Characteristics Of Falling In Love

I AM OMIYEHAN SUNDAY AND I PRESENT TO MY FRIEND IN LOVE characteristic of love for all of successfull Secrets Of Falling in Love love is what man can never explain and grap to the end, but with experience in falling in love you can still control feeling of love till the end of love. the end of love in the life of human is love of death. when there is love of death between two partner the other partner need to control love feeling. all you have experience in that love that depart was the spirit in his or her love, one the spirit is gone the rest become dust dirty, but if you say God give me the spirit of love that i love then the love in spirit will come to you. yes there is love in spirit and love of the body some time you fall in love with one that is rejected by all men that is the loove in spirit. while some time you fall in love because you just like shape of the body and dresses. now see

what we have about loving and dating.

The Real Reasons We Do, And Why It Doesn’t Last If we don’t have enough Real Love in our lives, the resulting emptiness is unbearable. We then compulsively try to fi ll 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: • Praise • Power • Pleasure • Safety Let’s discuss how we use these forms of Imitation Love, and how they affect our individual happiness and our ability to participate in relationships. PRAISE In the absence of sufficient Real Love, praise feels pretty good. From the time we were small children, we all experienced the exhilaration 10 Chapter Two 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. Th e 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 fi rst 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 signifi cant drawbacks. Imagine that you read an advertisement in the paper that states, “Best apples you’ve ever eaten.” Rushing down to the store, you fi nd on display the most beautiful apples you’ve ever seen. Th e store clerk off ers you a slice of one of the apples, and you discover that they taste every bit as good as they look. You

buy an entire bushel and load them in the car. At home you eat nearly a dozen of the apples in the fi rst couple of days, and you pat yourself on the back that you saw that newspaper advertisement. You even tell your friends about your good fortune. On the third day, however, after eating through the upper two layers of apples, you discover that all the rest of the apples are soft and old, and many are rotten. Rushing back to the store, you confront the clerk about the rotten apples, saying, “You promised that these would be the best apples I’d ever eaten.” “But the apples on top were the best you’d ever eaten,” says the clerk. “Am I right?” “Well, I guess they were,” you say, “but that’s not the point. You lied to me.” “I did not lie,” says the clerk. “I gave you the best apples you’d ever eaten, just as I promised.” Real Love in Dating 11 “What about the rotten apples?” you protest. “I delivered exactly what I promised,” says the clerk. “I didn’t tell you about the rotten ones, because then I knew you wouldn’t buy the whole bushel—and you didn’t ask me about them, either. You were happy enough when you bought them. It’s not my fault that you didn’t look through the bushel to see if it was the same on the bottom as the top.” It’s quite obvious that the clerk lied to you—he completely misrepresented his product—but he did nothing diff erent from what most of us do on a fi rst date. Two people on a fi rst date are engaging in a “best foot festival,” with each party diligently putting on a show of his or her best characteristics. On the surface, that might appear commendable, but look at the eventual consequences of people putting their best apples on top. Th ey both believe that the other person’s best foot—his or her best apples—accurately represents who that person really is, and that’s where the problems begin. 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. “After all,” they reason— silently and aloud—“I used to be happy in this relationship, but now I’m not, so you must be withholding the happiness you once gave me.” When a relationship goes bad, our natural conclusion is that our partner has failed us in some way, breaking the unspoken contract we’d made together. But the real reason relationships fail is that from the beginning we established the relationship on something less than the complete truth about ourselves. Expectations were created, and when those were not met—when the truth came out 12 Chapter Two about who we were, and who our partners were—we felt as though our dreams had been crushed. Relationships fail because we create them on a foundation lacking the one ingredient—Real Love—most essential to happiness and fulfi lling relationships. Without suffi cient 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 fl awed, and no amount of time, eff ort, 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. Most of us were taught to put our best foot forward, and to create a great fi rst impression. Regrettably, our partners choose us on the basis of that falsely positive image, and when we can’t maintain it, the results are enormous disappointment and bitterness. Tragically, although Real Love is essential to happiness, most of us have never had consistent experiences with it, as we discussed in Chapter One. In our emptiness and pain, we’re only too eager to reach out for anything that makes us feel better, however superfi cial and fl eeting 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 fi lls our emptiness. To use a metaphor, what we’d really like is cookies that are warm and fresh out of the oven, with that unforgettable smell, taste, and texture. If we can’t have freshly baked cookies, however, we’ll take stale cookies over nothing at all. Our obsession with praise as a form of Imitation Love can be illustrated by a study recently done at a major university. Of the incoming freshmen women that year, 65% were found to Real Love in Dating 13 have a signifi cant eating disorder—mostly bulimia and anorexia. Th ese women were so eager to be praised for their appearance that they were willing to starve themselves or induce vomiting after meals. Th ey were willing to physically injure themselves because all women know that physically beautiful women—translation: sexually attractive women—are treated quite diff erently from those who are not considered attractive. To demonstrate this, a group of social scientists studied the reactions of a group of people to two women placed at opposite ends of the room—one woman a model, the other considerably less attractive by most standards. To the surprise of no one, the “unattractive” woman was treated virtually like a leper, while the model received a great deal of attention. Th is diff erential treatment was observed not only among the men at the gathering, but among the women as well. Unintentionally, we teach our children from a young age— even in their bedtime stories—that it’s very important to be praised for one’s appearance. As a child, did you hear the fairy tale about the princess who was rather average looking? No, I didn’t either. In our bedtime stories, we use the terms beautifulprincess and handsomeprince as though they were each one word. Without meaning to, we’re teaching our children that they must be beautiful or handsome in order to earn the praise—and, by implication, the affection—of others. 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 signifi cant 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. Th e eff ects of praise are always short-lived, leaving us empty and desperate for more. People who consistently use addictive drugs soon discover that the eff ect becomes increasingly brief, and more of the drug is required in order to achieve the same outcome. All the forms

14 Chapter Two of Imitation Love are like addictive drugs. Despite all the eff ort required to earn Imitation Love, the benefi cial eff ects of praise, power, money, and sex become increasingly brief. We also have to work harder to get the desired eff ect, 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. A friend of mine once had a job where she interviewed celebrities on radio and television. She once interviewed a man who regularly performed on stage and screen. She asked him what it was like to be cheered and adored by so many, and he said, “It’s a great feeling, but after the show, before I even get to the hotel in the limousine, I already need more.” No amount of praise—or any other form of Imitation Love—is ever enough to make us happy. All the forms of Imitation Love become like addictive drugs: We must have more and more, and eventually no amount of it can give us relief from our pain. Not only is the eff ect of praise brief, but somehow we also sense that the praise isn’t really about us. When people praise us, they’re usually telling us that we’ve done something to make them feel better. When the boss praises you, is he saying that he’s happy for you, happy that you have derived a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment from your performance? No, he’s almost always saying that you’ve made his job easier, and he wants you to continue doing that for his benefifi t. To provide another example, when a man tells a woman that she’s beautiful, is he really talking about her? Usually, what he’s really saying is that he enjoys the physical pleasure of looking at her. He enjoys the praise he receives from others as he is seen with Real Love in Dating 15 a beautiful woman. He also enjoys the excitement of fantasizing about her, and if he persists in praising her beauty, he increases the chance that he might score an even greater physical pleasure with her. Without realizing it, when he says, “You are so beautiful,” he’s really saying, “I like how you make me feel.” 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. Th at 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 suffi cient 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. Th e following example will illustrate one common use of power. Most young girls have little power over the people around them. Th ey can’t control their parents, teachers, friends, or even their own bedtimes. Without enough Real Love, this sense of helplessness is painful. When girls get older, however, and develop sexually, they can’t help but discover that they have gained considerable infl uence over the boys and men around them. Sexually attractive girls tend to receive more attention—and they get away with more mistakes—than do girls who are less attractive. With their sexuality,

young women learn to exercise power over others, and it’s mostly unconscious. It’s understandable that they would do this—we all naturally use whatever form of Imitation Love that will dull the pain of not feeling loved unconditionally. 16 Chapter Two 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. Th e enjoyable eff ects of pleasure, however, are fl eeting, 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 fi nally 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. Again, stale cookies are better than nothing at all. In the absence of suffi cient 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. Real Love in Dating 17 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 off er. 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 fi fty cents in return. Without being aware of the reason, you naturally prefer the company of the person who gives you a fi fty 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. Th is 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. Th at 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 believes 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 18 Chapter Two can see the eff ects 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. Th en 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 off er—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. Th ey 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 eff ect of Imitation Love always fades, as Michael and Susan discovered. Th ey really enjoyed the Real Love in Dating 19 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 fl eeting eff ects 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 eff ect of Imitation Love, they also invariably fi nd 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: Type of Imitation Love (in dollars) Received by Imitation Love Michael Susan Praise 5 5 Power 5 5 Pleasure 6 2 Safety 1 5 Total Imitation Love 17 17 In the beginning of their relationship, they both received fi ve dollars of praise as each of them complimented the other for a variety of qualities, including sexual desirability. Th ey were equally successful in getting the other to do the things they wanted (fi ve dollars of power each). Michael got more physical pleasure from the relationship (mostly from sex) than Susan (six dollars versus 20 Chapter Two two), but Susan got a greater sense of security (safety) from the relationship than Michael did (fi ve 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: Type of Imitation Love (in dollars) Received by Imitation Love Michael Susan Praise 1 1 Power 3 1 Pleasure 4 1 Safety 0 1 Total Imitation Love 8 4 Th ey both discovered that the eff ects of fl attery had quickly worn off , and that constantly earning it was exhausting, so neither of them was willing to continue their initial eff orts to praise one another (down from fi ve dollars to a dollar apiece). Susan discovered she could hardly get Michael to do anything she wanted (one dollar of power vs. the fi ve dollars she got in the beginning of their relationship), so she tended to reward him with nagging instead of praise. Without suffi cient 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 fi ve 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 fi delity when he looked at other women. Michael felt no safety at all as Susan nagged him about everything. What a miserable state of aff airs. When they fi rst met, what Michael and Susan both needed was Real Love, but neither of Real Love in Dating 21 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 off ered 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 satisfi ed with their relationship in the beginning. When the eff ects 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. Th ey were both faced with the horror that they were not going to get the happiness they’d hoped for all their lives. Relationships fail not because either partner did anything wrong, but because both of them came to the relationship without enough of the one thing—Real Love—essential to individual happiness and healthy relationships. Th ey based their relationship on a counterfeit currency—Imitation Love—that cannot buy happiness. 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 satisfi ed, because even though his total was down from seventeen dollars to eight, it was still better than what he enjoyed before fi nding Susan. 22 Chapter Two Sex as a form of Imitation Love deserves special attention, and I’ll be addressing that subject in Chapter Seven. 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, fi nally choosing the one they believe will provide them with the fulfi llment of their dreams. Ideally, marriages should be the cream of all relationships, the best of the best. And yet 60% of those 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. Th e inescapable conclusion is that their partner has somehow failed them, somehow withdrawn the joy they once magically dispensed at the beginning of the relationship. After reading the fi rst two chapters of this book, however, you now understand the real reason relationships fail. When two people enter into a relationship without suffi cient 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 fulfi lling 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 Real Love in Dating 23 they’ve had before, so it seems real. Th en, when the eff ects 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. “I LOVE YOU BECAUSE . . .” When someone says, “I love you because . . .” that person really commands our attention. We’re eager to hear what follows: “. . . because you’re smart, beautiful, handsome, responsible, clever, witty, whatever.” We absolutely adore hearing these fl attering descriptions of ourselves. What we don’t realize is that these seductive words also constitute the seeds of destruction in our relationships. When someone tells you why he or she loves you, that person is describing the qualities you must have in order for him or her to continue loving you. You’re now obligated to continue fifi lling the expectations of that person. When we don’t have enough Real Love, we’re eager to fi ll our emptiness with Imitation Love, and when we fi nd someone who gives us an adequate supply, we’re naturally drawn to that source. We must understand that when we say, “I love you,” what we usually mean is, “I need you.” When we don’t feel unconditionally loved, and we tell someone we love him or her, we’re expressing only a selfi sh wish for that person to keep making us feel good. When we say, “I love you,” however, our partner hears us promise that we’ll make him or her happy. ThTh ese conflfl icting expectations cause the failure of most relationships. When I discuss this subject in seminars, someone often asks, “So you’re saying that if we had suffi cient Real Love in our lives, 24 Chapter Two we could love everyone?” When I reply in the affi rmative, he or she continues, “But you’re not saying that we should date or marry just anyone, are you? Isn’t it all right that we look for certain qualities we like in a future spouse, for example? Isn’t it all right to want to marry someone because they possess certain qualities I like? ThTh at’s not necessarily selfi sh, is it?” As we fi nd suffi cient Real Love in our lives—we’ll discuss how to do that in Chapter Four—our emptiness and fear disappear. Th en we’re no longer driven by what we need from people, or by what we fear from them, and in that condition we then gain the ability to accept all people and care about their happiness without their doing anything for us—the defi nition of Real Love. Th at does not mean, however, that we won’t fi nd some people more enjoyable to be around. We’ll discuss that subject in greater detail in Chapter Five. THE REPEATING PATTERN Our pursuit of Imitation Love explains not only how relationships begin and end but also how we tend to attract the same kind of partner over and over. How many times have you known someone who has broken up with a partner, and then, only a few weeks

or months later, he or she has found the same partner but with a diff erent name and face? Somehow we seem to fi nd the same personality type over and over, as though we were magnets for that particular kind of person. Why do we keep repeating these same patterns of attraction and failure? Without enough Real Love, we’re desperately looking for those people who will give us a “good deal” in the exchange of Imitation Love. It’s as though we have a fl ashing billboard on our foreheads, which states, “Looking to trade.” We advertise to potential partners that we’re willing to give Imitation Love in exchange for receiving it. Over a lifetime, we have also learned to off er a certain combination of the diff erent forms of Imitation Love. We’ve all Real Love in Dating 25 noticed, for example, that some of us are more likely to off er fl attery to attract people, while others of us tend to off er power or pleasure. When we fi nd someone who is attracted to our particular combination—say, for the sake of example, fi ve parts praise, four parts power, two parts pleasure, and three parts safety—and when we in turn like the combination he or she off ers us, everything “just clicks,” and we’re certain we’ve found the love of our life. When everything “just clicks,” however, it almost always means that we’ve just found a great exchange of Imitation Love, and that will never make us happy. Th e initial excitement, though, is enormously seductive, and we tend to fall for it over and over. Until we recognize what’s happening, we’re doomed to repeat this unhappy pattern. We keep repeating the same unproductive behaviors in relationships because we keep bringing the same person—ourselves—to each relationship. Until we learn to stop looking for Imitation Love, we will repeat our unhappy results over and over. FREEDOM As you come to understand Imitation Love, you may feel some sense of discouragement. You might think, “I can’t believe it. I’ve wasted my whole life trying to fi nd happiness with Imitation Love.” You’re not alone. Most of us have unwittingly placed our faith in the utterly futile pursuit of the happiness that Imitation Love can never produce. Once we recognize this pattern, however, we can begin to take the steps that will lead to the Real Love, genuine happiness, and great relationships we’ve always wanted. 26 Chapter Two I once knew a woman who had a large house you simply would not believe. All the garbage she had generated over the years— old papers, empty food cans, rotten produce, car tires—had been tossed into the rooms she wasn’t using. Eventually the fl oors literally bowed with the weight of more garbage than I’d ever seen outside a regional landfi ll. Cockroaches were everywhere, and the only reason she wasn’t overrun by rats was that she had thirty cats in the house. Th e cats generated their own waste, of course, and the combination of all that refuse created a stench that I would not have thought possible in a human dwelling. A group of friends decided to help this woman out of her predicament. With her permission, they arranged for the sale of property on which the home sat—the home itself was bulldozed and burned—and helped her fi nd a smaller, more manageable apartment. Th ey were so proud of themselves, that they had helped her fi nd a more pleasant environment in which to live. Within a year, however, her small apartment looked almost exactly the same

as her old home had. She had fi lled the place with garbage, and the stench of cat waste was overpowering. Although these people had good intentions, they failed to consider that despite changing the woman’s location, she herself had not changed, so the cause of the mess remained. Most of us move from partner to partner, hoping that the next one will provide us the happiness we’re looking for. If we bring to each relationship, however, the same inadequate tools—specifi cally a lack of Real Love—and a belief that Imitation love will bring us happiness, we will keep experiencing the same disappointing results, just as the woman who created a garbage dump wherever she went. We must recognize our dependence on Imitation Love. Once we do that, we can begin to take the steps to fi nd the Real Love we need. We hope you have enjoyed these excerpts from Real Love in Dating. We can confidently promise that as you learn and apply these principles you will begin to experience a level of happiness that you never thought possible. We encourage you to continue in love THE NINE PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE PARENTING The First Principle More than anything else, my child needs to feel loved The Second Principle When my child behaves badly, he or she doesn’t feel loved The Third Principle When I’m angry, I’m wrong The Fourth Principle I can’t give what I don’t have: I must find Real Love for myself The Fifth Principle My child needs to be loved and taught The Sixth Principle After my child has been loved and taught, he or she needs to be loved and taught again The Seventh Principle The Law of Choice The Eighth Principle Happiness comes from being loving The Ninth Principle Happiness comes from being responsible CHAPTER THREE THE THIRD PRINCIPLE OF PARENTING When I’m Angry, I’m Wrong Because of their age and inexperience, children are naturally inconvenient in so many ways: • They’re always spilling stuff, falling down, making messes, and getting involved in all manner of “accidents.” • When they get ready for school, clean their rooms, prepare for bed time, or do anything else involving a time limit, they move at a slow and erratic pace rarely compatible with our own schedules. • They’re often unable to perform even the simplest tasks without help or supervision. • They incessantly make unnecessary noises in a wide range of

both volume and pitch. • Frequently they are unable to clearly communicate their needs. • When they do express their needs, they are often insistent and demanding. They have no patience. • Everything they do seems to cost money. 418 Chapter Three When we don’t feel sufficiently loved ourselves, these innumerable inconveniences often become more than we can stand—the straw that breaks the camel’s back—and then we understandably respond with behaviors designed to minimize the effects of these inconveniences on us. We’ve learned from a lifetime of experiences as children and as adults that one effective way to get children to listen, and to change their behavior, is to get angry at them. When we’re angry, children—as well as adults—tend to do what we want, and they tend to do it more quickly. THE EFFECTS OF ANGER Although our children often respond to our anger in the short term by doing what we want, the overall effects of anger are overwhelmingly negative. When we’re angry: • our children cannot feel loved by us. • because they don’t feel loved, they respond with even more Getting and Protecting Behaviors, the very behaviors we were trying to stop in the first place with our anger. • they can’t learn. • we can’t be happy. • we teach our children the lie that other people make us angry. Our Children Can’t Feel Loved by Us On one occasion in Chapter One, I lovingly described to you the mistakes you made while planting some bushes in my yard. Even though I was talking about your mistakes—a potentially negative subject—you could feel my concern for your happiness. In the scenario that followed, however, I was disappointed and irritated at you, and the effect on you was quite different. Why? When I’m angry at you, I’m saying, “How dare you inconvenience the true center of the universe—ME. You have somehow failed to remember that your purpose in life is to serve ME, or you have done something unpleasant to ME.” We could, in fact, replace the word angry with ME-ME-ME. Anger is the ultimate arrogance. Imagine, then, that I’m standing over you in anger, with my words and behavior shouting ME-ME-ME. While I’m completely Real Love in Parenting 419 focusing on myself in that way, is there any way in the world that you could feel my unconditional concern for your welfare? Utterly impossible. This is such an important concept that I suggest you indelibly etch the following in your memory: Every time you are angry at another human being—husband, wife, lover, friend, parent, boss, co-worker, or child—that person hears you say only four words: “I don’t love you.” If you have any doubt about the truth of this, blow up at anyone you know—especially a child—and watch his or her face. When we’re angry at our children, we’re powerfully telling them that we do not love them unconditionally—at least in that moment—and they feel that. We may not be trying to say “I don’t love you,” but when we’re angry, we’re just too consumed with our own needs and fears to be capable of loving anyone else. There is nothing children hate to hear more than “I don’t love

you,” and that’s why they are so easily motivated by our anger. They’re willing to do whatever it takes to get us to stop being angry—to stop expressing our lack of love. Anger Can Literally Define the World For a Child—in a Very Negative Way The cost of anger is especially high when we express it to our children. Young children don’t create out of thin air the view they have of themselves or of the world. They learn who they are, what the world is like, and how they relate to the world mostly from what we say and do as their parents. Early in their lives, they accept completely what we tell them, and so we have a virtually god-like influence over them. When a child makes mistakes, for example, and we become impatient and irritated, the child learns this: • When I make mistakes, my parents obviously love me less. • When I am flawed, I am therefore less worthwhile. • Since I am flawed most of the time, I am obviously worth very little. • The world is a harsh, judgmental, and unloving place. I cannot over-emphasize the destructive impact of these lessons 420 Chapter Three on a child. A young child is quite incapable of questioning these conclusions when they are taught by a parent, who stands in a position of unquestioned power. When you are angry at a child, there is no way on earth that he or she could have the courage or insight to say, “Dad (or Mom), I see that you’re angry. You must be feeling unloved. Even though you’re expressing your anger at me, I know you’re just reacting to a lifetime of not feeling loved, not primarily to something I did or did not do in this moment. Is there something I can do to help you feel more loved?” Absurd. No, a child can conclude only that your anger is all about him or her, and the effect is disastrous, as outlined above. They Respond with Even More Getting and Protecting Behaviors It’s hugely ironic that when we get angry at our children, we cause the very behaviors we’re trying to control or eliminate. Here’s how that happens: • All the behaviors in children that inconvenience and annoy us—disobedience, rebellion, whining, insistence, sullenness, withdrawal, and so on—are only Getting and Protecting Behaviors that exist in response to their not feeling loved unconditionally. • When we don’t feel unconditionally loved either, the behaviors of our children then make us feel even more empty and afraid. • To alleviate these painful feelings, we get angry, which gives us a sense of power and safety. • From our anger, our children hear only “I don’t love you,” which greatly magnifies their feelings of emptiness and fear. • They respond by using even more Getting and Protecting Behaviors, exactly what we were trying to prevent. Children will do almost anything—they use all the Protecting Behaviors—to avoid any expression of our disapproval: a sigh, a frown, a raised eyebrow, a change in our tone of voice, or an unkind word. To our children, disappointment and anger are different only in degree, and both are devastating. Real Love in Parenting 421 They Can’t Learn One beautiful fall day, George came to see me about his son, Dan. He

was quite animated and irritated as he told me about Dan’s negative attitude, disobedience, and lack of responsibility. “Only yesterday,” George said, “I was trying to talk to him about something, and he just sat there, giving me that sullen stare. It’s like he doesn’t hear a word I say.” “He can’t,” I responded. “What do you mean?” “When you’re angry, he can’t hear anything you’re saying.” “I wasn’t angry. I was just being firm. He doesn’t listen unless I’m firm with him.” “It doesn’t sound like he listens to you when you’re ‘firm,’ either, but you were more than firm. You were angry.” “How do you know that? You weren’t there.” “I didn’t have to be. I’m here with you now, and you’ve been angry at Dan from the moment you started talking about him. You’re also angry at me for questioning what you did—which doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m only describing what I see so that you can see it. You’ve already proven that the way you talk to Dan doesn’t work, and because I care about you, I’m helping you see why he can’t hear you. Considering all the anger you’re showing here, it’s utterly impossible to believe that you were not angry with Dan when you talked to him. If I spoke to you in the same tone of voice you used with Dan yesterday, would you think I was angry?” “Okay, I get the point. So I might have been a little irritated at him.” “Let’s assume for a moment that I’m your employer. I supervise you, sign your paycheck, and have the authority to fire you. Can you picture that?” “Sure.” “Now, suppose I come to you and describe a mistake you made at work yesterday. I tell you that it’ll cost the company a couple hundred dollars to fix the mistake, and two other employees will have to work overtime to correct it. But you can see that I’m not the least bit irritated by any of this. In fact, I apologize that I didn’t give you enough information to do the assignment correctly in the first place, and then I describe how you could do the task in a way that will be easier and more productive. Would you be willing to do it the new way?” 422 Chapter Three “Of course.” “How do you feel about me describing your mistake?” “Fine. You’re just trying to help me.” “Now imagine that I come to your office and throw a pile of papers on your desk. I say that what you’ve done is completely unacceptable, and I yell at you as I describe what a bumbling fool you are. Do you feel different about our conversation this time?” “Sure.” “What’s the difference?” “It’s hard to listen to you when you’re yelling at me.” “Why?” “It just is,” he said. “The first time I talked to you, it was easy to hear me, because— in your words—I was just trying to help you, right?” “Yes.” “What was different about the second time was that I was angry at you. We rarely appreciate what our anger means. I can describe your mistake and still have a genuine concern for your happiness, as you discovered when I talked to you the first time. But the moment I become angry, I’m telling you my primary concern is for whom?”

“Yourself.” “Exactly. Every single time I’m angry, I’m mainly concerned about what I want, which means I can’t possibly be concerned primarily about you. Every time I’m angry, I’m telling you I don’t care about you—which is the one thing we all hate to hear more than anything else—and then you will react to that, instead of listening to my correction of your mistake. You’ll defend yourself by withdrawing from me, or being angry at me, or acting like a victim, and so on. While I’m angry, you can’t really listen to me, because all you can hear is my telling you I don’t care about you.” “I never saw it that way before.” “Most people don’t, but you have to understand this before you can change the way you interact with Dan. Every time you’re angry at him, I promise you he hears you speaking only four words: I don’t love you. Once he hears that, essentially he becomes deaf to everything else you’re saying. You’ve been wondering why he doesn’t listen to you, and this is the answer: your anger.” “But I’m not always angry when I talk to him,” George protested. Real Love in Parenting 423 “That’s probably true,” I agreed. “Let’s go back to the example of my being your boss. Suppose that I blow up at you only half the times we speak. During the other half of the times we talk, what will be going through your mind? Will you feel relaxed?” Whenever we’re angry at our children, they hear us say only four words: “I don’t love you.” And then they respond with the Getting and Protecting Behaviors that are so destructive to them and to others. “No, I’ll be waiting for you to blow up. I’ll never be sure when you’re about to get mad at me.” “Right, and that’s how Dan feels. Also remember that if you want to estimate how much of the time you’re not mad at him, you can count only the times he’s making mistakes—when he’s screwing up. If you treat him nicely while he’s doing what you want, that doesn’t count for much, frankly. On those occasions, he can feel only like he’s buying your affection. It’s only when he’s making mistakes that he can feel whether you love him unconditionally—or you don’t. If I had to guess, I’d bet you get angry at him a lot more than half the times he makes mistakes, and that leaves him with only one conclusion: that you don’t love him. That has a huge impact on him. He’s constantly waiting for the next blowup from you.” Most of us have said to our children on many occasions, “How many times have I told you to _____? Why do I have to keep repeating myself?” If our children had the insight and courage, they would answer, “You have to keep repeating yourself because each time you teach me that principle, you’re angry, and I can’t hear you when you’re angry. If you would speak to me with any concern for my welfare, I could probably hear you.” We Can’t Be Happy Think about the last time you snapped at a child. Did you feel a growth of your inner peace? Did you feel warm and fuzzy inside? Never. Not only does our anger have a negative effect on others, but it eliminates the possibility of happiness in our own lives. Genuine happiness comes from feeling unconditionally loved and from loving others. Because anger always interferes with our feeling loved and loving others, it makes happiness impossible. 424 Chapter Three We Teach Our Children the Lie

That Other People Make Us Angry Every time we express anger at our children, we’re strongly implying that they made us angry. We make it quite clear—with our words, sighs, rolling eyes, tone of voice, and so on—that they are responsible for how we feel. In order to remove all doubt about that, in fact, we often say, “You make me so mad.” In so doing, we are teaching our children a terrible lie, that other people can make us angry. This lie has enslaved most of us all our lives, as illustrated in the following story. One day I heard two of my children, Joseph and Rachel, quarreling in the next room. Walking into that room, I said to Joseph—randomly choosing one of them—“You look pretty mad.” “Yeah,” he said, “who wouldn’t be? She borrowed my shirt again, and she didn’t put it back. So I had to look all over the house for it until I figured out that she had it.” “So she made you angry, right?” “Yes,” he said emphatically, and surprised that I would question such an obvious conclusion. “So let’s do this,” I suggested. “Let’s go down to the hardware store, get a large brass ring, and fasten it through the hole we’ll drill through your nose. Then we’ll attach a big chain to the ring and hand it to Rachel.” “What?” he said, obviously confused. “You wouldn’t like being Rachel’s slave?” “No.” “But you already are her slave, Joseph. Any time she wants to, she can do something to make you mad. So, effectively, she owns you. Do you want to keep being her slave?” “No.” In our society, it is almost universally accepted that other people make us angry, and we pass this belief on to our children. Regrettably, this belief makes our children captive to the behavior of every person around them, which is far from a desirable condition. Later in this chapter, we’ll prove that other people never make us angry, and in Chapters Six and Eight we’ll discuss how to handle arguments between our children. Real Love in Parenting 425 BECAUSE OF ITS CONSISTENTLY DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS, ANGER IS ALWAYS WRONG In Chapter One, I said: Since happiness is the central goal of life, a behavior is right when it contributes to that goal—in other words, when it leads to being unconditionally loved, loving, and responsible. Any behavior which interferes with those conditions is therefore wrong. Because anger always interferes with our feeling unconditionally loved, loving, and happy, anger is always wrong. I am not saying that when you’re angry, you’re evil, nor am I saying that you shouldn’t be angry—in a given moment, anger may be the best you can do. I am saying that because anger detracts from our primary purpose for being alive—because it is uniformly destructive, and keeps us from being happy—it is wrong. It just doesn’t work. Anger is wrong in the same sense that saying 2 + 2 = 5 is wrong, or that when you get a flat tire on your car, replacing the tire with a kitchen sink would be wrong. We also established in Chapter One that our primary goals are to love our children and teach them to love others. In the presence of anger, our children cannot feel loved by us, and so, for yet another

reason, anger is wrong. When we’re angry, we cannot be loving, effective parents. Take a moment and tattoo these words on the inside of your right upper eyelid, where you’ll always remember them: When I’m angry, I’m wrong. Everything else we give our children—entertainment, money, a great house, the best education, and so on—will not make them happy if they don’t feel unconditionally loved by us, and they cannot feel loved when we’re angry at them. Because anger always interferes with our greatest purposes in life—to feel loved, to be loving, and to be happy—anger is always wrong. You might be tempted to think, “But what am I supposed to do 426 Chapter Three when they misbehave? I have to correct them, don’t I? Sometimes they only pay attention when I’m mad. When I speak calmly, they just ignore me. Sometimes I have to get angry, for their own good— so they’ll listen.” That reasoning is seductive, but we must never forget that when we’re angry, our children don’t feel loved, and Real Love is the most important gift we’ll ever give them. When we’re angry, we’re wrong. Period. It’s true that when we get angry, they do sometimes move more quickly and accomplish the individual tasks we demand of them, but the long-term effects are devastating: • First, if they consistently respond to our anger with obedience, we’ll have children with clean rooms and good grades but who—without Real Love, the one element most important to genuine happiness—will be deeply unfulfilled and miserable in the long term. • A second outcome, however, is even more likely. Eventually, most children resent the constant whip of anger as a motivation, and then they quit responding to it with fear and compliance. Instead, they protect themselves by withdrawing, acting like victims, and getting angry in return, as George’s son, Dan, did. Anger is always wrong, and it’s never effective in the long term. That does not mean we should be permissive, which is an equally terrible mistake in parenting. Throughout the book, we’ll be discussing the most effective ways we can teach and love our children, avoiding both anger and indulgence. WHY WE GET ANGRY If anger is so destructive—to us personally, to our children, and to our relationships with them—why do we continue to get angry? Why do we continue to use a behavior that never gives us the results we really want? We continue to get angry at our children because: • we’re empty and afraid ourselves. • our children don’t fill our enormous expectations for their love. • anger is a response we’ve learned from our parents and others throughout our lives. Real Love in Parenting 427 We’re Empty and Afraid As we described in Chapter Two, anger is a Getting and Protecting Behavior. We get angry only to fill our emptiness and to protect ourselves from fear, conditions that exist because we do not have sufficient Real Love. Anger is absolute proof that we are empty and afraid. When we’re already empty and afraid from not feeling enough Real Love, we become much more afraid when confronted with

angry or disobedient children. What are we afraid of? • We’re afraid of losing control over them. Without sufficient Real Love, we enjoy the sense of power we get from influencing or determining what our children do. That’s not a pretty thing to see about ourselves, but it’s still true. When they behave badly, we feel helpless and weak. • We’re afraid of losing their respect (another form of power, and also praise). • We’re afraid of losing their approval and affection (praise). • We’re afraid of looking like bad parents—to our children and others (loss of praise). • We’re afraid of losing the peace and quiet we enjoy (pleasure and safety). We hate the simple inconvenience that always accompanies an angry child—we have to deal with his or her anger, which usually isn’t easy or fun. In other words, when children are angry we’re afraid of losing the Imitation Love we get from them, a “love” we have no right to demand. And then we respond with our own Getting and Protecting Behaviors, one of which is anger. With anger we feel better in several ways: • We feel stronger, more in control, less helpless. • We often succeed in commanding their respect. • If we consistently manipulate our children to do what we want, we feel competent (praiseworthy). • We create the illusion of being disciplined and strong parents, earning the praise of other parents. • We achieve the peace and quiet we crave (pleasure and safety). 428 Chapter Three Of course, all these effects are superficial and transient—as are the effects of all forms of Imitation Love—and when they wear off, we have to work to get them again. No amount of Imitation Love can ever make us truly happy. They Fail to Fill Our Expectations for Love Another explanation for our anger is the expectations we have of others. If we don’t feel sufficient Real Love—as most of us don’t—we’re empty and afraid, a condition we cannot tolerate. It’s only natural that we then expect the people around us to soothe our pain and fill our emptiness, and when they don’t, we can become quite irritated. How, we reason, could other people—especially those close to us—just stand by and fail to relieve our obvious discomfort? Without meaning to, we heap some of these expectations for love—Real and Imitation—on our children, and when they don’t fill them, we resent it. Anger is always preceded by an expectation of some kind. We get angry at people only when they fail to fulfill our expectations. You never become angry at your neighbor, for example, for not taking out your garbage, while it’s easy to conceive of getting angry at your son or daughter for not doing the same task. The difference? Expectations. You don’t expect your neighbor to take out your garbage, so when he doesn’t do it, there’s no disappointment or irritation. We get angry at our children because we have expectations of them. What do we expect? • Obedience (power, safety) • Gratitude (praise) • Respect (praise, power, safety) • Cooperation (power, safety) • Affection (praise) Certainly these are qualities children need to have if they want

to be happy, but rarely do we insist on these qualities in our children solely for their benefit. When we don’t have enough Real Love in our own lives, we demand obedience, for example, to feed our own need for praise, power, and safety. We need gratitude to confirm our own worth (praise). We demand respect to confirm our position of power over our children. Real Love in Parenting 429 The Powerful Need for Our Children’s Love On many occasions, I have asked adults, “Does anyone love you unconditionally?” and a common answer is this: “Yes, my children do.” That belief, however, is almost always inaccurate, inappropriate, and dangerous. Our children are not responsible for loving us, and with rare exceptions they’re also incapable of doing so. Most of us place considerable responsibility on our children to make us feel good. We prove this every time we’re disappointed in them or angry at them, because on these occasions we’re declaring that they are responsible for our happiness or unhappiness—and we’re mostly unaware of how often we do that. Our happiness is not determined by the behavior of our children. Our happiness is a result of how much unconditional love we’ve received over a lifetime of experiences with parents, teachers, friends, and spouses—and by how loving we are toward others. Most of us, however, were not unconditionally loved, and without Real Love we have become unhappy as adults and parents. But now it is not our children’s responsibility to give us the Real Love we need. Children need to be loved by us. They need to be filled up with the unconditional love required for their happiness. Children become whole only when love is initially a one-way flow, from us to them. That can’t happen while we’re demanding something from them in return. Our Children Can’t Love Us Unconditionally We want to believe that our children love us unconditionally, but if they haven’t received enough Real Love from us—as few of them have—how can they give it to anyone else? In most cases, when we expect love from our children, we’re asking them to give us what they’ve never received sufficiently themselves. Their task is impossible, and the burden is crushing. Love can be unconditional only when it’s freely given. The giver of unconditional love can’t be empty or afraid. When people are empty or afraid, they can only manipulate other people to get what they want or protect themselves from being hurt. Almost without exception, our children are both empty and afraid: They 430 Chapter Three badly need us to love them, and they’re scared to death of losing our love. These are natural conditions for a child, but they make it very difficult for children to give us Real Love. We tend to love our children more when they’re good—when they do what we want. They can feel that our approval is not unconditional, but it feels better than nothing, so they do their best— in the beginning, at least—to earn more of it by giving us what we want: gratitude, respect, obedience, affection, and so on. We feel good when we get those things, and understandably we then believe that our children are “loving” us. But they need our approval and love far too much to give us anything without expecting something in return. They give us what we want so we’ll give them the “love” they desperately need. Although it’s unconscious, our children trade Imitation Love with us, and we gladly participate in the exchange, all of us just doing our best to survive in the absence of Real Love.

Is it ever possible for a child to unconditionally love his parents? Yes, but only after that child has been consistently and unconditionally loved himself for a long time. Few children have been loved in that way, and no loving parent would expect such love from a child. When a child can love his or her parents, it’s just a delightful bonus for those parents, not something they have a right to expect. How We Manipulate Them for Imitation Love If we don’t have enough Real Love in our own lives, we will make attempts to get Imitation Love from the people around us, and we will tend to do that most with the people who are closest to us. Later in this chapter we’ll talk about the various ways we manipulate our children for Imitation Love. Failure to See the Expectations We Have of Our Children Most of us have expectations every day that our children will love us and make us happy. Often we express them in subtle ways. We don’t say to a child directly, for example, “I need you to love me.” Instead we say, “Give Mommy (or Daddy) a kiss.” Without thinking about it, we thus place an enormous burden on children to give us affection so we won’t be disappointed, and they feel that obligation. As they sense that we have any expectations for them to make us happy, they can’t feel unconditionally loved—even if our expectations are unconscious. Real Love in Parenting 431 How can we know whether we have selfish expectations of our children? Again, disappointment and anger. These feelings mean that we didn’t get something we wanted. Our disappointment and anger prove that we’re being selfish, and we experience these feelings in response to the behavior of our children so often that we’ve come to accept them as normal. We justify ourselves, claiming that disappointment is acceptable—even unavoidable— when a child makes certain kinds of mistakes, or is disobedient, or is disrespectful, and so on. When our children behave badly, it is our responsibility to correct them, but disappointment and anger are never a part of loving and effective teaching. I’m not saying that children shouldn’t be respectful, obedient, and grateful—far from it. They need these qualities in order to be happy, but they acquire these characteristics far more easily when we just love and teach them. Children don’t learn real respect—and certainly don’t feel Real Love—when we expect and demand it from them. We’ll talk more about how to love and teach children in Chapters Five and Six. We become angry at our children when they don’t fill our huge expectations for them to love us. Those expectations are inappropriate and harmful. Why We Have Children Without Real Love, we try to fill our emptiness with all the praise, power, and pleasure we can find. We lie, attack, act like victims, and cling in order to earn the attention of other adults, but we soon find those efforts exhausting, and we discover that the Imitation Love we get is unpredictable. Because children are so dependent on us— because they desperately need us, and because they feel obligated to us by all we give them—we learn that we can use them more easily and consistently than other people as a source of Imitation Love. Adults resist our manipulations and require more from us than children do. And we feel safer around children: They don’t ask us why we don’t get a better job; they don’t tell us to be more responsible; they don’t suggest that we lose some weight; they don’t make us feel unattractive; they don’t see our fears or intimidate us

432 Chapter Three in as many ways as adults do. We don’t like seeing this, but a significant part of the motivation for many of us to have children is that we feel alone, and we hope children will love us and make us happier. That’s understandable, but we are often selfishly using our children to make us feel better. Elise and Chris had lived together for two years. Both came to the relationship without experiencing much Real Love, and each expected the other to make him or her happy. Naturally, the result was disappointment and bitterness. As their relationship began to fail, Elise thought a baby might bring them together again. Without telling Chris, she stopped using her contraceptive and became pregnant. Soon after that Chris left the relationship completely and moved away. After he left Elise said to a friend, “Well, at least when the baby comes, I won’t be alone.” What a fate! Even before his birth, this child was given the responsibility to make his mother feel loved. That’s a burden no child can carry and be happy, but that’s the job most children are given, and it destroys them. We Get Angry at Our Children Because We Learned That Response from Others In a given situation, we have a natural inclination not to do what’s most effective but to do what we’ve learned. Most of us can easily recall how our parents and others responded to us when we were quiet, clean, responsible, and cooperative as children. They smiled at us, spoke gently, and in other ways indicated how pleased they were with us. But we also remember what happened when we made too much noise in the car, fought with our sister, and dragged dog poop across the living room carpet. The smiles and kind words were instantly replaced with frowns, sighs of exasperation, and words spoken in a harsh tone. It certainly wasn’t intentional, but we were clearly and repeatedly taught that when people make mistakes, the natural consequences are disappointment, irritation, and disapproval. It’s little wonder that we learned to repeat the same pattern with our friends, classmates, co-workers, spouses, and children. NO ONE EVER MAKES US ANGRY Real Love in Parenting 433 Earlier in the chapter, I mentioned that in our society it’s almost universally accepted that other people are responsible for making us angry. When we’re mad, we’re usually blaming someone for causing that feeling. All that blaming and anger never make us happy, but we keep doing it. Why? Because other people—being flawed human beings, and having their own needs to fill—unavoidably and regularly inconvenience us, which we believe is the same thing as causing our anger. Our reasoning might go something like this: • All was well in my world. I was fine. • Then that bone-headed, inconsiderate, selfish fool _____ (whatever he or she did to “make” you angry). • Immediately I became angry. • Because I would not have become angry if he had not behaved in that way, and because my reaction immediately followed his behavior, it’s obvious that he caused my anger. Because anger is so destructive, and because blaming others only makes the continuation of anger a certainty, I will present here several proofs that other people are never the cause of our anger. These will also stand as proofs that our children never make us angry. Take your time with these. As you absorb them and allow them to change your thinking, your world will change, and you will

gain the ability to give your children great personal power. Proof 1 The Self-evident Proof: We Always Have a Choice As human beings, we have a position unique in the universe. Although there is certainly much in this world that is beautiful and awe-inspiring—the stars, planets, oceans, mountains, trees, birds, fish, sub-molecular intricacies, and so on—we alone have the ability to determine our own course. The behavior of everything else is determined by gravity, instinct, the weather, training, and DNA, but we human beings can actually comprehend our condition, ponder it, and make decisions that will change our course. In fact, we’re quite jealous of that ability and will defend to the death our right to exercise it. We have fought many wars against those who would 434 Chapter Three claim to tell any of us what we can or cannot do. As proud as we are of our ability to make our own decisions about everything else, why is it that we are so quick to claim that other people can make us angry? Whenever we think or say “You make me so mad”—a common expression indeed—we are giving up our right to determine how we feel, and we do this quite often. We claim that we can make our own decisions about everything else but not about how we feel. Why is that? Because we claim the ability to make choices only when it suits us. We like being responsible for choosing what we eat, and what we wear, and where we live, and whom we’ll marry, because we like the consequences—the rewards—of those choices. But we don’t like being held responsible for our anger. We’d rather blame that choice on someone else. Rain makes the ground wet. The sun makes the grass warm. The ground and the grass have no choice in the matter. But we human beings are not dirt or grass. We do have choices—about many things, including about how we feel. When people treat us badly, we make decisions about how we will respond. In the absence of Real Love, our ability to respond is certainly impaired—sometimes severely— but we can still choose to limit our Getting and Protecting Behaviors (including anger) to some degree. The more we understand about the behavior of other people, and the more loved we feel, the more able we become to make wise and loving choices. Self-control and Real Love enjoy a powerful synergy, which we’ll discuss in Chapter Four. Proof 2 It’s Your Emptiness and Fear That Lead to Anger, Not What Someone Else Does to You (Two Dollars vs. Twenty Million) In Chapter One I asked you to consider what it would feel like if you were starving and I took your last two dollars, the money you hoped to exchange for a loaf of bread. You were angry, and understandably you blamed your anger on me. But then we imagined a different scene. Again I took two dollars from you, but this time you had twenty million dollars in the next room. Your anger was either eliminated or greatly reduced, proving that your anger in the first scene was caused not by me but by your lack of twenty million Real Love in Parenting 435 dollars. As I said in Chapter One: When we have enough Real Love in our lives, we feel as though we have twenty million emotional dollars with us all the time.

With that greatest of all treasures, the little inconvenient things people do become relatively unimportant. With Real Love, we have everything that matters. Without it, we become afraid and protect ourselves with anger. Our anger is caused by a lack of Real Love in our own lives, not by what our children or anyone else does in a given moment. Proof 3 You Can’t Claim That Someone Makes You Angry If Anyone Else Does Not Become Angry When That Person Does the Same Thing I once went with some friends on a canoe trip down a stretch of river that included some challenging white-water rapids. My friend Gene was less experienced than the rest of the group and nervous about the adventure, so I invited him to go with me in my canoe and assured him that he’d have a great time. During our passage through one of the more difficult rapids, two of the men in another canoe were goofing around and intentionally bumped their canoe into mine. Gene was startled, lost his balance, and fell out of the canoe. Of course, that tipped the canoe over and threw me into the water, too. Gene was already anxious about this outing. He’d never canoed a river this rugged, and now he found himself bouncing between large rocks while gasping for air in the cold, churning water. Understandably, this had become a terrifying experience for him. I hurried to make sure that Gene was all right, and when he reached the calmer waters I found that he was fine physically, but he was furious at the two men who had bumped into our canoe. Clearly, he blamed them for his anger. Unwittingly, he had proved that other people don’t make us angry. The exact same thing happened to both Gene and me: We were both bumped by the other canoe, dumped into the cold water, and forced to swim through the rapids down the river. Our 436 Chapter Three reactions, however, were strikingly different: Gene was enraged at the men who had run into us, while I found the whole incident rather humorous and invigorating. What was the difference? Gene was simply unprepared for what happened, in at least two ways. First, he was physically unprepared. He had no experience with such situations—through no fault of his own—so when he was bumped by the other canoe, he didn’t know what to do, lost his balance, and fell into the water. He was also emotionally unprepared. He had not felt sufficient Real Love in his life, so he was already unhappy, and the slightest mishap was enough to push him over the edge. When he became frightened, he immediately reached for the Protecting Behavior he had always used—anger. It was the only thing he knew to do. Because I was physically prepared for canoeing, being bumped by the other men was not overwhelming to me, although I was still thrown in the water because of Gene’s reaction. Because of that inconvenience, I could then have reacted with anger to all three men, but I had been prepared emotionally by years of being unconditionally loved. Because of that love, I didn’t feel empty or afraid and therefore had no need to use any of the Getting and Protecting Behaviors, including anger. I was not a better man than Gene, just better prepared to react to that incident. We see examples all around us of people reacting differently to the same events. In World War II, for example, millions of people were imprisoned and killed in concentrations camps, by the Germans

and by the Japanese. From the many oral and written accounts made by survivors of those camps, we have learned that many of those people understandably became very angry and bitter because of the unspeakably hateful treatment they received at the hands of their captors. Some of those inmates, however, chose not to become angry. Instead, they forgave their tormentors and even learned to love them. They saw the terrible effects of anger and hate—on both perpetrators and victims—and they refused to give in to those feelings. Victor Frankl spoke of such people in Man’s Search for Meaning, as did Corrie ten Boom in her book, The Hiding Place. Some of us get angry when other people are inconsiderate toward us, but others of us do not. Clearly, the problem is not the people who are inconsiderate. If that were so, everyone would become angry when he or she were treated badly, but that does not happen. Real Love in Parenting 437 In fact, if you get angry when I do something, and we can find even one person in the world who does not get angry when I do that same thing, then I did not make you angry. You made a choice. Anger is always a choice. In any given situation, some people choose to become angry and others do not. Proof 4 When Imitation Love Makes Your Anger Go Away, You Can’t Claim Someone Else Caused Your Anger One day I was having lunch with my friend Larry, and he mentioned an incident with his son Jordan. Larry had clearly told Jordan never to use Larry’s expensive video camera, but Jordan ignored his warning, and while Larry was out of the house, Jordan used the camera, dropped it, and damaged it. Larry was furious at his son, and during our conversation he used the phrase, “Sometimes that kid makes me so mad.” Me: If I gave you a million dollars in cash right now—and a new car—would you be less irritated with him? Larry: (smiling) Yes, I guess I would. Me: Then Jordan didn’t make you angry. Larry: I don’t understand. Me: If a million dollars would make your anger go away, then obviously the real cause of your anger is the lack of a million dollars, not Jordan—right? Other people never make us angry. Anger is always a choice. In our society, we commonly greet people by asking some variation on “How are you?” A frequent reply to that query is “Fine” or “Good.” What we almost always mean by that response is that things are going well. We mean that our supply of Imitation Love is adequate for the moment, and that is what keeps us from being angry. But if we’re running low on praise, power, pleasure, and safety, watch out! That’s when we become irritable. When we don’t have enough Imitation Love, people who would ordinarily not 438 Chapter Three bother us suddenly become enormously irritating. Once again, it’s not the individual behaviors of the people around us that make us angry. Anger is our reaction to the emptiness and fear that always accompany the lack of Real Love. When we have sufficient Imitation Love, we can often temporarily ignore the emptiness of not feeling loved. When we run out of Imitation Love and get angry, a new supply of Imitation Love usually makes our anger go away. Proof 5

When Real Love Makes Your Anger Go Away, Then It’s Obvious That the Lack of it Was the Real Cause. Earlier in this chapter, George was irritated with his son, Dan, and he was certain that Dan had made him angry. Over the following months, however, he learned to tell the truth about himself— which we’ll discuss in the next chapter—and he began to feel unconditionally accepted by wise and loving friends. As George felt loved and happy, he no longer had a need to demand respect and obedience from his son. When compared with Real Love, Imitation Love soon loses its appeal. As George felt unconditionally loved, he lost his need for anger, which is a Getting and Protecting Behavior. He quit being angry even though Dan’s behavior remained the same for quite some time. And thus he proved that Dan had never been the cause for his anger. If Dan had really been the cause, George would have continued to be angry when Dan’s behavior didn’t immediately change. I have observed the effect of Real Love on the lives of hundreds of people, and I can tell you that George’s story isn’t the least bit unusual. As we feel unconditionally loved, we lose our anger— perhaps not all at once, but it does go away eventually. THE FREEDOM OF BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR ANGER We blame people for our anger because it seems easier than taking the responsibility ourselves, a technique we learned from birth. When I blame you for my anger, however, I’m stuck. I’ll be angry forever unless you change. That’s unfortunate for two reasons: It’s very impractical to have my happiness chained to your decisions, Real Love in Parenting 439 and it’s simply untrue that you cause my anger. When I realize that my anger is a reaction to the emptiness and fear caused by a lack of Real Love in my own life, I can now do something about it. I can tell the truth about myself and get the unconditional love I need. I can quit being angry at my children and instead be a loving parent to them—an infinitely better choice. After understanding that other people don’t cause our anger, we can take the next crucial step of teaching this principle to our children. And then they too can experience the freedom that comes from take responsibility for their own anger. I suggest that you become familiar with two or more of the above proofs and use them in teaching your children in family meetings and in situations where they become angry.