Why Do People Fall Out of Love?
Falling out of love can be hard and happens for many reasons. Or does it? Sadhguru explains the only reason why people fall out of love and how one can approach relationships in a way that is deeply satisfying and without entanglement.
(The following is a transcription of a spoken discourse. To maintain the style and authenticity of Sadhguru’s spoken words, we have retained the original language instead of conforming it to our standard style book.)
Is Love in the Air?
When you were in love, you thought the flowers were blooming for you, the birds were singing for you, the clouds were moving for you. Maybe what was happening within you was so exuberant that you saw it everywhere. I do not want to destroy all the romance, but essentially it is happening within you. Your experience of love is that you feel a certain sweetness of emotion within yourself.
It is wonderful that you are experiencing such sweetness of emotion stimulated by someone. You are using the other person as a key to open up an experience within you. But why are you using a key when there is no lock, no door, no barrier of any kind? It is just that you are a push-start machine. Nowadays all the cars are self-start. Many of them are remote-start. Would you like to upgrade your technology so that you are on self-start? If you wake up in the morning, you should be overflowing with joy, love and exuberance by yourself. You should not need anyone to stimulate you.
Why do people fall out of love in relationships?
It is very important that you are a self-start machine. Otherwise, after some time, you will try to extract happiness from the other person. That is when these love affairs become tedious and horrible. There are two ways to enter into a relationship. One way is because you want to extract something from someone. Another way is because you want to share something with someone.
If you are out to share, your life will be good. If you are out to extract, when they close the tap, it is going to get terrible and nasty. You have seen people who thought they are absolute lovers—how terrible it becomes for many of them. Not because there is anything wrong with them. Simply because you started off on the wrong footing by thinking, “This person is the source of my joy.” Whether it is joy or misery, the source is within you. It is for you to decide. If you are a joyful human being, they will also want to be with you. If you are a misery, they will endure you for some time.
The key to love
Question: Sadhguru, how do I see the same wonder in human beings that I see in the peacock dancing?
Sadhguru: There is a whole culture growing in the world where people go about saying, “I love the entire humanity but I cannot stand the human being sitting here.” The problem with human beings is that you encounter them everywhere. They are in your house, they are in your office, they are everywhere. They are not just dancing somewhere far away. If they were just dancing far away, you would love them also. The problem is you have to work with them, live with them, and manage them every day.
It is easy to see wonder in things with which you do not have to share anything. For example, it is very easy to love God because he never comes and sits at the dinner table with you. It is easy to love a wild bird which is dancing—which is beautiful because it does not ask anything of you. It does not think much of you because there is nothing you have to offer. There is nothing you have to do. You can just enjoy things from a long distance. This is why people are now full of love affairs going on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram because you do not have to meet them, share anything with them, or wait outside the bathroom when they are using it. If you do not like it, you can turn it off and wipe out the account. But keep the peacock in your house for three days, then let’s see how much you like it. It will shit all over the place and make very loud sounds in the night.
Human beings are a difficult species. That includes you. We are talking about not having distinctions of race, religion, caste, creed and gender. I am telling you: do not even draw lines about the species. Because if you say, “I love the monkeys, but I cannot stand the human beings,” what does it mean? It means you do not like evolution. It is all right—at least you are enjoying the birds. There is nothing wrong with appreciating and loving a peacock dancing. You must love him even when he is not dancing.
It is easy to love when there is distance. Distance is a wonderful thing. Death is a fantastic thing. Dead people are always loved by everyone. The moment they are dead, they just suddenly become worship-worthy. Why did you not worship them when they were alive? When they were alive, you were struggling with them. The moment they die, you worship them, miss them, and love them.
Let’s look at this carefully. Your problem is that you have a defined characteristic of your personality. You are looking for something which does not step on your persona. But not every human being respects your boundaries. They inevitably step on it. Some of them do it out of ignorance; or some of them by intent—like me. The moment someone steps on your boundaries, you feel that person is a problem. Right now, the peacock is outside your boundaries, so it looks very beautiful. If it steps into your boundary, you will see him also as a big nuisance.
The important thing is that you create a little distance between yourself and your own personality, then you will see that you will even enjoy yourself. And once you enjoy this person, you will see everyone is wonderful. You can enjoy everyone because now you see people for who they are, not having some framework which they must fit into.
| Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally renowned speaker, Sadhguru is the founder of Isha Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to human wellbeing. (www.isha.sadhguru.org) |
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