Kenny & Julia Loggins' recipe for lasting love ; the main ingredients: total honesty, commitment and a willingness to take responsibility for your feelings

Vegetarian Times, August, 1998 by Suzanne Gerber

Do you think people are scared by your suggestion that they can't control everything with their will?

Kenny: I hear it in songs all the time: I'm never going to give up, I'm going to stay here and fight this out... Gee, that sounds like a pleasant relationship. People think it's our force of will power that keeps our relationships together but that's really just a trick of the mind. Love should keep a relationship together.

Your approach to love is the antithesis of The Rules.

Kenny: Yeah, we howled when we saw them.

What do The Rules lead to?

Kenny: Divorce. Because you're building a relationship on a facade, you're not starting with the honesty of who you are; you're trying to make him think you're a particular type of woman that will make him attracted to you. The rules will only work if that's who you really are at your core: for example, a woman who never talks more than three minutes on the phone or has sex with a man before marriage.

Julia: The Rules is also all about control, and everything we're about is letting go of control.

Kenny: And trusting in a higher power. There's none of that in The Rules. Spirit has better rules and is going to take us someplace better. A woman came up to me when I was on the road and said, "If you told me those things you told Julia early on, I'd have left you." And I said, `Gee, I'm glad I didn't fall in love with you!' Then I asked her to take a look at where she drew the line in the sand with which truths her lover was allowed to say. If you really want a man who's vulnerable and open and honest with you, I told her, then you can't be making rules about the limits to that honesty. If you want someone who's going to share his heart with you, you have to be willing to let him share his fear. Otherwise, he gets the message that there are some things that just aren't okay, and he's going to protect you from everything he thinks you're afraid of. And then your fear is leading your relationship.

What are your biggest personal challenges right now?

Kenny: Making the time to be together and to be able to say to Julia, `Hey, I need you with me.' It's hard, because she's got this little baby who says I need you and a four-year-old who says I need you and I'm supposed to be the adult here, but the truth is, I need her too. I keep putting myself on the back burner, but I don't like being last in line.

Julia: Part of my growth right now is to learn how to have everything exist at the same time: my creativity, my relationship with my kids, my lover...

Kenny: Another for me is learning that she does come back--it's the same teaching we're giving the children. I'm learning by her gentleness and her willingness to just stand in my pain and hold me and say, I'll be back, even though I might be raging.

Kenny, do you consider your celebrity more of a gift or a burden?

Kenny: It's both! In some ways, it makes access to media easier and it piques people's interest. On the other hand, people do have a little resistance to the message cause I keep bumping into comments like, `What can this rock 'n' roller have to say about relationships?' People tend to type you, and since they have such a clean definition of me as a singer/songwriter, they don't want me to muck it up. I think some folks are afraid I'm going to drop the singing and become a "relationship guru," which is not what I want to be or what this is about. But I so want to incorporate my music and my message. I have a dream of us going out and speaking together to people who've come for the music and the message. We'll talk, then I'll do a couple of songs from Unimaginable Life with a whole band--an unscripted theater piece. In my head, this is happening in a Broadway theater.