Miguel Ruiz: The Mastery Of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship

When we reject ourselves, and judge ourselves, and find ourselves guilty and punish ourselves so much, it looks like there is no love. It looks like there is only punishment, only suffering, only judgment in this world. Hell has many different levels. Some people are very deep in hell and other people are hardly in hell, but still they are in hell. There are very abusive relationships in hell and relationships with hardly any abuse.

You are no longer a child, and if you have an abusive relationship, it is because you accept that abuse, because you believe you deserve it. You have a limit to the amount of abuse you will accept, but no one in the whole world abuses you more than you abuse yourself. The limit of your self-abuse is the limit you will tolerate from other people. If someone abuses you more than you abuse yourself, you walk away, you run, you escape. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, perhaps you stay longer. You still deserve that abuse.

Usually in a normal relationship in hell, it's about payment for an injustice; it's about getting even. I abuse you the way you need to be abused, and you abuse me the way I need to be abused. We have a good equilibrium; it works. Of course, energy attracts the same kind of energy, the same vibration. If someone comes to you and says, "Oh, I am so abused," and you ask, "Well, why do you stay there?," he doesn't even know why. The truth is he needs that abuse because that is the way he punishes himself.

Life brings to you exactly what you need. There is perfect justice in hell. There is nothing to blame. We can even say that our suffering is a gift. If you just open your eyes and see what is around you, it's exactly what you need to clean your poison, to heal your wounds, to accept yourself, and to get out of hell.

I WANT TO TELL YOU A VERY OLD STORY ABOUT the man who didn't believe in love. This was an ordinary man just like you and me, but what made this man special was his way of thinking: He thought love doesn't exist. Of course, he had a lot of experience trying to find love, and he had observed the people around him. Much of his life had been spent searching for love, only to find that love didn't exist.

Wherever this man went, he used to tell people that love is nothing but an invention of the poets, an invention of religions just to manipulate the weak mind of humans, to have control over humans, to make them believe. He said that love is not real, and that's why no human could ever find love even though he might look for it.

This man was highly intelligent, and he was very convincing. He read a lot of books, he went to the best universities, and he became a respected scholar. He could stand in any public place, in front of any kind of people, and his logic was very strong. What he said was that love is just like a drug; it makes you very high, but it creates a strong need. You can become highly addicted to love, but what happens when you don't receive your daily doses of love? Just like a drug, you need your everyday doses.

He used to say that most relationships between lovers are just like a relationship between a drug addict and the one who provides the drugs. The one who has the biggest need is like the drug addict; the one who has a little need is like the provider. The one who has the little need is the one who controls the whole relationship. You can see this dynamic so clearly because usually in every relationship there is one who loves the most and the other who doesn't love, who only takes advantage of the one who gives his or her heart. You can see the way they manipulate each other, their actions and reactions, and they are just like the provider and the drug addict.

The drug addict, the one who has the biggest need, lives in constant fear that perhaps he will not be able to get the next dosage of love, or the drug. The drug addict thinks, "What am I going to do if she leaves me?" That fear makes the drug addict very possessive. "That's mine!" The addict becomes jealous and demanding, because the fear of not having the next dosage. The provider can control and manipulate the one who needs the drug by giving more doses, fewer doses, or no doses at all. The one who has the biggest need completely surrenders and will do whatever he can to avoid being abandoned.

The man went on explaining to everyone why love doesn't exist. "What humans call `love' is nothing but a fear relationship based on control. Where is the respect? Where is the love they claim to have? There is no love. Young couples, in front of the representation of God, in front of their family and friends, make a lot of promises to each other: to live together forever, to love and respect each other, to be there for each other, through the good times and the bad times. They promise to love and honor each other, and make promises and more promises. What is amazing is that they really believe these promises. But after the marriage -one week later, a month later, a few months later -you can see that none of these promises are kept.

"What you find is a war of control to see who will manipulate whom. Who will be the provider, and who will have the addiction? You find that a few months later, the respect they swear to have for each other is gone. You can see the resentment, the emotional poison, how they hurt each other, little by little, and it grows and grows, until they don't know when the love stops. They stay together because they are afraid to be alone, afraid of the opinions and judgments of others, and also afraid of their own judgments and opinions. But where is the love?"

He used to claim that he saw many old couples that had lived together thirty years, forty years, fifty years, and they were so proud to have lived together all those years. But when they talked about their relationship, what they said was, "We survived the matrimony." That means one of them surrendered to the other; at a certain time, she gave up and decided to endure the suffering. The one with the strongest will and less need won the war, but where is that flame they call love? They treat each other like a possession: "She is mine." "He is mine."

The man went on and on about all the reasons why he believed love doesn't exist, and he told others, "I have done all that already. I will no longer allow anyone to manipulate my mind and control my life in the name of love." His arguments were quite logical, and he convinced many people by all his words. Love doesn't exist .

Then one day this man was walking in a park, and there on a bench was a beautiful lady who was crying. When he saw her crying, he felt curiosity. Sitting beside her, he asked if he could help her. He asked why she was crying. You can imagine his surprise when she told him she was crying because love doesn't exist. He said, "This is amazing – a woman who believes that love doesn't exist!" Of course, he wanted to know more about her.

"Why do you say that love doesn't exist?" he asked. "Well, it's a long story," she replied. "I married when I was very young, with all the love, all these illusions, full of hope that I would share my life with this man. We swore to each other our loyalty, respect, and honor, and we created a family. But soon everything changed. I was the devoted wife who took care of the children and the home. My husband continued to

develop his career and his success and image outside of home was more important to him than our family. He lost respect for me, and I lost respect for him. We hurt each other, and at a certain point I discovered that I didn't love him and he didn't love me either.

"But the children needed a father, and that was my excuse to stay and to do whatever I could to support him. Now the children are grown and they have left. I no longer have any excuse to stay with him. There's no respect, there's no kindness. I know that even if I find someone else, it's going to be the same, because love doesn't exist. There is no sense to look around for something that doesn't exist. That is why I am crying."