LIFE QUESTIONS

Let’s Talk About Love. Why Do So Many Relationships Fail?

In this conversation with Alexandre Cormont, Sadhguru gives fresh perspectives on common questions on love and relationships. Alexandre is a popular French relationship coach.

The Number One Question About Love

Alexandre: As a love coach, the number one question I get is how to let go after a breakup or divorce. Your thoughts?

Sadhguru: I thought love is about coming together, not about breaking up! These things are happening everywhere because we are not looking at life as life. Our education systems and our ideas of science and technology are all about how to use everything for our benefit. Unfortunately, this also includes human beings. Because of that, what people call love today is actually just a mutual benefit scheme – “You will give me this; I will give you that. If you do not give me that, I won’t give you this.”

Love is not about getting what you want. It is an opportunity to lose yourself.

In my understanding of life, love is about weaving two lives together. But today, when we talk about love, people think it has an expiry date. It is an unfortunate situation that people will not know the profoundness of sharing their life with someone. When you really want to include someone as a part of your life, you will have to vacate some of yourself. Something of you should fall. The English expression “falling in love” is a good thing. You cannot rise in love; you cannot fly in love; you cannot climb in love – you can only fall in love.

Love is not about getting what you want. It is an opportunity to lose yourself. Love is not a profit-oriented project. The moment you think about profit, there will be friction right from day one. If your life is about sharing the best that you have, it will work. But if you are trying to squeeze joy out of someone, then breakup will come naturally.

Self-Love Is a Myth

Alexandre: Many people I coach do not know how to love themselves. Do you have any advice for them?

Sadhguru: Whether you want to love or hate someone, you need another person. Expressions like “I love myself; I hate myself,” have become part of the modern lexicon. This means there is more than one person within you. If there is more than one person within you, it means you are either schizophrenic or possessed. You need either a psychiatrist or an exorcist. Love does not need confidence or any other quality. It is just that a human being is capable of sweetness of emotion and a certain sense of sacrifice. It is deeply embedded within us.

When something really matters to you, you want to do whatever you can. This may be in an individual love affair, for the nation, or whatever else people stand up for. People are willing to die for their country or for their love. It is not that anyone should die for anything, but it is significant that something is more important than yourself. When something or someone is far more important than yourself, it is a love affair.

Why Fear Is Futile

Alexandre: The people I coach have a fear of not being good enough, of not having success in life, of not being what people want them to be. How can we overcome the fear?

Sadhguru: Fear is a consequence of projecting your thoughts into an area which you know nothing about. People are suffering what may happen tomorrow. What they are suffering is not life but their own imagination. People are always afraid of what may happen. They are suffering something that does not exist.

You cannot change the past. You can only experience the present moment. The future must be crafted the way you want.

That means you have not cultivated enough mental discipline. Your memory, present experience, and imagination are all mixed up. It took millions of years of evolution to get to this level of cerebral activity, but now you are suffering it. If you had the brain of an earthworm, you would fall in love easily, maintain that relationship, and die with each other. But because of the cerebral activity, you are imagining things which do not exist and remembering things which you do not need right now.

You cannot change the past. You can only experience the present moment. The future must be crafted the way you want. This ability will not come by becoming confident or by knowing how to woo someone. This will happen when you pay enough attention to the nature of your own intelligence, your own mind, your own body, and how they work. If you understand the mechanics of how you are made, these things are effortless.

How to Make Love Last?

Alexandre: Is there such a thing as eternal love, or is all love bound to fail?

Sadhguru: As you grow up, you are being programmed by society, though generally haphazardly. Your mother will say one thing; your father will say another thing; your teacher will say something else; a movie or a book will say something else. This jumble forms your individual persona.

If you can be programmed accidentally or unconsciously, you can also program yourself consciously. Once you program yourself consciously, you will be the way you want to be. Right now, the problem with relationships is you want someone else to be the way you want them, but you yourself are not the way you want yourself to be. When you cannot make yourself the way you want, it is unrealistic to expect that you can make the other person the way you want. It is bound to fail.

Stupidly in Love? Think Again!

Alexandre: But what if we fall in love with someone who does not have good intentions. Do we realize it?

Sadhguru: Is your idea of love to become stupid? Love is a very intelligent thing to do because if you are in love with everything you see, your life will be wonderful. It has nothing to do with anyone else. Both love and hate, in fact all human experiences happen within you. If you feel loving towards everything you see, you feel wonderful.

Love is a way of seeing that your emotions are always sweet and pleasant. It is an intelligent way to live.

There is substantial scientific and medical evidence that your body and brain function at their best when you are feeling really wonderful. Love is a way of seeing that your emotions are always sweet and pleasant. It is an intelligent way to live. But most people think to be in love means to do stupid things. That is because they make a mutual benefit scheme and think the other person will always give, and they do not have to do anything. For that, they will pay the price.

A relationship could be many things. It could be with our parents, siblings, or friends. There is a relationship between Guru and disciple. There is a variety of relationships. But in the West, when you say “relationship,” it generally means that it is physical. But physical contact is not the only way to establish a relationship. Intellectually, you can have a relationship, and emotionally, you can have a relationship. Emotional relationships are far more tender than body-based relationships. Only if you invest your emotions in something, will life become powerful and really meaningful.