8 Rules of Love: How to Find it, Keep it, and Let it Go

Part 1 correlates with the Brahmacharya ashram, or the stage of student life in the Vedic life stages. Here, it refers to preparing for love.

Rule 1, “Let Yourself Be Alone,” advocates for solitude as the first step in learning how to love. The discussion begins with research on how a fear of being without a partner causes people to compromise what they want and therefore make poor choices in their romantic lives. It uses an anecdote to illustrate this avoidance of loneliness and how one must “practice” being alone to not only improve one’s skills but also enhance one’s relationships, also illustrated through a story about Shetty’s time as a monk.

The chapter provides an exercise to acclimatize people to solitude and thereby move toward it from loneliness, by evaluating their alone time and thoughts. It refers to studies on the benefits of solitude, as well as psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research showing that adolescents do not develop their creative skills because practicing these skills means being alone, which they fear.

Shetty describes how to move from loneliness to solitude through three phases: presence, discomfort, and confidence. In the first phase, people learn to be present with themselves by uncovering their attitudes and beliefs, to ensure a potential partner also recognizes and appreciates these attitudes and beliefs. The second phase involves becoming more comfortable with being alone by trying new activities or learning new skills, traveling alone, or beginning a new job, resulting in stronger self-awareness and better confidence, which then leads to better romantic relationships. The third phase involves improving one’s confidence in the domains of personality, emotional health, physical health, relationships, and money (28-30). It includes an exercise for reaching one’s goals in the chosen focus through outside resources, creating a plan, and finding a community or support group. An anecdote about a friend who conquered her need for someone else to solve an insect problem, rather than handling it alone, illustrates this movement from fear to confidence in solitude.

Shetty stresses the importance of solitude in strengthening identity: “[T]here is a you before, a you during, and you after every relationship, forging your own way, even when you have company and love” (34). This solitude reinforces a person’s sense of self so that they don’t acquiesce to someone else’s needs. Shetty suggests that solitude can help people avoid quick decisions based on outside stimuli because it “gives us time and space between attraction and reaction” (35). It allows for careful consideration and decisions. Shetty outlines skills learned from solitude, particularly self-control and patience when it comes to considering a situation fully, along with feeling completely alone.

Rule 2, “Don’t Ignore Your Karma,” examines how karma impacts people’s choices. In the Hindu tradition, karma is a way of thinking that involves choices, actions, and outcomes, rather than a cycle of negative events that occur due to bad behavior. The chapter begins with an anecdote about a man’s concept of having “bad relationship karma” to show that “if we make a choice or take action with or without proper understanding, we receive a reaction based on that choice” (38).

Shetty elaborates on what he calls the “karma cycle,” which starts with events or ideas from childhood, which he calls “impressions” or samskaras, that impact decisions in adulthood. These decisions have positive or negative outcomes, but people can create new events and ideas to improve their decisions and the resulting effects. Shetty contends that people need to recognize and understand these impressions and their influences so that they avoid a negative karma cycle by “repeating the same karma. The same impressions lead to the same choices” (41). He proves this with an anecdote about a client who made a decision based on an incorrect impression of an ex-boyfriend.

Impressions form during childhood and youth from parents, movies, and first relationships. People reproduce their relationship patterns because of these impressions, but they can break the patterns through awareness.

Shetty provides a meditation to identify one’s childhood impressions, and he details a personal story about his own to illustrate how people seek partners who can make up for what they lacked in childhood but sometimes look for the positive qualities, or “gifts,” their parents modeled. These gifts can also create problems when searching for the right person because they lead to unrealistic relationship ideals. This chapter includes an exercise to discover parental expectations, models, and emotional support, along with an anecdote about a client who tried the exercise.

Movies also play a role in relationship impressions, and Shetty offers an exercise to identify the impact of movies and love songs on one’s ideas of love, as well as a discussion of studies on first impressions of new people, online dating profiles, and speed dating. First loves impact later romantic relationships, and because the brain does not fully develop until around the age of 25, young people can be impulsive when it comes to life and love. Some choose unhealthy partner types: the rebel, the chase (an unavailable person), the project (someone who needs to be rescued), the F-boy or F-girl (a promiscuous person), or the opulent one (someone who is attractive because of fame, money, or other abundance) (60). Shetty delves into each type, as well as how to identify one’s own role in past relationships as a “fixer,” “dependent,” or “supporter” (57-58). He cites studies about the negative impact the bonding hormone oxytocin can have on relationships, along with research on the “halo effect,” a bias that occurs when a positive quality like attractiveness makes a person seem positive in other ways. He also provides a reflection exercise for understanding past relationships and discusses how people attract what they put out into the world, with a related exercise.

The chapter ends with ways to consider what makes a partner attractive to individual people. Shetty reminds people that they shouldn’t use partners to fulfill an emotional need but should fulfill these needs themselves, and he offers an exercise for doing so. A story about a client who was angry at his wife due to his parental impressions illustrates this point.