by Paul Stanley
But a relationship’s success still comes down to who we’re having that relationship with. We can’t marry somebody who is at best ambivalent about giving up independence—the whole purpose of marriage is to combine. When we pick somebody who on some level doesn’t want to do that and pulls away, the natural reaction may be to try to pull them closer, which makes them pull away farther, which in turn makes you want to try again to pull them closer. Pretty? No. Pretty futile? Yes.
A relationship should bring out the best in both people and not provoke the worst. Too often, we have an agenda in a relationship. And if things don’t go the way we anticipate, we rationalize and find a way, because we have our agenda and we have our script. A lot of people think, “Oh, it’ll work out when we’re married” or “It’ll work out when we have a child.” Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s not going to.
A good partnership or relationship can only be built over time. And it can only be built over time because it’s dependent on how each partner responds to various situations, including critical situations, and on how they respond to each other’s needs. Obviously the commitment has to be reciprocal, but our partner must be somebody we can depend on—and the extent to which we can depend on them in various situations can be determined only through experience. Anyone can be a good person when things are going well, but a person’s real character is revealed when the chips are down.
I had a medical scare years ago, and because it was a very frightening prognosis at that moment, I called two women I knew—one being Erin, whom I’d recently met. The first woman said to me, “Oh, that’s terrible.” And Erin said to me, “Where are you right now?” And that is what you’re looking for: the person who drops everything to support you.
Erin and I dated for more than four years before we got married—and it wasn’t because I wasn’t crazy about her right from the start. But I think we both had to reach a point where we couldn’t imagine not being together. That’s way different from that first blush—which is awesome and can possibly be the first stone of a foundation, but by no means is an instant attraction to someone anything more than a fabulous psychological and biochemical reaction. I had years to see how Erin dealt not only with me but with her friends, emotional issues, medical crises, family problems. That’s key to a relationship—seeing how the person we’re willing to empower deals with things. Not surprisingly, Erin has never, ever disappointed me and has always been able to be there for me without any fear that it implies any weakness on her part. Security in ourselves allows us to do things without giving up our self-worth or self-respect. I’ve seen both sides of that coin in my own life and development—I had to deprogram my past, and experience the sense of self-assurance that came with that process, before I was capable of being there for other people.
I also love the fact that my wife blows me away with her intelligence. I am so thankful when Erin does or says something that makes me think, Wow, I never would have thought of that. It’s a great thing. In fact, I’m suspicious of people who seek out “lesser” partners, people who want to feel superior by being with someone they regard as less intelligent or less together. That has to do with discomfort with oneself. I want to surround myself with people who are on the same path that I am on.
We always have to look at somebody’s track record before we met them, because chances are that will dictate their future behavior. If your accountant has been sent to the slammer for fraud, there’s a pretty good chance he’s going to steal from you too. The only way to justify getting into business with someone who’s been convicted of fraud—a situation I’ve faced—is to pretend the person will act differently toward you. But no matter who you deal with, it’s never going to be you and them against the world. It’s always going to be them against the world. You’re never excluded from the treatment they’ve shown other people. Sometimes you may think you’re joining a movement when that’s simply not the case. If somebody has been ruthless or unethical with others, their same rules will apply to you too.
I learned at some point not to be surprised if I got screwed—in the less-than-ideal way—by somebody I clearly saw screw somebody else before. Earlier in my life, I was involved at various times with women who were cheating on their boyfriends or husbands. Time and again I just took it as the price of admission. Time and again the same brick fell on my head. But then I realized that being shocked at that behavior made me a fool. If I chose certain playmates—no pun intended—I shouldn’t be surprised if they hit me on the head with a brick.
It’s fine to go into a relationship with our eyes and our ears open. Love is sometimes blind. But it shouldn’t be deaf.
When we get into a relationship—romantic or otherwise—with somebody who displays some kind of negative behavior, we may make the mistake of thinking that we’re excluded from that behavior. Sooner or later, the way we see that person treat other people is the way they will treat us. If we choose not to see that, we shouldn’t be surprised down the road. We’re not excluded; we’re next. That’s who that person is.
Sometimes people say they want unconditional love. Well, the person who wants unconditional love is ultimately the person who’s going to bring the least to the table. It’s not about their partner. It’s about what that person wants. Unconditional love means that they expect their partner to tolerate whatever they do, often with no regard for the other person. That’s not a two-way street—and that’s not love, as far as I’m concerned, which is by nature a two-way street.
I knew a woman who was recently separated from her husband and got steeped in asking why her estranged husband was saying this and why he was doing that, and I just said to her, “The real question is, why are you there? You can’t change him. The only person you have control over is you.”
The idea is: Rather than trying to decipher your partner’s behavior, how about figuring out your behavior? Why are you where you are? Why did you choose this person? And why did you accept his or her behavior?
It shouldn’t feel demoralizing to find out your relationship isn’t as you expected. It’s a chance to make a change—for the better.
Part Three
Self, Health, and Happiness
12
Kick the Bucket List
I’ve always seen life as a conveyor belt. When we’re young, everyone’s ahead of us. As we get older, we start to see that the line behind us is longer than the line in front of us. It’s sobering. But that’s not a bad thing, because the reality is, we all reach our demise, and it makes the time we have here that much more precious.
For much of my life, I aspired to become more at peace with myself and more comfortable with myself and to become a better performer, better singer, better writer. At an early age, dreaming about being a good father was not in the cards. We can realize things like that only when they’re close enough to see and feel. There are also times when we have to accept what we won’t be able to do, and that’s important. There’s peace in being pragmatic enough to look at life and say, “Well, these are things I would love to do or do again, but other things are more of a priority for me at this moment in life.”
We tend to look too far into the future when we’re not equipped to have an answer. There is no ultimate goal or destination, because whether or not we reach our goal, the journey there fills us with new possibilities. We can only define ourselves today, and part of the joy of life is knowing that we will define ourselves differently in the future. That’s the excitement of self-discovery.
Life is long, and in the grand scheme of things, anything we accomplish is just an opportunity to accomplish something else—something more, something better. It doesn’t mean that any given accomplishment isn’t important. It just means that it’s of a certain moment. It’s what we did today. But what will we do tomorrow? If we are truly motivated and if we truly value ourselves and see the potential in our lives, that thirst is never quenched. That hunger is never filled. Because it’s not just a need; it’s what makes life valuabl
e.
At this point in my life, all of the amazing creative outlets I have make me feel good. I’d like to say they make me feel young, but that wouldn’t be accurate—because I didn’t have them when I was young. I had to get older to have access to them and the ability to see them. Painting, theater, writing books, my musical side project Soul Station. I find happiness in much more mundane outlets too, like simply being a dad or cooking up a delicious family dinner.
One of the keys to all of this: I kicked the bucket list.
We often make a fundamental mistake when talking about a bucket list: a bucket list should always be expanding based on our experiences, not getting shorter. If we’re slowly checking off items on our list without adding new items, we’re doing it wrong. You could say I have only one item on my bucket list: never to reach the end of my bucket list.
Because achieving something on our bucket list should open our eyes to something else we need to do. I don’t think we should ever end up with everything checked off our list, regardless of how content we are with what we’ve accomplished. I achieved all I originally set out to do—I attained fame and fortune as the rock star I’d always dreamed of becoming. But in my case, that was far from the end of the story—thank goodness!
I’ve realized that I’m just as happy about discovering new items for my bucket list as I am about checking one off. In fact, that’s the real excitement in life. The excitement is in discovery. And we can have the same sense of awe and joy in discovery as an adult that we had as children. In fact, the excitement is more pronounced for me now, in my sixties, than it was when I was younger, when I was too rigid in my thinking. If you’re missing that, then you’re not living your life fully. If your day is filled with the expected, then you need to open the curtains.
I started off by thinking life had a limited scope. It’s easy to picture life like a TV screen and believe it’s a certain size. Then experience shows us that it’s actually the size of a movie screen, and then, hopefully, it reveals itself as the size of an IMAX screen. Life should be a series of panels opening to make our world bigger, because what we let into our lives and how we perceive and experience it defines who we are. And I should emphasize, who we are for ourselves.
I’m much more aware of who I am today. I’m as aware today of who I am as I was clueless about who I was in earlier years. As the picture grows bigger, we have to step farther back to be able to see the complexity of who we are.
Of course, it’s still worthwhile focusing on specific goals. To try another metaphor, we can think of goals as tiles. We want to add tiles, sure, but we don’t want to just stack them up. We want to lay them out and use them to create a mosaic that can represent the richness of our life. We need to make sure that these tiles assemble into something larger—the complete picture of our life. As we create this mosaic, it should necessitate our stepping farther and farther back to see the whole picture, to see its enormous size and the intricacy of it. At that point, we should also see the potential to fill in more: self-discovery should lead to more self-discovery.
Nothing brings me more contentment than knowing who I am and knowing that I’m more than I thought I could be.
I’ll tell you something else: as with much art—and certainly with rock and roll music—even the imperfections are part of it. There’s no such thing as mistakes. Tunnel vision is fine in our quest to accomplish something, but we should always be aware that any given accomplishment is not the end. It’s part of this much larger picture.
Not only does this kind of approach—having a broader vision of ourselves and the world—make us more interesting at, say, a party, but it can contribute to the back and forth between all the various pursuits we engage in: we raise everything we do by raising anything we do. Not to mention, we’re more engaging in our own heads. We like ourselves more. We enjoy ourselves more when we like who we are, and liking who we are is based on liking what we do and—especially—how we do it.
13
Choosing Your Battles Means You Win More Often
Most of us will face situations in relationships or in our professional lives that have the potential to immobilize us. We have to fight that with all we have. There’s nothing wrong with licking our wounds, but once we’ve done that, we have to get up. Because—as we’ve all seen—when we stop moving our bodies, they become less cooperative. So get out of bed. Put on some clothes. And if at all possible, get moving. It may feel like we’re carrying the world on our shoulders, but ultimately the only way to lighten that load is to move forward. Otherwise, we’re crushed by it.
Among the lowest moments for me professionally were during the tour for Creatures of the Night, when we played to half-empty and sometimes nearly empty arenas. It was a horrible time. It’s mind-boggling to think now that I could fall asleep backstage in the dressing room—but I was so depressed that I just could not stay awake.
It seemed there was only one possible outcome: the band was going to go down, and it was over.
But if I’d had a hopeful approach, I could’ve thought of all kinds of other outcomes—and things we could do instead of accepting that one outcome. Sure, I was miserable. But it didn’t mean the band was over. It meant I had to fight to bring it back. Even if I didn’t know what I was going to do, I realized I could and would do something. I had to fight to leave that feeling and situation behind.
I simply told myself: This is not the end. This is not the final outcome.
I was determined not to allow the ship to sink. One reason to keep going was to avoid giving the people who didn’t like us the satisfaction of watching our demise; another was my refusal to let anybody except me determine the outcome of the situation. Funny how in situations like that, some bands will go onstage and give a half-assed show. Which makes no sense to me, because then you’re penalizing the people who showed up. Don’t be angry at the people who actually came. Give them something that they can go home and tell other people about.
If the band wanted to continue, the solution obviously wasn’t to have fewer people next time. We needed to attract more people instead. So lashing out at the people who were there would have been crazy. What we needed to do was blow them away.
I spent a lot of time wondering what else we could do to change the outcome.
Taking the makeup off was one thing. Creatures was a terrific album and a great declaration of our resolve to come back even stronger. But it fell on deaf ears because people were tired of seeing us the way we had always looked. Maybe they were unable to embrace other personalities or other faces in makeup. And it was clear to me that people were listening with their eyes. I had wanted to take the makeup off for Creatures, but we didn’t. So for Lick It Up it was a no-brainer.
After all, they say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Well, if we had put out another great album with makeup on, we’d have been idiots. How could we take this to the next level? By making another good album and changing how we looked. You know, retaining the part that people still embraced and accepted and getting rid of the part that wasn’t working.
When Lick It Up came out, it did well immediately, and we suddenly found ourselves being embraced, even by some of the critics, which was so strange to me—because I consider Lick It Up a good album, but Creatures of the Night is a great album. Others apparently saw it differently—and I would say that reaction is not coincidental to the fact that one of the album covers had us in makeup and the other didn’t.
There was also an underlying motivation for me to want the band to take off the makeup. There’s really no denying that with makeup, Gene is the face of KISS. But I’ve always been in essence the voice of KISS. Well, another way for me to get my due, or to get more of what I thought I deserved, was to take off the makeup. Because I was basically the same person I was with the makeup, whereas Gene relied on the makeup. In a sense, we changed the face of the band. And in doing so, I got to be recognized not only creatively and musically but on the street, w
hich I also craved and enjoyed. I wanted that acknowledgment, which had been missing.
It had always seemed odd to me that when I read something in the media about KISS, it described Gene as the “front man of the band.” It was always about Gene. But I thought, What do you mean by front man? The guy who talks the most offstage? What about the guy who does all the talking onstage? So now I was the lead singer. Indisputably the face of the band.
It served the band’s purpose, and it also served my purpose.
Whether it was “Lick It Up” or “Heaven’s on Fire” or any of the songs from that era, the band had a new dynamic—and a new focus. And if you look at the Smashes, Thrashes & Hits album, one person is in the center and bigger than the others. Which was appropriate. And, yeah, I enjoyed that. Plus, there was a feeling that went back to the code of the original band: as far as I was concerned, we didn’t have to do the same amount of work, but we each had to give 100 percent. And when someone wasn’t giving 100 percent, then I didn’t expect them to get equal exposure or equal billing. If you want to be in the front, then you’ve got to hold up your end of the bargain.
Even at the most frustrating times, I never contemplated KISS breaking up. Too much worth, sacrifice, and commitment had gone into it. I’d worked too hard to get KISS where it was to throw it away. As far as I was concerned, everybody and anybody could leave; I was staying. I never pondered even taking a break. When a band takes a break, there’s always a risk of never being able to get going again. I’d rather keep moving, even if the pace was slower or I took a few wrong turns. We risked losing all our momentum if we stopped.
I also had seen enough people who had left bands or dissolved them, thinking they could continue on their own. That’s a tough awakening. For me to suddenly take off the makeup and go solo back then? I could’ve done it, I guess, but I don’t know what the outcome would’ve been. KISS was an anomaly, so I don’t know if the rules that apply to other bands also apply to us.