How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving by Kathlyn Hendricks

How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving Reviews

• 
  Laura

  This is an excellent book, but it's one to take some time with. Richo's writing is eloquent and right-on, but it can also be a bit dense at times. This is the kind of book to have going at the same time that you're reading other things. It's good to come back to when you're feeling calm, soft, and able to focus. The practices at the end of each chapter are excellent, and they require a lot of deep internal work. I think that if you did all of the practices in this book and really took it slowly, it would be like doing 6 months of therapy.... maybe. It's that kind of deep, tender work that has to happen slowly so that the rest of your being has time to adjust and to change.
  
  Richo's theme is "the 5 A's." He states the importance of attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing in relationships. If we received the 5 A's adequately (or, ideally, more than adequately) in our childhood, then we are able to shower our adult partner and friends with them generously. If we didn't receive the 5 A's adequately.... well, then we have work to do. Good work, of course, but work that involves a lot of grief and a lot of opening up to vulnerability.
  
  Here are some of my favorite quotes from his book (there were a lot.... he is an excellent writer and was able to put difficult feelings and experiences very precisely and gracefully into clear words):
  
  "To love is to become loving." (p. 28)
  
  "Psychologically healthy adults come from a background of flexibility, not severity." (p. 37)
  
  "Practice does not mean forcing yourself to improve but trusting your potential to open." (p. 42)
  
  "'They did it for my own good' is collaboration in the abuse." (p. 58) >> read Alice Miller for more on this
  
  "Love is indeed a journey from aloneness through closeness and opposition into communion." (p. 69)
  
  "When we tolerate not having our needs met fully, fear turns to vulnerability and a more generous love awakens in us." (p. 82)
  
  "Human experience occurs only in a relational context, and specific conflicts from our past are excavated in relationships. As a result of relating to an adult partner, we can remember our life with our parents more vividly than we ever thought possible. In the conflict phase, in fact, we cannot help but meet up with the revenants of early life. This is the phase in which we hear ourselves saying to our partner and our children the very words we heard our parents say to us long ago. This is when we carefully train our partner to help us reenact our earliest and most bitter disappointments, hurts, and losses. In this phase we instinctively bring up the issues we are now ready to grieve and reenact the past to show what happened to us and to master it with the mirroring help of someone we trust. Every passing moment in a conflicted relationship dispossesses us of our illusions, as the psyche continually adjusts itself to newly revealed truths." (p. 127)
  
  "We move from the extreme of romance to the extreme of contention in order to reach the center of commitment." (p. 127)
  
  "Spirituality is not about transcendence of the world but deeper involvement in it." (p. 186)
  
  "A commitment is to workability." (p. 227)
  
  "Grief is a path to the virtue of compassion and to world progress, something that retaliation has never been able to effect." (p. 262)
• 
  malic

  Every radical queer i know should read this book, and everyone else too. The ways we act in relationships (in romance, friendship, house shares, community, etc) need to be as strong as our political analyses.
  
  
  The Five Keys to Mindful Loving:
  Attention
  Acceptance
  Appreciation
  Affection
  Allowing
  
  What gets in the way:
  Fear
  Desire for our demands/expectations to be met on our terms
  Judgment
  Control
  Illusion
  
  David Richo is feminist-identified and GLBT-friendly, but he lacks a radical queer politic. Sometimes he privileges heteronormative gender roles and nuclear families, and he's not particularly poly or sex work posi. HOWEVER, his personal life/investments do not interfere with the 5 keys, which shows how strong and important they are.
  
  
• 
  Eh?Eh!

  I typically eschew books like these, the self help/improvement category. But this one was offered when I was down and unable to fend it off. Sorry, Emma! I know I've always refused them from you, the few times you'd gently proffered them, using various excuses but basically boiling down to the fact that I find myself unable to retain what I read from them because I find them eyerolling. And boring. Maybe it was okay this time because I've aged and my taste has changed, like how eggs and potatoes made me gag as a child and now I could eat coops and fields of them?
  
  I can't quite gulp these books down yet, and the spiritual bits don't do much for me, but a read/skim pulled out good and sensible ways of viewing a particular situation that weighs me down. Much of these are things I know (I know I know I knooooow already) but blank out in distress. Some of it was enlightening, putting working terms to things that I could sense but not grasp. I learned that I am nearly completely described by the group of characteristics falling under Fear of Abandonment, down to being the one to leave, although without realizing it was me. I also learned that I'm not as screwed up as I'd feared, judging from the issues and cautions discussed in the book. Self back pat!
  
  This has been a year of ups and downs. There's still time for up. Come on, year. Work with me.
• 
  Cintain 昆遊龍

  I hate this book.
  
  There, I said it. Now that this is out of the way, let me also say that this is a good book, and that I do recommend it, will probably recommend it to patients and friends, and I will eventually (and hopefully) get back to it and do some of the practices in it, when I am in a relationship again. So, why do I hate it?
  
  It is naïve and presumptuous; it assumes and espouses values and philosophies I disagree with (notably Buddhism and monogamy), the editorial work is moderately sloppy and inconsiderate, and the way the affirmations and theoretical premises are presented is often sanctimonious and poorly supported by the theory.
  
  However, given that relationships are a hot topic for me, that my track record in them is notorious for its many mishaps, that I've been in therapy for four years trying to sort them out, and that I recognize myself in many of the examples the author gives for ego-driven, unenlightened behaviour in relationships, I also fully acknowledge that my opinions about this book partly reflect my resistance to how it challenges and mirrors me.
  
  Altogether a challenging read for me. I recognize its value, but I can also appreciate its potential usefulness, especially some of the practices it offers.
• 
  Erin

  I have a good, no, GREAT relationship with my parents, who make it very clear to me everyday how much they love me. We never discussed what love looked like; I just always knew that they loved me and what it felt like to be loved, but I was utterly unable to put that into words.
  
  I started reading this as I thought I was falling in love with someone, and realized that I really truly was in love with him. Our relationship matched exactly what Richo talks about in this book. It didn't work out between us, but I know exactly what I should be looking for in other people and in myself when I am thinking about long-term partnership due to this book. On every page there were sentences that really resonated with me, that I copied into my own journal. I am kind of a book hound, but this is one that I will always have a copy of.
• 
  Cara

  There were many times at uni where I had to write long essays. I remember being really excited about some of the topics, as I'd have some brilliant points to make, but then I'd look at the word limit and think 'there's no way I can pad these points out that far'. So, I'd draw on my ability to write copious amounts of crap and I would search through books from all genres to find random quotes that I could use. I'll also admit (given the world of goodreads is so private) to letting my ego get the best of me, and trying to find random quotes from pseudo intellectual pretentious sources just so the essay would look really good, and I'd come off sounding so well read and clever for being able to link all these sources together. Of course, sometimes it worked, sometimes it failed...
  
  To me, this book is a lot like that. Condensed down to it's essence, it's a 4.5 star book, some of the concepts really do gel, and it's a book that in parts has led me to have good discussions about how people relate in relationships, the impact of childhood needs and wants on your current relationship, and it was also insightful as to ways to parent and it has made me spend time thinking about how I apply, and could better apply, the 5 A's to my parenting style as well as relationship style. Some of the practice sections were also really interesting and potentially helpful. However all of this is, unfortunately, obscured, by superfluous language, unwieldy sentences, and a frustrating reliance on quotes from totally random sources, which while sometimes apt, many times just feel like padding. It needs a really really good editing, but I fear then that there would be issues in meeting the word limit!
  
  So if this were a short 30-50 page book, filled with the gems which it really does contain, it'd be something I'd reread over and over. As it is, it was somewhat painful and drawn out to read, which is a shame.
• 
  Janet

  This book changed my life about 10 years ago so I'm re-reading it again as a reminder. Still tops my list of must reads for anyone who wants to learn how to be "an adult in relationships!!" Should be required reading for all!
• 
  Sarah

  The trouble with reading a book called "How to Be an Adult in Relationships" is that people will ask you what you're reading and you have to tell them. That said, there were a lot of great messages, tools, and ideas in this book, the best (for me) being the description of "the five As", the keys to healthy relationships (friendly, romantic, any relationship): acceptance, affection, attention, appreciation, and allowing the other person in your relationship to be him/herself.
• 
  Summer

  Cheesy? Yes. The examples of 'adult' dialogue between couples in this book are laughably ridiculous and unrealistic. That said, I do think this book helped me.
  
  In particular, there's a shortish section on the differences in how to love and be loved by extroverts vs. introverts that helped put a lot of my relationship's issues in perspective for me. It basically perfectly described the difference between my boyfriend and I in a way that helped me realize that a lot of the things he does that make me feel insecure are simply the traits of an introvert, and why a lot of the things I was doing to express my feelings were being taken the wrong way.
  
  I've come away feeling more prepared to keep the best relationship I've ever been in healthy and productive.
• 
  Suzie

  Couldn't get through it. I'm not a fan of self-made gurus who like to hear themselves speak. Insipid, long-winded, and lacking any kind of evidence or logical thought (and this is coming from someone who very often "thinks" with her heart, and puts intuition before logic). I kept hearing myself saying "GET TO THE POINT!" Sorry, but I think there are so many better relationship books out there. Anything by the Arbinger Institute will blow this "book" out of the water.
• 
  Jae

  I could only make it through half of this before someone else wanted it from the library. Maybe I'm not quite ready to be an adult in relationships.
• 
  Sandie

  I was truly torn on how many stars to give. I would say that this book would be essential reading for anyone who's in or wants to be in a relationship, as there are a lot of gems in it. Unfortunately, to get to them, you have to be willing to slog through an inordinate amount of excess rhetoric. Where was the editor on this book??
  
  Our first indication that this book needs some fat trimmed is on the cover. Its utterly condescending main title "How to Be an Adult in Relationships" is not actually what this book is about, and I don't think the author intended to condescend (though interestingly, one of his points in the book is that intentions matter not--it's how the words or actions make us feel--and this title did NOT make me feel good as a reader!). The book is actually about "The Five Keys to Mindful (and Mature) Loving." The title should have started and ended there.
  
  Throughout the book, I found myself having to read and then re-read sentences to understand what the heck the author was trying to say. I didn't want to have to work that hard. I tried to skim, but found it un-skimmable to truly capture all the good ideas contained within. Even some of the "practical exercises" were incomprehensible on the first (and second) read.
  
  I would love for someone to re-write this book in half the number of pages (minus all the bizarre poetry references and mentions of bodhisattvas) at an eight grade reading level--not because I don't enjoy literary jaunts, but because I don't seek them in self-help books. In my opinion, books of this genre should be quick and accessible, and the reader's time should be spent working through the practical exercises, not trying to decipher overly ambitious prose.
• 
  Nickjames

  I love this book. It's deep and beautiful. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning how to give and receive love more fully. Not a lot "how to," but some great information about the different ways we express love and know your learning edge in relationship. Plus, I love the break-up chapter as it defines the grief we all go through at the end of a relationship and the foundation we need to start over again.
• 
  Caitlin

  While there are some aspects of this book that are potentially useful, overall this book is Freudian psychoanalytic malarkey. Richo doesn't properly cite sources and he reinforces gender stereotypes with old models of what men and women are like. A book written by someone who is a Certified Family Life Educator would be far more useful. He also is associated with the Esalen Institute, which is not known for legitimate research.
• 
  Eddie Hsu

  I should preface this by saying that I lost interest around 60% into the book.
  
  Richo's argument that relationship dyanmics are a function of the 5 As (Acceptance, Allowing, Affection, Appreciation, Attention) are analogous to many of the other frameworks laid out in other books on mindfulness. This book ends up being long-winded, overly dense, and peppered with unnecessary quotes seemingly to make the author sound smart. Richo bases much of the book's arguments on shaky ground, relying on spiritual / new age mumbo jumbo. Freud is a constant presence in the book-- our current needs and disposition towards others are a direction function of our relationship with our parents during our childhood. Then there's the perpetuation of gender stereotypes; something about males being predisposed to violence and sadism due to the inherent fear of their anima, which is supposed to be their contrasexual spiritual energy. Or something like that.
  
  If this were a 80 page book, it would be a solid 4. But it's not. So it gets a 2. Some of the exercises were solid though. Might try them out with a partner.
• 
  Joseph Hlebica

  I can't recommend this book wholeheartedly enough. Was recommended to me by my last partner, and we are both putting it to use in preparation for future relationships, as well as in our efforts to be friends now that our own is over. This is different to other self-help/relationship books in that it is based in the premises of Buddhist mindfulness, and it addresses all aspects of relating in personal relationships, not just love/intimacy. This is a book for the ages. Full of hard-hitting self analysis and lots of practical tips for arriving at peace of mind and peace in love. Please give this book a look; you won't put it down.
• 
  Chintushig Tumenbayar

  Харилцааг үргэлж жаргалтай байна гэж төсөөлөх нь эндүүрэл аж харин ч зовлон бэрхшээл байдаг үүнийг хамтдаа даван туулах нь бидний нэг нэгэндээ хийж өгч буй тус иймд бусдыг өөрийн бодлоор шүүх, нөхцөл байдлыг сөргөөр харах нь шийдэл болж чадахгүй гэдгийг сайтар ойлгож авлаа.
• 
  Nitin Kishore Sai

  I got this book after it was recommended by Mayim Bialik(Amy Farah fowler from The Big Bang Theory) . She said everyone should definitely read this book and coming from a neuroscientist, I was intrigued about the book and figured I'd just add this to my list. For some personal reasons I felt urged to try it out before this year ended. I have to be honest. I pretty much bookmarked and highlighted things every 2 minutes. This is a necessity. Most people don't understand what a relationship entails and this will help them be prepared and make the most of it. Reading this should be a prerogative if you want to get married. A lot of actionable practices and insightful advice. I enjoyed the book thoroughly since it broke down everything into fundamental elements and combinations that connect most experiences we have by the time we get to our 30s, with theory that is instinctive but not apparent. Especially if you're someone who has been healing from bad experiences, to get to the point where you can reconceptualize love and experience it again. The 5 A's and the opposing ego layers, neurotic traits, Inflated VS impoverished ego, and the SEE concept will be always on my mind guiding me and helping me understand situations. I will have to review all of my bookmarks and notes on this again for it to be ingrained but for now, I'm glad I read this book.
• 
  Macaulay Mauro

  life changing for me, a book i’ll always come back to. was so hard not to highlight every mind blowing point on every page
• 
  Shante

  This book is geared towards people in committed relationships; I am not. Oddly enough I felt it speaking directly to me. I found much of the practices at the end of each chapter useful in healing the lifelong relationship with myself. I would suggest reading this book with a journal. (Actually, the author mentions journaling frequently.) The text forces you to be brutally honest with yourself about how you conduct yourself in relationships, while also following up with compassion. With a theme of mindfulness and letting go of neurotic ego I would recommend this book to EVERYONE, committed or otherwise.
• 
  Stephen Kelley

  Incredible! A huge range of topics well tied together with a simple, understandable, unifying theme.
• 
  ryan wilkey

  i’m here because mayim bialik told me so. picking up a copy as soon as i can. :)
• 
  Lindsey Sullivan

  There were some really excellent tidbits and mindful exercises that apply to all relationships, not just romantic ones! I got a lot out of this and plan to add this to my list of books to listen to each year because I have a feeling you could continue to get more and more out of it with each reread.
• 
  Oana-Catalina

  While it might seem a quite complicated approach on our well known lives, with a lot of technicalities and deep analysis of what we are and what we should see in others, this book actually describes a loving profile within a psychological perspective and within what a person is and what kind of love she or he is capable of, regarded from a very own human potential.
  It's interesting how it explains the deep connection with our life as children, with our past experiences and with what is that adds value in different situations: like great artists who make great paintings because they have learned "to look without fixed ideas of what is fitting".
  But don't these past experiences make us think from an actual eggshell? How can we escape it if we were born and built inside of it?
  Misconceptions and how we tend to picture people minimizes their potential when creating a "defined" image of themselves instead of just looking at them as a "work in progress" which is then again undefined and infinite. Their ideals or our ideals change as each of us progresses individually.
  As adults we seek for a partner who "would be just right", but, very nicely said, when improving and maturing we do not seek for negative traits anymore but try to see the positive ones in one another.
  Flexibility as oposed to severity, cooperation and communication in regards to attachment and in general a different understanding of the five A's and how love works if we work on it, takes sentiment to a whole new level.
  Besides saying something new, something different, it approaches every one of us with our very own rights and wrongs and has the potential to change a little something. That's what makes it a great book.
• 
  Erica

  Take home message I got from this book: relish challenges and problems in relationships because they'll help you, and the relationship, grow. A nice sentiment considering it's natural to want to avoid difficult issues. Sorta like how diving right into a wave has less impact than letting it crash against you. Still the book succumbs to the lovey-doveniness common in some of these spiritual self-help books. The language they advise using with a partner to grow communication is so far removed from how people really talk. I hope they're expecting their readers to translate example messages into regular-folk speech. Some nice observations about relationships, but somewhat forgettable.
• 
  Kory

  I'd probably give this book 2.5 stars if that was possible. I could relate to many things discussed in this book and found the process of reading it worthwhile. However, I wasn't ever eager to hunker down and read 100 pages in one sitting. I can probably chalk that up to the nature of the book and the intention of the author to have readers chew on the material a bit and not rush through it. Additionally, the responses/feelings that it elicited in me factored into my aversion to it at times (i.e. some things hit close to home and they were hard truths). A bit over the top at times, but still a book that many people could likely benefit from reading.
• 
  Tessa

  This is a really neat book so far. He reflects on the process of psychological maturity in adulthood and its challenges to meet personal growth. Great for all, singles too! Yes, yes! (not just for intimate relationships, but all relationships)
• 
  T-mere

  I can never get enough of David Richo... my books are so scribbled and dog-eared/underlined/highlighted... whew! Such a wise and humbling individual-- need more of the like practicing in the therapeutic circles!