8 Rules of Love: How to Find it, Keep it, and Let it Go

“This book is different because it’s not about finding the perfect person or relationship and leaving the rest to chance. I want to help you intentionally build love instead of wishing, wanting, and waiting for it to arrive fully formed. I want to help you deal with the challenges and imperfections we encounter on the journey to love. I want you to create a love that grows every day, expanding and evolving rather than achieved and complete.”

Shetty suggests actively building love with the goal of addressing problems in healthy and purposeful ways. He wants people to prepare for love, practice love, protect it, and perfect it with intention, instead of expecting it to already be perfect. He proposes a type of relationship that is constantly “growing” and “evolving.” This also relates to the book’s theme of Learning and Emotional Growth.

“Love is not about staging the perfect proposal or creating a perfect relationship. It’s about learning to navigate the imperfections that are intrinsic to ourselves, our partners, and life itself.” 

Expecting a perfect relationship or partner is unreasonable. Shetty uses an anecdote about attempting the perfect proposal with his wife that went wrong and neglected her desires. The book explains how to accept the “imperfections” in a relationship, partner, or oneself that will inevitably arise. Life is not perfect, and relationships and people aren’t either.

“We must use the time when we are single or take time alone when we are in a couple to understand ourselves, our pleasures, and our values. When we learn to love ourselves, we develop compassion, empathy, and patience. Then we can use those qualities to love someone else. In this way, being alone–not lonely, but comfortable and confident in situations where we make our own choices, follow our own lead, and reflect on our own experience–is the first step in preparing ourselves to love others.” 

Solitude is key to preparing for a relationship, and Shetty also argues that time alone during a relationship is important. Self-understanding can only occur when people have time alone to learn about themselves and learn qualities like compassion and empathy toward themselves, which they can then give to others. They are then better prepared for a relationship. They also learn a confidence in solitude that differs from loneliness, which is a discomfort with solitude and reluctance to be alone.

“The difference between loneliness and solitude is the lens through which we see our time alone, and how we use that time. The lens of loneliness makes us insecure and prone to bad decisions. The lens of solitude makes us open and curious. As such, solitude is the foundation on which we build our love.” 

People perceive their alone time through two lenses: loneliness and solitude. Loneliness is a fear and insecurity about being alone, which impacts people’s romantic decisions, and solitude is a comfort and confidence with being alone, a security in oneself that aids in better decisions about potential partners and relationships. This relates to Rule 1, “Let Yourself Be Alone,” which guides people from loneliness to solitude through a path of being present with themselves, accepting discomfort when being alone, and gaining confidence. 

“Frida Kahlo said, ‘I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone.’ What is a self-portrait but a study of oneself—an attempt to visually portray self-awareness? Solitude allows us to understand our own complexity. We become students of ourselves.” 

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo spent a lot of time alone, as she was confined to a bed due to chronic pain and illness. During that time, she painted 55 self-portraits. Solitude places a mirror up to an individual, creating self-awareness or a type of self-portrait. People can only find true self-awareness when they have the chance to be alone with themselves and their thoughts, thus discovering and understanding themselves. 

“Every action produces a reaction. In other words, your current decisions, good and bad, determine your future experience. People think karma means that if you do something bad, bad things will happen to you, like someone breaks up with you because you broke up with someone else. But that’s not how it works. Karma is more about the mindset in which we make a decision.”

Shetty describes a “karma cycle” that involves what he calls “impressions,” or past events and ideas that impact current choices. These impressions can be superseded with new impressions so that people can make better choices. Shifting the focus of karma from consequences to mindset helps people see their relationships—past and present—more objectively, rather than look for connections that aren’t really there.

“If there is a gap in how our parents raised us, we look to others to fill it. And if there is a gift in how our parents raised us, we look to others to give us the same.”

The karma cycle includes impressions people obtained as children from parental models. These involve absences or needs that their parents could not meet, along with gifts from parents that impact the positive qualities people seek in a relationship. Both influence relationships and people’s perspectives of them.

“It’s also not uncommon in this phase to expect our partners to read our minds, to understand us as soon as we speak, and to agree with us. We expect them to channel our emotions and desires, to select the gift we crave, to intuit how we want to celebrate our birthday, what we want for dinner tonight, how much attention we want, how much space we need. But creating something together is better than wanting the same thing. How you handle your differences is more important than finding your similarities.” 

This quote refers to the dreams phase of the four phases of love in Rule 3 (“Define Love Before You Think It, Feel It, or Say It”) and the false expectations people have of their partners, particularly expecting partners to understand them completely without communication. In this phase, partners learn how to handle these false expectations and dreams by creating routines and schedules to allow their relationship to develop.

“Sometimes we assume trust is binary: either we trust someone, or we don’t. But trust increases gradually through actions, thoughts, and words.”

The fourth phase of the four phases of love emphasizes trust and building it through behavior, thinking, and the language used with each other. Accepting that trust is a slow process, rather than viewing it as either present or absent, helps partners build that trust.

“To experience all that relationships have to offer means facing the challenges and rewards of every stage of love. Sometimes people jump from relationship to relationship because they’re trying to avoid the challenges that love requires. You could date someone new every three months and have a lot of fun. But there is no growth in the cycle of just flirting, hooking up, and ditching. It is this ongoing growth and understanding that helps us sustain the fun of love, the connection of love, the trust of love, the reward of love. If we never commit, we’ll never get to love.”

This quote relates to the theme of Learning and Emotional Growth and describes the emptiness of dating without growth, which Shetty argues occurs when people cycle through several short-term relationships, and the true growth that comes from addressing relationship challenges. People must recognize that they will encounter problems, but also benefits, in different relationship stages. The work involved in a relationship impacts its strength, and then a person can love fully. This quote advocates for commitment as important for growth and loving fully, a view that supports Shetty’s mainstream perspective of relationships as moving through stages like those of a relationship escalator.

“A guru offers guidance without judgment, wisdom without ego, love without expectation. Being a guru doesn’t mean imparting wisdom [...] but it does require patience, understanding, curiosity, creativity, and self-control.”

Rule 3, “Your Partner Is Your Guru,” discusses how partners can act as a guru to each other. Here, Shetty stresses how a guru is an open-minded and non-judgmental teacher who is a guide, rather than someone who only communicates knowledge.

“Wanting to help our partner should not be confused with wanting to control our partner.”

When discussing a partner’s role as a guru in Rule 3, Shetty cautions that acting as a teacher to one’s partner is not about controlling them or expecting them to act the same way the teacher would. Controlling a partner leads to decreased autonomy and equality. Part of being in a relationship involves providing support and allowing for each partner’s autonomy, related to the theme of Autonomy, Equality, and Partnership.

“When you meet someone, you start cowriting with them. The stories intertwine. In the Vedic scriptures, this is described as your karma being intertwined, but not your soul. I think of this as cowriting your karma together. Karma is the activity in your life, but your soul is your identity. You might change and grow together, mixing your karmas, mixing the energy of two families and two communities, but don’t lose your identity.”

Co-writing a story with a partner means creating a story together that also supports each partner’s separate identity. Too often, people intertwine their stories to the point that they lose their individual identities. When perceiving a relationship as co-writing karma, people can see how co-writing involves actions or activities, while their identities, or souls, remain fixed. This relates to the Hindu concept of the separation between the soul and the body. One can think of the soul as each individual’s identity and the body as the relationship itself, separate from each other but related.

“We have heard people say of couples, ‘They grew apart,’ but we never say, ‘They grew together.’ Yet if we are not growing apart, that is most likely what we are doing—quietly but surely helping each other observe, learn, and grow in all directions.”

This quote correlates with the theme of Learning and Growth. It points to a common reason for breakups: growing apart. It then demonstrates that there is a flip side to that cliché: People can actually grow together. Those in relationships should realize and acknowledge that this occurs.

“Your dharma is a journey, not a destination. It can take a long time to find ways to best extract meaning, joy, and fulfillment from your pursuits. As long as a person is pursuing their purpose, they’re already living it.”

The book views dharma as purpose, while traditional Hinduism treats it as a duty or ethics. The book’s definition centers purpose, rather than a duty or obligation, to show partners how they can appreciate and support each other’s goals even if they change. Rule 5 describes how dharma begins the cycle of “fundamental pursuits” in the Vedas, which moves from purpose to money and work, to pleasure and relationships, to freedom from material things and a spiritual connection. Perceiving dharma as a journey removes goal-oriented thinking and demonstrates how purpose is a lifelong passion. The pursuit itself is the purpose.

“Helping each other fulfill your purposes is so central to the success of a relationship that in the traditional Vedic wedding ceremony it’s the final vow.”

Shetty connects purpose to Vedic principles by describing its reference in Vedic wedding ceremonies. Purpose, and supporting each other’s purposes, is key to a relationship, part of combining their autonomy and partnership. The link between Vedic principles and love underscores the book’s overall goal to apply these principles to relationships.

“When you’re part of each other’s growth, you don’t grow apart from each other.”

This quote demonstrates how growth strengthens a relationship, particularly being involved in each other’s growth. This also means involvement in each other’s lives. People who grow apart tend to become less connected as time passes. Being connected with each other’s growth includes self-growth through each other’s separate purpose, supporting one another’s individual growth, and relationship growth.

“When we take a neutral role, we remind ourselves that the problem isn’t our partner. It is something we don’t understand about them and something they don’t understand about us. Solving this puzzle will benefit both of us. If you are looking out for yourself and your partner equally, then you can be confident in your actions.”

This quote relates to conflict resolution and proposes seeing a problem from a neutral perspective and something to solve, instead of an issue with one’s partner. A problem is a misunderstanding, miscommunication, or issue to tackle together. Seeing the problem in this way removes the tendency to see one’s partner as at fault, emphasizes the benefits in solving the problem, and puts both partners on equal ground.

“The Bhagavad Gita spends seven verses talking about the indestructibility of the soul: ‘That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul. The soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind. This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. It is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable, and eternally the same.’” 

This quote relates to the Hindu concept of the separation of the soul from the body. The book quotes a passage in the Bhagavad Gita to connect the concept to one’s identity during a breakup, an identity that does not disappear when a relationship ends. The body is the relationship, but the soul and one’s identity live on, even when a partnership ends.

“I want you to recognize that when your relationship crumbles, you are not what’s breaking. Your soul doesn’t end. Your expectations of your partner are breaking. What you thought you were building with them is breaking. What you had together is breaking. That’s where the hurt comes from. But you have not lost your purpose. You have not lost yourself. Something is breaking, but you are not that something.” 

A breakup means an end to a relationship but not an end to an individual. One’s soul, or identity, continues on after a breakup, as does one’s purpose, which connects to identity. What ends is the relationship and one’s expectations of a partner, and that is why breakups are painful. 

“Instead of expecting love, we have to find ways of expressing love. We’ve been taught to believe that the only way you can experience love is when you receive it, but the Vedas say you can feel love anytime you want simply by connecting with the love that is always within you. In the Vedic point of view, we don't need to find love, build love, or create love. We are wired to love and be loving.” 

Shetty contends that most people have been taught to receive love rather than give it. He shows that they can tap into the experience of love by offering their love to others, including those beyond a romantic relationship. People are meant to love others, according to the Vedas. 

“You’ve been a student of love, and now you’re a steward of love.” 

Shetty reminds people that now that they have learned Love as a Practice, they can share their love with anyone through service to those in their community. Rule 8, “Love Again and Again,” broadens the concept of love from previous chapters to people’s wider circle of family, friends, co-workers, the community, and the Earth. Service is a key practice in the Hindu tradition, and the Sannyasa ashram emphasizes serving others and the divine.

“Try to love someone for the spark in them, not what surrounds them.”

When trying to love a difficult person in one’s life, Shetty suggests loving them for what is inside them. He proposes that the negative qualities that are more apparent on the outside are less important than internal qualities. He focuses on difficult family members in this section of Rule 8, an issue many people encounter.