a newer one »Artemis

The Sorrows of Love

Book Notes

I am a fan of The School of Life, their mission, and their products. I've bought a number of their books, and checked a few out from the library.

I was disappointed, however, to realize they publish their books with an aggressive, not-really-enforcable, you-can't-share-this-book license/understanding in the book, which comes shrink-wrapped so you don't know about this license until you've already bought the book. The published license is a "you can't sell, lend, or give away this book without asking us first" policy, which is just strange and off-putting.

That said, their ebook highlight and quote policy is fantastic, 15% instead of the usual 10% that most publishers use.

I am unable to reconcile the disconnect between the two policies.

That said, this book is amazing. I want to give a copy of this book to every person who is marrying. I want to buy a copy for anyone in a relation that could become a long term relationship. I want a copy of this in every eighteen year old's hands. I might feel the same way about The Sorrows of Work if I read it, but I haven't read it yet.

Anyway, this book lists ten aspects of love that one just doesn't consider when one is in an early part of eros / infatuation / hormonal / passionate / physical love. Yet when a relationship matures, it changes and becomes romantic or companionate or fatuous love, it rounds out into less passion and more depth. That change, however, can mean emptiness, loneliness, a misunderstanding about what a relationship should be. We believe the hormones and the fantasy about what long term relationships should be without knowing what a relation really is.

This book does a fantastic job at listing, describing, and explaining the mistakes in the fantasy about what long-term love is, what it looks like, how it feels, what it means.

It tells us that our struggles aren't special, we all feel them in a long term relationshop. It tells us that there is beauty in that long-term relationship, it just looks different than the hormonal relationship.

It tells us we are normal.

Sometimes we need that validation.

This book is potentially life-changing in its revelations. Let me buy you a copy.

If things go to plan, we tend to become something akin to monsters in love. As Romantic Realism attests, we are likely to be significantly less kind to our partner than to almost any other human on the planet.
Location 64

Asking someone to marry us turns out to be an impossibly demanding and therefore pretty mean thing to suggest to anyone we really want the best for.
Location 72

A crush represents in pure and perfect form the essential dynamics of Romanticism: the explosive interaction of limited knowledge, outward obstacles to further discovery, and boundless hope.
Location 113

Love begins with a hope of –at last –being able to tell someone else everything about who we are and what we feel. The relief of honesty is at the heart of the feeling of being in love.
Location 293

We must all die alone, which really means that many of our pains are for us to endure alone. Others can throw us words of encouragement, but in every life, we will at points be out on the ocean drowning in the swell while others, even the nicest ones, are standing on the shore, waving encouragingly.
Location 323

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