I Need Your Love - Is That True?

InLoving What Is, bestselling author Byron Katie introduced thousands of people to her simple and profound method of finding happiness through questioning the mind. Now,I Need Your LoveIs That True?examines a universal, age-old source of anxiety: our relationships with others. In this groundbreaking book, Katie helps you question everything you have been taught to do to gain love and approval. In doing this, you discover how to find genuine love and connection. The usual advice offered in self-help books and reinforced by our culture advocates a stressful, all-consuming quest for love and approval. We are advised to learn self-marketing and manipulative skillshow to attract, impress, seduce, and often pretend to be something we aren't. This approach doesn't work. It leaves millions of walking woundedthose who, having failed to find love or appreciation, blame themselves and conclude that they are unworthy of love. I Need Your LoveIs That True?helps you illuminate every area in your life where you seem to lack what you long for mostthe love of your spouse, the respect of your child, a lover's tenderness, or the esteem of your boss. Through its penetrating inquiry, you will quickly discover the falseness of the accepted ways of seeking love and approval, and also of the mythology that equates love with need. Using the method in this book, you will inquire into painful beliefs that you've based your whole life onand be delighted to see them evaporate. Katie shows you how unraveling the knots in the search for love, approval, and appreciation brings real love and puts you in charge of your own happiness. "Everyone agrees that love is wonderful, except when it's terrible. People spend their whole lives tantalized by loveseeking it, trying to hold on to it, or trying to get over it. Not far behind love, as major preoccupations, come approval and appreciation. From childhood on, most people spend much of their energy in a relentless pursuit of these things, trying out different methods to be noticed, to please, to impress, and to win other people's love, thinking that's just the way life is. This effort can become so constant and unquestioned that we barely notice it anymore. This book takes a close look at what works and what doesn't in the quest for love and approval. It will help you find a way to be happier in love and more effective in all your relationships. What you learn here will bring fulfillment to all kinds of relationships, including romantic love, dating, marriage, work, and friendship." Byron Katie From the Hardcover edition.

Byron Katie (she was born Byron Kathleen Reid, and everyone calls her Katie) discovered inquiry in 1986. Everything in this book comes from The Work of Byron Katie, her remarkable method for finding happiness and freedom. Katie has been traveling around the world for more than a dozen years teaching The Work directly to hundreds of thousands of people. In addition, she has introduced The Work into business settings, universities, schools, churches, prisons, and hospitals. Her website is www.thework.com, where you will find her schedule, articles about her, registration forms, and basic information about The Work.

From the Hardcover edition.

FOREWORD

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PREFACE

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INTRODUCTION

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Love is wonderful—except when we are searching for it, trying to hold on to it, or missing it.

Hours of every day are taken up with difficult, painful thoughts about our relationships.

This book introduces a way of relating that is much easier than our usual approach, and more effective.

Through its guidance and exercises, you will learn how to have a fulfilling love life, and you will find out how you can be in charge of your own happiness.

1. DO YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU THINK?

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Your most intimate relationship is the one you have with your thoughts.

The way you relate to your thoughts determines everything else in your life, and in particular how you relate to other people.

If you believe your stressful thoughts, your life is filled with stress.

But if you question your thoughts, you come to love your life and everyone in it.

2. QUESTIONING YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT LOVE

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Until you understand your thoughts, you aren't relating to people or to yourself; you're relating to concepts that you haven't questioned.

This is painful and isolating.

Chapter 2 gives you instructions for getting started in The Work, the process of inquiry that allows you to find out for yourself whether your thoughts are true for you and exactly how they affect your life.

The Work also gives you an experience of who you are without these thoughts.

Throughout the book we'll be inquiring into some painful and universally held thoughts about relationships, and we'll be finding out if they are really true.

3. SEEKING APPROVAL

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This chapter deals with one of the most painful thoughts about relationships—the thought that you have to win the love and approval of other people.

We inquire into this thought first by investigating how you live when you seek love and approval.

Several exercises are provided that allow you to make an amazing discovery: that the most universally held beliefs about what you need to do to be liked, loved, or appreciated are untrue, and that they lead to a false and stressful life.

The chapter also includes exercises that show you the relief and intimacy of being with other people without seeking their approval.

4. FALLING IN LOVE

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Why does it feel so good to fall in love?

Why do you think your experience of love is caused by your partner?

Why do you fall out of love?

This chapter includes an exercise that allows you to discover what your experience of love really is—an experience that doesn't disappear and doesn't depend on anything or anyone outside you.

5. PERSONALITIES DON'T LOVE—THEY WANT SOMETHING

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This chapter points out what happens when you form a romantic relationship based on a fictitious identity and a false concept of love.

It exposes the widely held myth that love is about getting what you want and having your needs met.

It also includes exercises that allow you to clearly see the difference between wanting and loving.

6. THE RELATIONSHIP WORKSHOP

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Chapter 6 gives you many examples of how relationship troubles disappear when you're willing to judge your partner mercilessly and then question your judgments.

7. WHAT IF MY PARTNER IS FLAWED?

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Apparent flaws in your partner are opportunities for self-realization.

What you see as a fact may be just another unquestioned thought.

The chapter ends with a conversation in Amsterdam that transforms a divorce into a love story.

8. FIVE KEYS TO FREEDOM IN LOVE

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If you believe that you absolutely need someone, that you couldn't make it without that person, that the people around you or life in general is failing to give you what you want, this chapter offers powerful ways to come to your own aid.

9. THE TRANSFORMATION OF A MARRIAGE

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The real-life story of a couple who saved their marriage through inquiry.

10. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE? COULD IT BE YOU?

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There's nothing left now between you and love except what you haven't resolved inside yourself.

This chapter facilitates the process of discovering what that is.

It shows you how to free yourself from what you're most ashamed of, what you can't forgive, what you still resent, what you want to hide, and any criticism you can't welcome with open arms.

11. LIVING IN LOVE

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What does love look like when it's not about seeking, wanting, and needing?

Excerpts from the accounts of hundreds of people who are living the discoveries that make up this book.

12. LOVE ITSELF

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A description of the experience of love when it is so firmly established in you that there is nothing outside it.

FURTHER TOOLS FOR INQUIRY

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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What is included with this book?

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I Need Your Love - Is That True?

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials