00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 92, "Clean Love." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Alright, hello, my happy friends. Okay, so glad to be with you today. Alright, here we go. So it is March and I'm loving it, spring, spring, spring, can I just say it's my favorite time of year and this is why. Because I'm kind of an anticipatory kind of person, I love the anticipation better than a lot of times I actually love the event when it happens. I love all the work up to it and all the excitement looking to it and so spring, this time of year when it's just starting to change, when the sun is starting to feel a little bit warm, I love it so much because I know that I have an entire spring, summer, and fall to look forward to amazing, warm, beautiful weather. So I'm just excited about it, I love it so much. So I hope that you're enjoying your spring. I'm a couple weeks out on this so you'll get this a few weeks after me, but it is lovely outside. Still a little bit chilly, but getting lovely. 

01:25 

Alright, so I just want to remind you that I am doing free coaching calls, and if you would like to do a free coaching call, I would love it. I'm trying to get 300 done in this calendar year, which is a lot, a super lot. So if you thought that maybe coaching would be kind of fun to try, give me a try, give me a call. You can get on my website, tanyahale.com, and there's a button there for "contact me" and it will send you straight to a calendar where you can set up a time that we can get together. And I would love it because I love coaching so much. I enjoy it a lot and I think you would have a great experience with it. 

02:08 

So also if you have not yet signed up for my "weekend win" email, go ahead and do that. You can do that on my website as well. Just scroll down to the bottom of the first page and there will be a place for you to just put in your name and your email address. And every Friday morning, delivered to your inbox, is a short and quick little message. They're meant to be read in a minute or less, just to give you something to kind of chew on and go "huh, interesting. Let's think about that and see how that works in my life." So I just want them to be helpful. I want to just help you to get your headspace where it needs to be. 

02:43 

Alright, so here we are. Today we are going to be talking about a concept that I call "clean love," and this is one of my favorite ideas that I've been working on in my own life lately. And the reason I'm loving it so much is because I feel it is helping me to really start to move my repentance to a deeper, more internal level, seeing things that I'm engaging in at a very fundamental level of how I think rather than just on my behaviors. So let's talk about what clean love really is. 

03:16 

So I shared this idea with my daughter who's on a mission in Ecuador and she loved it and she shared it with her mission president who said something to the effect of, "it sounds a lot like unconditional love to me." Okay, so I will for sure give that to him. It does. But I love also that my daughter says that when she's reading the scriptures in English and then the same scripture in Spanish, it's amazing because the different translations create such different ideas. And this is what I feel when I call unconditional love, clean love. Unconditional love in my mind means that not only that there is no end to it, but also, and probably bigger in my mind, is that there are no conditions on it. The love just exists regardless of what the other person chooses to do. Unconditional love is entirely my choice and the other person doesn't have any say in it at all. I'm the only one who gets to feel the love anyway. They don't feel the love that I have. All the love is in my heart and they don't feel it at all. They get to be the recipient of my actions that come about by my feeling of love, but they don't feel the love, right? 

04:27 

And here's the space where for me, calling it "clean love" takes a sharp right turn, okay? I was always looking at unconditional love like pre-work to love. I loved someone because it was unconditional. I wasn't putting conditions on my ability to love them. I loved them even though whatever, right? So clean love brings an additional understanding to my mind in that it looks at what happens after I give the love. So it helps me to understand that there are no ulterior motives to my love. So not only do I love them regardless of whether they deserve my love in the first place, which is where I've always put unconditional love, but I love them without expecting anything of them on the back end either. I have zero expectations of the other person reciprocating in some way, and this is what I call clean love. So clean love means that there are no impurities, that it is spotless, that it is devoid of anything, but straight up 100% love. 

05:42 

So let me explain a little bit more what I mean by this. I found that over the years I have had a great tendency to really put conditions on my love, but not just conditions that if you behave a certain way then I'll love you. I think I've worked really hard at being more aware of loving even when I don't feel the other person "deserves it," right? Whatever it would mean that somebody deserves my love or doesn't deserve my love. I think that that's kind of a ridiculous comment. But the idea is that they get my love even regardless, right? That I give them my love. But in my mind, the love that I've been engaging in for years has been a little bit more nefarious kind of love. This tainted or unclean love that I was so freely giving was fraught with the idea that if I show love to them that they were required to act a certain way or say the right things or even feel the way I expected them to. This love that I engaged in for so many years was laced with manipulation and control. I loved and acted in loving ways because deep down I was trying to control or manipulate their behavior by making them feel beholden to me. 

07:04 

This is kind of what people pleasers do. People pleasers are trying to control or manipulate other people to make them feel a certain way. That is a whole other podcast, this people pleasing thing. So let's get back to this clean love though. If I just made you freaked out a little bit or upset or whatever, stick with me. So let's get back to clean love. So again, when my love is not clean, I find myself trying to control or manipulate somebody else's behavior by making them feel that I gave you this love, you give me this in return. 

07:44 

Now I get it, it seems a little bit sick that we would say that we are trying to manipulate or control other people. But I'll be honest with you, I think most of us are a little sick in the head. The thing is, I had no idea that I was loving this way. I was completely unaware that I was using loving behaviors to try and manipulate the people around me to behave a certain way. And I think this is where most of us are. Our primitive brains are always working out the best way to make things work out for us. It wants to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. And in doing this it says, very convincingly I might add, that everything should be balanced out. If I love then they should love in return. If I rub their back then they should rub my feet without me even having to ask them to. If I make dinner then they should be cleaning up. Our primitive brain seeks fairness and it will seek unfairness when it's to our advantage. 

08:49 

So if we're not being very very aware of what's going on in our minds, it can be really easy to love with an ulterior motive, to be completely unaware that we are loving in this way. So let me give you an example. So let's say that I invite my son over for dinner because, you know what? I love him and I want to spend time with him. But what if things are a little bit difficult with him right now? Clean love would say that I just really love him. I want to share a good meal with him. I want to reach out to him. I want to give something to make his life better. So now when I invite him over, but if I expect him to engage in conversation with me, when I expect him to offer to help the dishes afterwards, when I anticipate that he will see that my garbage cans need to be brought in from the curb, then my love is no longer clean. 

09:43 

Okay, now stick with me here, right? I know that many of you might be feeling a little bit uneasy here and saying that he probably should do at least one of those things, right? Because I'm bringing him over and I'm feeding him dinner. And for sure it would be nice if he did, but if he is doing the things because he is feeling pressured or manipulated into doing them, then all that is happening is that there will be resentment towards me building up in his heart because he's going to be feeling manipulated, right? When he engages in these behaviors of bringing in my garbage cans or engaging in conversation or helping with the dishes, I want him to engage in them because he's a good and thoughtful person, not because he feels like he owes me or because he thinks that I'll be angry if he doesn't. 

10:35 

In this way, I can also help him to connect with clean love through my example rather than feeling that love is something used to manipulate or control other people. As I look back on my marriage, I can see so many times that I loved or engaged in loving behaviors with ulterior motives. Somewhere in the back of my brain I was thinking, "if I do this, then he better do this," or "if I'm willing to sacrifice this, then he should be willing to sacrifice this other thing in return." And all too often there seemed to be a return policy on my love, a belief that I deserved something in return for the love I was extending. My love was being given not just because I was choosing to love, but because I was hoping for and even expecting something in return. In which case I have to ask myself, was I really giving love at all? Okay, so I'm going to say yes on that. I feel like I was giving love, but I'm also going to qualify that it wasn't clean love. But it was the love that I was capable of giving. It was all that I could figure out about how to get what I wanted from other people. And when asking doesn't work, some good old fashioned manipulation will work just fine, right? Okay, well, yes, unless we really care about the relationship. And then we need to start looking at our love and cleaning it up and getting rid of the control and the manipulation. 

12:16 

So let's look at some day-to-day examples here. So let's say it's Christmas and you buy your spouse a gift. And it's a nice gift, right? Do you have expectations attached to giving that gift? Are you expecting a gift of similar value or thought under the tree? Are you giving the gift just because you love your spouse or is there some element of wanting to get one in return? Okay, really think about this example. When our kids are tiny, we give them gifts without any expectation of them giving us a gift in return. And why is that? It's because it is clean love. It's not laced with expectations and demands that they give us something in return. We're not saying, "okay, I'm giving you this doll, but you better sleep through the night tonight," right? It's not laced with any of that. Our joy is found when we see their excitement. That is clean love, right? We don't expect anything back from them. 

13:23 

But it seems to change when we get older and the people that we're engaging with are older, right? When we give our spouse a gift. Often there can be an element of wanting to control their behavior, whether they give us a nice gift or not. And if they don't, then we see to it that they know that not getting us a nice gift wasn't the right choice. Meaning we don't let them forget about it for a very long time. We don't let them forget about it, right? So here's another example. We're dressed up for an event, getting ready to leave, and you tell your spouse, "wow, you look especially handsome tonight." At this point, what are you expecting? Are you expecting a return compliment? So ask yourself, did you give the compliment because you expected him to give you one in return? And if he just says "thank you," and grabs the car keys and heads for the door, what's running through your head? 

14:24 

When we see what thoughts we're thinking, we can begin to see if we have clean love or not. If we feel annoyed and are thinking, "what? You're not gonna tell me something in return," that he didn't return the compliment, then that's a good indication that we need to look at our love and see if it needs some cleaning up. It probably does. But if you find yourself not even noticing that he didn't return the compliment, you may find that your love is cleaner than mine, at least, right? Clean love will give a gift, a compliment, with zero expectation of getting something in return. 

15:04 

So let's talk about giving an apology. Let's say that you and your spouse just had a really tough couple of days, and after some soul-searching and struggling, you decide you need to extend an apology for the role that you have played in this standoff. So you do. You find a quiet moment, you approach with remorse, and you apologize to your husband for the hurtful things you said or did. And he says, "okay, thanks, I appreciate it." And that's it. What's your response? Okay, if you really apologize for a place of clean love, what do you think your response would be? Okay, now, tainted love would be expecting a return apology, or maybe even him taking full responsibility for the standoff, right? Clean love, however, extends the apology just because it loves. No expectations that the spouse will honor the return policy. Clean love is not trying to control or manipulate the other person into apologizing as well. 

16:14 

Okay, are you struggling with this, or is this making sense? It has taken me some time to really start to wrap my head around this thought. The first struggle for me was understanding the idea that love would be given as a form of manipulation or control, but I got through that one pretty quickly, okay? But the second part, learning to start seeing it in myself, took me a longer time because come on, no one wants to see themselves as a controlling manipulator. But once I acknowledge that some of my "loving" behaviors were fitting into this category, the more I begin to notice it and be aware of it. And though I don't like what I'm seeing, I'm also pretty excited about what I'm seeing, because now I can begin to clean up my love so that I can have stronger, healthier relationships with the people in my life. 

17:07 

And this is the kind of love that I believe in the scriptures is referred to as "charity." Think about how God and Christ love us with a pure, clean love. Their love is extended to us always, regardless of what we've done, and even if we fail to notice it. Even when they give us gifts and we don't say "thank you" or we don't try to live better, nothing in their love has any expectation that we will return with anything at all. Their love does not try to manipulate us into behaving better. It does not try to control how we will respond or what we will give back to them. Their love is just given freely, openly, and honestly. It is not withdrawn when we don't obey the commandments. It's just there, and it always stays there. 

18:07 

This is the beauty of clean love. When a person doesn't live up to our expectations, our love is still there. Well, first of all, clean love's not going to have expectations, right? It's just going to love. Our love is just there. It's just happy to exist for the sheer pleasure of what it creates in us. We find great joy in this love. It is love coming from a place of light rather than a place of darkness. 

18:37 

So I've alluded to this idea before of how everything in our life can come from the light or from the dark. Clean love is light love. It is unconditional love. It is Christlike love. It is charity. And getting to this place of love in our lives takes time. It takes patience, awareness, and persistence. We don't just have this insight and then boom, there it is. Now I've got clean love. Right? Realize especially that if you've been loving with tainted love for a long time, these ideas are ingrained into your primitive brain and they are deep. And our primitive brain doing what it does best will try to run the show behind the scenes without your conscious acknowledgement. Our primitive brain is amazing like that. This is why you can put on and tie your shoes without any conscious awareness. You'll be walking out of your bedroom door and you don't have one idea or thought about how you got those shoes on your feet. Because our primitive brain is working hard to conserve energy. 

19:41 

And one way it conserves energy is to automatize our thoughts, our feelings, and our behaviors. This means that if you've been extending tainted love to people in your life, which I believe most of us have, that your brain will go to a place of doing it so quickly that the deed will be done before you're even aware of it. And guess what? That's okay. Because once you notice that you've done it, you've made your first step into awareness. And once it's part of your awareness, you'll start seeing it more and more. And the more you see it, the more you can engage with it and start really looking at it. And the more you do this, the more you will start to clean up this love. It's just a process. If we could all notice when we're doing something that we don't want to do, and then we just changed it, we would all be translated and perfect by the time we were 10. Right? We would see things, change it be done, but that is not how this life works. 

20:43 

The purpose of life is to teach us to gain control over our bodies and our brains, our primitive brains, are part of our bodies. Our brain is part of what our spirits need to learn to have control over. Learning to manage our brains is a huge part of our mortal existence. So please be patient with yourself. Awareness is the first step, right? Just becoming aware of this concept, if it's new to you, is a first step. And then being willing to look at your love and really figure out how clean it is, is an incredibly brave step right there. Give yourself credit for being here on this podcast, for being willing to look at your life from a new perspective. Stepping into growth takes a lot of courage and strength, and here you are, showing up week after week. You should be very proud of yourself for being willing to go into these places and try and see things and try and figure this out. So look at it, figure it out, become aware of it, and start loving from a clean place and see the difference it makes in your life and in your relationships. We can't ever go wrong with clean love. I promise you that. 

22:08 

I love growing up. Love the insights, I love figuring it out, I love understanding how to have better relationships with others and with myself. This is brilliant work, I love it, and I would love to work with you, right? If you want some personal help, contact me, set up an appointment, let's do this, all right? Let's start moving you into a better place and help give you more mindful awareness, okay? This coaching gig is pretty darn awesome. I love when I work with my coach. I love the insights that I get. I love that she helps me to see my thoughts and learn how to start managing my mind much more clearly. Okay.  Is it an investment? For sure. It's an investment in time. It's an investment in money and it's an investment in energy. But so worth it to get to a place. I'm looking at another 40 or 50 years of a better life because I'm learning and implementing these things. And that's brilliant. And that's exciting to me. 

23:14 

Alright. Okay. If you love this, please share it with somebody else. Let's make this move. And I just hope that you have a really, really terrific day and that you see ways that you can start cleaning up your love. Clean love is the way to go. Right? Okay. Love you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And I wish you all the best. Have a terrific day. Talk to you next time. Bye. 

23:40 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!