by Jay Shetty
Once the element of romantic pursuit was removed, I wasn’t trying to promote myself as a boyfriend, to look good, to make women think anything of me, to indulge lust. I found my connections with female friends—with all my friends—growing deeper. I had more physical and mental space and energy for their souls. My time and attention were better spent.
Again, I’m not suggesting you give up sex (though you certainly could), but what if you give yourself permission to be single, by yourself, able to focus on your career, your friends, and your peace of mind? Minister and philosopher Paul Tillich said, “Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.”
I spent three years as a monk, three years developing my self-awareness, at the end of which I was able to ask myself the right questions about a relationship. I may not have spent all of my waking hours in sattva—the mode of goodness—but I knew where I wanted to be and how it felt. I had the opportunity to become the person I would want to date. Instead of looking for others to make me happy, I was able to be that person for myself.
ATTRACTION VERSUS CONNECTION
Our increased intentionality gives us a clearer perspective with which to evaluate why we are initially attracted to people and whether those reasons support our values. There are five primary motivations for connection—and note that these don’t exclusively apply to romantic prospects:
Physical attraction. You like what they look like—you are drawn to their appearance, style, or presence, or you like the idea of being seen with them.
Material. You like their accomplishments and the power and/or the possessions this affords them.
Intellectual. You like how they think—you’re stimulated by their conversation and ideas.
Emotional. You connect well. They understand your feelings and increase your sense of well-being.
Spiritual. They share your deepest goals and values.
When you identify what’s attracting you, it’s clear if you’re attracted to the whole person or just a part. In my experience, ask most people what attracts them to another person and they’ll mention some combination of the top three qualities: looks, success, and intellect, but those qualities alone don’t correlate with long-term, fortifying relationships.
Monks believe that someone’s looks aren’t who they are—the body is only a vessel for the soul. Similarly, someone’s possessions aren’t theirs—they certainly don’t tell you about the person’s character! And even if you’re attracted to someone’s intellect, there’s no guarantee it will lead to a meaningful bond. These three qualities don’t correlate with long-term, fortifying relationships, but they do show your chemistry with another person. The last two—emotional and spiritual—point to a more profound, lasting connection—they show your compatibility.
QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY
When it comes to the energy we expend and receive in relationships, the focus is quality, not quantity. I often hear from guilty parents (usually moms) that they feel bad having to work long hours and lose out on time with their kids. According to the first-ever large-scale study of the impact of mothers’ time, it’s the quality of time spent with kids, not the quantity, that counts. (That means put away your phone during family time.) I’m not a parent, but I know that as a child, I always felt my mom’s energy. I never measured how much time she spent with me. My mother worked, and as a young child I went to daycare. I don’t have a single memory from daycare—no painful memories of her absence—but I do remember her coming to pick me up. She’d always smile and ask about my day.
This is true in all relationships. Nobody wants to sit with you at dinner while you’re on the phone. This is where we confuse time and energy. You can spend a whole hour with someone, but only give them ten minutes of energy. I’m not able to spend much time with my family, but when I’m with them I’m 100 percent there. I’d rather spend two hours with them, focused and engaged, than give them partial, distracted energy for a whole weekend.
A monk shows love through presence and attention. In the ashram, time invested was never seen as a reliable measure of care or engagement. As I’ve mentioned, after a meditation, nobody asked how long you’d meditated, they asked how deep you’d gone. If you have dinner together every night, great, but what is the quality of the conversation? Think like monks do, in terms of energy management not time management. Are you bringing your full presence and attention to someone?
TRY THIS: HANDCUFF ATTENTION THIEVES
These days, most of us are losing a battle for our attention. The victors are our screens. The only way to give another person your complete attention for a period of time is to turn off your screens. To give someone in your life the focus they deserve, sit down with them to agree on rules surrounding the phone, the laptop, and the TV. Choose specific activities that will be your quality time, without distraction. Agree to turn off your phones, put them in another room, or leave them at home. This may be a challenge at first. Perhaps conversation will lag, or friends and colleagues will be frustrated because they can’t reach you. Setting these boundaries will establish new expectations on both fronts: Lapses in conversation will lose their awkwardness; friends and colleagues will accept that you are not available 24/7.
SIX LOVING EXCHANGES
Most couples don’t sit down together, draw up a list of values, and see whether they share them. But once we have clarity about ourselves, we can connect with others in a more intentional way. The Upadesamrta talks about six loving exchanges to encourage bonding and growing together. (There are three types of exchanges; each involves giving and receiving, thus adding up to six.) They help us build a relationship based on generosity, gratitude, and service.
Gifts. Giving charity and receiving whatever is offered in return. This seems obvious, or maybe even materialistic—we don’t want to buy each other’s affection. But think about what it means to give to another person with intention. Do you get flowers for your partner on Valentine’s Day? This is a very conventional gesture, so consider whether it is the one that brings your partner the most joy. If flowers it is, did you walk them past a flower shop six months ago to suss out their preferences in preparation for this day, or did you text a secret query to their closest friend? (Both actions entail a lot more intention than just ordering some roses online, though, of course, that’s better than completely forgetting the day!) Is Valentine’s Day the best moment to express your love, or would an unexpected gesture be even more meaningful? Have you taken the time to contemplate what an ill friend would really like? Maybe it isn’t an object but an action, a service, our time. Cleaning their car, organizing activities, helping them with obligations, or bringing them someplace beautiful.
You can bring the same thoughtfulness to receiving a gift. Are you grateful for the effort that went into the gift? Do you understand why and what it means for the giver?
Conversation. Listening is one of the most thoughtful gifts we can give. There is no better way to show that we care about another person’s experience. Listening intentionally means looking for the emotions behind the words, asking questions to further understand, incorporating what you’ve learned into your knowledge of the other person, doing your best to remember what they said, and following up where relevant. Listening also involves creating an atmosphere of trust, where the person feels welcome and safe.
TRY THIS: MAKE YOUR CONVERSATION INTO A GIFT
Ideally, you try to do this in conversations regularly, but this time, do it with focus and intention. Pick a moment you have coming up with someone important to you—a friend, a relative, your partner. Maybe it’s a meal or walk you’ll be taking together. During this time, shut off your phone. Give all your focus to the other person. Instead of having an agenda, be curious. If a topic doesn’t emerge, ask them open-ended questions to land on a subject that’s important to them: What’s on your min
d lately? How’s your relationship with X? Listen carefully, ask follow-up questions. Share your own experiences without turning the conversation to yourself. A few days later, email or text the friend to follow up
It is also important to share your own thoughts and dreams, hopes and worries. The vulnerability of exposing yourself is a way of giving trust and showing respect for another person’s opinion. It enables the other person to understand the previous experiences and beliefs you bring to whatever you do together.
Food. The world was a very different place when the Upadesamrta was written, of course, and I interpret this exchange of food broadly to mean the exchange of experiences: any tangible expression of care and service that nourishes body or spirit, like giving a massage, creating a relaxing space for the other person in the home, or putting on music you know they enjoy. On a grander scale, my wife left her beloved family and moved to New York so she could live with me—an expression of care and generosity that nourished me more than I can say. Once we were in New York, I introduced her to other women to help her find a community. The experiences we exchanged didn’t have to be perfectly matched—we look for what the other person needs most.
* * *
These six exchanges can be thoughtless and empty, or they can have true depth and meaning. But don’t judge people’s efforts without giving them a chance to succeed. Nobody can read minds. If your roommate or partner doesn’t guess that you want them to organize your birthday party, it’s not their fault. Instead, be clear and honest with them about what you need.
TRY THIS: ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT
Tell the important people in your life how you like to receive love. When we don’t tell people what we want, we expect them to read our minds and often judge them for failing to do so. This week, be more genuine in asking people for help rather than waiting for them to predict what you want.
Think of a complaint you have about a loved one’s behavior. (But don’t look too hard for faults! If nothing springs to mind, that’s a great sign and you should skip this exercise.)
Dig to the root of the problem. Where is the real dissatisfaction? You might find that your need corresponds to the loving exchanges. Do you want more time to share and connect? (conversation) Do you feel unappreciated? (gifts) Do you want more support? (food or other acts of service)
Articulate it without criticism. Say, “This is what would make me feel more loved and appreciated” instead of “You do this wrong.”
In this way you give a companion a path to connection, which is easier for them and more likely to fulfill you.
READY FOR LOVE
The six loving exchanges lay a foundation for any close relationship, but most of us are looking for “the one.” The Harvard Grant Study followed 268 Harvard undergraduates for seventy-five years, collecting piles of data about them along the way. When researchers combed through the data, they found a single factor that reliably predicted the quality of participants’ lives: love. Participants could have every other external marker for success—money, a thriving career, good physical health—but if they didn’t have loving relationships, they weren’t happy.
We all come to relationships with different levels of self-awareness. With the encouragement of online quizzes and dating apps, we list the characteristics we want in a partner—sense of humor, caring, good-looking—but we don’t look at what we really need. How do we want to be cared for? What makes us feel loved?
In How to Love, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Often, we get crushes on others not because we truly love and understand them, but to distract ourselves from our suffering. When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.” After the ashram, when I was ready for a relationship (which was not, as some friends assumed, the moment I left), my sense of what I wanted in a partner was steered by self-knowledge. I knew what would complement me and what wouldn’t. I knew what I needed in my life and what I had to offer. My ability to find the right relationship evolved because I had evolved.
As it happened, Radhi Devlukia, the woman who would become my wife, already had this self-knowledge too. Without the need for the same journey I’d made, she knew she wanted to be with someone spiritually connected, with high morals and values. I believe she would have done just fine without me. But I know my life would have been different, full of pain, if I hadn’t taken the time to work on myself before diving into a serious relationship.
According to Massive Attack, love is a verb. Dan in Real Life says love is an ability. The Dalai Lama says, “Love is the absence of judgment.” Love is also patient. It’s kind. And apparently, love is all you need. With so many definitions of love in our culture, it’s all a bit confusing. And I was confused, despite all my monk experience—my self-exploration and intentionality and compassion—when I ventured out on my first date back in London.
I already know I like her. The Think Out Loud group I started in college continued for some years after I left, and I stayed in touch, visiting and lecturing when I came to London. Radhi was part of that community, had come to some of my lectures, and had become friends with my sister. Now people from that community, including me and Radhi, have joined together to organize a charity event against racism and bullying for young kids in England. Seeing Radhi in that context has told me more about her than I would have learned on a dating profile, or even after a few dates. I’ve seen how respectful she is with everyone on the team. She has interesting opinions and cool ideas. I’ve had a chance to get a real look at who she is—anyone can be their online profile for a one-hour date. It may be their best self, but it doesn’t give the full picture.
I still haven’t gotten a full-time job, but I’ve been tutoring to make a bit of money. I’ve saved up a month’s earnings, and I take Radhi to the theater to see Wicked. Then I bring her to Locanda Locatelli, a fancy restaurant that’s way above my pay grade.
She’s polite, but unimpressed. Afterward, she says, “You didn’t have to do this,” and confesses that her ideal date would be going to a supermarket, walking the aisles, and buying some bread. I’m mystified. Who would want to do that?
I hadn’t had any relationships since becoming a monk, and I had yet to reconcile who I was spiritually with how I used to date. I felt like I had one foot in each world. In spite of my monk training, I snapped right back into my old relationship mode—the one where I tried to give the other person what media, movies, and music told me they wanted instead of developing my awareness of who they were. I myself love gifts and extravagant demonstrations of love, and for a while I cluelessly continued to shower Radhi with grand gestures. I got it completely wrong. She wasn’t impressed by any of that. She’s not very fancy. Even after my years in the ashram, I could still be swayed by external influences or my own preferences rather than careful observation of what she liked, but after my initial missteps, I was aware enough to figure it out, and, thank God, she married me.
If you don’t know what you want, you’ll send out the wrong signals and attract the wrong people. If you aren’t self-aware, you’ll look for the wrong qualities and choose the wrong people. This work is what we’ve talked about throughout this book. Until you understand yourself, you won’t be ready for love.
Sometimes we find ourselves making the same mistake over and over again, attracting the same sort of incompatible partners or picking them in spite of ourselves. If this happens, it isn’t bad luck—it’s a clue that we have work to do. The monk perspective is that you carry pain. You try to find people to ease that pain, but only you can do that. If you don’t work through it, it stays with you and interferes with your decisions. The problematic people who emerge reflect your unresolved issues, and they will keep reappearing until you learn the lesson you need to learn. As Iyanla Vanzant said to Oprah, “… until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex; but eve
ntually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them.”
Once you’ve unpacked your own bags and you’ve healed yourself (mostly), then you’ll come to relationships ready to give. You won’t be looking to them to solve your problems or fill a hole. Nobody completes you. You’re not half. You don’t have to be perfect, but you have to come to a place of giving. Instead of draining anyone else, you’re nourishing them.
KEEPING LOVE ALIVE
Remember when we talked about the mind, we said that happiness comes when we are learning, progressing, and achieving. And yet as a relationship lengthens, we tend to long for the honeymoon phase, when we were first falling in love. How many times have you been in a relationship, and said to yourself, “I wish I could feel like that again,” or “I wish we could go back to that time.” But going to the same place for dinner or to the place you had your first kiss won’t bring back all the magic. Many of us are so addicted to re-creating the same experiences that we don’t make space for new ones. What you were actually doing at the start of your relationship was creating new memories with energy and openness. Love is kept alive by creating more new memories—by continuing to learn and grow together. Fresh experiences bring excitement into your life and build a stronger bond. I have many recommendations for activities couples can do together, but here are a couple of my favorites, drawn from monk principles.