Book SummaryHow to Be an Adult in Relationships, by David Richo

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of How to Be an Adult in Relationships

Do you want a long-lasting, healthy, and fulfilling love? In How to Be an Adult in Relationships, therapist and self-help author David Richo argues that mindfulness is the key to strong, healthy relationships. Drawing from both Eastern philosophy and Western psychology, he explains how mindful loving can heal your psyche, help you succeed in intimate relationships, and build a better, more loving world.

This guide presents Richo’s ideas in four parts:

• In **Part 1:...

How to Be an Adult in Relationships Summary Part 1: What It Means to Love Mindfully

Richo’s relationship advice is rooted in the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, the practice of witnessing the present without evaluating, judging, or trying to influence it. When you’re mindful, you simply notice what you’re actually experiencing right now.

He argues that the key to a healthy relationship is a mindful approach. Specifically, he suggests adopting mindful loving: the practice of seeing your partner, yourself, and your relationship as each really is in the present, without imposing your interpretations.

(Shortform note: Mindfulness is often associated with meditation, but it encompasses much more than that. You can think of meditation as training: Buddhists believe that it gradually teaches them to live in the present moment. This process gives them the insight they’ll need to understand suffering, let go of their ego, and reach enlightenment. Western psychologists traditionally think...

How to Be an Adult in Relationships Summary Part 2: Becoming Someone Who Can Love Mindfully

Even if you know how to love mindfully, Richo says, you’ll need to do some inner work to become someone who can love mindfully—an emotionally mature person. In this section, we’ll explain how your parents’ love shaped your ability to love mindfully—and how to emotionally mature by healing any childhood wounds you may have sustained. Finally, we’ll explore how emotional maturity prepares you to approach romantic relationships in a healthy way.

Your Parents’ Love Shaped Your Capacity for Mindful Love

According to Richo, the love you received from your parents as a child set the stage for your adult love life. If your parents always loved you mindfully, then you’re set to become an emotionally mature adult: someone who knows how to give and receive mindful love. On the other hand, if your parents ever made you feel hurt or underloved, you sustained childhood wounds that can hold you back from becoming emotionally mature.

Richo explains that these childhood wounds can interfere with your ability to love mindfully in adulthood in three ways: You accept inadequate love, you expect your partner to fill a parental role, and/or you’re afraid of intimacy.

**How Secure...

How to Be an Adult in Relationships Summary Part 3: How Mindful Love Strengthens and Sustains Relationships

Once you have the emotional maturity to be a good partner and find a good partner, Richo says, you’ll create relationships that are not only strong but also continue to help you heal and mature.

In this section, we’ll discuss how mindfully loving relationships encourage you to grow and become more secure. Then, we’ll explore how mindful loving helps you navigate the changes that occur naturally over the course of a relationship.

Mindfully Loving Relationships Encourage You to Grow

Richo says that mindfully loving relationships encourage psychological growth in three ways: They provide the opportunity to process your issues, make compassionate validation possible, and improve your self-esteem.

Growth Factor #1: Relationships Provide Opportunities for Processing

Mindfully loving relationships are a space where you can explore and overcome the consequences of your childhood wounds. Richo explains that during the course of a relationship, you and your partner will inevitably trigger old memories of emotional pain. When this happens between two mindful adults, you can healthily address the conflict and the inner turmoil that has followed you from...

How to Be an Adult in Relationships Summary Part 4: Loving Well Means Loving the World

At this point, you know why mindful love is so important to strong relationships and may have started bringing GREAT aspects to your own relationships. This sets you up to strive for universal loving-kindness, the Buddhist tenet that requires compassion for all living beings.

According to Richo, this is the ultimate goal of learning how to love mindfully. Romantic relationships teach you to honor your partner’s inherent lovability despite flaws and conflicts—he sees this as a small-scale way to practice extending compassion to everyone.

Why You Should Strive for Universal Loving-Kindness

Richo says that universal loving-kindness should be your ultimate goal because it has two major life-improving benefits: It gives your life meaning and it improves society.

First, Richo says that universal loving-kindness compels you to help others when they’re suffering, which will make your life feel more meaningful. For example, if you see that your neighbor is struggling to afford food, you might practice universal loving-kindness by helping them buy groceries. You may not be able to solve world hunger on your own, but you can be part of the solution in small...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on Your Capacity for GREATness

Think about an unsuccessful relationship you’ve had. You may not have known what the GREAT model was before reading this guide, but you probably still practiced it to some extent. In this exercise, you’ll evaluate your use of the GREAT model in that relationship and come up with a plan for using the GREAT model better in future relationships.

In your unsuccessful relationship, how did you practice Gratitude, Respect, Engagement, Affirmation, and Tenderness? List some examples for each aspect of the GREAT model.