes a lack of confidence makes us think we’re not lovable. You are lovable, I promise. But having me say it doesn’t help you feel it. We build confidence by making time for the things that matter to us.

Remember that until you act on your goals, your partner won’t know that they are truly important to you. Sometimes you have to start executing to have full buy-in. But in either case, if we don’t know what our own goals are, we have no way of knowing how well they intersect with another person’s.

Solitude allows us to understand our own complexity. We become students of ourselves.

In solitude we learn to create space between sensory stimulation and decision-making. If we are constantly looking for love or constantly focused on our partner, we’ll be distracted from the vital work of understanding ourselves. If we don’t understand ourselves, we risk taking on the tastes and values of our partner. Their vision becomes our vision. We might choose to sign on to someone’s vision because we admire it—someone

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett writes, “When you’re with someone you care about, your breathing can synchronize, as can the beating of your hearts.”

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.

In youth, choices are made for you. These become impressions. As an adult, you use these impressions to make your own choices. Those choices generate an effect, a consequence, or a reaction. If you’re happy with the consequence, you probably won’t change your impression. But if you don’t like the consequence, you can revisit the impression and decide whether it steered you wrong. If it did, you can break the cycle by forming a new impression, which then steers you to a new choice, from which you get a new reaction.

If we don’t understand how our impressions were formed and how we make choices, then we keep repeating the same karma.

It’s a basic Freudian principle that the early relationships we have with our parents and caregivers establish relationship dynamics that, like Mellors, we’re compelled to replicate as adults.

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.

A key area of our brain—the prefrontal cortex—doesn’t develop fully until we’re about twenty-five years old. 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.

Vedic teachings say that there are three levels of intelligence. In the first level, when someone tells you the fire will burn you, you listen and learn and never touch fire. In the second level, you experience it for yourself. You touch fire, it burns you, and you learn not to touch fire again. In the third level, you keep burning yourself, but you never learn. If we don’t heed our karma, we’re stuck in the third level of intelligence, and we bear the scars.

In her book Why Him? Why Her? anthropologist Helen Fisher, the chief scientific advisor for Match.com, explains that playing hard to get creates a phenomenon she calls “frustration attraction.” She writes, “Barriers intensify feelings of romantic love … probably because the brain pathways associated with pleasure, energy, focus and motivation keep working when a reward is delayed.”

The supporter is an ideal to strive for. Both partners communicate as equals. Your partner is always teaching you, but you are always teaching them. And when you both understand that you’re both teaching and learning at the same time, that’s when you create a partnership.

According to neuroscientist and psychiatrist Daniel Amen, oxytocin is related to feelings of being in love, and the release of oxytocin can support and even accelerate bonding and trust. Generally, men have lower levels of oxytocin than women, but sex causes men’s oxytocin levels to spike more than 500 percent. New York University neuroscientist Robert Froemke says that oxytocin acts like a volume dial, “turning up and amplifying brain activity related to whatever someone is already experiencing.” During and after sex, we feel more in love, but it’s not actually love. We feel closer chemically even though we’re not closer emotionally. Additionally, the hormone actually has a temporary blocking effect on negative memories, so all of those “little things” that were bothering you or that argument you had beforehand—which might have been a major warning sign—could fade after sex.

Being attracted to our partners for what they have or what they’ve achieved is not a bad place to start, but it’s not a good place to end. Abilities and achievements don’t matter so much as qualities and actions. We make the mistake of assigning qualities to people based on their abilities. We assume that a good communicator will be trustworthy. We think a writer must be thoughtful. A manager must be organized. The only way we can know what qualities a person truly has is by spending time with them and observing them. Only when we know someone intimately and deeply do we find the sweetness in them.

We tend to base success in relationships on how long they last, but their actual value lies in how much we learn and grow from them. If we understand that, we can examine the choices we’ve made, assess why we picked a person, figure out what went wrong, and develop a better sense of whom to pick and whether we need to change anything for next time.

Our relationships aren’t supposed to be responses to what our parents did and didn’t give us or balms for the insecurities of our youth. If we look to our partners to fill an emotional gap, this puts undue pressure on our partner. We are asking them to take responsibility for our happiness.

This is a cycle we will repeat not just with one partner, but with pretty much everyone who plays an important role in our lives. This is the practice of love. Attraction Dreams Struggle and Growth Trust

First, we start with personality because it’s the easiest thing to spot, understand, and connect with. In their personality, you’ll see how their past has shaped them. Second, you’ll explore their values, which define who they are today. And third, you’ll try to recognize their goals, which encapsulate what they want in the future.

Even if you think you know your partner well, the answers might surprise you. What’s something you love to do? Do you have a favorite place? Is there a book or movie you’ve read or seen more than once? What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment? What’s something you wish you knew more about? What’s the best meal you’ve ever had?

Here are some uncommon questions you can try out on Date Two that will help you learn what they find interesting, how they deal with challenges, what they value, how they tolerate risk, and how they make decisions. Who’s the most fascinating person you’ve ever met? What’s the most out-of-character thing you’ve ever done or would like to do? Have you ever had a big plot twist in your life? If you won the lottery, what would you spend the money on? What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done? What is a tough thing you dealt with in your past? What makes you proud? What would you do if you had enough money to not need a job?

On Date Three you can try out some deeper questions, such as the ones listed below. Do you have a dream you’d like to fulfill one day—a job, a trip, an accomplishment? What would you like to change about your life? If you could meet anyone, who would it be? Is there a single moment or experience that changed your life? Is there someone you consider to be your greatest teacher? Using the information you glean on these three dates, you can determine if you like a person’s personality, respect their values, and want to help them pursue their goals.

Attraction leads to dreams. When our attraction to a person continues over time, we start to fantasize about the relationship that could develop. What adventures we could have with this person. What our life together would look like.

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.

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

Rhythms and routines help us maintain a steady pace that lets us get to know each other gradually and genuinely. We acknowledge that we are both looking for a long-term relationship and hoping this is it. When we establish rhythms and routines together, instead of trying to meet false expectations, our relationship is grounded in how much time we’ll spend together and how we’ll spend it. We don’t have to wonder when the person we’re interested in will call us next. We don’t play games like waiting a certain number of days before returning their call.

The time and space we spend apart enhances the time we spend together. We want to find a balance among time together, time alone, time with our own friends, and time with collective friends.

Merely saying “I need alone time” leaves them wondering what they’ve done wrong, while saying “I need alone time because I’m stressed out” gives them a chance to be supportive and understanding.

We expect love to flow naturally, but this is extremely rare, and often it means that we’re not taking on the tougher issues. We need to make mistakes, identify what we need to change, and work on doing better. This is where we grow as individuals and together.

We assume trust is binary: either we trust someone, or we don’t. But trust increases gradually through actions, thoughts, and words. We shouldn’t trust someone instantly just because they’re kind to us. We give them our trust because little by little, day after day, we have shared more of ourselves and seen what they do with our honesty.

To evaluate the depth and breadth of your trust for your partner, consider these three aspects: physical trust, mental trust, and emotional trust. Physical trust is when you feel safe and cared for in their presence. They want to be with you, they’re present and attentive, and being around them feels good. Mental trust is when you trust their mind, their ideas, their thoughtfulness. You may not agree with every decision they make, but you trust the way they make decisions. Emotional trust is when you trust their values and who they are as a human. Do they treat you well? Are they supportive? Do you trust how they behave not just with you but with the other people in their life, from close friends to a waiter?

BUILD REALISTIC DREAMS TOGETHER Establish a monthly check-in. Commit an hour every month to talking about your relationship. This gives you an opportunity to reaffirm what’s working and redirect what’s not working. Identify a highlight. What are you grateful for? This helps you both know what’s going well. Identify a challenge. What are you struggling with? This helps you see what needs work. Find something to work toward together this coming month. It could be a date night, a birthday celebration, a trip, a plan to redo a room in the home. You can look through a website to research a vacation you want to take. This way you’re building your dreams together. Together, you’re working on how you want your relationship to look and feel.

Self-expansion theory says we’re motivated to partner with someone who brings to the relationship things we don’t already have, such as different skills (You know how to unclog a drain!), personality traits (You’re the life of the party!), and perspectives (You grew up overseas!). Our partner expands our sense of who we are because they expand the resources to which we have access.

The guru is focused on the behavior’s cause, not its consequence.

The guru should try to behave in an exemplary way.

The guru will never ask the student to do something that they’re not comfortable doing themselves.

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.

Understanding your partner’s goals without editing them to suit yours is one of the greatest gifts you can give someone. When we hear other people’s goals, we automatically put them through our filter and lens.

You approach your studies diligently enough, with an open mind and heart, you can learn even more from a mediocre teacher than you might from a great one.

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.

It’s normal to take on some characteristics of our partners. Studies have found that couples start to adopt the same mannerisms, to sound alike, and even to eat the same quantity of food. Some merging of habits is inevitable, but we want to retain our individuality within the relationship. We want to take on positive qualities of our partner without becoming them (or their assistant). You are always writing your story. When you meet someone, you start cowriting with them.

Remember your own personality, values, and goals. Don’t lose the thread of your own story. Spend time in solitude. Don’t cancel plans with friends and family. Pursue your own interests, not just your partner’s.

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. —DAVID VISCOTT

Either partner doesn’t know their purpose or isn’t actively engaged in it, that individual emptiness impacts the relationship.

The Pyramid of Purpose Learn—Devote time to learning in the area of your purpose Experiment—Take what you learned and try it out for yourself in order to discover what works for you and what doesn’t Thrive—Perform your purpose, building consistency and steadiness in what you’re doing Struggle—Face the challenges that inevitably come and use them for growth Win—Celebrate successes, big and small

Purpose begins with curiosity. We think starting means doing, but it actually begins with learning.

A mentor will help you form a vision of how you can start to pursue your purpose and what your life might look like as you continue to live in your purpose. The mentor can also give you concrete advice as first steps you can take, how you can network, and where else you can turn to learn more.

If you’re stuck and uninspired regarding your own purpose, it might be an ideal opportunity to direct your free time and energy toward your partner’s pursuits (later in this rule I’ll tell you how).

Nobody is satisfied through another person’s dharma. If one pretends to share the other’s dharma, they won’t be able to use their true gifts. Dreams don’t have to be big; they just have to be yours.

You may feel that your partner is fulfilled by their purpose, not you. “I think I should be more important than my partner’s purpose” is the complaint I hear most often about purpose in a relationship. We want more of the attention our partner is giving to their purpose. But if someone gives us their time because we demand it, we don’t get the best of them. Instead of pulling them away from their purpose, you can join them in their journey, whether they are learning and experimenting or putting their purpose into action.

When you’re a part of each other’s growth, you don’t grow apart from each other. You can celebrate the successes together and be there together for disappointments.

No matter how compatible a couple is, to live in conflict-free bliss isn’t love, it’s avoidance.

To sustain a conflict-free existence means floating on the surface, where everything looks pretty but we never achieve deep knowledge of each other.

According to couples counselors, the top three areas of conflict are money, sex, and how to raise children.

I believe that often the bigger issues are at the root of the daily conflicts.

Every time one of you loses, you both lose. Every time the problem loses, you both win.

Long-term relationships don’t survive because of great date nights or spectacular holidays. They don’t endure because people have good friends (although community certainly contributes to relationship stability). One of the biggest factors in a long-lasting relationship is knowing how to fight. According to a paper published by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, when partners can express anger to each other in healthy ways, they build certain qualities and abilities. The qualities—such as compassion, empathy, and patience—help you understand the challenge. The abilities—like communication, listening, and understanding—help you solve equal or greater challenges in the future.

If you come to an argument convinced that you are right and your partner is wrong, your tone and your words will make that inflexibility obvious to your partner.

The only successful argument is the one in which we both win. We have to not just acknowledge this, but deeply internalize it. I’m right and you’re right. You’re wrong and so am I. These are both win-win scenarios.

When we take a neutral role, we remind ourselves that the problem isn’t our partner. It is something we don’t understand about them and something they don’t understand about us. Solving this puzzle will benefit both of us. If

Venting. Some people, like me, want to express their anger and keep hashing it out until a solution is reached. To paraphrase a common saying, there are three sides to every argument: yours, mine, and the truth. There is no objective truth. The fighter who is solution-oriented wants to get to an answer and is often overly focused on facts.

Don’t rush to an answer. First you and your partner will need to agree about what issue you’re up against. Only then can you look for solutions together.

Hiding. Some people shut down in an argument. The emotions are just too strong, and you need space. You need to process.

Take the time and space you need, but don’t use your silence as a way of doing battle.

Exploding. Some of us can’t control our anger and so erupt with emotion. This response takes a great toll on relationships, and it’s a behavior you should make a concerted effort to change.

Figure out what would work best for you: perhaps going for a run, taking a shower, or otherwise letting off steam.

When we feel mean, we say things we don’t mean. We make permanent declarations based on a temporary emotion.

“The best apology is changed behavior.”

Abuse is any behavior that one partner uses to control the other, and control has no place in a relationship. The National Domestic Violence Hotline identifies six categories of abuse: physical, emotional and verbal, sexual, financial, digital, and stalking.

According to research by psychologists Clifford Notarius and Howard Markman, it takes just one aggressive or passive-aggressive remark to erase twenty acts of kindness.

There’s no reason to be alone when you make hard decisions and enter the unknown. Seek out supporters or experts, whether it’s through online forums, books, friends, or organizations.

According to data from community health centers, of couples where a partner had admitted to cheating, only 15.6 percent of relationships were able to recover.

Another sign of waning interest is that you don’t instantly want to share good or bad news with your partner. Think about who comes to mind when you have good news to share. If your partner isn’t in the top three, then this probably means either you don’t feel that they’re important enough to share it with, or you feel they won’t care enough.

No relationship is perfect all the time. But when challenges do arise, notice if you’re the only one trying to fix them.

When we connect on negative issues, we generate a low vibration—a low energy that doesn’t last long or create satisfaction. When we connect in a neutral manner over routine matters, like schedules or chores, we generate a medium vibration that doesn’t foster intimacy and love. But when we experiment together, learning from and through each other, we generate a high vibration that energizes and stimulates our connection.

Seek out adventures that aren’t in either of your areas of expertise. You don’t want to attempt a sport where one of you has a natural advantage or to play a game that one of you has played for years. To build intimacy, you want to both be novices so that you feel inexperienced and curious together. You both feel similarly uncomfortable. You’re both going to learn something new. You’re going to need and rely on each other. A challenging hike, a visit to a haunted house, spelunking, roller skating, or (my favorite) an escape room. Intimacy builds as you expose yourselves to each other in a vulnerable moment.

Those who anticipated receiving the painful shock experienced significantly more attraction than those who anticipated only a mild one. This research points to why novel and exciting things—anything that arouses our senses—can help to revive and refresh our interest in our partner. Their takeaway was that “a small amount of stress can spur amorous feelings.”

We start by identifying an intolerable issue. This is a difference between you and your partner that might be a deal-breaker. This is usually a recurring point of frustration that you think might lead to the end of your relationship. Then we take this issue down a path: from intolerable to tolerable to understanding to acceptance.

The first question to ask yourself is: Do you love this person enough to deal with some discomfort as you work through the issue? If the answer is no, there is no way you can live with this issue no matter what, and it’s never going to change, then you simply don’t care for this person enough to work it out.

The first step on the journey from intolerable to acceptance is when, however begrudgingly, you acknowledge that there might be some way of dealing with the issue. You believe the two of you can figure it out somehow, even if you have no idea how. This admission alone shifts the issue from intolerable to tolerable.

According to marriage and family therapist Dr. John Gottman, 69 percent of marriage conflicts are about ongoing problems and never get resolved.

Start conversations about the behavior or issue that troubles you. Ask your partner: “Is this something you enjoy?” “Why do you like it?” “What makes you do it this way?” Ask your partner why they are struggling to make the changes you’ve asked them to make. Ask questions and take time to hear the answers. These conversations give you the opportunity to understand more deeply instead of judging your partner and taking their behavior personally.

Research shows that areas activated in the brain when we’re in love are the same as those involved in cocaine addiction. So the way your brain experiences a breakup is kind of like the misery of detox. Just as addicts crave a fix, we can literally crave the other person. This happens in part because our brains flood with chemical messengers that are part of our reward and motivation circuitry. Our brain sends urgent signals that we should hurry up and retrieve what’s missing. In one study of breakups, participants reported thinking about their exes roughly 85 percent of the time they were awake.

I want you to recognize that when your relationship crumbles, you are not what’s breaking. Your soul doesn’t end. Your expectations of your partner are breaking. What you thought you were building with them is breaking. What you had together is breaking. That’s where the hurt comes from. But you have not lost your purpose. You have not lost yourself. Something is breaking, but you are not that something.

But don’t pressure them to stay in the relationship. You don’t want to stay with someone who has already checked out.

Don’t wait for an apology. Closure is something you give yourself.

Psychologist Guy Winch says, “Heartbreak creates such dramatic emotional pain, our mind tells us the cause must be equally dramatic.” We can become conspiracy theorists, creating complicated narratives, when the answer could be comparatively straightforward.

If we leave the healing wound unattended, the density of the scar tissue becomes problematic, impairing our movement, increasing pain and the risk of reinjury. And so we approach our recovery thoughtfully, undergoing some kind of physical therapy to help us mobilize and realign the scar tissue, and then we rebuild strength in our broken places until we’re fully healthy. The same is true in heartbreak.

We are defined by what we accept. Part of what makes a breakup so hard is that this person who once valued us so highly no longer does. We’ve been devalued, but only by them.

If you have an intrusive thought, ask yourself, do I like this thought? Is this thought useful? Is this thought insightful? Is this thought helping me move forward? This is how we move from the mind’s conversation to the intellect’s conversation.

The way you perfect love is not by waiting to find or have it, but by creating it with everyone, all the time.

Giving love solves a human need that is even greater than romantic love: I need to be of service. There is no greater ecstasy than that.

Instead of expecting love, we have to find ways of expressing love.

We can show love to our friends and family not just through what we say or do. Behind those acts are four key qualities. Understanding. All of us want to be understood. To love your nearest and dearest is to try to understand who they are and what they are trying to achieve. We do this by listening and asking questions rather than pushing our ideas and agendas. Belief. Our friends and family want us to believe in them. This means believing that they have the potential to achieve their dreams. When someone you love shares an idea, give positive feedback. Be supportive and encouraging. Acceptance. Our friends and family want to be accepted and loved just the way they are, for who they are, with all their flaws and differences. We don’t project our expectations of what they should do or how they should act onto them. Appreciation. We give love through appreciating the little and big things our friends and family do, the struggles they face, the efforts and changes they make, the energy they bring to the relationship. We think that merely being present is showing enough appreciation, but I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t want to be told with specificity and sincerity what they have done well.

The psychologist Russell Barkley said, “The children who need the most love will always ask for it in the most unloving ways.”

When we encounter someone whom we find difficult to be around, the first step toward loving them is to understand what, if anything, our reaction to them reveals about ourselves.

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar hypothesized that brains can only handle a certain sized social group, and after looking at historical, anthropological, and current data, he and his colleagues determined that number to be about 150. An article on BBC.com adds, “According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people—loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognize). People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants.”

We love our juniors through guidance and mentorship, not control and ownership.

We love our peers through support, encouragement, collaboration, cooperation, and appreciation.

We love our seniors by following through on what we’ve signed up to do, being respectful, and holding on to our boundaries.

The easiest (and safest) way for us to give love to the people who cross our path is to smile. Thanks to our survival circuitry, our brains are constantly scanning for cues as to whether we’re welcome in our surroundings. Scientists say that when we smile at someone, it signals social connection, putting them more at ease.

Smiling releases dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, the feel-good neurotransmitters, which lift our mood. And countless studies back up what most of us have known our whole lives—smiling is contagious. So if you smile and someone returns it, you’re both benefiting from your feel-good hormones.

You can seek love your whole life and never find it, or you can give love your whole life and experience joy. Experience it, practice it, and create it instead of waiting for it to find you. The more you do this, the more you will experience the depths of love from different people throughout every single day for the rest of your life.