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#1 New York Times bestselling authors Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott are psychologists and founders of the game-changing online assessment, BetterLove.com. Their best-selling books include Love Talk, Crazy Good Sex and the award-winning Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. Their work has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today and on CNN, Good Morning America, the Today Show, The View and Oprah. LesAndLeslie.com

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Real Relationships

ZONDERVAN

Contents

Introduction: Our Longing for Belonging........................111 The Compulsion for Completion................................192 Keeping Family Ties from Pulling Strings.....................433 Bridging the Gender Gap......................................634 Friends to Die For...........................................775 What to Do When Friends Fail.................................976 Falling in Love without Losing Your Mind.....................1177 Sex, Lies, and the Great Escape..............................1338 Breaking Up without Falling Apart............................1559 Relating to God without Feeling Phony........................175Notes..........................................................193

Chapter One

It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them.

Anthony Storr

In the autumn of 1992, we did something unusual. We offered a course at Seattle Pacific University that promised to openly and honestly answer questions about family, friends, dating, and sex. In short, its purpose was to teach the basics of healthy relationships.

Colleges around the world offer instruction on nearly every conceivable topic, but try to find a course on how to have good relationships and you'll look for a long time. We wanted to change that. As a psychologist (Les) and a marriage and family therapist (Leslie) teaching on a university campus, we had our hands on stacks of relationship research showing that, with a little help, most of us can make our poor relationships better and our good relationships great. And that's exactly what we wanted to teach students to do.

The course was to be an informal group with voluntary attendance; any student could be present or drop out at any time if he or she so desired. We called the class "Relationships."

Our determination to start such a class was met with no resistance from the powers that be, as long as it was taught free of salary and on our own time without load credit. Of course, a few eyebrows were raised by those who considered relationships neither a scholarly subject nor a serious part of a university curriculum. We were amused in the ensuing weeks by a few odd looks from some colleagues. One professor in discussing our plans called the course "Irrelevant!" Others asked mockingly if the class had a lab requirement.

Nevertheless, the course was offered that autumn, and students enrolled. After the first day of registration, we received a call from the registrar's office informing us that our classroom, big enough for twenty-five students, had been moved to an auditorium, where we were forced to close enrollment at 225 students. We've been teaching the course, the largest on our campus, ever since.

Since that first autumn, we have lectured on campuses and in churches across the country, teaching the basics of healthy relationships. And we always begin with the same sentence: If you try to find intimacy with another person before achieving a sense of identity on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to complete yourself.

This single sentence holds the key to finding genuine fulfillment for every relationship. If you do not grasp its message, the best you can hope for is a false and fleeting sense of emotional closeness, the kind that comes from a series of temporary attachments. Once the truth of this sentence is understood and internalized, however, you'll discover the abiding comfort of belonging—to family, friends, the love of your life, and ultimately, God. A solid sense of who you are provides the foundation you need to forge friendships that last and to find your soul mate.

Let's be honest. Many of us at some time in our lives have felt as though something is missing. All of us have struggled with loneliness. We've all felt detached, unaccepted, separated from the group we'd like to be part of. And when we find ourselves in this empty space, we typically search outside ourselves—often compulsively—for something or someone to fill it. We shop, we drink, we eat; we do anything and everything to distract ourselves from the pain of feeling alone. Most of all, we tell ourselves, If I find the right person, my life will be complete. Too bad it's not that simple. If it were, we'd have friends that never failed us and marriages that never fractured. The truth is, the cause of our emptiness is not a case of missing persons in our lives, but a case of incompletion in our soul.

In order to build healthy relationships, you must be well on your way to becoming whole or complete. You must be establishing wholeness, a sense of self-worth, and a healthy self-concept. And this chapter will help you cultivate it.

You can think of this chapter (and the exercises in the workbook) as your guide to exploring the secret contained in the single sentence: If you try to find intimacy with another person before achieving a sense of identity on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to complete yourself. This chapter will guard you against the deadly lies that sabotage potentially good relationships, and it will show you the ins and outs of achieving a healthy sense of identity or self-worth. The journey begins, however, with a look at our innate hunt for wholeness.

The Quest for Wholeness

Stephanie, a student in her mid-twenties, came to our office to talk about her current relationship, the third in a series that had each lasted almost a year. This one was with Dan, an older, confident college grad. She was nearly trembling with happiness as she spoke about their relationship.

"I'm so in love with Dan," she told us. "Last weekend he gave me this adorable little teddy bear to celebrate our ten months of dating." She went on to describe his good qualities. "He's amazing; I just hope ..." Stephanie's chin started to quiver, and before she could finish her sentence, she was crying. I (Leslie) handed her a box of tissues and asked her what was wrong. She wiped the tears from her eyes and blurted out that she was terrified of doing something wrong and "ruining it."

"I've done it before," Stephanie confessed. "I get in a relationship, things go pretty well for a while, and then I do something to mess it up."

"Like what?" Les prodded. "What might you do that would make Dan leave?"

Stephanie, still sniffling, confessed her fears of being stupid, irresponsible, lazy, or just about any other undesirable trait she could think of. She told us that she always feels better about herself when she's dating a guy. "It's like I'm somehow more complete," she said.

Les looked at me with knowing eyes. It was obvious. We'd heard this same story with different names and faces many times before. Stephanie was riddled with insecurity and desperately afraid of losing her boyfriend because, for the time being, he was what was giving her a sense of self. By being attached to Dan, Stephanie felt more whole.

"I'd do anything for Dan," Stephanie volunteered.

"Maybe that's the problem," Les boldly replied.

Stephanie looked surprised, but at the same time, inquisitive. The rest of our session was spent...