Most of us spend a considerable amount of money on car insurance to protect us in the event of an accident. We spend even more for health insurance to help pay for expenses should we get sick. We get life insurance to help our families after we are gone. But few of us even consider getting “Love insurance” to protect our relationship from small or catastrophic accidents that can befall us.
Statistics show that 50% of first marriages, 66% of second marriages, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce in the United States. Since it’s clear that the odds of keeping a relationship alive and well aren’t all that good, you would think that people would want to protect their relationship from going under.
Further, we know that having a good relationship is a very valuable asset. How valuable? A study by Dr. Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, reported in the prestigious International Journal of Epidemiology calculated that marriage brings the same amount of happiness as $132,400 of annual income. What do you lose when you separate? When we separate and divorce, it would take an additional income of $249,700 of income each year to balance the loss. These figures didn’t even calculate the actual cost of separation and divorce (moving out, two households, lawyer’s fees, etc.).
We could also add the health benefits of a healthy marriage, which are considerable. Researchers are finding that marriage has a much greater impact in our lives than many have assumed. This is especially true in the area of adult health and well-being. Sociologist Linda Waite and researcher Maggie Gallagher explain, “The evidence from four decades of research is surprisingly clear: a good marriage is both men’s and women’s best bet for living a long and healthy life.”
It took me awhile to get my own “love insurance.” I married young, went through a divorce, remarried, and divorced again. It was an expensive experience, both monetarily and with my health. I suffered from depression, adult ADHD, became increasingly angry, was overwhelmed with stress, and wrote a book, Stress Relief for Men. When Carlin and I got together, a third marriage for her as well, we vowed to overcome the odds against us and learn how to keep love alive and well. We’ve been joyfully married now for 34 years. Here are our own “Love Insurance” practices.
1. Love is letting go of Fear
Gerald Jampolsky, M.D. wrote a wonderful book, Love is Letting Go of Fear. He said, “With Love as our only reality, health and wholeness can be viewed as inner peace, and healing can be seen as letting go of fear.” The first thing we need to do is to keep focused on what we want and let go of the fear of what didn’t work in the past. We’ve all been wounded in relationships, whether the ones in our family of origin, or later in life. If we focus on pain and loss, we will likely get more pain and loss. If we focus on love and understanding, that will likely be our future. When we’ve been burned before, it’s not easy to stay focused on love. Carlin and I teach people to imagine throwing the fears off a bridge and watching them float away. Let love be our guide.
2. Love is a practice, not a melodrama.
Most of us were raised on melodramatic stories of being swept away by love. We see love as a magical force that will inhabit our lives forever as soon as we find Prince Charming or Princess Leia. In fact, love is a practice at requires work. Like anything else you want to get good at, love requires our attention. If you want to insure that love lasts, keep practicing.
3. Learn from the experts.
Most of us go to school to learn to drive, get a good job, or learn an important skill. But how do we learn about love? We learn from the school of life. But often the school of life teaches us about dysfunctional love, not healthy love. I’ve learned to go the experts if I want to learn how to do something well.
Two experts who have taught me to love well (and I’m still learning) are John Gottman, who recently wrote another helpful book, What Makes Love Last? How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal and Sue Johnson, author of Love Sense: A Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships. If you’re serious about learning to love, you couldn’t find better guides than these.
4. Learn the difference between “love” and “love addiction.
Many of us look for that “in love” rush we feel when we have found that special someone. But is that feeling really love or is it love addiction? According to addictions expert Dr. Stanton Peele, “Many of us are addicts, only we don’t know it. We turn to each other out of the same needs that drive some people to drink and others to heroin. Interpersonal addiction—love addiction—is just about the most common yet least recognized form of addiction we know.”
I wrote a book, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions, to help people find true love and avoid addictions. I describe 21 distinctions between real love and addictive love including the following:
- Healthy Love develops after we feel secure. Addictive Love tries to create love even though we feel frightened and insecure.
- Healthy Love comes from feeling full. We overflow with love. Addictive Love is always trying to fill an inner void.
- Healthy Love grows slowly, like a tree. Addictive Love grows fast, as if by magic, like those children’s animals that expand instantly when we add water.
5. Love your mate like you wish you were loved as a child.
Most of us know that children need our attention, particularly when they are upset and scared. We hold them close, touch them with love, and nurture them with continuous affection. We don’t take it personally when they are upset and call us names. We are there for them, no matter what they do. They are dependent on us for our love and support throughout their lives. We used to think we didn’t need that kind of love as adults, but research shows we need this kind of nurturing from cradle to grave.
6. Both Men and Women Have to Learn to Accept Our Need to Depend on Our Partner
It took me a long time to allow myself to show vulnerability and weakness, even to my wife. Although she would assure me that she would love me even more if I opened myself to her and reached out when I was anxious, stressed, or needy, I wasn’t so sure.
I remembered hearing my mother and her women friends talk about their husbands in very negative ways when they acted “weak.” I still hear many women say things like, “It’s like I have another child in the house. I can accept my little ones crying and running to me for support, but it doesn’t feel right when my husband acts that way.”
Most of us grew up believing that we needed to separate from our parents, go out in the world and establish ourselves as independent, self-sufficient adults if we were going to attract a mate. This belief is particularly prevalent in men, but our whole culture emphasizes self-sufficiency and independence as marks of maturity.
According to research by Dr. Johnson and Dr. Gottman, good relationships thrive when we acknowledge our dependency needs rather than denying them. “You are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection.”
But gradually, we’ve both learned that depending on your spouse for love and support doesn’t mean you’re weak. It just means you’re human. She needs to learn to run to me for support and nurture when she is stressed out scared and I need to learn to do the same. As the Eagles song “Desperado” reminds us, “You better let somebody love you. You better let somebody love you. You better let somebody love you, before it’s too late.”
Most of us grew up believing that we needed to separate from our parents, go out in the world and establish ourselves as independent, self-sufficient adults if we were going to attract a mate. This belief is particularly prevalent in men, but our whole culture emphasizes self-sufficiency and independence as marks of maturity.
According to research by Dr. Johnson and Dr. Gottman, good relationships thrive when we acknowledge our dependency needs rather than denying them. “You are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection.”
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