What is Real Love?

Real Love: The Love We’ve All Been Looking For — Unconditional Love

We've heard songs about it, seen it in the movies, heard it talked about on Oprah by relationship experts, and read about it in thousands of self help books. But, what is unconditional love? We all want to feel loved. We think about it, hope for it, fantasize about it, go to great lengths toachieve it, and feel that our lives are incomplete without it. The lack of unconditional love is the cause of most of our anger and confusion. It is no exaggeration to say that our emotional need for unconditional love is just as great as our physical need for air and food.

It is especially unfortunate, then, that most of us have no idea what unconditional love really is, and we prove our ignorance with our horrifying divorce rate, the incidence of alcohol and drug addiction in our country, the violence in our schools, and our overflowing jails.

Our misconceptions of unconditional love began in early childhood, where we saw that when we did all the right things—when we were clean, quiet, obedient and otherwise “good”—people “loved” us. They smiled at us and spoke in gentle tones. But we also saw that when we were “bad,” all those signs of “love” instantly vanished. In short, we were taught by consistent experience that love was conditional, that we had to buy “love” from the people around us with our words and behavior.

So what’s wrong with conditional love? We see it everywhere we look, so what could be wrong with it? Imagine that every time you pay me fifty dollars, I tell you I love you. We could do that all day, but at the end of the day would you feel loved? No, because you’d know that I “loved” you only because you paid me. We simply can’t feel fulfilled by love we pay for. We can feel loved only when it is freely, unconditionally given to us. The instant we do anything at all to win the approval or respect of other people—with what we say, what we do, how we look—we are paying for the attention and affection we receive, and we can’t feel genuinely loved.

A New Definition of Love: Real Love

There’s only one kind of love that can fill us up, make us whole, and give us the happiness we all want: unconditional love or true love. It is unconditional love that we all seek, and somehow we intuitively realize that anything other than that kind of love isn’t really love at all—it’s an imitation of the real thing.

Unconditional love—true love—is so different from the kind of love most of us have known all our lives that it deserves both a name—Real Love—and definition of its own: Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves. It’s also Real Love when other people care about our happiness unconditionally. It is not Real Love when other people like us for doing what they want. Under those conditions we’re just paying for love again. We can be certain that we’re receiving Real Love only when we make foolish mistakes, when we fail to do what other people want, and even when we get in their way, but they don’t feel disappointed or irritated at us. That is Real Love (true unconditional love), and that love alone has the power to heal all wounds, bind people together, and create relationships quite beyond our present capacity to imagine.

What we Do Without Real Love: Imitation Love

If we don’t have enough Real Love in our lives, the resulting emptiness is unbearable. We then compulsively try to fill our emptiness with whatever feels good in the moment—money, anger, sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, power, and the conditional approval of others. Anything we use as a substitute for Real Love becomes a form of Imitation Love, and although Imitation Love feels good for a moment, it never lasts and never gives us the feeling of genuine happiness that Real Love provides.

Most people spend their entire lives trying to fill their emptiness with Imitation Love, but all they achieve is an ever-deepening frustration, punctuated by brief moments of superficial satisfaction. All the unhappiness in our lives is due to that lack of Real Love and to the frustration we experience as we desperately and hopelessly try to create happiness from a flawed foundation of Imitation Love. The beauty of Real Love is that it ALWAYS will eliminate our anger, confusion, and pain. So how do we find this universal cure?

Finding Real Love

As people learn the principles of Real Love, they almost uniformly ask how they can find and feel the real thing. They want to feel the actual power of Real Love.

Fortunately, there are so many courses of action we can take to find Real Love and experience its healing power.

1. Study. Read the book Real Love. Watch the Essentials of Real Love online or on the six-DVD set. The more we study these true, lifegiving principles, the more we tend to feel the power that emanates from them.

2. Participate in the forums offered here on RealLove.com. There you can tell the truth about yourself and feel the acceptance from those who can see, accept and love you.

3. Hire a Real Love Coach. Many people have found the guidance of a professional coach indispensable as they learn and apply the principles of Real Love. You can learn more about coaching at RealLoveCoaching.net.

4. Join a Real Love Group. If one is not available, take the steps to form one. Share the Real Love book or the Essentials DVDs with friends, and as you do that, you will naturally find people who express an interest in the principles of Real Love. Gradually, you can ask these people if they have an interest in joining you in a Real Love study group.

5. Gradually accumulate a group of people that you can communicate with by phone or in person every day. Make a habit of communicating with at least one person every day who is capable of loving you unconditionally. You will find these people as you take the steps described above.

6. Attend the Real Love seminars you find listed on the website under Events and Seminars .

As you take these steps, and tell the truth about yourself to other people—especially about your mistakes, flaws, and fears—they can finally see you as you really are. They can accept you and give you unconditional love, as indicated in this simple diagram:

Truth  Seen  Accepted  Loved

When you feel enough of the unconditional love of others, you'll have the most important treasure in life. The wounds of the past will heal—wounds caused by insufficient Real Love—and you'll feel whole and happy. As your emptiness and fear are eliminated by Real Love, you'll simply have no need to use Getting and Protecting Behaviors. Without those behaviors, you'll find relationships with others relatively effortless and will begin finding the happiness you've always wanted.

We have now seen the powerfully healing effects of Real Love in the lives of tens of thousands of individuals. Impossibly unhappy marriages now thrive, angry and rebellious children now turn to their parents for love and guidance, singles are finding partners interested in a relationship based on Real Love instead of trading in the sure disappointment of Imitation Love, and divisive and unproductive corporate cultures are become nurturing and supportive. Visit RealLove.com daily to get the relationship advice and tools that will help you replace your anger, confusion and addictions with peace, confidence, and happiness.