it has taken me over a month to read this book. why? every page, every half-page, every sentence of this book made me stop and think. and no, I wasn’t looking up all the words to see what he meant- the language is precise and candid. none of the puritanical jargon one expects from academia although he does mention phenomenology , and none of the oversimplified patter often offered up by relationship gurus or other love pundits, either. just a clear, sane voice, illuminating love in a way that reveals both new things and things you already knew but took for granted. and, by illuminating love, it illuminated everything from conversations I’ve had to whole portions of my life in a new light.
it is a fabulous read. a life-improving read, no doubt.
I am not sure I can sum it up nicely… the book builds from the first page to the very end, and there are so many important details. I will try maybe quoting bits and pieces, to just give you a brief, kaleidoscope idea of it all. although looking at all the poor pages I dogeared for that purpose, I doubt I can quote from all of them.
oh, and yes, I must point out, this book is on romantic love. he does briefly contrast it against other types of love, but he focuses on what romantic love is and how/why it works.
...[L]ove is not a mysterious “union” of two otherwise separate and isolated selves but rather a special instance of the mutually-defined creation of selves. Who and how we love ultimately determines what we are. (24)
We too easily tend to conclude that great feeling constitutes love, and the greater the feeling, even if incapacitating, the greater the love. But this is dangerous nonsense. Feelings follow, they do not lead the psyche. They are the body’s attempt to keep up with the mind and its intentions. Feelings are not the whole nor even the measure of love. (81)
Perhaps this is also the place to say something about the familiar query, whether it is better to love or be loved. My answer, very quickly, is that to be loved is not an emotion or an experience at all. Without loving, it is at best a compliment or a convenience, often an unwanted obligation, and at worst a burden or a curse. It is loving that counts, and then being loved is the most important thing in the world. (85)
It is tragic and absurd that our idealized storybook romance should be so different and so detached from the real story of love and our conception of love should, consequently, be so divided into two wholly separate parts, one romantic and exciting but unrealistic and the other a dull tale of domesticity and endurance, devoid of the excitement that many of us now insist upon to make life worthwhile… The romantic story is all about the thrill of newfound love, but it is so filled with suspense and excitement or pathos that it cannot bear the weight of the future. “Forever” is thus an evasion of time rather than a celebration of it. The infinitely less romantic part of the story is about the formation and working out of a partnership, legally defined as such by marriage. It is a topic fit for accountants, advisers and counselors, in which the market virtues of honest and fair exchange and the business skills of negotiation and compromise are of great value… In other words, first there is the thrill, then there is the coping. (100-1)
Fantasy is an extension, an embellishment, an enrichment of reality, not an alternative to it. Fantasy should be opposed only to that dull, practical planning that is too often rationalized as “realism.” Love, like music, lives in the imagination, but it is no less real for that. (163)
The essential thing to remember is that it is the identity itself that is crucial to love and its lasting and not one or two of the dimensions that may contribute to it. Sex may hold love together for a certain period but then get superseded by less passionate shared experiences and roles which nevertheless bind love with no less success, and it is tragic that we should so often confine our definitions of love to sexual passion and ignore the fact that the bond of love may be equally served by any number of shared and reciprocal activities and attitudes. (238)
We have said a great deal about the creation of self, but the simplest formula for self-creation is that, insofar as we create ourselves, we do so by caring… Life has meaning not because of what we have or what we know or what we are “in ourselves” but because we care about something. (260-1)
Intimacy is an experience of mutual availability. It is not just openness of expression but an openness of the self to share and to change. (278)
The need to rethink the rules of love and reinvent love for ourselves is in fact one of the most powerful inspirations of love. Love thrives by being thought about; it is not just a feeling that goes on its way whether we pay attention to it or not. .... Love must be reinvented, but it is being so right now, by all of us, two at a time. (349)
I am sad all over again that I never got to meet him. I had the chance but as usual didn’t realize how short time is for us. I wish he were still in the world; it needs people like him, I think.
