Real Love

Real Love Plot Summary

Introduction

Ellen and Gil recently celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Ellen often tells her younger colleagues seeking relationship advice to look for unconditional love. When asked how they'll recognize it, she shares a story. Early in their relationship, Gil would pick her up at the train when she visited him on Long Island. Once, while driving, Ellen began talking about her parents' divorce when she was seventeen. Gil pulled over to the side of the road. When Ellen asked what was wrong, he replied, "You are telling me something important, and I want to listen and give it my full attention." For Ellen, that was the defining moment. Twenty-five years later, Gil still listens to her with the same attentiveness. Real love isn't about grand gestures or dramatic declarations. It's found in the small moments of genuine connection – when we truly see each other and are seen in return. Whether in partnerships, friendships, family relationships, or even our relationship with ourselves, real love requires presence, courage, and the willingness to be vulnerable. Throughout this journey, we'll explore how mindfulness can help us navigate the complexities of human connection. By learning to be present with ourselves and others, we can create spaces where authentic love can flourish. The path isn't always smooth, but when we approach our relationships with awareness and compassion, we discover that real love isn't something we find – it's something we cultivate and practice every day.

Chapter 1: The Foundations of Self-Love: Moving Beyond Inner Criticism

When she was in her early twenties, Diana believed that the only way to find her soul mate was to have sex with prospective partners soon after meeting them and then spend every possible minute together. In her mind, they would experience such an exquisite blending of body and soul that the man would never want to leave her side. "I wanted us to be so attuned to each other, we'd be like one person in two skins," she says now. "I even remember saying to my true love du jour that I couldn't tell where I stopped and he began. Needless to say, my designated soul mates were terrified of my dependency and headed for the hills. It took me years to unpack my neediness and see that I was trying to heal my lonely childhood by trying to merge with my lovers. Thankfully, I learned that in order to truly see and be seen by another person, there has to be differentiation and space between you. We cannot be one." Diana's journey reflects a common misunderstanding about love – that it requires complete fusion with another person. Many of us enter relationships carrying wounds from childhood, seeking in others what we haven't yet developed within ourselves: a sense of worthiness, security, and acceptance. We might believe that someone else can "complete us" or heal our pain, placing an impossible burden on our relationships. The foundation of healthy relationships begins with self-love – not in a narcissistic sense, but as a genuine acceptance of our whole selves, including our flaws and vulnerabilities. When we practice self-compassion, we create a stable internal foundation that doesn't depend on external validation. We can then approach others not from desperation or neediness, but from a place of wholeness. Learning to love ourselves is an ongoing practice that involves challenging our inner critic, embracing our imperfections, and recognizing our inherent worthiness. It's about treating ourselves with the same kindness and understanding we would offer a dear friend. As we develop this relationship with ourselves, we become capable of forming healthier connections with others – connections based not on dependency or fear, but on mutual respect and genuine care.

Chapter 2: Navigating Relationship Dynamics: Between Attachment and Independence

Georgia is a freelance writer who works at home in a two-story loft space with tall windows that let in beautiful light. Some time ago, she was under tremendous financial pressure and took on too much work to compensate. With deadlines for projects following one right after the other, she started to slump. Georgia is a good cook, but when the pressure hit, she began eating only junk food. She didn't feel like exercising, so her life became confined to her four walls, where her dark mood closed in. Her housekeeping fell off, and of course, so did her meditation practice. She'd pledge to meditate forty-five minutes under the covers while in bed, but would then promptly fall asleep. And she began drinking more than she had at any other time in her life. Georgia was devoting all her waking hours to the goals and demands of others. Her motivation was partially self-protective, as she needed the money. But the way she acted on it was not, and she burned out. She felt disconnected from her body and from everything that nourished her. And the way she spoke to herself became quite self-punishing. For a while, Georgia couldn't see a way out of this downward spiral. And then, in a moment of awareness, she did. "I wasn't taking a stand on my right to be happy," she told me later. "I realized I had to do that in order to find a way back to self-love." As a first step, Georgia drove to the supermarket to replenish her kitchen with healthy food. While there, she found a votive candle dedicated to San Judas Tadeo, the patron saint of difficult and desperate cases. The prayer on the back read: "Pray for me. I am so helpless and alone." That summed up how Georgia had been feeling, so she brought the candle home, showered, and lit it. Georgia's story illustrates the delicate balance we must maintain between meeting external demands and honoring our internal needs. In relationships and in life, we often find ourselves pulled between attachment and independence – between connection with others and autonomy. Finding equilibrium requires consciousness and choice. When we lose ourselves in meeting others' expectations or demands, we can disconnect from what nourishes us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This disconnection eventually affects not only our well-being but also our capacity to engage meaningfully with others. Georgia's realization – that she needed to "take a stand on her right to be happy" – reflects a profound truth: we must claim our own happiness as a legitimate priority. The path to balance involves small, deliberate actions that honor our needs while maintaining our connections. For Georgia, it began with nourishing her body, acknowledging her feelings, and gradually reengaging with practices that supported her well-being. Through these acts of self-care, she was able to reconnect with herself and, by extension, with the world around her.

Chapter 3: The Space Between Us: Finding Balance in Intimacy

In every intimate relationship, there are three elements: us, our loved one, and the space between us. That space is rich with possibility, but it can also become a battleground or an inhospitable no-fly zone. How do we balance privacy and intimacy, self-protection and vulnerability, fear and longing? Can we love without trying to possess? If we're hurt or betrayed, can we trust in love again? Mindfulness practice gives us a way to explore the space between and to discover safe ways of navigating it. When we meditate, we hope to create space—whether it's a step away from our chattering minds where we can gain perspective, or a new opening to tenderness and goodwill. We come to realize that we can fill that space between with generosity, respect, support, and fairness—or anxiety, resentment, anger, and silence. How we traverse the space between us is critical. How do we remain open when it makes us feel vulnerable? We humans suffer from a porcupine problem, trying to live with bodies that combine a soft underbelly and a back bristling with spiky quills. The German philosopher Schopenhauer invented this metaphor to describe the dilemma of relationships. In the cold of winter, his porcupines tried to huddle together for warmth. But when they got too close, they stabbed one another, so they'd move off to a safe distance until they got cold again. If our tendency is to be anxious and grasping, we might try to fill the space between with whatever we think will hold others to us. We try to become indispensable. We're determined to be the most helpful, the sexiest, the most perfect, the smartest, the kindest, the most interesting. Of course, not only are we being inauthentic but also we're often wrong about what the other person really wants from us. We're making assumptions based on our own needs, and we may even be trespassing on the other person's autonomy. The psychotherapist Deborah Luepnitz investigated this tension in her book Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy and Its Dilemmas. "Definitions of love, aggression, intimacy, and privacy vary enormously, of course—by culture, historical moment, and social class," Luepnitz wrote. "Without making universal claims, we can assume that people in the contemporary West live lives bedeviled by the porcupine dilemma. That is, we struggle on a daily basis to balance privacy and community, concern for self and others, sexual union and a room of our own." Finding balance in intimacy means learning to respect the space between us while still nurturing connection. It requires us to see separation not as a threat but as a necessary condition for authentic relationship. When we understand that real love thrives in the tension between togetherness and autonomy, we can approach our relationships with greater wisdom and compassion.

Chapter 4: Radical Compassion: Extending Love Beyond Your Circle

A woman I know committed to a six-hundred-mile, seven-day bike ride to raise money in memory of a friend who had died of AIDS. The fund-raising scared her more than the physical demands of the trip, but as it turned out, raising money was effortless. So many other people had loved her friend that she became one of the top fund-raisers that year. When she crossed the finish line, glowing from the sun, her whole family and many of her donors were waiting to cheer for her. All had something to celebrate: her achievement in finishing the long ride; the months of training that preceded it; the generosity that brought them together; a chance to honor and remember their lost friend. My friend still draws on the joy generated on that day. Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else's success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others. We stand up and cheer when, after some struggle, a promising teenager graduates from high school. We dance late into the night at a dear friend's wedding. At other times, sympathetic joy can come as a gasp of relief. A friend is sick and waiting for some crucial test results and they come back fine! There may be complications ahead, but for this moment, we can share one of the flashes of connection that hold our lives together. These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship, with all its unspoken comparisons and personal disappointments, the heart may not leap up so easily. After a recent talk I gave on sympathetic joy, a woman I didn't know asked to meet with me privately. When we sat down, she confessed that although she felt terribly guilty, she was so upset that her best friend was getting married that she could hardly sleep at night. "I know I should be happy for my friend," she told me, her voice quivering, "but I haven't been in a relationship for three years, and every time I see her, it feels like pouring salt into a gaping wound. I know she really cares about me, but a big part of our bond has been being single together, each other's Saturday-night date. I know it's crazy and irrational, but somehow I think that because she's found someone, I never will. I'm supposed to be her maid of honor, only I can't imagine how I can make it down the aisle on her big day." So often we react from feelings of scarcity, as if there were rations for things like love and success. Our individualistic society often leads us to believe we're alone in this world and must scramble for every morsel we can grab. When we believe there isn't enough to go around, we cling to what's ours and respond begrudgingly if someone close to us gets something that we, too, might like to have. Radical compassion challenges us to extend beyond our immediate circle and our immediate feelings. It asks us to celebrate others' joy even when we're suffering, to recognize that another's gain doesn't diminish our worth or possibilities. This practice doesn't come naturally – it requires intention and effort – but it opens our hearts in profound ways, allowing us to experience a more expansive love that transcends our personal circumstances.

Chapter 5: Transforming Anger into Connection: Stories of Reconciliation

Carlos told me, "After two divorces and several painful breakups, I finally met the woman of my dreams. She was everything I had hoped for; nonetheless, I found myself cynical about relationships. I was carrying around so much resentment, anger, and blame toward my past partners that it was standing in the way of fully embracing this new relationship that I really wanted to be in. "I decided to focus my meditation on a practice of forgiveness. I focused my sittings on seeing my past relations more clearly. At first it felt like nothing significant was happening. Until one day, while on a long airplane flight, I had a breakthrough. On the back pages of a book I was reading, I made a time line of my life. I included all the painful relationships and alongside them I chronicled the life events I considered successes. "I saw the need to more honestly grieve the loss of a couple of those relationships before I could feel free. For another, I watched my resentment, fully acknowledged, transform to a feeling of gratitude for her contributions to my life. And for yet another, my biggest regret, and my resolve to let go, came from seeing just how much rent-free space she (long gone in real life) still occupied in my mind. It was considerable! "Seeing the relationships and the successful life events side by side showed me how they might be interconnected, how each relationship and partner could have played some role in helping me get to where I was at that moment. That moment, the forgiveness, the gratitude for my life in total, opened my heart to fully embrace my new partner, whom I married and deeply love." When we forgive someone, we don't pretend that the harm didn't happen or cause us pain. We see it clearly for what it was, but we also come to see that fixating on the memory of harm generates anger and sadness. Those feelings then prevent us from savoring the love and joy available to us right now. Forgiveness is the way we break the grip that long-held resentments have on our hearts. But real forgiveness in close relationships is never easy. It can't be rushed or engineered. The spike of defensiveness we feel when someone advises us to "forgive and forget" shows just how deep our pain has burrowed. And though people who advise us to do so may have good intentions, forgiveness cannot be achieved on command. That kind of coercive denial could never be healing. When we're told we should simply let go of our genuine feelings of hurt and anger, we may find ourselves defending our pain and our right to continue feeling it. Carlos's story illustrates that forgiveness isn't about erasing the past but integrating it. By acknowledging how his past relationships had shaped him, he was able to see them as part of his growth rather than simply as sources of pain. This shift in perspective didn't happen overnight – it required deliberate practice and deep reflection. The result wasn't just freedom from resentment but a newfound capacity for love and gratitude. The transformation of anger into connection often begins with honest acknowledgment of our feelings, followed by a willingness to see a larger picture. When we can hold our pain with compassion while also recognizing how our experiences have contributed to who we are today, we create space for healing and renewal in all our relationships.

Chapter 6: Embracing Life's Impermanence: Finding Peace in Change

Years ago while I was writing a blog post on my computer at IMS, an e-mail from a student landed in my queue. This young man wanted to know about the nature of anger. I wrote back explaining that becoming lost in anger cuts us off from other people. It limits our perspective and makes us see ourselves and the rest of the world with tunnel vision. When we're angry (not when we're merely feeling it, but when we are overcome by anger), it often seems like the only thing we can pay attention to is the person or thing we're angry at. Anger also tends to make us put people in boxes, so we lose sense of our connectedness as living beings; instead, we collide with the world, kicking whatever it is we think got in our way. Just after I clicked Reply, the computer crashed, and my stress hormones started pumping. As I tried to calm myself down, I realized that the most computer-savvy person at IMS was on vacation. My panic over missing my deadline quickly turned to anger—anger at the person who wasn't available to help me, anger at myself for not being able to fix the problem, anger at the computer, anger even at the fact that I was getting angry! Flashes of anger like these can seem automatic. But in the midst of this quick reaction, I sat with my feelings. I made an effort to notice what my mind was doing. Did sitting with my feelings mean that the anger suddenly went away? Definitely not! But by inviting myself simply to notice what was coming up, I gave myself space to see that my anger was creating tunnel vision. I remembered that I had actually urged our computer person to take a break from work. I had even helped to arrange his trip. And a little later, as my panic subsided, I managed to fix the computer snafu. Anger at a person or a computer has a different flavor than outrage at injustice or violence. The sheer heartbreak that fills us as we witness intense suffering can naturally call forth an inchoate cry of "No!" that we know as anger. However natural it might be to feel angry, it is still useful to examine what it's like to be repeatedly overcome by anger and the consequences both to ourselves and to others. Most of us are familiar with the strange, addictive quality of anger—how it fills our minds and how the rush of energy that accompanies it makes it hard to turn off. As the Buddha said, "Anger, with its poisoned source and fevered climax, is murderously sweet." When someone or something makes us angry, our bodies and minds effectively have an "immune" response, much like inflammation in the body. We instinctively try to self-protect, similar to the way blood rushes to the site of a bee sting. Embracing life's impermanence means recognizing that everything changes – our feelings, our relationships, our circumstances. Nothing remains static, no matter how much we might wish it would. When we resist this fundamental truth, we create suffering for ourselves. When we accept it, we find freedom. The practice of mindfulness helps us to stay present with our changing experience without getting lost in it. By observing our emotions as they arise and pass away, we learn that they are not permanent states but transient phenomena. This understanding gives us perspective and allows us to respond to life's challenges with greater wisdom and equanimity.

Summary

Real love isn't a destination we arrive at, but a continuous practice that transforms how we relate to ourselves and others. Throughout this exploration, we've seen how the journey begins with self-love – not narcissistic self-absorption, but a genuine acceptance of our whole selves, including our flaws and vulnerabilities. When we cultivate self-compassion and challenge our inner critic, we create a foundation for authentic connection with others. The essence of real love lies in finding balance – between attachment and independence, between togetherness and autonomy, between holding on and letting go. It asks us to navigate the space between ourselves and others with mindfulness and care. It invites us to extend compassion beyond our immediate circle, to transform anger into understanding, and to embrace life's impermanence with grace. In the words of the Buddha, "You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." This wisdom reminds us that real love begins within and radiates outward, creating ripples of connection that enrich not only our lives but the lives of all those we touch.

About Author

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Sharon Salzberg

One of America’s leading spiritual teachers and authors, Sharon Salzberg is cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts. She has played a crucial role in bringing Asian meditation practices to the West. The ancient Buddhist practices of vipassana (mindfulness) and metta (lovingkindness) are the foundations of her work.

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