Richard Lloyd Jones: We spend our entire lives in them, looking for them, or extricating ourselves from them. Maybe we've read lots about them. Certainly we've discussed them, agonized over them, rued the day we ever got involved in them, and celebrated them when they're going well. But how much do we really know about the inner workings of our relationships? I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, Dr.
Cláudia Pacheco and I will turn a magnifying glass on love and relationships, a popular subject. On our podcast. First, don't forget our free book giveaway. Norberto Keppe, whose scientific philosophy underlies everything we do on this podcast, has written a number of books that, if understood, would dramatically alter how we see ourselves and the world we live in. He wrote a book about the pathology of power back in the 1980s that is still today the best and most precise definitive critique of our so-called democracy and inverted economic system that you'll ever read.
It's one of the wisest and most pointed books about the sickness in our political and economic leaders and how this sickness is leading us to disaster. A must read. And it's free just by emailing me at rich at richjonesvoice.com. You know, a number of months ago, I produced a couple of podcasts with Dr. Cláudia Pacheco on love and relationships. A listener recently listened to those and wrote me a nice email asking me if Cláudia could answer some further questions for her about the subject.
Cláudia agreed, and so here we are. Cláudia, a listener just wrote to us saying that she liked very much the comments you had on love and relationships. She found them very enlightening.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Ah, this is my expertise, Jones.
Richard: I've noticed that in your work.
Cláudia: She said that you made numerous comments about love and the
Richard: joy we derive from expressing this. That we don't love someone else for what they give to us, but how we feel for them.
And I remember this was very, really stood out to me in your podcast, too, your comments, that the Love doesn't come from receiving love. It comes from the feeling of love, the ability to give love and do good. But then she said this. She said, my question is this, our listener said. If someone finds him or herself in relationship with someone who's not being respectful, do you encourage this person to continue expressing love?
Cláudia: So, Johns, that's interesting because when we speak about trilogy, We go from universals to particulars or examples or practical situations. But in this case, when the person comes to do analysis, it is very much important to start from the specific examples and practical situations. We go from the lesser to the bigger. So in these circumstances, we must have more information about the way the person is, what is she talking about, how is this relationship.
You know why, Jones? Because we consider the dialectics that Keppe brings very important. We don't ever have just one way of thinking. Like, this is a rule for all examples. Each case is a case. So, in this situation, we would ask her to give examples of how this man is being disrespectful. So, we can understand if this disrespectfulness is a true thing, a real objective attitude, or a projection of herself.
Because women many times see in men their own disrespectfulness towards themselves and her lives and in many instances there is no reason to see like that I'll give you an example I have a client she's married for already 13 years. And she has a son who is 10 years old. And now she is very, very nervous because she says that her husband lies to her, that she cannot trust him, that he mistreats her because he drinks, that he despises her.
And she feels like out of the world because he doesn't take her seriously. So if we see the perspective of the thing, we would say, okay, so she wants to split the marriage because she's right. She would need another kind of treatment from another man, and now she's realizing that she got a wrong guy to get married.
Richard: Got a bad deal there
Cláudia: somehow.
Bad deal. But if we go further, we see the following. Her husband, as all husbands and all wives, have his qualities and his problems. But his qualities in the situation are bigger than the problems. He is a hardworking man. He supports her and the child. He's giving her anything and everything she wants. But on the other hand the way she behaves like being too dependent too childish not wanting to take responsibility for her life not wanting to work seriously in anything.
She doesn't have any serious profession. She just stays jumping from one course to the other and then like a butterfly in many areas. So he is finding himself like in a bad deal, having her as a wife, as a companion, because he was much more developed in his life, in his profession. And now he sees his wife as uncultivated woman, envious, dependent, and always demanding things and accusing things towards him and very envious, very envious at him.
So the idea she has and the complaints she has is not because she has really real problems with her husband, but because of her envy towards the husband, she sees himself under this perspective. So this other weekend, she was complaining that her husband lied to her. He said he was traveling because of work and she discovered that he didn't go to the place he said he would go.
So she was furious. He went to see to attend a concert that a friend of his was organizing. He is in the show business and she was furious. And I told her but did he had a good time and she said of course he had. And I was locked at home and he was lying to me. How can I trust this guy.
And I said but are you mad because he was not telling you where he he was going or are you envious because he went away from this deep depressed locked up environment you want him to be and wrapped up in your sadness in this old dram inside the house every weekend. And he was like wanting to breathe a little bit. And she said but how come he didn't tell me and I said well if he would you would probably say no you stay home with me and he would not be able.
So you force him to lie to you because of the environment you provide your husband and their child and then he had to use this means to be a little bit happy in his life.
So the problem here is envy.
Richard: You know I was um listening to another interview you did a long time ago with in our teleclass where you were talking about how human beings are much more pathological than we think. And this comes through to me when we receive questions from our listeners. That we have this idea in our minds that we have good intentions, that we want the best, that we don't really want to see the problems that we have.
And so because we don't want to see our problems, the problems then have to appear in somebody else or some other situation, which strikes me that's what's happening there.
Cláudia: You're right. You are very right. But let's go back to this example of your listener or our listener because she might be in another situation. Right. So let's do the dialectics. And I would ask her if she's listening to us, does your boyfriend or your companion, is he too jealous of you?
Is he too demanding? Is he accusing you of not being the way he would like you to be? Is he blaming you because he's not happy because of your own fault? Is he after you all the time, controlling what you do and where you go? Is he being physically abusive? Or if he drinks, when he drinks, does he become aggressive or depressed?
So these are questions very important to be addressed. Does he support you? Or does he split with you the responsibilities of your lives? Or is he dependent economically on you? Is he a drug abuser? And when he abuses drugs, how he becomes? So there are important questions to be addressed. Is he an honest man? Is he a hard-working man? So we need to see all this information in order to see who is misusing and abusing who.
This
Richard: is totally throughout all of Keppe's work, that it's the true psychology because it goes into the person's problems and issues. The second question this woman said is, what does it really say about the individual if he or she loves someone who's disrespectful? Does it say that he or she has an unconscious wish to disrespect him or herself? Does it say that the unconscious mind believes that the individual is not worthy of respect, and so loving this person is a way in which to fulfill that need?
Cláudia: Yeah, this might be. This might be. And in order to understand this better, we should start from the point that love, Jones, always goes with reason. So if I love, really love a person who doesn't love me, this could be not love, real love. This could be a more pathological, as she said here, pathological, unconscious wish to destroy her life. She would be using this guy, she would be attached to him in a pathological link and not in a loving link.
So this is a good point. And I go back to that. Only through associations, free associations, in an analytical situation, the person could discover that. Because
Richard: we have to find out if it really is the other person or if it's this person's envy, as you talked about before, what it is
Cláudia: that's going on inside. Because, you know, Johns, when there is envy going on, we complain about the other person, giving an excuse of the other person's problem.
But in reality, we can't stand his qualities or her qualities. So it's just an excuse.
Richard: She says then later, a further question, do we love despite the fact that we're not being treated well? Or do we love because we're not being treated well?
Cláudia: Yeah, so the term love here would be the question. Because if I say I love a man who is aggressive psychopath or something, this is not love.
This is an emotion. This is a passion. This is a morbid pleasure to be destroyed and being using a man to do this. And this is very, not that rare. This happens many times. Sure.
Richard: Not only in women, but also in men. What is love, Cláudia? How would you define this immense word? Starting
Cláudia: from the point that love is undefinable, because love cannot fit inside reason and intellect.
Love is much broader, much richer, much more powerful. But you could maybe say that love is the wish, the demand to be good and to do good for the other person. Love is doing good, mostly. It's not only a feeling, but it's mostly an attitude and actions. How
Richard: do we demonstrate love in a relationship effectively? Because there's so many grounds for these kinds of difficulties, right?
There's so many pathologies, weaknesses. How do we do this in relationships well?
Cláudia: Maybe we could add here a question that the same listener brought. Could you read it? Sure. About
Richard: telling the truth? Yeah. She said, what is it about human beings that keeps us from saying what we really mean? What are we protecting and at what cost? What would happen if we really did speak our mind?
Cláudia: So speaking the truth is a synonym of love. But not when you are angry, in a burst out of anger, when you are fed up and then you throw up everything you always thought about that person, just to be aggressive and generally people only tell the truth in in these circumstances. So they hide they hide they hide and then when they are fed up and they are up to so they just throw up.
This is very destructive not only for the listener but also for the person who's who does this because afterwards a lot of immense feelings of guilt come to the surface because even though you said the truth you said it with anger and this is destructive. And afterwards you may regret and then you start saying "oh no I didn't mean that I'm sorry I was I was upset I was angry so don't don't consider that." And then this is another second wrong thing to be done because then you cover up again the truth that went through the emotions.
Now, what I suggest is that when you want to tell the truth to another person, try to tell it after reasoning about that. When you are calm, then think and rethink. Would you stay in the same concept? Would you keep that concept? If you do, then you have to bring from your very inner life this feeling of love and wishing the best.
Because if you tell the truth, you have to tell it in order to build the other person. Right. To do something in order for that person to improve her life. If you are lazy and if you are destroying your life out of your laziness I'll have to say this to you what are you doing with your life with your talents and keep reinforcing the person to improve her life.
Richard: So is a lack of telling the truth evidence of a lack of love. Sure
Cláudia: parents who never tell the truth and only praise their children do not put limits they lack love a lot because when you love you tell the truth despite what is coming after. So you have to think that person is corrupting herself is destroying herself with that negativity or with any negative aspect so in order to be loving I have to give support for that person to grow.
And here comes again the dialectics. Many people attack other people using as an excuse this idea, I'm giving love so the person can correct herself. So I'm being after that person intolerantly, saying and pointing out, you did this, you did that, you should do this, you should improve in that.
Richard: I'm only trying to
Cláudia: help you. Yeah, I'm trying, yeah. And sometimes parents pick their children with this corrections so love means also tolerance and forgiveness and patience and seeing that we are not like because like machines that we can correct ourselves like this. And we many times take years or sometimes a life or sometimes even eternity to correct a problem in ourselves.
And we can do
Richard: this too in relationships we can take years and years and years to build a relationship and destroy it in 30 seconds.
Cláudia: You are very right.
Richard: Incredible this. Why is it so difficult to tell the truth, Cláudia? That's the other question this woman was asking. Why is it difficult to say what we mean, to say the truth?
Cláudia: We could tell a few things.
We have this unfriendliness towards truth since we fell from paradise, you could say.
Richard: We talked about that last week, this
Cláudia: fall from paradise. So we see in the truth the problem. We think that we are upside down so we think that what I don't see won't hurt me won't hurt the other person and it's exactly the opposite. So if I see, if I focus a problem without censoring, with tolerance I see, I look at the problem the energy, the scholar energy that I put onto that problem will help to correct the problem.
So let's imagine if I have a bad dependency on food let's say or this this listener she depends on her this relationship she can stay away from the man she is engaged with. So she might not be willing to see anything wrong because immediately she thinks if I see I'll have to split or have to change my mind and I have to be without him. So I don't see anything in order to stay in the situation.
So, if I see that I'm jealous out of envy, I have to correct my jealousy and I have to respect my husband's or my lover's happiness and charm and anything, freedom. I have to respect and if I don't want If I don't want to swallow my envy, I will never admit that I am envious. For instance, so seeing a problem, addressing a problem with tolerance will tend to change, to correct.
Richard: There's a big difference between seeing the problem, addressing the problem, speaking the truth and trying to get the other to change, isn't
Cláudia: there? Yes, yes, and trying to get the other and trying to get me to change. You are right. If you address a person and if you tell something in order to benefit you, this is already some, there is a problem in there.
So you are telling this to me because you want this for you. But if you're telling me for my good, then I'll feel differently. And we can feel when the person is addressing us with a true good intention. Or if I am addressing you with a bad intention. You
Richard: know, recently one of my students was telling me about, a male student was telling me about his son, who was about five or six, who invited a young friend over to play at his house with him.
And they were playing away, and then all of a sudden my student noticed that the friend was gone. And he said to his son, what happened to your friend? And his son said, oh, I got bored with him. I told him to leave. And my student said, you can't do that, son. I'm going to take you over there to apologize to him.
Do you know what his wife said? His wife said, no, but he's just a kid. Just leave him alone. He said, no, I'm going to take him there to apologize to his friend. This is not right. When they got to the other house and knocked on the door, the other boy's mother came and she said the same as his wife. Oh, they're just kids.
Don't worry about it. And he said, no, this is not right. And I found something interesting in this, in our podcast about the true role of women we were talking about.
Cláudia: It's interesting, isn't
Richard: it, that the man really wanted to do something morally high.
Cláudia: Yes. So who loved more?
Richard: I think my student, the man.
Cláudia: Sure. Even though children misunderstand the situation and think my father is angry, he doesn't like me he is after me and my mother protects me so she loves me much more she's more much more cheerful.
So uh children misunderstand this and people get spoiled and especially and they think the world would do the same as their mothers and the world doesn't work like this
Richard: no we've seen a lot now they're having a lot of problems in the United States with these young people who are coming into the workplace, being completely unable to deal with any criticism, completely unable.
All their lives, they've heard how fantastic they are, how great they are, how wonderful they are. When they get to the workplace, they don't know how to cope with a mistake or a problem. This is a real corruption of our young people we've done, isn't it? Yes, it is. Not a sign of love, is it?
Cláudia: Not a sign of love at all.
But, Jones, before we finish our podcast today, I would like to give a recipe. I don't give recipes in general. No,
Richard: you don't. I've never heard you give a…
Cláudia: But I would like to give one.
Richard: The three steps to…
Cláudia: The three steps to see a little bit of who is who in
Richard: a relationship. Okay.
Cláudia: So, who is more jealous of who? Who is complaining that the relationship is not working, demanding things?
Who is more dependent and who has a life of accomplishment, good accomplishment? I mean, I'm not saying that, for instance, a man or a woman who is a hardworking person in Wall Street
Richard: selling… Derivative funds or…
Cláudia: Yeah, whatever, just to be rich. No. Who is accomplishing more good and beautiful work in life? If this is a case of both of them, wonderful.
This is important to diagnose because the more paranoid one will have the tendency to blame the other one and to be after the other one and accusing and blaming and demanding and asking. Things from the other one. Problems all of us have. We will not find a perfect person, but we need to see who is the more projective, and the more projective will be the seeker.
And sometimes they are not physically aggressive, but emotionally they are so envious that they bring both of them down.
Richard: One more point, Cláudia, to make, because I think it's very important to talk about. In a previous program we did on relationships, you talked about the triangle, but with man and woman at the bottom and God at the top. Yeah. And I think this is a fundamental thing that Keppe talks about, that you talk about, that I've never really heard spoken about well before.
It's the first place I've heard it spoken. How do we destroy this triangle in our relationships? Yeah,
Cláudia: when we want to be happy through the other person. If I want to be happy through you or if you want to be happy through me if I expect from another person the source of happiness what is missing in my life this is very important.
If I need someone in order to fulfill a need in my life an opening in my life this would tend to become a sad relationship because we cannot expect from another human being to fulfill our own problems that we cannot correct or we are not ready to, we are not willing, we are whatever, we cannot. So the only being that can fulfill our needs is God.
And if our first relationship is with him, we will be able to share our qualities with another person. And if we have similar ideals in life, this is a good recipe for a relationship to work. Ideals mean ideals and not dreams or fantasies of becoming rich or becoming powerful or constructing, building an empire. Because this is out of pathology. So if I am egotistic, if I want power, if I am greedy, this will manifest with my partner.
So this is a recipe for a relationship. Not working, but if you have this wish to accomplish a good work in your life, to do something that is in direction to the divine, So this triangle, we go in parallel ways, sort of, to God. And this resonance with God will give me strength, energy, and happiness enough to share with my partner. So we'll be sharing lives and not depending on each other, sucking the life of my partner.
Richard: Keppe says in The Origin of Illness that all of us have capability and talent, but our envy keeps them from developing. Looks like that's also applicable to our relationships. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Talk to you again next week.
