The key ideas

How to Be an Adult in Relationships

David Richo, 2002

Why do people who love each other hurt each other so often? Psychotherapist David Richo shows that in adult love we look for what we did not get as children, and he names the five things intimacy is made of. You will understand which phases a couple goes through, what we fear in closeness and how to love without asking the impossible of your partner.

Who it is for

For anyone who loves and still feels unheard. And for anyone who notices the same argument coming back in every new relationship.

Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.

“But I'm right here”

Picture an evening in the kitchen. Ira is talking about a hard day, and Denis nods while scrolling through his phone. She falls silent and says, “You're not listening to me.” He is genuinely surprised: “But I'm right here. I love you.” Both are right, and both feel bad. The love seems to be there, yet they never actually meet.

David Richo is an American family psychotherapist who has practised since 1976 and brings together Western psychology, the ideas of Jung and Buddhism in his work. In 2002 he published a book about why people who love each other so often miss each other. It became a bestseller and has been reprinted many times. Its answer sounds unfamiliar: most people think of love as a feeling, while Richo sees it above all as a way of being present with another person.

The author calls what that presence is made of the five A's: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing. In English all five words begin with A. Each of us needed them as a child, and we look for them in adult love.

Next you will see where our expectations of a partner come from, which phases a couple goes through, what we fear in closeness and what stops us loving as adults. And most of all, what to do about it tomorrow evening in your own kitchen.

Five things a self cannot grow without

Richo begins not with the couple but with childhood. For a child to develop a steady sense of self, they need five things. Attention: they are noticed and listened to. Acceptance: they are loved as they are. Appreciation: they are valued. Affection: they are hugged and held. Allowing: they are allowed to be themselves and go their own way.

A simple prompt helps you remember them. It is our own device, not the author's formula. Each A answers a child's question. Attention: “Am I seen?” Acceptance: “Am I loved as I am?” Appreciation: “Am I worth something?” Affection: “Will someone hold me when I'm hurting?” Allowing: “May I be different from what you want?”

This is not a set of good manners. Through the five A's a child learns that their feelings make sense and that they themselves are worth something. That is how an inner footing grows, one that later holds up through rejection, loneliness and other people's displeasure.

No parents give all of this in full. Richo does not expect perfection: what matters is whether a person got enough of it. Where there was not enough, an empty space remains. It does not hurt every day, but it makes itself felt as soon as we fall in love with someone.

The adult in this book is not someone who had a perfect childhood. It is someone who knows their empty spaces and can give the five A's to others without waiting for someone else to make up the shortfall first.

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About the author

David Richo is an American psychotherapist and teacher who has practised in California since 1976. His books bring together Western psychology, the ideas of Jung and Buddhism.

All books by this author: David Richo

Terms from the book

  • Mindfulness
  • Transference
  • Ego
  • Jung
  • Buddhism
  • Five A's: Richo's own idea, not a scientific term: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing. All five words begin with A.
  • Allowing: Richo's fifth A: freedom for the other person to live their own way, and a readiness to accept life and love as they are without trying to control everything.
  • Idealisation: The tendency to see more virtues in another person than they have, and to overlook their weaknesses. For Richo it is typical of the romance phase.
  • Fear of abandonment: In Richo's model, one of the two main fears of intimacy: the fear of being left. It is an image from the book, not a diagnosis.
  • Fear of engulfment: In Richo's model, the second fear of intimacy: the fear of dissolving into the other person and losing yourself. It is an image from the book, not a diagnosis.

All terms

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