Real Love: Unconditionally caring about the happiness of another person without any thought of what we might get ourselves. There is only one kind of love — Real Love. Everything else is counterfeit. Through no fault of our own, few of us have either received or given much Real Love, and without it we have a terrible void in our lives.
Imitation Love: In the absence of Real Love, we attempt to fill our emptiness with Imitation Love, which is conditional and which comes in four forms: praise, power, pleasure and safety. No matter how many of these substitutes we acquire, we remain feeling empty, alone and afraid.
Lying, attacking, acting like a victim, clinging and running.
- Attacking: anger, irritation, expressing disappointment, being “hurt”, criticizing others, sighs and other non-verbals, insisting on being right, defending ourselves, passive aggression like being late or forgetting to do something.
- Lying: pretending to be someone we aren’t, modifying what we say or do to please another, spending too much time on appearances, not telling the whole truth about our mistakes, only telling the good things or bad things, bragging, false praise, not taking responsibility
- Acting like a victim: acting like we have no control, blaming others for our unhappiness, pretending to be totally innocent, grudgingly going along, acting like there is no solution, acting like we are not appreciated.
- Clinging: using emotions to control another, needing another person’s time or presence to be happy, talking on and on to get and keep attention, acting helpless without the other person, excessive gratitude or flattery, telling people how much we NEED them.
- Running: leaving mentally or physically when there is conflict or tension, not speaking, escaping into addictions or activities, over-sleeping, changing the subject.
Anytime we use Getting & Protecting Behaviors, we are thinking of only ourselves and the message the other person hears is, “I don’t love you.” All productive communication stops at that point.
Getting & Protecting Behaviors: We use Getting Behaviors (lying, attacking, acting like a victim and clinging) to try to fill our emptiness with Imitation Love. We use Protecting Behaviors (lying, attacking, acting like a victim and running) to eliminate our fear of not being loved.
