1.1 Yes, finally
It’s such a sweet idea—to ask more of love—so why wouldn’t you want to go for it? Why wouldn’t you want more love, and richer, and deeper, if you can get it?
Except I’m not talking about doing better at conventional love bit by bit. I’m talking about taking a quantum leap, and…
Upgrading love itself.
Which is…
As profound a thing as humans have ever done
And as big a challenge as we’ve ever taken on.
And it’s a double challenge.
First, if you decide you want to ask more of love…
You’re going to have to ask more of yourself.
A lot more.
That’s daunting enough. But there’s a second problem. This upgrade project has a dark side, and it can shake you to your core.
So…
I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into here.
No sugarcoating.
I’m going to start by telling you how this upgrade idea came to me and why I embraced it and made it the center of my life. That’s the happy part of the story.
But then I’m going to give you a warning, a warning that couldn’t be more serious. Because what this upgrade project reveals about the human operating system is damning.
I’m going to show you what I’ve discovered, for better and then for worse. And I’m doing this so you can make your own decision…
Do you want to take on this project?
Or…
Do you want to give it a pass?
Personally, I’m crazy about upgrading love. It’s given me what I was missing, it’s pulled my life together, it’s got me fighting for myself like never before, and that’s why…
It means the world to me.
But…
That’s me and it might not be you.
So please don’t let my enthusiasm sway you. What matters is that you keep asking yourself…
Will upgrading love give me blessings I want?
And then, crucially…
Will those blessings be worth the price I’ll pay for them?
No need to make your decision right now. This first chapter is designed to help you take the best possible care of yourself as you read through the rest of the book.
And the rest of the book is designed so you can get to know intimately what’s involved in this upgrade project because I want you to have a chance to…
Weigh the rewards against the challenges.
A chance to…
Test your yeses against your noes.
And then make the decision that’s right for you…
A decision you can relax into and count on.
Now let’s begin.
When I was a boy, my church taught me I was…
Unlovable.
Everybody was in on this. Not one person protested. Not the minister or my Sunday school teachers or any of the people around me in the pews. And not my parents. They went along with the church.
Most Christians believe they’re born sinners, that’s fundamental to the faith. But according to my church, which followed a bleak version of Calvinism, God’s judgement against us was something worse. We were…
“Totally depraved.”
And this was not a passing phase, it was…
Forever.
Even if God took me up to his heaven when I died, even if he took pity and granted me that mercy, I would still not be worthy of love. He would hold his nose as he saved me.
I was an obedient kid, so I took this lesson to heart—that it was just not possible for anyone to love me.
And there was…
Nothing I believed more deeply than this.
Yet…
Nothing troubled me more.
Which is why, as I grew up, I became obsessed with love. And why I found myself doggedly searching for a better kind of love…
A kind that might include me.
But year after year I failed, and defeat would have been the story of my life, except…
That troubled something in me did not quit.
What was it exactly?
An impulse to fight.
It pushed on me and kept pushing. It kept me in the game. It proved to be…
My saving grace.
But it was a very slow grace. For a long time, my fight remained mostly underground. Once in a while it would pop up and surprise me and then I’d do something very unlike my Calvinist self.
Where did this fight come from? More than anything…
Little kids want to be loved.
They want approval for sure, but even more they want to be…
Enjoyed.
They want the freedom to be who they are and at the same time, in spite of that, or better, because of that, they want to be a source of joy. They want to…
Fill the hearts of the people in their lives with happy exclamation points.
They want to be loved exuberantly not dutifully. This desire is not something they adopt after reading a self–help book, it comes built in.
But Calvinists, the ones I grew up with, were not fans of open–hearted, rambunctious little kids. They wanted their children to be proper good boys and girls, restrained and unemotional, with no need for affection. For example…
I don’t remember my mom or dad giving me a hug as a kid. When I came home for Christmas my first semester in college, I was determined to change that. I walked in the front door, set down my suitcase, and reached out to give my mom a hug. She got me in the chest with her elbow. I went for my dad. He froze until I let go.
My parents were diligent. They took very, very good care of us three kids. So what went wrong? Just one thing really. They grew up under a regime of emotional austerity in their childhood churches, and without thinking, passed that along.
Now let me fast forward to my mid–forties. I had spent years in therapy where I was diligent. I showed up every week without fail. And I learned good things, but not the things I needed in order to find love. None of my therapists were a match for how tough my defenses were.
My other hope was self–help books. Again, I was diligent. I devoured them by the dozen. And, again, I learned some good things, but none of those things went deep enough.
By going to therapy and doing that reading, I hoped I might prove that the people in my church were wrong about me. I hoped to change enough to overturn their condemnation.
This didn’t happen. Therapists are supposed to be the experts at fixing people, but I didn’t get fixed.
Self–help authors are supposed to be the experts at creating the life you want. And how can you doubt them? They’ve got followers galore crowding around them and singing their praises. But I tried everything they recommended and still I was failing at love, and still I was deeply unhappy with myself.
So here I was in mid–life, deep in despair. But then I got surprised.
I don’t remember anything else about that day, I don’t remember where this idea came from, but I do have a vivid memory of saying to myself…
Down underneath all this psychology fluff, there’s a hard core of biology.
In that moment, I decided that’s where the answer was. So I threw myself into the study of human evolution. Maybe this sounds like an odd thing to do, but I’m an odd one.
Evolution teaches us that we humans are developmental beings. Other animals rely on instincts, but we have to learn and grow and develop in order to become fully functioning adults. Some of this learning is fun, but some of it is hard work. Even painful work. Really painful.
Still, if we humans are developmental, that means…
Human love is developmental.
And if that’s so, then…
It’s possible for us to upgrade our love.
Which means…
We can make of love something way better than the default which evolution gave us.
And I started thinking maybe I should stop trying to make conventional love work for me and play a bigger game.
Then finally, thankfully, quietly this question came and settled in…
What if I ask more of love than I’ve ever asked of it?
And now I had a project, a life project, a mission, and…
This mission was me.
Like nothing else had ever been before.
And now…
I had an altogether different relationship with love.
Proactive and hopeful instead of defeated. Now I could be an explorer instead of a schlemiel.
I wanted better love for myself. I admit that came first. But my happiness put me in a generous mood, and I wanted better for everybody.
And soon I found myself becoming…
An advocate for love itself.
I became ambitious for it. I wanted to be its champion. I wanted love to be the best it could be…
For its own sake.
Very quickly I realized how much this upgrade project was going to ask of me. It was not going to be a walk in the park. It was not going to let me kick back and coast. But I didn’t care. I was getting what I needed, so my attitude was…
Ask away!
I was eager to do whatever I needed to do, no matter how difficult, because now I was fired up, with a new start and a new game plan. I found myself flying forward in my life and loving it, and that’s when…
I crashed into a series of hard truths, one after the other.
And…
They were ugly and depressing and not at all what I wanted.
Not at first.
