I spent much of the time my husband was gone crying and wondering. When I tried to explain my fears, I knew he didn’t really understand. He was totally committed to me and didn’t see his traveling as a problem. But from my perspective he didn’t seem to realize how he needed to be always on his guard. I felt he would not have nearly the discernment in these situations that I would have because no one in his family had ever done what my father had done.
My husband went on several business trips during the following months. I tried to be more positive in my interactions with him. I worked hard to control my thoughts and feelings. But every time he left, I would panic inside. The emotional stress became so intense that I had difficulty eating and sleeping whenever he was gone. And as hard as I tried, nothing seemed to make things better.
Finally, after years of dealing with deep pain, I reached a point where I was able to forgive my father. I could see his behavior for what it was: his behavior. He had hurt us all deeply, but I found I could forgive him and love him and let go of the fear and the pain.
This became a major turning point in my life. All of a sudden I discovered that the tension in my marriage was gone. I was able to say, “That was my dad, not my husband.” I found I could kiss my husband good-bye as he left on his trips and shift my focus to all I wanted to get done before he got back.
I don’t mean to suggest that everything became perfect overnight. Years of resentment toward my father had created deeply ingrained habits. But after that pivotal experience, when the occasional thought or feeling would surface, I was able to recognize it, address it quickly, and move on.
Again: You will always be a victim until you forgive. When you truly forgive, you open the channels through which trust and unconditional love can flow. You cleanse your own heart. You also remove a major obstacle that keeps others from changing because when you don’t forgive, you put yourself between people and their own conscience. You get in the way. You become a roadblock to change. Instead of spending their energy on deep interior work with their own conscience, they spend it defending and justifying their behavior to you.
One of the greatest deposits you can make in your relationships with other family members—and in the basic quality and richness of your own life—is to forgive. Remember, it isn’t the snake bite that does the serious damage; it’s chasing the snake that drives the poison to the heart.
The Primary Laws of Love
In this chapter we’ve taken a look at five significant deposits you can proactively and immediately begin to make into the Emotional Bank Accounts of the members of your family. The reason these deposits create such a powerful difference in the family culture is that they are based on the Primary Laws of Love—laws which reflect the reality that love in its purest form is unconditional.
There are three such laws: acceptance rather than rejection, understanding rather than judgment, and participation rather than manipulation. Living these laws is a proactive choice that is not based on another’s behavior or on social status, educational attainment, wealth, reputation, or any other factor except the intrinsic worth of a human being.
These laws are the foundation of a beautiful family culture, because only when we live the Primary Laws of Love do we encourage obedience to the Primary Laws of Life (such as honesty, responsibility, integrity, and service).
Sometimes when people are struggling with a loved one and doing everything they can to lead that person toward what they feel is a responsible course, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of living the “secondary” or counterfeit laws of love— judgment, rejection, and manipulation. They love the end in mind more than they love the person. They love conditionally. In other words, they use love to manipulate and control. As a result, others feel rejected and fight to stay the same.
But when you deeply accept and love people as they are, you actually encourage them to become better. By accepting people you’re not condoning their weakness or agreeing with their opinion; you’re simply affirming their intrinsic worth. You’re acknowledging that they think or feel in a particular way. You’re freeing them of the need to defend, protect, and preserve themselves. So instead of wasting their energy defending themselves, they’re able to focus on interacting with their own conscience and unleashing their growth potential.
By loving people unconditionally, you unleash their natural power to become their better self. And you can only do this when you separate the person from the behavior and believe in the unseen potential.
Just consider how valuable this perspective would be when dealing with a family member—particularly a child—who is filled with negative energy or who has gone off track for a period of time. What would happen if, rather than labeling this child based on current behavior, you were to affirm the unseen potential and love unconditionally instead? As Goethe said, “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be.”
I once had a friend who was dean of a very prestigious school. He planned and saved for years to provide his son with the opportunity to attend that institution, but when the time came, the boy refused to go. This deeply concerned his father. Graduating from that particular school would have been a great asset to the boy. Besides, it was a family tradition. Three generations of attendance preceded the boy’s. The father talked and urged and pleaded. He also tried to listen to the boy to understand him, all the while hoping that his son would change his mind.
He would say, “Son, can’t you see what this means for your life? You can’t base long-range decisions on short-range emotions.”
The son would respond, “You don’t understand! It’s my life. You just want me the way you want. I don’t even know if I want to go to college at all.”
The father would come back with “Not at all, son. You’re the one who doesn’t understand. I only want what is best for you. Stop being so foolish.”
The subtle message being communicated was one of conditional love. The son felt that in a sense the father’s desire for him to attend the school outweighed the value he placed on him as a person and as a son, which was terribly threatening. Consequently, he fought for and with his own identity and integrity, and he increased his resolve and his efforts to rationalize his decision not to go.
After some intense soul-searching, the father decided to make a sacrifice—to renounce conditional love. He knew that his son might choose differently from what he wished; nevertheless, he and his wife resolved to love their son unconditionally, regardless of his choice. It was an extremely difficult thing to do because the value of his educational experience was so close to their hearts and because it was something they had planned and worked for since his birth.
The father and mother went through a very difficult rescripting process, proactively using all four gifts and struggling to understand the nature of unconditional love. They eventually felt it deep inside, and they communicated to the boy what they had done and why. They told him that they had come to the point at which they could say in all honesty that his decision would not affect their feeling of unconditional love toward him. They didn’t do this to manipulate him, to use backhand psychology to try to get him to “shape up.” They did it as the emergent extension of their own growth in character.
The boy didn’t give much of a response, but his parents had such a mind-set and heart-set of unconditional love at that point that it would have made no difference in their feelings for him. About a week later he told his parents that he had decided not to go. They were perfectly prepared for his response and continued to show unconditional love for him. Everything was settled, and life went along normally.
A short time later an interesting thing happened. Now that the boy no longer felt he had to defend his position, he searched within himself more deeply and found that he really did want to have this educational experience. He applied for admission, and then he told his father, who again showed unconditional love by fully accepting his son’s decision. Our friend was happy but not excessively so, because he had truly learned to love without condition.
Because these parents lived the Primary Laws of Love, their son was able to search his own heart and choose to live in harmony with one of the Primary Laws of Life involving growth and education.