5 Books on Love that Could Transform Your Relationship
These five books explore aspects of love through lenses of anger, masculinity, family systems, and the body, along with its familiar joys and pains.
In Western culture, romantic love is a fantasy, a fairy tale. We’re often told we simply need to meet “the one” and everything will fall into place for our happily ever after.
But the truth is, love with a partner takes work; it’s a practice. It’s also a mirror. Love tends to show us to ourselves in various lights—some more flattering than others. Many of us struggle with love because the models we grew up with, including our parents or what we saw on TV, were unhealthy, unhappy, or simply untrue.
It’s never too late to learn about love and to learn about ourselves in love. Whether we’re happily or unhappily single, dating, or in a long-term relationship, the following resources can give us some essential food for thought in deepening our relationship to love, to ourselves, and to others.
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
All About Love: New Visions is a beautiful, thoughtful book by the feminist cultural critic bell hooks. It is the first book I came across that looked at love from a critical perspective, considering what it means not only internally, but also in terms of the systems it is connected to, such as patriarchy and white supremacy. Hooks writes about her deep desire for true love and her experiences trying to achieve and understand it. Though some may consider it a self-help book, she doesn’t really give any tips or even claim to be speaking from a place of having figured it all out. Rather, it’s an exploration (and a celebration) of love, its joys, and its pains.
The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner
This 1985 book remains so powerful and relevant that I recommend it to almost all my counseling clients. In it, Lerner reframes anger as a necessary and valuable emotion, particularly for women, whose anger has been suppressed and repressed in a society that prefers them to be small and quiet. She teaches how anger can be a tool for self-understanding and communication, and how it can actually deepen intimacy and authenticity rather than pushing others away (depending on the situation, of course). I must have read it three times in a row because it felt so revolutionary to me.
I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression by Terrence Real
Terrence Real is a therapist who has written several books on intimacy and love, often focusing on men and boys in particular. I Don’t Want to Talk About It explores men’s covert depression. While that may not seem like an obvious topic when exploring romantic love, it is vital reading for men and anyone who wants to love them. Real explains the way patriarchy has oppressed and suppressed men’s vulnerability, which lead to common relationship problems. Reading this book will help anyone better understand what men are going through and, maybe, how to love them in the way they need.
No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D
Dr. Richard C. Schwartz is the founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a style of therapy that understands the mind in terms of various “parts” that protect the core Self. Though these parts can act in ways that are maladaptive, Dr. Schwartz explains that they are always trying to help. His central idea is that there are no bad parts; even those parts tied to addiction, illness, harmful behaviors, or pain have their place in the internal family system.
Reading this book is an exercise in radical compassion. Schwartz invites us to view ourselves from a loving perspective and be able to understand every part of ourselves—even the ugliest, most distasteful parts. When we can do that, we get much better at loving others—and letting them love us in return.
The Body is a Doorway: A Memoir: A Journey Beyond Healing, Hope, and the Human by Sophie Strand
Sophie Strand’s memoir of her experience living with chronic illness isn’t a traditional story of romantic love. She shares her unique worldview and how she sees her identity as being intimately intertwined with what she calls the “more-than-human” world, made up of plants, animals, fungi, even the mold that invades our houses. She lives in relationship with everything that exists, including the devastating illness that has repeatedly threatened her life.
In Strand’s telling, even the most mundane things hold special meaning: dirt becomes a form of medicine, while black mold acts as a friend that helps her see the toxicity of her romantic relationship with another human. She also explores the idea of being in an intimate relationship with something other than a human: a place, a lake, a field. It is an unconventional love story, but a beautiful one worth spending some time with.
by Julie Peters
