Final Thoughts from Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks on Commitment and Love

Near the close of the conversation, Eric asked Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks if they had anything left they wanted to pass along before wrapping up.

Kathlyn, who goes by Katie, went first. She wanted to return to something they'd touched on earlier: how much commitment can do for a person. To her, committing is a way of gathering yourself and moving ahead. It hands you a route from wherever you happen to be standing to the place you actually want to reach.

Her advice for couples was direct. Commit to the relationship, and commit to what you want out of it. Everyone drifts away from that, she said, and the question is what you do once you notice. Instead of turning on yourself with criticism or pointing the blame at your partner, you recommit. You circle back to what you really want. That, in her experience, is what carries two people from here to there, and she added that you can enjoy the trip rather than grinding through it.

Gay picked up the thread with his own closing idea. He described love as the deepest kind of healing available to us. A relationship, he explained, eventually brings you to a spot inside yourself where loving is the only way to stay fully present with another person. He called that a small miracle built into the way life works. Whatever we most need to move through, life tends to hand us the exact instrument for getting through it.

Eric thanked the two of them for taking part in Psychology of the Future and for spreading word of the conference to the people who follow their work. He said he hoped audiences from other communities would discover what the Hendricks teach, and he promised to reach out again as soon as the call ended. Katie thanked him, and the three of them said their goodbyes.