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How to Be an Adult in Love: Letting Love in Safely and Showing It Recklessly - Paperback | Diverse Reads

How to Be an Adult in Love: Letting Love in Safely and Showing It Recklessly

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How to let love into our lives, and how to express that love to the world at large—the latest from a best-selling author.

We were made to love and be loved. Loving ourselves and others is in our genetic code. It’s nothing other than the purpose of our lives—but knowing that doesn’t make it easy to do. We may find it a challenge to love ourselves. We may have a hard time letting love in from others. We’re often afraid of getting hurt. It is also sometimes scary for us to share love with those around us—and love that isn't shared leaves us feeling flat and unfulfilled.

David Richo provides the tools here for learning how to love in evolved adult ways—beginning with getting past the barriers that keep us from loving ourselves, then showing how we can learn to open to love others.

The first challenge is that we have a hard time letting love in: recognizing it, accepting it from others. We're afraid of it, of getting hurt. The second, related problem is that we're unable to share love with those around us—and love that isn't shared isn't truly love. The first step to learning to love and be loved, according to Richo's model, is to identify the different levels of love so that you can hit each one separately. He breaks it down to three:

   • Level One: Positive Connection. As simple as being courteous, respectful, helpful, and honest, and decent in all our dealings. Pretty basic, but it makes the world a better place, and it's the essential foundation for growing in love.

   • Level Two: Caring and Personal Connection. Intimacy and commitment to friends, family, partners, lovers. Commitment to others.

   • Level Three: Unconditional and Universal. Transcending the love of individuals to the love of all beings; self-sacrificing. The love expressed in the Sermon on the Mount and the Bodhicharyavatara. This level of love isn't for a heroic few, it's everyone's calling.

He then shows us how to incorporate these varieties of love into our lives. It's a relief to know that even just aspiring to incorporate them really changes things. He also provides exercises and guided meditations for identifying and getting through the things that keep you from getting and giving love at each of these three levels.

Through the lens of these types of love, Richo covers topics such as: how to still be yourself while loving another; how to embrace your dark side; what to do when the one who loves you dies; need versus fear; clinging; healthy sexuality, including fantasies and how to experience pleasure without guilt; how to break distructive patterns in your relationships; and how to have safe conversations with your loved one.

Richo provides wisdom from Buddhism, psychology, and a range of spiritual traditions, along with a wealth of practices both for avoiding the pitfalls that can occur in love relationships and for enhancing the way love shows up in our lives. He then leads us on to love’s inevitable outcome: developing a heart that loves universally and indiscriminately. This transcendent and unconditional love isn’t just for a heroic few, Richo shows, it’s everyone’s magnificent calling.

ISBN-13: 9781611800814

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Shambhala

Publication Date: 01-07-2014

Pages: 272

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

DAVID RICHO, PhD, is a psychotherapist, teacher, writer, and workshop leader whose work emphasizes the benefits of mindfulness and loving-kindness in personal growth and emotional well-being. He is the author of numerous books, including the best-selling How to Be an Adult in Relationships and The Five Things We Cannot Change.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Introduction xiii

1 What Is Love? 1

Love as a Capacity 4

Love as a Quality 4

Love as a Commitment 5

Love as a Purpose 5

Love as a Grace 5

Love as a Practice 6

Kinds of Love 10

Compassion 15

Liking and Other Connections 16

Heart-Centered Feelings 21

What It Takes to Love 22

What It Takes to Practice 25

Practices: Trusting Our Ability to Love Mindfully Expanding Our Circle of Loving-kindness Working with Our Fear of Love 27

2 How We Can Love Ourselves 42

To Be Myself and Love You Too 47

Practice: Getting Up when We Are Put Down 50

Befriending Our Shadow Side 53

How Our Brain Helps 56

Our Chemical Conditioning 60

Practices: Giving to Ourselves What We Give to Those We Love Adding a Tail to Our Tale Affirming the Five A's 62

3 Our Need to Be Loved 68

How We Know We Are Loved 71

Practices: How Was I Loved? Childhood's Influence She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not When the One Who Loved Us Dies 73

Does Someone Who Abuses Us Really Love Us? 81

Practice: What We Tolerate 85

4 Neediness-Driven Drama versus Serene, Contented Love 87

A Frustrating Search 90

Clinging When We Find Someone 93

Practice: Drama or Love? 94

What It Takes to Change 96

Open to Finding 99

When We Can't Get Enough 102

5 Healthy Sexuality 107

Pleasure without Guilt 110

Lust and Longing 112

Practice: Honoring Our Sexuality 114

Our Fantasy Life 115

Practice: How Our Fantasies Can Reveal Us to Ourselves 117

6 Showing Love to Others 121

Practice: Expanding the Ways We Can Love 123

Three Ways of Connecting 128

Practice: The Three-Tiered Path 132

How Loving and Being Loved Release Us from Fear 133

Practice: Loving Others When They Don't Like Us 135

7 Showing Love in a Relationship 137

Practices: How Partners Can Break Unskillful: Patterns Finding Out Where We Are What a Relationship Asks of Us Safe Conversations Clearing the Past Upgrading Our Emotional Responses, Especially Anger Working Things Out 139

Why We Hurt the One We Love 156

Practice: Being On the Lookout 161

8 Showing Our Love Everywhere 162

Over-the-Top Ways of Loving 166

Love May Make Us Outsiders 174

Practice: Paths to Love 176

Loving Our World 178

We Are Important Here 181

Practice: Cosmic Consciousness 183

9 What to Watch Out For 186

What Is Ego? 187

How Ego Moves from Fear to Freedom 190

Practice: Clearing the Obstructions of Ego 195

When Narcissism Appears 198

Power and Control 201

Practice: Letting Go of Our Compulsion to Be Controlling 203

The Urge to Retaliate 206

Retaliation in Early Life 208

Retaliation in Relationships 209

Practice: Giving Up Getting Even 213

How Hate Happens 216

Practice: Radical Affirmations 219

Epilogue: There Is Hope in Our Limitations 223

Appendix 1 Commitments to Loving-Kindness toward Ourselves and Others 227

Appendix 2 A Checklist of Well-Being 233

About the Author 241