How to Be an Adult in Relationships

The Role of Conflict in Relationships

Richo emphasizes that conflict is a natural and essential phase in building a lasting relationship. He argues that without conflict, partners might lose their individuality and become overly dependent on each other. Conflict helps transition from romantic projection to mature self-affirmation. Richo states, 'We need conflict in order to evolve from romantic projection to mature self-affirmation.' This phase often brings up unresolved issues from our past, especially those related to our parents, which we then project onto our partners. This reenactment allows individuals to confront and process these old wounds, ultimately leading to personal growth and a deeper, more authentic connection with their partner.

Embracing Vulnerability and Intimacy

Richo emphasizes the importance of embracing vulnerability to foster genuine intimacy in relationships. He suggests that our fear of closeness often stems from a fear of our own emotions and vulnerabilities. Richo advises that instead of rebuking ourselves for these fears, we should recognize them as our deepest vulnerabilities, which make us most lovable. He writes, 'We don’t fear physical closeness because we fear proximity itself. Most of us earnestly want physical contact with those who love us. Rather we fear what we will feel when we get too close.' By acknowledging and sharing our fears with our partners, we create a safe space for intimacy to flourish.

The Five A's of Love

David Richo introduces the Five A's—Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection, and Allowing—as the cornerstone of mindful loving. These elements are essential for developing self-esteem and a healthy ego in childhood and are equally crucial for happiness in adult relationships. Richo emphasizes that these elements are not just psychological needs but also spiritual practices that can lead to universal compassion. He states, 'We feel loved when we receive attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection, and when we are allowed the freedom to live in accord with our own deepest needs and wishes.' By integrating these elements into our relationships, we can create a nurturing environment that fosters growth and intimacy.

Mindfulness in Relationships

Mindfulness is a recurring theme in Richo's work, described as an 'alert witnessing of reality without judgment, attachment, fear, expectation, defensiveness, bias, or control.' He argues that mindfulness allows us to stay present in the moment, which is crucial for experiencing life and relationships as they occur. This practice helps us let go of ego-driven behaviors and become more compassionate and loving. Richo explains, 'Through compassionate mindfulness, we become adept at granting the essential components of love to everyone—even to ourselves.' By practicing mindfulness, we can enhance our capacity to give and receive love, thereby improving our relationships and overall well-being.

The Heroic Journey of Love

Richo frames the journey of love as a heroic expedition that involves leaving the familiar, facing struggles, and returning with a gift of higher consciousness. This journey is not just about personal growth but also about contributing to the world's evolution. He writes, 'The heroic journey is a metaphor for the yearning in the human soul for something that can repair and restore what has been broken or lost in our limited world.' This journey requires both psychological work, such as addressing and resolving emotional blocks, and spiritual practices like letting go of ego and increasing mindfulness. By undertaking this journey, we can transform our relationships into a source of mutual growth and universal love.

Transforming Ego Reactions

Richo provides practical steps for transforming ego-driven behaviors into healthier, more mindful actions. He emphasizes the importance of moving beyond either/or thinking, becoming nonviolent, and letting go of the need to be right or to justify oneself. For instance, he suggests, 'Our need to be right comes from our fear of loss of approval. If I’m wrong, we think, I lose my identity and thus my approvability.' By acknowledging and transforming these ego reactions, we can foster more authentic and compassionate relationships.

Love is the possibility of possibilities. Its farthest reach is beyond us, no matter how long we love or how much. It will always remain the mute mystery to whose ecstasy and ache we can only surrender with a yes.

The human heart holds much more love than it can ever disburse in one lifetime. This book suggests a program for activating that abundant potential.

We are born with a capacity to dance together but not with the necessary training. We have to learn the dance steps and practice until we move with ease and grace. The joy in it requires work.

Love from another adult does more than just satisfy us in the present. It ripples back in time for us, repairing, restoring, and renovating an inadequate past.

Acceptance is unconditional since it means validating someone’s choices and lifestyle even when we do not agree with them. It is the opposite of moralizing.

To give and receive love is our primary need. We express love emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

The five A’s begin as needs to be fulfilled by our parents, then become needs to be fulfilled by our partners, and someday become gifts we give to others and to the world.

If any one of us were whole and totally satisfactory, we would not be motivated to go on the journey that makes our life so wonderful.

Mindsets are minimizations, since every reality and person is actually an infinite field of potential, a vast open space beyond limit.

The practices show us our vast potential to be healthy adults who know how to love. They also show us where our constrictions in and resistance to love may be lurking.

Mirroring helps us survive emotionally—that is, to experience the events of our life with the power to handle them and without being devastated or embittered by them.

When we despair of mirroring and of the possibility of trusting in others, we despair of the very things that make intimacy possible. Intimacy is mutual mirroring.

Becoming more adult means having an inner nurturant parent who supervises our unruly inner child, protects our endangered inner child, and comforts our scared inner child.

We find our depth when we go directly into the hole, as Alice did. Wonderland is really the depths of the human soul, with its defiance of logic and all its radiant possibilities.

We cannot unlive our painful history, but we do not have to relive it. We cannot let go of it, but we do not have to hold on to it.

Our goal as healthy people is not to give up longing for a relationship but to let it be fulfilled moderately by others and following a model of mutuality rather than neediness.

A healthy person is not one in a relationship but one in his own skin.

The commitment to work through problems as they arise is the only sign that we truly want full intimacy. Only that commitment makes a difference, not good looks, not empty words, not what we seek, not even what we find.

The first requirement for trust and commitment is telling the truth. We sometimes do not share our feelings and reactions with a partner because we sense that she cannot receive the truth from us.

In the holding environment of intimacy, we can allow the truth to emerge without fear, shame, or embarrassment. Such trust flourishes when partners are committed to working on themselves.

As we become healthier and more adult, we no longer seek sex for joy but share sex because of joy. When there is happiness in our inner world, we give up the frantic search for happiness in sex.

Romance is real but temporary. We are in love but only with a projection of ourselves, not with a true other.

The purpose of relationships is not to endure (which in Latin means “to harden”). When we try to hold on and endure, the relationship changes and leaves us behind.

Romance blooms in wish, love in will. In romance, we think: “I am contained by you and you by me. We are finding—or rediscovering —the five A’s we sought in our primordial relationship.

The biggest risk: to trust that these conditions are all that I need to be myself,” said Taoist sage Han Hung.

My erotic delights with my special someone weave every veil in my life.” - Rumi

Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; / The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.” - Alexander Pope

Working things out involves two steps: articulating the truth as each person experiences it and acting in accord with it. (Frustration results when we articulate without acting.)

Most of us have such a hard time being with each other, yet love involves a choice to keep working things out. When we refuse to do that or do it only reluctantly, we do not really love anymore.

When consciousness connects our present experiences to its childhood determinants, we gain a sense of expanded meaning in our life experience.

The whole point of mindful spirituality is to acclaim affiliation and defy division. Then we see differences as mere adornments to similarities, and the fear of differences fades away.

Our challenge is to find some of what we desire in others in our own contrasexual energy—a woman’s male energy or a man’s female energy —and transform in ourselves what we fear in others.

Confusion is a totally legitimate phase of working things out. We may need a period of ambiguity, uncertainty, or lack of clarity before we can see what is going on.

Patience is an ingredient of bread and love. If we respect our timing and our moods, we grow in self-trust.

Success in any relationship is not the absence of conflict but the ability to be in conflict mindfully, for example, without attachment to the intrusive mindsets of ego: fear, desire, control, judgment, or illusion.

Jealousy challenges our power to stay open and centered, without blame or withdrawal, in the midst of rejection. To go through it rather than simply bolster our ego shows us a path to maturity and liberation.

Infidelity is a state-of-the-union address, forcing us to see the truth about our relationship.

Disappointment empowers us when it helps us learn to locate and trust ourselves while still relating to a partner.

According to Buddhist teaching, we attain satisfaction not by indulgence of desires but by renunciation of clinging.

Our destiny is to bring more and more consciousness to what has remained unconscious, 'to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being,' as Jung says.

Unconditional love is love without the conditions—the F.A.C.E. —of ego. Such love is free of fear.

To free ourselves from our neurotic ego is ultimately to accept the conditions of existence and to see ourselves not as victims or opponents of the givens of reality, but as adults who face up to them honestly.

Vengefulness and indignation are clues to the presence of an arrogant, narcissistic—and ultimately very scared—ego.

The healthy adult moves from pose to poise. He wants to be ex-posed so that he can act freely with no further need to invent or protect a self-created image.

We build trust when we admit we are not perfect. Partners can practice an occasional confession to one another by following these steps: Acknowledge to yourself that you may have failed in mirroring your partner by showing a willful deficit in attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, or allowing freedom of individuality.

The person I find when I have been alone for a while—and have had a chance to reflect, process, and grow from my experience—is more likely to be at a higher level of maturity.

Someday the other person and the relationship and all that has happened will simply be information. That will signal that the grief has run its course and that you have moved on.

The wisdom is in not escaping at all. Mindfulness is not about becoming composed but about composing ourselves fully in our here and now, truly mirroring our immediate reality.

Sex is not a reliable indicator of a good relationship because it can be great even when we are utterly mismatched—as in our case.

Doing the work and maintaining no contact is the best path to a liberating iconoclasm. Instead of holding out for fulfillment, will I settle for a repetition of an old cycle?

An intimate adult commitment is based on informed consent: “I know the architecture of your ego and the unlit corners of your shadow, and I commit myself to you with my eyes wide open.

An essential bond in a relationship goes on after divorce. It is the unconditional love that can be dismantled but never demolished.

It is a mysterious and marvelous fact that it takes someone else to lead us to ourselves. No wonder we confuse our innermost longing for spiritual partnership with a tangible partnership and a specific person.

Love can coexist with anger when we include the five A’s in our expression of anger.

All feelings are legitimate and are meant to lead to addressing, processing, and resolving in mindful ways.

The Everest in the psyche is love, and the ego is perfectly suited to reaching it. All it takes is dying and rising.

In the past you were powerless to change the thing that hurt you, but now you can change your reactions to situations that resemble those that once caused you pain.

Forgiveness is a happening, not really a step. We cannot plan for it or will it. It is automatic compassion for and absolution of those who have hurt us. It means letting go of blame and anger while still acknowledging accountability.

We feel loved when we receive attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection, and when we are allowed the freedom to live in accord with our own deepest needs and wishes.

Through compassionate mindfulness, we become adept at granting the essential components of love to everyone—even to ourselves.

The heroic journey is a metaphor for the yearning in the human soul for something that can repair and restore what has been broken or lost in our limited world.

Mindfulness is not meant to help us escape reality but to see it clearly, without the blinding overlays of ego.

Control is meant to make you what others need you to be. Limit-setting makes it safe for you to be yourself.

Grief is healed by letting go and by contact.

Every disruption, interruption, and failure at empathic attunement from our parents helps us gain the power to face the future, with all its separations, disappointments, and defeats.

Once we love ourselves, people no longer look good to us unless they are good for us.

We relate to our desire for love mindfully by feeling it fully, witnessing how it changes and where it leads us, and accepting that it may or may not be fulfilled soon.

Romance is real but temporary. We are in love but only with a projection of ourselves, not with a True other.

The fear of closeness and engulfment is subtle and long-lived; we are only released from it when we work through it and practice overriding it again and again.

To love unconditionally calls for mindfulness: We let go of expectation, fear, grasping, shame, blame, retaliation, and the need to victimize or be victimized.

Holding on is the painful element of letting go.

We believe in the abundant possibility in each of us to bring love into the world.

The lack of any of the five A’s feels like a gap in our psyches, a hole, a deficiency. Yet each unfulfilled A is more than a hole. If we stay with the pain of the emptiness, it opens a spacious chamber in our psyche.

In conditional, ego-centered love, we show love only to someone who meets our specific specifications. In unconditional love, we create loveability by freely giving the five A's. In this generous form of human grace-giving, there is no set of criteria to be met by the love object. In other words, love's range is infinite and anyone can be loved.