The Romantic Love Question and Answer Book
A tedious way to learn about one of life's headier subjects. Psychologist Nathaniel Branden and his wife run the usual sort of self- and relationship-fulfillment workshops, and he also wrote The Psychology of Romantic Love, The Psychology of Self-Esteem, etc. Both those works are quoted so extensively here that one can make do without this spinoff. Romantic love is defined - conventionally, too - as a "passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment" that presupposes a high regard for the other person's value. Categories of questions range from the general - what it all means, what it requires of us - to the more specific: communication, marriage, work, sexual intimacy, jealousy, old age, etc. Within that framework the Brandens lecture, pontificate, and theorize, with illustrations from their workshop couples or from their marriage. Their point of view? You have to love yourself - and be "selfish," in the best of senses, before you can commit yourself fully to another. Romantic love and sex go hand in hand to such an extent that it is difficult (never do they say impossible) to have one without the other: having children, however, is not essential to the fulfillment of romantic love. Compromise, active, sympathetic listening, etc., are the key to keeping love alive. Old stuff in a particularly stuffy format. (Kirkus Reviews)--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.