The Soul of Therapy

THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH OF GENUINE LOVE

BY KEVIN ANDERSON, PH.D.

MANY OF MY PATIENTS COME TO THERAPY needing to talk about their challenges in that most human of experiences: love. Some speak of a confusing, lingering mix of love and pain in their family of origin decades after leaving the nest. Others tell me a partner who once seemed like a perfect match now sometimes triggers feelings of anger, loneliness, or being taken for granted. Parents share the painful gap between their desire to give children unconditional love and their inability to be anywhere close to perfect in that quest.

For three weeks in 1982, the No. 1 song in the United States was Joe Cocker’s and Jennifer Warnes’ duet “(Love Lifts Us) Up Where We Belong.” This ode to romantic love promises that it can transport us “far from the world below, up where the clear winds blow.” This and countless other love songs and poems flow from the myth that extraordinary love is the ultimate haven from the ordinary difficulties of life. When we place that expectation on love in any of its manifestations in our lives, we make genuine love more difficult. An essential element of genuine love is not perfect protection from life’s messiness but radical acceptance of the imperfection inherent in real relationships. Anyone can handle love’s highlight moments. Genuine love adds an abiding acceptance of love’s imperfections.

An important distinction is necessary here. One of a therapist’s most common jobs is to help people differentiate ordinary conflict from abuse. Genuine love uses the difficulties intrinsic in love to develop radical acceptance, compassion, listening, forgiveness, apology, kindness, and affirmation. Abuse, however, is blind to these spiritual paths. It gets stuck in loops of shaming, blaming, and punishing another person. Genuine love grows through difficulties; abuse uses them to stifle the growth of another by creating an atmosphere of fear and repeated trauma.

I wish we had a word in the English language that could give us a clearer idea of what Buddha meant 2,500 years ago when he made “Life is dukkha” his first noble truth. The most common English translation of this truth, “Life is suffering,” may seem accurate at times when life is particularly difficult. But we suffer in smaller, less obvious ways even when great difficulties are not present. To convey dukkha’s subtler meaning, I often use words like unsatisfactoriness, discontent, and imperfection. If we observe our minds daily, we will see that they flow with a persistent tension between the way things are and the way we long for them to be. This is as true for how we perceive the state of the world as it is for how we experience our closest relationships.

Love, like everything in this life, participates in dukkha. This is the first noble truth of genuine love.

If you’re not sure about dukkha being present in all love relationships, begin by looking inward. Anne Lamott wrote, “My mind is like a bad neighborhood; I try not to go there alone.” Are you always kind in your mind when you speak to yourself? Are you always accepting of your body as it is? Do you compare your children, your marriage, your success, your material abundance, and even your spirituality to what others have? Have you ever been self-critical of the ways you’ve failed to be perfect in love?

If you cannot always be at peace within yourself—and no one can—do you think it’s reasonable to expect a perfect love relationship to give you that peace? That’s not love’s job. Genuine love teaches us to be kind, accepting, non-judging, honest, vulnerable, forgiving, and humble. But we long, particularly in romantic love, for another person to be the answer, to be “the one,” to be our soulmate. We don’t want the slow, plodding apprenticeship of real love.

Known for creating fascinating stories about unreal worlds, J.R.R. Tolkien penned a few lines of surprising wisdom about the real world in a 1941 letter to his son, Michael: “Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that in a more perfect world (or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soulmate is the one you are actually married to.” This thought extends beyond intimate partnership. Our best teachers are not perfect parents, siblings, children, or friends, but the sacred and imperfect people with whom we are walking through life.

Sorry, Joe and Jennifer, love does not lift us up out of dukkha. Love, like everything in this life, participates in dukkha. This is the first noble truth of genuine love. When a committed partner does that thing that irks you for the 200th time, that’s dukkha. When you want sexual intimacy and your partner doesn’t, or vice versa, that’s dukkha. When a good friend hurts your feelings and you spend hours or days talking it out, that’s dukkha. When your children seem to remember your worst moments as a parent and forget the relentless service you rendered to raise them, that’s dukkha. When you feel a disquieting loneliness at a family holiday party, that’s dukkha. When a loved one refuses to align with your spiritual and political views, that’s dukkha. When your normally insightful counselor seems to have an off day and misses the mark, that’s dukkha.

Genuine love rids us of love’s double vision—the illusion that what sustains romantic love and what underlies love of family, friends, and “love your neighbor as yourself” are fundamentally different. Eros without agape does not soar for long. The heat of real life melts its wings. Its Icarian fall, though, can ground us in a humble awareness that we all need a lifetime to learn and grow in genuine love. &

Love humbles even masters.

Love humbles, even masters us at times.

Love humbles, even masters us. At times we return to the same dead ends in a maze.

Love humbles, even masters us. At times we return to the same dead ends. In amaze- ment with simple graces, we find our way again.

Information in this column is for general psychoeducational purposes and is not a substitute for assessment and care provided in person by a medical or mental health professional.

KEVIN ANDERSON, PH.D., is a psychotherapist, poet, and writer. His books include Now Is Where God Lives, Divinity in Disguise, Noble Nature, and The Inconceivable Surprise of Living. He is father to five and grandpa to one. Visit thewingedlife.com.