Library of Congress Control Number: 2011924445

Copyright © 2012 The Prentiss Trust of June 30, 1998. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

ISBN: 978-0-943015-73-6

ISBN: 9780943015743

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Cover design: Nita Ybarra

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Note: Some of the names and details in the stories in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

To you who seek the perfect relationship, ever deepening, ever growing, ever broadening, ever becoming more and more what you hope for, long for, and strive for — may you be loved and cherished by the one you love in an enduring walk together along the path you have chosen for this lifetime

Special thanks to my wife, Lyn:

You are a treasure beyond measure, an ever-present manifestation of how wondrous a relationship can be when lived in accordance with the Laws of Love.

To the readers of The Laws of Love:

I have now lived with my husband, Chris, for eleven years and I want you to know that they have been the happiest years of my life.

∼ Lyn Prentiss

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Path of Discovery

LAW 1

Universal Law Controls Everything

LAW 2

Everything Is in a State of Constant Change

Action Steps: The Power of Flexibility and Adaptability

LAW 3

Your Philosophy Determines the Quality of Your Relationship

Action Steps: The Power of Your Thoughts and Expectations

LAW 4

Relationships Only Thrive in Safe Space

Action Steps: The Power of Free and Open Communication

LAW 5

Successful Relationships Require Light from the Past

Action Steps: The Power of Sharing Your Life Stories

LAW 6

The Universe Is Perfect and Is Always Working to Benefit You

Action Steps: The Power of Looking for the Benefit

LAW 7

Your Relationship Will Provide What You Need

Action Steps: The Power of Learning from Your Partner

LAW 8

If You Would Be Loved, Love Yourself

Action Steps: The Power of Nurturing Yourself

LAW 9

The Happiness You Seek Can Only Come from within You

Action Steps: The Power of Choosing to Be Happy

LAW 10

Your Relationship Will Endure When You Make It Your Primary Priority

Action Steps: The Power of Priority

LAW 11

Harmony Strengthens, Disharmony Weakens

Action Steps: The Power of Gentle Generosity

LAW 12

An Ideal Relationship Can Only Exist within Complete Trust

Action Steps: The Power of Truth and Trust

LAW 13

Every Action Produces a Result That Is in Exact Accord with the Action

Action Steps: The Power of Small Acts of Kindness

LAW 14

You Are the Author of Every Next Moment

Action Steps: The Power of the Next Step

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Throughout this book I have referred to your relationship partner or mate in the third person as “they” or “them” rather than “he or she” or “him or her” because it is less cumbersome and less repetitive. For instance, the phrase “You then have to live with them” can be understood as “You then have to live with him or her.”

There are many words to describe a person with whom you are in a personal relationship. Again, for readability and variety, I alternate the words partner, mate, or loved one to denote the person you love and with whom you want to build your ideal relationship. If you do not consider that person to be your spouse or mate, please read that word as partner or another term that is applicable to your personal situation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A special thank you once again to Nigel J. Yorwerth and Patricia Spadaro of PublishingCoaches.com. I appreciate your creativity and care, patience and persistence in helping me develop, shape, edit, publish, and promote my work. Your expertise and heartfelt support is invaluable. And thank you, Nigel, for your unwavering efforts in promoting my work, getting excellent distribution, and selling rights for my books to top foreign publishers.

I also acknowledge Carl Hartman as the person who introduced me to the brilliant concept of Safe Space in the late 1980s.

A PORTION OF A POEM WRITTEN 2500 YEARS AGO

When two people are at one in their inmost hearts,

They shatter even the strength of iron or of bronze.

And when two people understand each other in their inmost hearts,

Their words are sweet and strong, like the fragrance of orchids.

∼CONFUCIUS

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

∼ GEORGE SAND (1804–1876)

The Laws of Love are time-tested principles for successful loving that for thousands of years have brought soul-drenching happiness and fulfilling relationships to those who have followed them. Embracing these simple truths and acting in accordance with them will empower you to shape out of the framework of your relationship, current or future, a beautiful, lasting creation that will nurture and sustain you, turn your sad days into happy days, and gladden your heart through the years. Living in harmony with these fundamental laws of life will also help you to avoid the pitfalls that beset the path of those who never give a thought to the consequences of their thoughts, words, or actions. The path to creating a wonderful relationship may at times be challenging, at times painful, but in the end always rewarding.

INTRODUCTION

THE PATH OF DISCOVERY

WHETHER YOU ARE SEEKING HELP FOR YOUR CURRENT relationship or you are seeking help in attracting a new relationship, you will find that help here. If you are currently in a troubled relationship, knowing the Laws of Love will empower you to save it—if it’s worth saving. You may, in fact, be in a relationship whose usefulness has been outlived. Knowing the Laws of Love will give you the information you need to determine if you’re with the right person, and it will give you the insight and the courage to end your relationship if you’re not.

You may think that the course of a relationship depends on the luck of the draw or circumstances that weave their way in and out of your life. Or you may think that your happiness depends on what your partner does or does not do. The reality is that the quality of your relationship depends mainly on one thing: you.

That’s not to say that your partner may not be part of the problem or may even be the entire problem, but by knowing the Laws of Love you will be able to heal your partner and bring your relationship into the light of happiness. Few relationships come to us exactly as we want them, but with the right knowledge and care we can shape them into enduring pillars of strength and beauty—relationships where great joy is experienced, great deeds are accomplished and, most importantly, great love is returned.

Once again, though, I caution you that this applies to relationships that are worth saving. Your partner may have been damaged by life, upbringing, or prior relationships to the point where your relationship is not savable. Perhaps your partner doesn’t love you and doesn’t want to love you, or perhaps he or she is just using you for financial reasons, emotional support, or some other hidden agenda. If after applying the Laws of Love, you discover that your partner is with you for the wrong reasons or is damaged beyond repair, you should move on with your life and find a new mate. In the words of Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady fame, “Throw the baggage out!”

GOOD RELATIONSHIPS ARE NOT AN ACCIDENT

Having the relationship of your dreams is not an accident, a roll of the relationship dice. It’s a result of being the kind of person who knows the right steps to take to create an enduring, fulfilling friendship with your partner. Sometimes we may meet a person who we believe is just right for us. Yet because of what we’ve learned about relationships and who we’ve become over the years, we ruin the opportunity, and what might have been a great relationship with the right person becomes another sad ending. Even the finest opportunity in the wrong hands comes to nothing.

Some twenty-five years ago, a friend of mine was sitting at my kitchen table having breakfast with me when he said, “I have the worst luck choosing women. The last nine women I have chosen to have relationships with have all turned out to be bitches.”

I had to laugh at that—he had such a huge ego. “That’s not true,” I said. “The last nine women you chose were all sweet, gentle, loving creatures who you turned into bitches.”

He angrily replied, “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” He was very insulted, got up from the table, and stalked out of the house. I did not hear from him for four years and then he called me from Hawaii, where he was living with his wife and their one-year-old son. He said, “I’m calling to thank you and tell you that I realized that what you told me at the breakfast table that morning about how I was ruining the women in my life was correct, and I don’t do that anymore.” He said he was wonderfully happy with his wife and son. Today, he has three children and is still happily married.

My friend discovered what you will discover in this book: the kind of person you are at every moment is primarily responsible for the status of your relationship or your lack of a relationship. Not only that, it’s also responsible for your current condition in life, your happiness or lack of it, your possessions or lack of them, and your state of well-being.

IN-FORMATION

The world of deep, loving, rewarding, comforting relationships is a unique world, a world that very few inhabit. You will discover within this book why so few have it and why it has eluded you. You will become aware, perhaps for the first time in your life, of the information that has shaped you, that is present every minute in your life, and that is guiding and directing you and the course of your relationship. That information has been guiding you sometimes well and sometimes poorly, but always inexorably.

You currently hold in your mind ideas about how to create a relationship. Most likely you are unaware that you hold those ideas. They were formed over the years as you experienced your own relationships and observed those of others. Perhaps your ideas about how to create a good relationship were passed down to you or you learned them from something you read, heard, or saw in a movie or on television. You will try to fit your current relationship or any new relationship into the framework of those ideas. But those ideas are based largely on misinformation. If that were not true, you would already have the relationship you are seeking.

Much of what you have read, heard, and seen in the media, while it may sometimes depict the relationship you are longing for, is misleading in describing how to obtain it or does not talk about how to get it at all. It’s like looking into a magazine of the lifestyles of the rich and famous and seeing their yachts, planes, mansions, and opulent standards of living but not being told how to unlock the portal to that world of affluence.

Not possessing the keys to the world of fulfilling, loving relationships will find you wandering around outside the invisible yet impregnable walls of that world, peeking into it in books, magazines, movies, television programs, your imagination, and an occasional conversation with the rare person you may meet who inhabits that world. What will allow you to enter the world of great relationships is living in accord with the simple but powerful Laws of Love. Understanding those laws and how to use them will provide you with new information—in-formation.

You can think of this in-formation as new ideas and concepts you will take “in” that will create a “formation” within your mind. That formation will cause you to think in a certain way about yourself and your relationship, and it will cause you to act in a certain manner with your partner.

You must come to this information prepared to remake yourself. In the eyes, heart, and mind of the one you love and who you want to love you, you will become, in essence, a new person. As you proceed through this book, you will see how you can bring together the Laws of Love to form a ritual of conduct, a way of being, that will bring beauty and endurance to your relationship and peace and harmony to your life and the lives of those around you. Love is what you are seeking and love is what you will feel and receive when you live in harmony with these laws.

HEALING WHAT’S OUT OF BALANCE

Here’s a little background on how I came to understand the Laws of Love. For many years, I’ve been a student of the world’s most ancient writings, especially ancient Chinese philosophy. Those teachings have survived thousands of years because of their immense practical value to people, and they have much to teach us about happiness, peace, and prosperity as well as how to create meaningful and enduring relationships. I have studied these concepts for more than forty years, have put them into action in my own life, and have written about them in other books. These principles are key to healing from the foundation up, which is how all true healing unfolds. Let me give you a parallel example.

The core concepts you will read about in this book are also an important part of what we teach at the Passages Addiction Cure Centers that my son Pax and I founded. People come to our centers from all over the world to be healed of their dependencies on drugs, alcohol, and addictive behavior. The ones who arrive at our door are usually in a poor state of mind. People don’t wake up in the morning feeling really good and having everything going right in their lives and say, “I think I’ll go to Passages today.” They come when the bottom has dropped out of their lives, when they are spinning out of control, when they have tried countless times to quit their addiction and failed, and when life has become a nightmare. In our daily work, we see every kind of relationship in every state imaginable—from relationships between spouses or significant others that are totally supportive, loving, and caring to relationships where spouses have just been kicked out of their homes and are under restraining orders not to go back or have just been served divorce papers.

At Passages we use a refreshing and innovative approach that has revolutionized the treatment of addiction and alcoholism. For decades, the American Medical Association has been declaring that alcoholism and addiction are diseases. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous the world over believe that those so-called diseases are incurable, giving rise to their slogans “Once an addict, always an addict” and “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” At Passages, we know that alcoholism and addiction are not diseases but merely symptoms of underlying conditions that have caused and are maintaining the various addictions. Neither are drugs or alcohol the problem. The use of drugs, alcohol, and other addictive behavior is what our clients were doing to cope with the conditions that were the real causes of their addictions.

In other words, we do not treat our clients for alcoholism or addiction; they are only symptoms. Instead, we help our clients discover and correct the underlying conditions that are causing them to self-medicate, to seek relief in substances and addictive behavior. The result of this approach is almost always an addiction-free life.

The same principle applies to healing relationships that are off track. A key to making breakthroughs in any situation in need of healing is to identify what’s unhealthy, what’s out of balance, and then get the information that will help you to cure that condition. The way to heal your relationship is to look for the underlying conditions in yourself and in your partner that have caused your relationship to go off track and then to seek out the guidance you need to heal yourself. The Laws of Love will give you that guidance. You’ll come to understand what’s happening below the surface. And you’ll learn how to correct what’s out of balance by adjusting how you treat yourself and your loved one and by adjusting how you react to the situations that come and go in your life.

When your behavior changes, all those around you, particularly those with whom you have close relationships, will change as a result of your new behavior. That’s because everyone responds to you as you are being at every moment. You can easily see that if you are regularly nasty to your loved one, it won’t be long before cause and effect sets in and undermines your relationship. The reverse is also true: if you are unceasingly caring and loving to your loved one and act with the Laws of Love in mind, you will be deeply loved in return and your relationship will thrive. That’s how Universal law works.

FIRST STEPS

Some of what you read in this book will be contrary to what you’ve come to believe about how to create a wonderful relationship. It may even outrage your common sense. Actually, it probably will outrage your common sense. That is to be expected. If it were not that way, this book would not do you much good. For the most part, what you are doing here is unlearning what you learned about relationships that is untrue and replacing it with what is true. As the Greek philosopher Antisthenes said, “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.”

When you come upon a concept in this book that outrages your common sense, before you scoff at it and discard it as unworthy, ask yourself, “Would I like that concept to be true?” Then ask yourself, “Will I give it the chance to be true?” Don’t make the mistake of relying on your rational mind or even what you think of as your common sense, because neither one of those has brought you the relationship you want. What you think of as your common sense in regard to relationships may be based on something you have come to believe that isn’t totally true or may not be true at all. Instead, take this opportunity to open your mind and heart to a new approach.

The goal you are undertaking is major and totally worthwhile. So before you go any further, get a highlighter or a pad of paper and a pen. As you read, highlight or underline sentences you feel are important to you or take notes. That way you will be able to go back through the book to see your highlighted items or review your notes so you can refresh your memory with what was most meaningful to you. Make sure you follow this important step. It is essential if you are to integrate these concepts into your life. The Laws of Love are interrelated, so you may find that several of the unfolding concepts overlap and cover some of the same ground but from a different angle. This is intentional and will help reinforce the change in outlook it takes to make the lasting changes you want.

One of the first steps on your new path is to start with a simple admission. Now, don’t be alarmed; this is easy. To begin to create change, you must first admit to yourself that something about the way you’ve been operating has to be incorrect or you would already be getting the results you want.

For you to absorb the new information you’ll be reading about here, you must first recognize and acknowledge that what you now know about creating a great relationship is, at least to some degree, not working and is based on misinformation. I’m not saying that you are wrong; I’m saying that some of what you have come to believe about creating a great relationship is wrong. I realize that’s the reason you are reading this, but you must also acknowledge to yourself that you don’t yet know how to do it.

So take a moment and say to yourself: “What I know about creating my perfect love relationship is in part incorrect and doesn’t work.” Do that now. Say it and mean it. It is not my intent to be confrontational, but it takes a certain emptying of your mind before you can put something new into it.

THE JOURNEY AHEAD

Get ready now for what could be the most important journey of your life. You are now on a path of discovery that will give you the information you need to create the relationship of your dreams. More than that, it will give you insights you can use to change your entire world so it more closely resembles the world in which you would like to live.

At the conclusion of your time with this book, if I have done my job and you have done your job, you will think differently, act differently, and see the world differently. You will have re-created yourself as a different person—a happier person, a person your loved one will be overjoyed to be with, or, if you are still searching for a partner, a person who will attract and hold your newfound love. You will also achieve your goals more easily, good things will naturally flow to you, and life will be easier because you will be living in accord with Universal laws rather than in opposition to them. Here, then, are the Laws of Love.

To those who have conformed themselves to The Way, The Way readily lends its power.

∼ LAO TZU (OR “OLD SAGE,” BORN LI ERH, SIXTH CENTURY BC)

Our world is governed by Universal laws, both physical and metaphysical (that is, beyond the physical). Those laws are unbreakable. They are also fixed—unchangeable. Every event, every circumstance, every situation, every manifestation of every part of nature and life unfolds only in accordance with Universal laws. By learning to live in harmony with those laws, you will discover the source of all health, all wealth, all happiness, and all joy as well as profound peace, assurance, and fulfillment in your relationships. The fact that there are laws that govern relationships should be a great comfort to you because once you know those laws, you can completely depend on them in every situation to accomplish your relationship goals.

LAW 1

UNIVERSAL LAW CONTROLS EVERYTHING

THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE WERE IN EFFECT BEFORE you were born, they are in effect now, and they will remain in effect long after the physical form you’re in now has been transformed and you have moved on in your journey through time and space. Universal laws are in action all around us and in us. In a vacuum, light travels 186,282.397 miles in one second—no more, no less. It’s a law of the Universe. You can depend on it.

Sir Isaac Newton, born in 1642, formulated the idea of gravity while sitting under an apple tree and seeing an apple fall to the ground. The short version of his concept is that every object in the universe exerts a physical attraction on every other object. The force of the attraction depends on the mass of the object and its distance from other objects. The smaller the mass of the object and the greater the distance from other objects, the less will be the attraction. The apple is attracting the earth to it and the earth is attracting the apple to it by virtue of the same gravitational force. The reason the apple falls to the earth instead of the earth rising to the apple is because the mass of the apple is very small compared to the mass of the earth. That’s a Universal Law, a law that has been represented in a precise scientific formula.

Day after day, year after year, Earth rotates around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, give or take a few miles per hour, and it is spinning around its own axis at just over 1,000 miles per hour. Our moon travels at a speed of 2,288 miles per hour as it travels around the earth in an ellipse (an oblong figure) that is 1,423,000 miles around. Everything moves in accord with fixed Universal laws.

You discovered both physical and metaphysical laws through trial and error. As a child, if you thought you could walk through a tree, you bumped your nose. If you thought you could fly and you jumped from a high place, the resultant pain as you crashed to the ground convinced you otherwise. You learned from trying to break physical laws just how unbreakable those laws were and always will be.

You learned about metaphysical laws in much the same way. If you treated your friends badly, you lost them as friends. If you lied a lot, no one trusted you. If you were thoughtful, loyal, and considerate, you were well liked.

PERFECT ORDER