“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
— Stephen Chbosky, film director and author
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I met Stefan Deutsch (https://activepause.com/deutsch/) online and sent him my Operating Manual for Enlightenment. He sent me his Love Decoded: Getting the Love You Deserve. Here are his “Nine Laws for Fulfilling Relationships,” taken from the introduction, along with my comments. His approach reminds me of cognitive behavioral therapy, which says you reap what you say.
Approaching love this way is like crossing a swamp by jumping from stone to stone. This may keep you out of the muck, but it does not lead to higher ground. There is, truly, a heart space for higher love, and you cannot explain your way there.
Here are Stefan’s nine laws with my comments after each.
1. Love that has to be earned isn’t love.
All love is conditional on supporting a positive relationship. To love a destructive person can only be healthy if there is some part of that person who is not destructive. If you love a person who is entirely destructive, then who are you loving?
Love that is unreciprocated can be an obsession. Love that does not involve a relationship does not need to be earned, but it’s rarely love in an interpersonal sense. Who is loved in heartbreak?
Love that persists beyond death is love of a different kind. You can draw on it and reapply it, but it is more of a pattern than a response.
Love that persists in abusive relationships is a combination of needy and pathological. It can be true and committed, but it is not healthy.
The more pressing question is whether love that is offered but not reciprocated is real love? There are cases where we can say it is, such as within families, but not always.
2. Become aware of your own and others’ unloving, conditional behaviors as well as loving, unconditional behaviors.
I find this confusing and unclear. I like things that are confusing when they foster greater insight, but simply considering opposites is not productive. It can be valuable but is easily overwhelming. There should be a point or goal, such as resolution or integration. Love is felt, not thought. It is a fantasy that exists in its own space.
Awareness is a necessary starting point, but there must be a path forward from this. Contradictions don’t resolve themselves. They exist for a reason, and some of those reasons will take you into the unfamiliar. The heart space can take you beyond yourself and into your genetic heritage, or the future of society. These contradictions are important, but you will not think your way toward their common resolution.
3. Never reject others’ loving energy. It hurts them.
This is a nice idea but a useless form of guidance. Those who will reject another will always find a justification for it. Even if that is nothing more than being uninterested.
There is no social paradigm that tells us to accept others. I cannot think of anyone who would place themselves or their friendships at risk in order to enforce this maxim. I entirely agree with the statement, but it provides no guidance to those who don’t understand it. More than that, it’s childish finger wagging.
I would rather say, “Be careful when you reject another’s loving energy. It hurts them and it will hurt you.” That is the point: if you hurt others, then you do not understand. You are insensitive to the meaningful role that you are playing in another person’s life. The opportunity to make a deeply felt, authentic connection is the root of meaningful existence.
If you are dismissive or disrespectful, the chances are good that you will lose this opportunity. If you ever become wise and can remember the mistakes you’ve made, you’ll regret them.
4. Never allow others to behave unlovingly without consequence. It hurts you. Ask them to love you unconditionally.
This is a pasta and lettuce sandwich on crackers. Though they’re all true, these three things have nothing to do with each other.
The first problem is that this statement is circular: you hurt because you allow others to behave unlovingly, and they are behaving unlovingly because you hurt. Saying one shouldn’t do this is like telling someone who’s hurting themselves to stop it. That’s a classic therapy joke: “Just stop it!” The admonition is ridiculous.
The second problem is the suggestion to ask for unconditional love. If you knew what unconditional love was, then you would not ask for it. It cannot be asked for. You cannot make conditional love unconditional. Some might claim it can be done alchemically, but alchemy was a bust.
The difference between conditional and unconditional love is fundamental. One is based on personal need, while the other is based on collective growth. I also think unconditional love is an oxymoron. It really means love based on a collective good.
Truly unconditional love is demented. It helps no one. This even applies to parents of children: children need guidance, not unconditional acceptance. Parents and children should recognize their enduring dependence and mutual reliance, but if acceptance means agreement it is not helpful.
To love without conditions is a chemically induced state. It’s meaningless. Some say they love Jesus unconditionally. What could this mean?
If you’d like to explore love in your life, schedule a short, free conversation:
5. Do not assume that there is any intentionality behind any act that hurts, disappoints, or angers you. Resist the temptation to blame others or assume their actions are designed to hurt you.
This is nonsense. Many actions are designed to repel and some are intentionally hurtful. The underlying motivation may be fear, need, or protection, but at the strategic level the injury is often intentional and premeditated. We might call this anger, and it must be recognized as dangerous.
Better advice is to examine the intentionality of another’s actions. If you do this, then you’ll find ambiguity and internal conflicts. Despite these uncertainties, there are going to be some manifestly negative intentions. Most acts of anger are confused. People “shoot the messenger” in the mistaken belief that you are the messenger.
Today, a common act of revenge is driving your truck into a crowd of people. In these cases, the messenger is the perpetrator’s creation, targeted to deflect their self-loathing.
Laws exist for the purpose of affixing blame. It’s good to have one’s own laws and, to put teeth in them. You must make judgements. Without judgements there is no justice. Make judgments, but be aware they are all flawed.
6. Assume all people, like you, are always doing the best they can.
Useless. True without doubt, but there is still evil, exploitation, crime, irresponsibility, and ignorance. The assumption that others are “always doing their best” can be made useful if you try to understand another person’s thinking. That is not a form of universal acceptance.
The notion of unconditional positive regard is an evasive distortion of Carl Roger’s original intention. This leads to a Land of the Lotus Eaters, an opioid state of no decision and no action. You need understanding, not acceptance. With understanding you can do what’s difficult. It’s easier to be accepting. Then you don’t have to do anything.
7. Loving energy is real, nourishing, and visceral. It is like air, food, and water, and everyone needs to give and receive it in all our relationships, not just a few.
And then what? Does this make anything happen? Demanding nourishing love leads to rejecting almost everyone because almost no one provides real, nourishing love. I prefer to state it plainly: reject everyone who cannot provide real love. Insist on divine love and don’t expect to find it. Become a guide, mentor, and inspiration… and expect to be alone.
There are exceptions, such as soldiers brought together under fire and mothers nursing infants, but these situations are not normal. Learn that love is a psychosomatic rhythm in one’s personal sphere. It is not evident in society.
It is a paradox that real leaders are unrecognized. Popular leaders are the automatic rabbits that all the dogs chase. People follow a popular leader because that person triggers their following instinct. Such a leader is not really leading anything at all.
Recognizing loving energy as nourishing is like recognizing fast food isn’t nourishing. The only thing to do is raise your own food. If someone wants to join you, welcome them, but withhold expectations.
8. Loving energy has many names, like compassion, patience, affection, and thoughtfulness. It is not to be confused with automatic, physical, and sexual energy. Sweaty palms and fast heart beats are biological signals for mating. Loving energy nourishes us in a universal way.
The Greeks’ eight aspects of love are all related despite their differences. They are not the same yet they are connected. To lump them all together is as offensive as excluding some. Even the Greek term “mania,” which refers to obsession, needs to be recognized as playing a role, albeit an immature and unproductive one.
To say that sexual energy is not love energy is a sexual sickness, an extension of our perverted society. Sexuality plays an essential role in intimate relationships. Sex energies are essential to understanding social attitudes, gender roles, family dynamics, and relationships of every sort. Sex energy is difficult therapeutic terrain, but a necessary part of it.
9. The act of giving love must involve a conscious decision to be unconditionally loving even when you are upset with another person. You make the choice.
Love is a conscious intention. Something one commits to as an essential part of one’s soul. But this is not unconditional love. The term “unconditional love” should be stricken from the language. It could be replaced with “divine love.” It’s a different thing but it suits the intention of most people who use the term “unconditional.”
Divine love is perhaps the most conditional of all. It is broadly accepting but intolerant of violation. It sets the highest standard.
Divine love will appreciate the twisted and often unsuccessful energies that people offer and others accept, but it does not condone them. It appreciates the need for learning and growth, but it neither forgives nor forgets.
It is ironic that the process of learning divine love often leads to disengagement. You cannot be attached to nonreciprocating, twisted, unchanging people. These conditions define most adults. It is a mistake to abandon a relationship where love is possible, just as it is a mistake to remain in a relationship where it is not.
As a therapist I confer with people who are moving on a path to divine love. They may not know it, and there may be trouble ahead, but all of my clients are moving in this direction. Every step they take makes the world a better place.
What I Consider Important
These nine laws are suggestions. Most don’t say enough. Number two’s “Become aware…” starts in the right direction, but stops short of recognizing love as enlightenment.
Awareness
In Operating Manual for Enlightenment I emphasize awareness comes before behavior. I identify three kinds of awareness: conceptual, subconscious, and neurological. Conceptual means intellectual. Subconscious means emotional and somatic. Neurological refers to habits of perception and reaction. Love floats on top of these.
It does no good to talk about behavior aside from perception. If you want more love in your life, then learn what makes you tick and who’s ticking.
Thought
There are conscious aspects to love, how you recognize, communicate, present, and receive it. There is an intellectual aspect to love despite our inability to define it.
Sex
Our bodies make the most emphatic statements. We trust actions, but many fool us both in giving and receiving love. The great thing about sex is that you cannot fool a person for long. Sex without love is obvious, and people who receive sex but not love are fairly obvious, too. But you must be perceptive.
Neurology
The role neurology plays is obscure. We don’t know enough about the brain’s structure and function to identify love. How our brains create complex emotions is unknown.
We develop triggers, which are habits, predispositions, and automatic reactions. We can classify these as they affect our behaviors. We can adjust these behaviors to modify our triggers. This can rebalance our relationships.
Neurological work does not sound or feel like love. Brain training is more like physical exercise than lessons in romance. Despite this, perception training is centrally important as it determines how and what you see. If you cannot understand another person, there’s little hope of fostering love between you.
Commitment
You will commit to what you recognize as essential. Love is one of our most essential states of mind. We have some notion of love at every level of development. Ideally, as we grow our ability to love grows, but trauma can interrupt this. When this happens, one loses sight of what’s essential.
Discernment
Rather than being the most accepting, the highest love is the most discerning. Discerning doesn’t mean rejecting, but it does mean seeing differences, making judgements, and taking actions. The easy part of divine love is that it applies everywhere. All your judgements can be based on one point of view.
Effort
All those in loving relationships agree love takes work. There are no nine laws and there is no formula. Love is an encompassing, inclusive, form of understanding. It is the foundation of personal and cultural interaction.
Support
It was recently noted human life spans have not really changed much throughout history. Plagues and childhood mortality aside, people have always lived well into their 70s. If love is a necessary nutrient, then it does not seem to be getting any more plentiful. This is unfortunate.
Spirit
The problem is social. You need love to prosper personally, and society needs you to foster loving relationships. From all I see, we’re not doing much better than we ever have. That’s why it’s every person’s obligation to build love for yourself and for us all. Love is your real legacy.
References
Deutsch, Stefan (2014). Love Decoded: Getting the Love You Deserve. THDC Press.
Stoller, Lincoln (2024). Operating Manual for Enlightenment: Recreating Your Mind, Universal Press.
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