50 pages • 1 hour read
8 Rules of Love: How to Find it, Keep it, and Let it Go
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BetaPart 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Healing: Learning to Love Through Struggle”
Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary: “Win or Lose Together”
Part 3 considers the ashram of Vanaprastha, when couples “reflect on [...] loving others, discover what blocks our ability to love, and work on forgiveness and healing” to find bhakti, “a deepening of love” (165). It covers ways to handle conflict, major relationship problems, and breakups to strengthen relationships.
Shetty once overheard an argument while at a restaurant, and he recalls this at the beginning of Rule 6, which tackles conflict and its necessity in a relationship. He contends that “partners who avoid conflict don’t understand each other’s priorities, values, or struggles. Every couple fights—or should” (168). Many people think that a “perfect” relationship means not arguing at all, but Shetty posits that people should actually argue frequently so that problems don’t escalate. They should address an argument as a “team” and perceive it as a mutual problem, and he provides an exercise for doing so. He cites research on the healthy communication of anger and how it improves traits and skills like compassion, empathy, patience, communication, listening, and acceptance (171). He also delineates the differences between abuse and conflict.
This chapter details three areas of conflict that most couples have (money, sex, and parenting) but adds that every day, milder arguments also occur. Shetty argues that both types require the same approach because more important issues impact everyday conflicts. To explain conflict resolution, he uses the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text consisting of a conversation on a battlefield between Arjuna, the leader in a battle, and the god Krishna, who guides Arjuna.
He connects the Bhagavad Gita’s “energies of being” to three types of arguments: tamas (pointless arguments), rajas (arguments that occur when a person prioritizes winning over solutions), and sattva (productive arguments). From there, he describes how to have productive arguments by eliminating one’s ego and the desire to be right, figuring out the core problem (and how a couple did so), and understanding each other’s “fight styles”—venting, hiding, or exploding—with an exercise for recognizing those who vent or explode with anger, or shut down and become silent. He adds that being right reinforces a person’s position and helps them avoid accountability. This perspective sustains their “beliefs and assumptions. We don’t need to change or take any responsibility” (176). A desire to be right won’t solve the problem, so the chapter includes an exercise for finding the ego and passion in an argument and stresses the need for both people to see the misunderstandings that occurred and their roles in them.
This chapter also enumerates three “layers” of conflict (interpersonal, inner, and those based on outside elements) based on the model of Swami Krishnananda, who was an author and teacher of the Vedas, and explains how these layers can expose a conflict’s core problem.
Shetty then offers an acronym for conquering fights as a team: PEACE (place and time, expression, anger management, commitment, and evolution). This involves choosing a safe place and optimal time to address the conflict, with an exercise to create an agreement that includes these elements and possible solutions to the conflict. He details research by cognitive scientist Art Markman on the healthy expression of anger and the best positioning to discuss a conflict, which studies say should be both partners sitting next to each other.
Expression means carefully considering the words said and using the word “we” when addressing a problem to denote its shared nature. To illustrate this, the chapter includes an exercise for addressing complicated issues and sample language to use.
The anger management step addresses anger and egos, dismissiveness, blaming or generalizing, shutting down, or giving in or giving up to end the conflict without resolving the issue (193). Commitment involves an agreement for change, and evolution means the couple grows from the conflict by apologizing and taking responsibility for their role. This last step involves three sub-steps for an apology: acceptance or feeling regret, articulation of this regret, and action by trying not to repeat the error.
The chapter ends with discussion of what happens when people can’t resolve their conflicts or continuously repeat arguments, with a recommendation to agree to disagree. Psychiatrists Phillip Lee and Diane Rudolph say that couples can become addicted to arguments or mired in this pattern, so this is one resolution to that problem.
Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary: “You Don't Break in a Breakup”
Using an analogy, Shetty likens a breakup to flaws in the walls of a house that turn into cracks. Everyone has flaws, but in a relationship, these issues should be fixed, especially infidelity and loss of interest or intimacy. He addresses each and why couples might need to break up or how they can stay together. He includes an exercise for evaluating whether one is leaving the relationship for the right reasons. He also describes different types of abuse and how abuse is a “deal-breaker,” illustrated through an anecdote about a friend in an abusive relationship.
He addresses infidelity and the importance of forgiveness in repairing trust between partners. Psychologist Shirley Glass advises couples to carefully consider their decision to break up due to infidelity and allow for the necessary work to occur. Social worker Robert Taibbi addresses why rebound relationships occur after a breakup.
This chapter also covers loss of interest and deciding whether this is a short-term or continuing issue and how to recognize signals like feeling tired and unexcited around a partner or withholding “intimate information.” Therapist Marilyn Hough describes how loss of interest can result in a breakup.
Loss of intimacy occurs without proper care of a relationship, and Shetty illustrates this through a client anecdote. It can be regained in different ways, such as entertainment, new experiences and experiments, and education, because learning with and from each other and new experiences can lead to more intimacy, bonding, deep conversations, and attraction, and they increase physical arousal, according to a study by Arhtur Aron and Don Dutton. Shetty and his wife cultivate intimacy by building their community of friends and through new experiences. Studies also suggest travel or volunteering, which increases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Couples can also develop intimacy by acknowledging their appreciation and gratitude for each other.
Sometimes couples must decide to remain together or break up, and Shetty details a decision-making process (and a story about clients that tried it) consisting of the steps intolerable, tolerable, understanding, acceptance, and appreciation. He leads couples from finding an intolerable issue, to understanding that there is a way to handle it, to acceptance of their differences or the change that will occur, to appreciation of how the issue is part of their partner because it is “an integral part of the person we love, and maybe part of what makes them lovable” (223). One client’s porn addiction illustrates how to appreciate the work a partner is doing on an issue.
He moves on to breakups and the need to let go of the fear of being alone or an unrealistic expectation for change that may keep an unhealthy relationship alive. He also details research on how the brain produces specific chemicals during a breakup and the emotions involved. People “may feel empty, lost, broken, and hurt, but the soul is unbreakable” (225), and Shetty uses a quote from the Bhagavad Gita to illustrate this. He posits that a breakup will be easier if the individual has followed the previous rules.
He outlines the breakup process from creating a deadline to avoiding contact and suggests the words to use with a partner. He also addresses what to do if the breakup is one’s partner’s idea and how to discover the karma involved and focus oneself by “repairing your ego, building your confidence, and bringing what you learned from this relationship to the next” (229). For closure, he proposes to let the brain create a story about the breakup to enable healing, and he offers an exercise to help.
He discusses learning “karmic” lessons from the relationship, with an exercise and anecdote about Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, and ways to confront problematic thoughts that arise and modify them to more rational thoughts. He also cautions people to delay dating and prioritize friends, solitude, and purpose instead, detailing an anecdote of a client who decided to wait and ended up finding her future husband. To illustrate how to reinforce one’s self-worth during a breakup and understand how different people define worth and value people differently, he describes a parable about a boy who asked his father how much his life was worth. Shetty cautions that a breakup may change one’s value to the other person.
Part 3 Analysis
The third part engages with Vanaprastha ashram, which relates to the period of retired life. Shetty describes it as a “healing place where we retreat to seek peace” (7). People have settled into their relationships and face the need to tackle conflict and protect their love during this stage, and they also decide whether to break up or push forward when a major problem exists.
Rule 6 underscores the intensification of love that occurs when partners perceive a conflict as a mutual problem and recognize that conflicts will happen. This rule uses the “energies of being” from the Bhagavad Gita to outline different argument types and explains how couples should tackle a problem as a “team.” When viewed this way, problems become issues to solve together, rather than a fight due to an issue or fault one person needs to fix. Seen the reverse way, someone “loses”: “Every time one of you loses, you both lose. Every time the problem loses, you both win” (170). Partners need to recognize that “the problem isn’t our partner. It is something we don’t understand about them and something they don’t understand about us” (179). They can then address the problem as an issue to be solved together, rather than a fault in one of them. In the Bhagavad Gita, the loser in the battle isn’t an individual but an “ideology.” The “loser” in a relationship is similar; it is the “flawed ideology or issue and the negativity it provokes between us” (169).
This rule re-emphasizes the overarching theme of Learning and Emotional Growth, as partners will grow through conflict by assuming responsibility for their roles.
Rule 7 extends the discussion of conflict to incorporate major conflicts and deciding whether to work on them or break up. Shetty stresses the role of maintaining a sense of self when experiencing a breakup, buttressed by the strength a person has gained from learning to be alone and their confidence in doing so. Individuals can also reflect on what they learned from the relationship to improve the next one, again linking to the theme of Learning and Emotional Growth. Shetty uses the common analogy of a wound healing but emphasizes that scar tissue must be healed mindfully to avoid new damage. He also references the Bhagavad Gita’s perspective of the “indestructible” nature of the soul, which relates to the Hindu concept of the soul as separated from the body. The soul of a person does not break in a breakup; only the body of the relationship does.
Couples may decide to work on their problems, and the discussion of overcoming infidelity, loss of interest, or loss of intimacy confirms how couples can grow together and learn that they do not need to end a relationship if repair is an option. Learning and Emotional Growth encompasses new experiences, education, learning to be present while watching television together, and even seeing a partner’s flaw as “an integral part of the person we love” (223). Partners also learn to trust again after infidelity. Learning and growth occur through learning to improve a failing relationship, growing together when it changes, or learning to break up.
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