It's outside us.' That's why the proverbial urge to merge is, according to Hendrix, an itch best left unscratched. 'That really needs to be amplified,' he says, 'The between-ness is the locale of love. 'You become conscious that there is a space between the two of you, and that's where the relationship resides.' 'Well, I would say real love is about going to a different destination,' she says, giving the conversation a quarter turn with a certain exuberant sweetness. But most of us 'love' an image rather than the real person.' He pauses, then looks at his wife. But if it is, then you can follow up with, 'What relational transactions are stirring up your discomfort with me?' The point is, you're committed to what is real. People can have stresses you don't know about. You can ask, 'Is the experience you're having right now somehow triggered by me?' Sometimes it's not. So there's a kind of detachment-you simply hold your partner's experience when they're going through changing emotions. 'It's not subject to how good you are or whether you're pleasing to your partner all the time. Instead you make an unconditional commitment to the other person.'Īs for those who believe you have to merit love (they include no lesser minds than William Butler Yeats, as well as enrollees in the School of Tit for Tat: You know who you are), Hendrix begs to differ. 'Love as a verb isn't dependent on how you feel or even what you think. 'Love as a feeling is ephemeral and goes away when circumstances change,' Hendrix says.

While he speaks, his wife, Helen Hunt (not that Helen Hunt-this one helps run their seminars and has coauthored several books with him), listens intently (she and Hendrix were 'the living laboratory' for their theories, she interjects) and occasionally touches his arm. It's a behavior in which the welfare of another person is the primary intention and goal.' 'Real love,' says Hendrix, looking slightly professorial in a plum-colored sweater, 'is a verb. Not only isn't love a feeling-love isn't even an it. We might want to rethink that, says Harville Hendrix, PhD, a groundbreaking marital therapist. In any event, it's one hell of a feeling, right? Ask anyone about love and they'll give you an opinion: It's written in the stars.

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