True Love Deluxe

by Jennifer Lopez

  There were some shows where, because of local permits and noise ordinances, we had to cut a few songs to finish in our allotted time. Once or twice, I suggested maybe we could cut “Until It Beats No More.” We already had two other ballads, and I figured people would prefer the more upbeat songs. But everybody—Benny, the band, the dancers, the crew—all said, “No way!” People felt it was the most emotional part of the entire show. In many ways, it was the heart of the show—the whole reason I was doing it. And so it stayed in . . . every time.

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  I’m alive, I can breathe, I can feel, I believe

  And there ain’t no doubt about it, there ain’t no doubt about it . . .

  I’m in love.

  —“UNTIL IT BEATS NO MORE”

  SHARING COMFORT

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  In the middle of the tour, I had a very special moment with Max. I brought Emme and Max on the whole tour, as I couldn’t stand the thought of us being separated for five months. Fortunately, the kids are great travelers, so we didn’t have any problems—although there were some very long days and nights on the road.

  One night, really late, we were flying into Turkey for the next show. Everybody on the plane was asleep, passed out. But Max was awake, and he was sitting on my lap, asking me the kind of questions that a four-year-old asks: Will you always be my mommy? When are we going to see Daddy again? Will we always be together?

  I hugged him tight and whispered, “Listen. There’s only one thing you need to know. Me, you, and Emme are always going to be together, no matter what, okay? No matter what.”

  Max looked up at me with his big brown eyes and said, “Okay.” As if that was all he needed. I pulled the blanket up around his shoulders, and he relaxed into my arms. I’d never felt happier than in that moment, because I knew it was true.

  SET LIST

  Video transition: “Baby I Love U!”

  “Let’s Get Loud”

  “Papi”

  “On the Floor”

  I am grateful for the tough experiences in my life. They taught me some of my most valuable lessons. But I can’t let the negative experiences haunt my memory and fuel regret.

  It’s time to extract the good from the bad and leave the rest behind.

  I’m taking all the positives with me and I’m forging ahead.

  BABY I LOVE U!

  (VIDEO TRANSITION)

  AT THIS POINT in the show, there was what we call a video transition. We use these to do quick changes, but they can be so beautiful if done right and can really enhance the message of the show. Again, Parris Goebel choreographed it. It was based on a piece she had choreographed to Etta James, which I’d fallen in love with; the reason I’d hired her, actually. I asked her to do something similar to “Baby I Love U!,” a song I had written many years before for my This Is Me . . . Then album. She thought it was a great idea. We wanted to show the blossoming of a new kind of romantic love. It was a beautiful, emotive piece, two people sitting side by side on a bench—together but independent of each other—meeting and discovering one another. It was loving but it wasn’t needy; it was sweet and strong at the same time.

  Creating this show and going through my songs and my life in this way was like holding up a mirror to myself. At this point in the show we had now established how people see me—Big Hollywood—how I see myself—the Bronx section—who I am as an artist and my message about love, and how motherhood had changed my entire perspective on love and how it wasn’t what I thought it was. In fact, I was seeing romantic love in a whole new way. I still hadn’t found the key to unlock the secret, but I was getting closer. I was in transition and this was the perfect transition piece, a perfect breather before the big finale.

  • • •

  Boy I never thought I could feel the way I felt when I felt the way you were feeling me, baby.

  —“BABY I LOVE U!”

  It was time to own up to myself.

  Was I living the life I was supposed to live?

  Were my relationships good for me?

  Did I truly know myself?

  TURNING POINT

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  ACCEPTING HELP

  In looking back at the crazy ride I’d been on with my past relationships, it was hard not to recognize that there was something I needed to examine. During my trip to promote “On the Floor” in Europe, between performances and interviews, I was desperately trying to figure things out. I called my friend Leah, I needed to talk. With everything that was happening . . . I told her I’d never felt so low in my life. She asked why.

  “I feel like I’m doing things and accepting things I don’t want to,” I said. “Like, this is not how I want my life to be. I feel sick to my stomach.” No matter how bad things had gotten in the past, this was a level of anxiety I had never dealt with before. I didn’t know how to handle it.

  “This is great!” Leah exclaimed.

  Well, that was not the response I expected.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked her.

  “You’re hitting rock bottom,” she said. “You know, Jennifer, you have to hit bottom before you can make a change, and it’s finally happening.”

  I didn’t say anything. Was she right? Was that what I was experiencing?

  “Do you want help?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.” I had to find some way through all this, and I didn’t know how to do it alone. I had to find the strength to make a change, but I didn’t have that strength in me, and I didn’t know where I could get it. And that was a very frightening, disorienting place to be. I felt helpless, and I felt scared.

  Leah helped me hire a therapist, and during that period, while I worked really hard promoting “On the Floor,” which was fast becoming the biggest-selling single of my career, I was working even harder behind the scenes—discussing, analyzing, doing exercises, everything I needed to do to understand the turns my life had taken.

  I’m usually a pretty quick study, and hot off the realization that a change was necessary, I started recognizing my own patterns. One of the most important realizations I had was that the problems I was having with Marc weren’t about him. They weren’t about anyone else—they were about me. And there were a lot of problems. One, I discovered I had low self-esteem, which I had never really pictured myself as having. Two, I worked on learning what integrity meant, which would cause a massive change—but we’ll get back to that later. And three, the biggest lightbulb that went off during those two weeks was that I realized I wasn’t recognizing the value of my own love.

  In analyzing, step by step, relationships that went as far back as high school, I noticed I had never stopped to consider just how special my love was. I never stopped to look at myself and say, You know what? You’re honest, you’re generous, you’re loving, and you’re loyal . . . You deserve a love that is as pure and special and good as the one you are giving. My love has value. I HAVE VALUE.

  Hold on, back up. I have value? My love has value?

  WOW.

  Sometimes, especially as women, we don’t feel comfortable giving ourselves that credit. We’re selfless in the best ways. But that can be dangerous too. You need to feel comfortable with affirming the greatness of who you are as a partner, a wife, a mother, a person. You are great. What you have to offer is great. When you give your time, your love, your respect, you deserve respect in return. You deserve comfort, you deserve honesty, and you deserve to feel safe. That’s what relationships are supposed to be about—a place where you feel good, right?

  When you give your time, your love, your respect, you deserve respect in return. You deserve comfort, you des
erve honesty, and you deserve to feel safe.

  Okay, so now I’m thinking, keep the diamond rings, the Bentleys, the doves, the trips to Europe . . . Keep all of it! I can buy all those things myself. Give me your time, your honesty, your respect, kindness, patience, fidelity. Give me comfort when things are tough . . . Being me, being famous, doesn’t mean I don’t need those things like any other girl. It didn’t matter if my partners were famous either, it was always the same scenario. I gave off the air of being self-sufficient and instead of expressing and demanding the right kind of love for myself, I always wanted to appear like I was fine, in fact, I thought I was fine—and so did they. But it wasn’t true. Just because you’re a strong girl doesn’t mean you don’t need to be loved and cared for like anybody else. And it doesn’t matter where you sit in this world, poor or rich, famous or not, we all need to be loved in the right way. That’s what matters. In discovering my own value, that’s what I was finally realizing I deserved.

  OKAY WITH GREAT

  I remember a time when I was filming a movie and I had finished a really good take when I started experiencing some anxiety. I couldn’t quite understand why I was feeling that way until later, when my acting coach, who was on the set with me, was able to quickly notice and diagnose the problem: “You’re afraid of your own greatness,” she said. At the time, I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but now, thinking back, I understand what she meant. I had never really owned that feeling. I had never truly believed I was great at acting, or anything else for that matter. I never thought of myself in that way, I wasn’t even aware enough to consider it. I never stopped to give myself credit, to say, “Jen, you’re awesome; you’re doing amazing.” It never even occurred to me. I was always working and striving and going and running. I mean I knew I was doing okay. I knew I was a good person. But great? I was just trying to be as good as I could be.

  Marianne Williamson has a wonderful quote that says:

  Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us . . . [But] as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same.

  I was finally recognizing a really unhealthy pattern that had entrapped me for so many years. I was always looking for the other person to tell me I was great so I could feel good about myself. I lived for that. I wanted their appreciation. Even worse, if they didn’t give it to me, I tried even harder to prove to them that I was worthy. I would keep trying to fix things and make them better, searching for that validation. I always thought the reason it wasn’t working had to be because I was doing something wrong. So no matter how I was treated, or what the other person did in our relationship, all I cared about was getting his approval. In fact, that would oftentimes become the glue that kept these relationships together.

  Ultimately, the love I wasn’t giving myself, I was trying to get from others.

  Ultimately, the love I wasn’t giving myself, I was trying to get from others.

  I was so concentrated on doing everything in my power to make the other person happy, to make the other person love me, to make them believe that I was great because, deep down, I didn’t really believe that I was.

  But why?

  I’m no psychologist, but I think much of it can be traced back to my upbringing. As the middle child, I was always trying to be perfect at everything I did in order to get some attention. I ran track and I did gymnastics and I won all these trophies and medals because I wanted my parents’ recognition—and everyone else’s, for that matter—I wanted them to think I was special in some way, to think that I was awesome! I always tried to be the best-hearted, nicest, most well-behaved kid. So when everyone would compliment me, in my mind, it had to mean that I was doing pretty well. The feeling wasn’t coming from inside of me; it was coming from other people.

  This thought process became a part of who I was. I would automatically feel better if someone else told me I was doing well. Having my sense of self-worth depend on someone else’s validation ended up working to the detriment of my relationships.

  On the flip side, that same flaw turned out to be a very positive driving force in my career. It is what fueled that overachieving quality that I had in every other aspect of my life. I am always striving for perfection and aiming for the top. But in an emotional relationship, it’s a double-edged sword because the value and acceptance that can make you feel your best can also make you feel your worst when it’s being manipulated or it’s simply not there.

  In realizing this, I understood that there was an imbalance and I needed to work on believing in myself, believing in my own greatness in order to choose the right person and make the right decisions for myself. The middle child in me was coming full circle. While I used to feel like I had to run faster than everybody, be more perfect than everybody while looking for everyone’s approval, I was now finally understanding that my value didn’t lie in the medals I won. Maybe just being me was enough to be loved. I wasn’t giving myself any credit.

  Now I knew that I had to.

  Because you can’t expect to be treated great if you don’t first believe that you are great.

  Baby I need you, need you, I gotta have you

  I gotta have you baby, can’t be without you

  —“BABY I LOVE U!”

  FACING REALITY

  It’s in my DNA to never give up, to fight to make things work and hang in there until they do. I had stayed in just about every relationship for too long, knowing somewhere deep down that I should have walked away a long time ago. This had happened so many times, over and over, in ways that were so similar. How had I not seen it before? I don’t know—but now that I did see it, I knew I was never going to miss it again.

  The first step in any recovery is recognizing the problem, right, folks? On this trip, I finally saw it clearly, for the first time.

  On the last day of the promo trip to Europe, we were in London. I had a photo shoot in the morning before heading to the airport. As soon as the shoot was over, the reality of going back home hit me. I felt different. I went back to my room in the hotel and lay down on the bed, sobbing uncontrollably. I couldn’t hold the feelings in any longer. I cried and cried. It was like an emotional flushing, like I was purging all that pain and disappointment from my system, making room for something new. Something stronger.

  It was one of those gray, rainy days that are so common in London, and in the car on the way to the airport, I remember looking out the window and thinking life was gloomy, wishing I didn’t have to deal with it, hoping there was a way out of the situation I was in. I was dreading going back home. Deep down inside, the fighter in me still wanted

  Because you can’t expect to be treated great if you don’t first believe that you are great.

  to make things work, make things better, but the reality was that I knew things could never, ever be the same.

  Over the course of the previous weeks, even the previous months, little by little I had been building up my self-esteem and my self-confidence. I’d never even known I had a problem there. And one of the most important things I worked on while in Europe was finally understanding and really learning the definition of integrity.

  Integrity is your own gauge of what is right for you.

  Integrity is not a stand-alone concept, as we often make it out to be. You decide what it means to you. If you think that being talked to in a bad way is not acceptable and you allow it to happen, then you are compromising your own integrity. In other words, it’s like a betrayal of yourself. And now that I was aware of that, I couldn’t allow certain things to continue any longer. I would be compromising my own integrity. If I didn’t take care of myself, who would?

  A few days after I got back home, I was out there in the desert for that L’Oréal photo shoot, and my brain finally accepted what my heart already knew. I had changed. It wasn’t about anybody else; it was about me. I knew my
relationships would never be the same again.

  I asked my mom if she could stay longer. “I need you,” I said. “Marc and I are going to get a divorce.” She knew something was up because Marc hadn’t been home since I got back from Europe. She said she would, and the next day I asked Marc, who was staying at a friend’s house, to come over so we could settle things.

  We sat down together, and I said, “This is not working. You know it’s not working. We’re not living like a family, and I don’t see how things are going to change.” He agreed, and I continued. “Neither of us is happy, and the kids are wondering what is going on. I think we should move on with our lives.”

  As painful as it was, Marc seemed to know that what I was saying was true. Deep down, I still wanted him to put up a fight for our family. I wanted him to say, “No, I’m not going to let this happen.”