Love Sense Book Review
After reading “The All or Nothing marriage”, I saw several comments on Goodreads that “Love Sense” by Sue Johnson is a better read on the same topic, so I checked it out. My thoughts are that the comments were correct, “Love Sense” is a MUCH better read on pretty much the same topic. Whereas “The All or Nothing Marriage” spends a lot of time on the history, needs, and philosophy on Marriage, Love Sense just jumps right into the topic of “This is why romantic relationships fails, and these are some of the things you can do to keep things working”.
The basis of her actions is mostly based on the theory of attachment theory, which in summary is that we need secure emotional attachments to flourish. She quotes quite a bit of research into a lot of her action-based things you can do to keep your relationships strong, and gives quite a few examples of what works and what doesn’t work. There are quite a few exercises she gives to make your relationships stronger, but one problem is that it really works well if the couple in a relationship has read the book and willing to do it. If only one person has read the book, you can probably listen with more empathy and depth, but might still feel left out.
There’s also quite a lot of theories in the book about how pornography and plastic surgery has increased the lack of connectiveness between couples, although I think the jury is a bit out on that one. Her section on how humans are wired for monogamy is probably a generalization as well, monogamy/polygamy is as much social and economic as it is anything else. There might be some biological basis for it, but that’s a bit like saying we are wired towards violence because that worked in the distant past. Its probably 100% true, but it doesn’t really help in our complex modern society.
Overall, I do highly recommend this book for people in a relationship, married folks, and people not in a relationship. I think if you’re not in a relationship, finding someone else who’s also read this book might be a good filter as to whom you want to be in a relationship with.
The ideas in the book are really ideals of what you’d like your ideal relationship to be in, so I think as a conversation piece with a potential date, its really good. Anyhow, its a short read, and the audiobook version is lovingly narrated by the authoress.
Recommended.