"Falling in Love" vs. REAL LOVE

The Real Reason Relationships Fail

(An Article by Dr. Greg Baer – Edited by R Butch David)

There are few conditions to which more books and movies have been devoted, and few subjects that fascinate us more than “Falling in Love.” We think about it, talk about it, hope for it, fantasize about it, go to great lengths to achieve it, and feel that our lives are incomplete without it. But we really don’t understand it. Most of us know how it feels to Fall in Love. But we don’t understand why we Fall in Love, or perhaps more importantly – why we seem to “Fall Out of Love” with distressing regularity. In order to understand Falling in Love, we must first understand the most important human need. The most important requirement for our emotional health and happiness is to feel loved. Our souls require feeling loved in just as real a way as our bodies require air and food. But not just any kind of love will do.

REAL LOVE is: Unconditional Love

The only kind of love that can fill us up and make us whole emotionally
is Real Love (Unconditional Love). Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves. Real Love is when others care about our happiness [well-being – rbd], unconditionally. With Real Love, people are not disappointed or angry when we make our foolish mistakes, when we don’t do what they want,
or even when we inconvenience them personally.

When I use the word happiness, I do not mean the brief and superficial pleasure that comes from money, sex, power, and the conditional approval we earn from others when we behave as they want. Nor do I mean the temporary feeling of satisfaction we experience in the absence of immediate conflict or disaster. Real happiness is not the feeling we get from being entertained or making people do what we want. It’s a profound and lasting sense of peace and fulfillment that deeply satisfies and enlarges the soul. It doesn’t go away when circumstances are difficult. It survives and even grows during hardship and struggle. True happiness is our entire reason to live, and it can only be obtained as we find Real Love and share it with others. With Real Love, nothing else matters – without it, nothing else is enough.

Imitation Love is: Conditional Love

 

Sadly, few of us have sufficiently received or given Real Love. From the time we were small children, we observed that when we were otherwise obedient and cooperative, our parents and others smiled at us, patted our heads, and spoke kindly. With their words and behavior, they told us what good boys and girls we were, and we felt loved.

But what happened when we didn’t behave in a way that others approved of. Did people smile at us then or speak gentle, loving words? No – they frowned, sighed with disappointment, and often spoke in harsh tones. Just as the positive behaviors of other people communicated to us that we were loved, we could interpret the withdrawal of those behaviors only as an indication that we're not being loved. Although it was often unintentional, our parents and others taught us this terrible message: “When you’re good, I love you, but when you’re not, I don’t – or certainly,
I love you a great deal less.”

This Conditional Love can give us brief moments of satisfaction, but we’re still left with a huge hole in our souls, because only Real Love can make us genuinely happy. When someone is genuinely concerned about our happiness, we feel connected to that person. We feel included in his or her life, and in that instant we are no longer alone. Each moment of unconditional acceptance creates a living thread to the person who accepts us, and these threads weave a powerful bond that fills us with
a genuine and lasting happiness. Nothing but Real Love can do that. In addition, when we know that even one person loves us unconditionally,
we feel a connection to everyone else. We feel included in the family of
all mankind, of which that one person is a part.

If we don’t have enough Real Love in our lives, the resulting emptiness is unbearable. We then compulsively try to fill our emptiness with whatever feels good in the moment – money, anger, sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, and the conditional approval of others. Anything we use as a substitute for Real Love becomes a form of Imitation Love, and they all fall into one or more of four categories. These forms of Imitation Love affect our individual happiness and they also affect our ability to participate in relationships in which we “Fall in Love.”

Praise – In the absence of sufficient Real Love, praise feels pretty good. From the time we were small children, we all experienced the exhilaration of hearing, “Good boy,” or “Good girl,” or “Nice job” when we behaved in the ways other people liked, and most of us have devoted the remainder of our lives to duplicating that feeling. The pursuit of praise is so widespread that it’s accepted as normal, even desirable. We’ve all heard, for example, the expressions “Put your best foot forward” and “Always make a good first impression.” Without realizing it, our parents, teachers, and others taught us that earning praise was a good thing, and we accepted their counsel.

Putting your best foot forward, however, has significant drawbacks. After two people successfully establish a relationship based on their best foot, they eventually discover that their partner is a lot more than his or her best foot – that there is also “the other foot,” bad breath and numerous other imperfections – and the disappointment can be overwhelming. Both partners feel deceived, cheated, and betrayed, and it’s understandable
that they vent their frustration on their partner.

Relationships fail because we create them on a foundation lacking the one ingredient – Real Love – most essential to happiness and fulfilling relationships. Without sufficient Real Love, neither partner has the tools to create a healthy and mutually rewarding relationship. Without enough Real Love, the foundation of any relationship will be fatally flawed, and no amount of time, effort and worry spent on the windows, doors, and carpets will ever create a healthy relationship.

Tragically, although Real Love is essential to happiness, most of us have never had consistent experiences with it. In our emptiness and pain, we’re only too eager to reach out for anything that makes us feel better, however superficial and fleeting that relief might be. We use Imitation Love – praise being just one form – because it does feel good for a moment, even though it never really fills our emptiness. However, the effects of praise are always short-lived, leaving us empty and desperate for more. Moreover, no matter how successful we are in obtaining Imitation Love, we never get the feeling of connection to other people that will come with Real Love, so we’re still painfully alone.

Power – When we don’t have enough Real Love, we feel empty, alone, helpless, weak and afraid. We get some measure of relief from these intolerable feelings, however, when we can control the behavior of other people – that sense of power feels much better than the helplessness we often endure. As we control people – as we convince them to agree with us or to do what we want – we also get a sensation of connection to them, which can relieve our loneliness. In the absence of sufficient Real Love, power can be quite satisfying, and we get it in so many ways: with money, authority, physical and verbal intimidation, anger, violence, and sex.

Pleasure – When we don’t feel loved unconditionally, we use physical
and emotional pleasures – sex, food, alcohol, drugs, work, shopping, gambling, driving fast, and so on – as welcome distractions, and we
often pursue them with great devotion. The enjoyable effects of pleasure, however, are fleeting, and they can never make us genuinely happy in
the absence of Real Love. As with all the forms of Imitation Love, pleasure wears off, and eventually no amount of it will give us even a brief relief from our emptiness and pain.

Safety – Without Real Love, we’re already in the worst kind of pain,
and we’ll go to great lengths to keep ourselves safe from experiencing more pain. If we can’t have genuine acceptance, we can at least do everything in our power to avoid more disapproval. Toward that end, we avoid doing anything unfamiliar. We stay in the same boring, dead-end jobs, attempt to learn nothing new and continue in stagnant, unrewarding (but predictable) relationships. If we’ve been hurt consistently by all our past relationships, but finally we’re with someone who simply hurts us less, we can confuse that relative safety with love. Or we might avoid dating and relationships altogether.

“Falling in Love” –
The Nature and Effect of Imitation Love

Even though Imitation Love cannot give us genuine, lasting happiness –
it does feel good. And if Real Love is either unknown to us or unavailable, we’ll go to great lengths to get enough Imitation Love to feel good temporarily. In the absence of sufficient Real Love, we’re strongly attracted to anyone who gives us Imitation Love, and it is therefore the pursuit of Imitation Love that governs how most relationships begin and end.

We’ve all observed that if we give enough praise, power, pleasure, and safety to another person, he or she will be more likely to return some of the same to us. In order to get the Imitation Love that can feel so good, therefore, we buy it from others with whatever forms of Imitation Love we have to offer. We trade Imitation Love with those around us. If I praise you enough, for example, you will be more likely to say something kind to me in return, or to do something else I want.

Without thinking about it, almost all of us tend to establish relationships based on the trading of Imitation Love. That may
not be romantic, but it’s nonetheless true. Often, 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. “Falling in Love” is rarely anything more than the relatively equal and abundant exchange of Imitation Love – a formula for disaster. Many relationships begin as two people find, in their partner, the qualities that would entertain them, make them feel worthwhile, and give them safety – not because they unconditionally love one another. Most of us pick our partners for the same reasons – we look for someone who has qualities that will temporarily make us feel good, and in return we’re quite willing to do the same for that person.

As I’ve said before, however, the effect of Imitation Love always fades,
as many couples discover. Most couples really enjoy the initial exchange of Imitation Love, but it’s not long before that level of praise, power and pleasure isn’t as rewarding as it once had been. When people say the “excitement has worn off” in a relationship, they’re just describing the fleeting effects of Imitation Love. As we experience less “happiness” with Imitation Love, we naturally turn to the people closest to us to supply
what we’re missing, and understandably our partners feel resentful
of our increased demands. Most of our relationships begin based on an unspoken understanding of how much Imitation Love our partners will
give us, and how much we’ll give them in return, and when we change the rules – when we give less or demand more – our partners don’t like that one bit. As couples discover the transient effect of Imitation Love, they also invariably find that the exchange of Imitation Love becomes unfair.

In the beginning of relationships, couples often receive equal amounts of praise as each of them compliments the other for a variety of qualities, including sexual desirability. They are equally successful in getting the other to do the things they wanted. One partner might get more physical pleasure from the relationship and the other might get a greater sense of security (safety) from the relationship. Because they experience more Imitation Love from one another than with anyone else they had known, they are “In Love.” After several months, however, the trading often changes. Couples often discover that the effects of flattery quickly wear off, and that constantly earning it is exhausting, so neither is willing to continue their initial efforts to praise one another.

When couples first meet, what they need is Real Love. But often, neither has ever felt much Unconditional Love, so there is 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, people offer one another what they do have – Imitation Love in its various forms – and they give all they have. Imitation Love does feel good, and because both partners are giving it with all their hearts, they are satisfied with their relationship in the beginning. When the effects wear off, however, and they each give one another less
of the various forms of Imitation Love, they feel like the rules of exchange have been violated. They are both faced with the horror that they are not going to get the happiness they’d hoped for all their lives.

The Real Reason Relationships Fail

I have counseled with thousands of couples, most of them married. Remember that people usually get married only after they have sifted through many potential partners, finally choosing the one they believe will provide them with the fulfillment of their dreams. Ideally, marriages should be the cream of all relationships, the best of the best. And yet 60% of these dream relationships end in divorce, and the vast majority of those who remain married are settling for far less than they had once hoped for. When troubled couples come to me for counseling, invariably they ask some variation on the question, “What happened?” Both partners are absolutely befuddled, wondering how they could possibly have moved from being Soul-Mates to being combatants.

In their attempts to understand what happened, it’s unavoidable that each partner would blame the other. After all, they reason, their partner once “made them happy,” and now that happiness is gone. The inescapable conclusion is that their partner has now somehow failed them, somehow withdrawn the joy they once magically dispensed at the beginning of the relationship.

But you understand the real reason relationships fail. When two people enter into a relationship without sufficient Real Love, their relationship is virtually doomed from the beginning. Most relationships are guaranteed to fail from the word “Hello” – no matter how wonderfully they get along in the beginning – because both parties lack the one ingredient most essential
to genuine happiness and fulfilling relationships. In the beginning of their association they achieve the illusion of happiness only because they give one another enough Imitation Love. It’s better than anything they’ve had before, so it seems real. Then, when the effects of Imitation Love begin
to wear off – as they always do – they’re left with the horrifying realization that their dreams have turned into so much dust. 

Relationships fail not because of what each partner does or does not do. Relationships fail because they are not built on a foundation of Real Unconditional Love, but instead are based on a counterfeit currency – Imitation Love. . . And that kind of Love can never buy one's happiness.     www.reallove.com

A Note from R Butch David:

Here's a Music Video link to a song by Bryan Adams that seems to describe what "Real Love" may really be about. Perhaps, it doesn't make
sense. . . and then again, maybe it does. This particular song was used in the movie "Hope Floats" starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick, Jr. I'm hoping you'll take the time to watch it and, in particular, pay attention to the lyrics. It's called. . . "When You Love Someone":