Title How to Love

Author Thich Nhat Hanh

Year Published 2014

Kind of Book Meditation/Relationship

How strongly I recommend it 2/10 

My Impressions

This was my first book by Thich Nhat Hanh and I must say, I was very underwhelmed. Perhaps it isn't fair to expect someone who lives alone in a monastery to give good relationship advice.

Date Read December 2022

What question is the author trying to answer? How should we love?

Practical Takeaways

  •  treat your partner with the respect you would accord a guest

  • Respect the person you want to love

  • Respect yourself

  • Give yourself happiness first

  • Try to understand the other person

  • Don't blindly say 'yes' to whatever the person you love wants

  • Don't let loving another person keep you from giving yourself what you need

  • When your loved one is talking, practice listening deeply.

  • Accept the person you love as they are (including their weaknesses)

  • Forgive the person in your own heart first

  • Forgive yourself

  • take a year to prepare for having children before having kids

  • Only engage in physical intimacy when there is love and mutual understanding between the two of you

  • set up a regularly structured time of deep listening to help you and your partner stay happy together.

  • Don't assume you know what will make your partner happy. Ask them

  • Be a friend to yourself.

  • Ask yourself, “Who can I make smile this morning?”

  •  watch your partner sleep for a few hours to gain compassion and understanding for them

  • listen to the person who is talking to you with only one purpose: to give the other person a chance to speak out and suffer less. Practice breathing in and out deeply and concentrate on what you are hearing.

Big Ideas

  • When we make ourselves happy, we allow ourselves to better lover others

  • Understanding someone's suffering is the best gift you can give them

  • To Understand someone is to love them

  • You can't love someone if you don't understand them

  • Sometimes we get a crush on someone to distract ourselves from our suffering

  • In order to love someone you must respect them AND respect yourself

Three types of intimacy

1.Physical

2.Emotional

3.Spiritual

 

Loving someone doesn't mean saying 'yes' to whatever they want

True love requires accepting the other person warts and all

  • People don't hurt others intentionally

  • When someone hurts you they are reacting to their own pain

It is possible to reconcile with someone who is out of your life or dead

Forgiving yourself benefits the rest of humanity

Because

SP: People who hate themselves harm others

All humans make mistakes and hurt people they love

The only way to learn is by making mistakes

Its easier to be completely sexually abstinate than to be sexually skillfull

Love and understanding are two sides of the same coin ie. The more you understand someone the more you can love them. The more you love someone the more you understand them

Sex (without intimacy) doesn't relieve loneliness

Loneliness is caused by not being open and honest about what is in our hearts (not about being physically close to others or having sex)

We don't know any person completely (including ourselves)

Loving someone is like giving them ointment for their suffering

Loving someone so that we will feel safe is not true love

our expectation of what happiness looks like prevents us from seeing it

there is no desire to control in true love