How True Love Tastes: The 80/20 Rule

Source: Amanda Oleander,@amandaoleander, used with permission

For many couples, one of the inevitabilities of a long-term relationship is that life intrudes. When we first get together as a couple, during the heady falling-in-love phase, it's natural and effortless for us to pay loving attention to one another and to care for each other’s needs. But then life, in its many forms, gets in the way. Work is endlessly demanding. We have kids and they, by their nature, also relentlessly require our attention and care. All the challenges of modern living intrude, and intrude, and intrude. And, our culture encourages us to put our own needs on the back burner and even to put the needs of our partner and relationship on the back burner. We learn by experience that we can actually survive inside this state of deprivation, reassuring ourselves that it is temporary, or noble, or maybe just the cost of being a grownup.

However, those needs don’t actually go anywhere. They just go unmet, and we become more and more deprived and unhappy. And, as our needs go unmet, we become more and more distracted by them. Like, you can skip a meal and it’s fine, but eventually, hunger takes over your every thought and we become increasingly “hangry.” The same thing happens with our need to be attended to and nurtured by our intimate partner. We can cope without enough for a while, but eventually, it’s all we can think about and we become increasingly nurturance-“hangry.” And, from that place, we can become increasingly self-focused, self-centered, self-justifying, and demanding. That fussiness about not getting our needs met can take two forms — fussy withdrawal of a form like, “whatever, who cares, I don’t even need that," or fussy complaining, like, “Give me what I need! Why aren’t you giving me what I need?”

There is a parable called the parable of the long spoons. In this allegory, there are two groups of hungry people, both set up at tables with plenty of food, but forced to use spoons that are too long to reach the food that is right there in front of them. In one group, each person is solely focused on feeding themselves, forever failing, continuing to starve and suffer. The other group, however, realizes that while it is, in fact, impossible to feed one’s self — what they can do is feed each other. And so, each one uses their spoon to feed someone else, learning that the more their focus is on feeding others, the more that they themselves are fed.

Our intimate relationships can only thrive when our hearts are most steadily oriented toward our partner’s wellbeing. True love emerges from its enactment. We are only dynamically loving someone when we are behaving lovingly towards them. Love is benevolence, compassion, care, concern, affection, sacrifice, and unrelenting generosity in the service of the beloved other. And, here’s the secret — we ourselves are actually at our happiest when we are enacting our love for others. And, conversely, we are at our most miserable — and increasingly miserable — when our focus is on our own hunger to be served. The voice inside our heads that cries, “what about me? What about my needs?” though necessary, is also by its nature, insatiable.

That bears repeating. The part of us that is focused on what we want and need, though necessary and important, is by its nature insatiable. And the more we focus on feeding our needs to the exclusion of tending the needs of others, the more we inadvertently water the seeds of our own greed, self-concern, and insatiable ego. The more we feed it, the hungrier it gets, the less satisfied we become — and the less capable of peace we find ourselves.

While it is true that some part of our attention must concern itself with our own wellbeing, that part, for our own wellbeing, is best if it isn’t the center of our attention — if our goal is intimacy, love, happiness, and real joy. I’m just making up numbers here, but it strikes me that the part that scans for whether or not our particular needs of the moment are being served only needs to be checked in with somewhere around 20% of the time. In my own life, that 20% seems sufficient to make sure that I am giving voice to, and being clear about, my need for attention, affection, reassurance, meditation, work, and exercise.

And, it has become increasingly clear to me, in my work with couples, that our true joy and happiness emerges most faithfully when the vast majority of our attention, the other 80%, is joyfully dedicated to lovingly tending the beloved ones in our lives.

So, today, this is my encouragement to you. Let your focus be on lovingly tending the heart and health of your beloved, and know, for yourself, how true love tastes.