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

maturation consists not in leaving needs behind but in recruiting supportive others who can give age-appropriate and generous responses to our needs.

Can fathers provide the container for the holding and separating experience so crucial to growth? It seems unlikely. Their role is to protect us from being contained too long! Women can provide a safe place for us to express our feelings and make our unique choices. Men can show us a safe exit into the larger world. And if fathers are sometimes so

If our emotional needs were fulfilled by our parents, we emerge from childhood with a trust that others can give us what we need. We can then receive love from others without distress or compulsion. Our needs are moderate. We can trust someone to help fulfill our needs while we help fulfill hers. This provides a foundation for a life of compassion

Attention to you means engaged focus on you. It means sensitivity to your needs and feelings.

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.

Acceptance engenders a sense of being inherently a good person. Appreciation generates a sense of self-worth. Affection makes us feel lovable. Allowing gives us the freedom to pursue our own deepest needs, values, and wishes.

To give and receive love is our primary need. We express love emotionally, spiritually, and physically. An affectionate touch or hug from someone who really loves us can penetrate our bodies and restore our souls. All our fears, no matter how deep, can be erased by a single loving stroke.

Every cell of your little body knew the difference between being held supportively and being clutched to fulfill a parent’s needs. You knew when something was being given and when it was being taken.

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.