How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

The neurotic ego, on the other hand, is the part of us that is compulsively driven or stymied by fear or desire, feeding arrogance, entitlement, attachment, and the need to control other people. Sometimes it is self-negating and makes us feel we are victims of others. This neurotic ego is the one we are meant to dismantle as our…

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all the love in the world will not bring us happiness or make a relationship work. That requires skill, and this skill is quite attainable. Practice can make us nimble enough to dance together with grace, however bashful we may be at the beginning.

Paying attention and letting go are the twin tools that will be presented throughout these pages.

It may seem like a sign of weakness to have needs. Actually, needs direct us to grow in the ways we were meant to. Childhood yearnings for attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and the experience of being allowed to be ourselves are not pathological but developmental. In trying to get a parent to pay attention to us, we were seeking what

When others give you attention, they also confront you directly when they are displeased, harboring no secret anger or grudges. But they always do this with respect and a sincere desire to keep the lines of communication open. Attention, like the other four A’s, is given in a trusting atmosphere of holding.

The unconditional presence of someone who loves us hearkens back to the past and repairs our childhood sense of being unwanted. At the same time, no human being can or is expected to be fully and unconditionally present all the time. An individual…

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Faith commitments call for trust in an invisible source of nurturance, and when visible sources of nurturance have let us down, we are less likely to trust the invisible sources. Yet Jung says the longing for the spiritual is as strong in us as the desire for sex. We therefore ignore an inner instinct when we totally deny the possibility of a power

True allowing also means letting someone go. To allow is to stand aside when someone needs space from us or even leaves us. This is an “A” in courage.

the five A’s come to us as gifts in childhood. They are then bestowed by us as gifts to others. They are not the result of effort but are the automatic overflow of love we receive.