Love and Relationships

Self-concept is Destiny

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I met her when she came to a workshop I was conducting on “Self-esteem and the Art of Being.”

She was thirty-two years old, pretty, and worked as a receptionist in a law firm. Early in life she had decided that she knew what she was—“a bad girl.” How else could she explain the endless screaming reproaches of her mother, and the emotional coldness of her father, and a home that lacked any trace of love, affection, or kindness? As an adult, she supported the claim that she was a bad girl trough sexual promiscuity, and an inability to remain faithful to any lover or boyfriend.

I met him at the same self-esteem workshop as the one where I met her.

He was thirty-five, athletic, and worked as an artist in an advertising firm. He had come to the United States from Norway.

Months later—when he became a therapy client—he More >

Newsweek Interview: Is Romance Dead? A new book offers advice for sustaining love in an ‘anti-romantic age.’

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Newsweek: Selfishness isn’t usually the word we use to describe love.

Of all the nonsense written about love, none is more absurd than the notion that ideal love is selfless. To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.

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The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age

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“The passionate attraction between man and woman that is known as romantic love can generate the most profound ecstasy. It can also generate, when frustrated, unutterable suffering. Yet for all its intensity, the nature of that attachment is little understood. To some, who associate “romantic” with “irrational,” romantic love is a temporary neurosis, an emotional storm, inevitably short-lived, which leaves disillusionment and disenchantment in its wake. To others, romantic love is an ideal that, if never reached, leaves one feeling as though one has somehow missed the secret of life….

“I do not see romantic love as the prerogative of youth. Nor do I see it as some kind of immature ideal, inappropriately adapted from literature, that must crumble in the face of “prac­tical reality.” I do see romantic love as requiring more of us, in terms of our personal evolution and maturity, than we generally appreciate. Indeed. that is More >

In Defense of Romantic Love

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“Romantic Love” evokes associations of valentines, violins, and soft music and knights in shining armor—for some people.For others, it raises the question “Aren’t we too sophisticated for that today?”

It is unfortunate that a few popular symbols of what people like to call “romance” have replaced the psychological reality of romantic love. We need to think more deeply than that. Valentines and violins have nothing to do with the essential meaning of love between a man and woman (as I conceive them in “The Psychology of Romantic Love”).

And no, if we want to speak of sophistication, we are not too sophisticated.We are not sophisticated enough.The error is already evident in the use of the term “sophistication.”In this context, it is a frivolous word.

“Sophistications,” in the modern world, is often the last refuge of people who are simply frightened of passion, devotion, and commitment.

Many people are so naïve More >

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