Nine Books to Read Front, Back and Sideways Before You Tie the Knot
Actually, before you start swiping.
Far too many people mistake attraction for love. Lust for intimacy. We all do it. Some of us do it repeatedly, and some of us want to stop the pattern, figure out what’s going on, and choose healthier relationships that add to our growth as adults, and find out why we attract the partners we attract.
You may not want to hear this next sentence because you won’t be able to unhear it once you do: We are most attracted to a person based on the parent we didn’t get enough from during childhood.
Learning about yourself and the relationships that draw you in determines long-term happiness.
Here are seven books that will help you do just that.
Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D.
Getting the Love You Want makes sense of why people are drawn to each other and that basically, we are all fundamentally drawn to someone that we are incompatible with — this is true for all of us. This book explains why. We will always be drawn to a partner who can heal our childhood wounds. It also explains why you argue with that person.
Disclaimer: The next paragraph you can’t unlearn after you read it. If you want to be fully enlightened, continue. If not, skip — ignorance is bliss for a reason.
Most body sexuality is the sexualization of trauma. The pattern of the person we desire is often very similar to the pattern of the parent we most couldn’t obtain — their personality patterns, interactive patterns with us, behavior patterns.
In that case, sexual energy will go anywhere. It will attach to anything.
That is why people find themselves getting sexually aroused by all sorts of ‘strange’ stuff.
Because sexual energy flying loose will go anywhere — it will attach to anybody.
It will attach to someone who solves the problem of childhood. And often why we are attracted to someone not necessarily good for us in the long term but because we’re trying to solve the problem of childhood.
Let’s say you had an overbearing, critical parent whose love was conditional and placed you in the position of “never good enough.” In adulthood, you repeat the pattern by attracting to you an overbearing, critical partner to remedy your childhood trauma. Many times these negative behavior patterns don’t surface until after marriage. Because marriage is the ultimate act of intimacy.
We try to make a relationship work with a person. We couldn’t get close to that parent then, so we try to resolve it now with the partner we’ve chosen that most resembles that parent.
You enter into a sexual relationship with a person (usually not knowing these deeply unconscious triggers), and very soon, the lust fades. It evaporates, usually after you’ve made the most intimate move — marriage.
The sexualization of the trauma is not sufficient to maintain a relationship.
The sexual part is short-lived because you are reenacting childhood trauma with this person, and it’s why relationships fail.
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Ether Perel
Esther Perel is a therapist, author, speaker, and creator of the award-winning podcast Where Should We Begin?
I devoured this book in one sitting. As the brilliant title suggests, this book is about maintaining desire in long-term relationships.
When Mating in Captivity came out in 2006, it was only “the sexologists” that thought it was great. Her thinking went against long-established relationship wisdom, namely that if you fix the relationship through talk therapy, then the sex will fix itself. Perel does not agree. She says that, yes, this might work, “but I worked with so many couples that improved dramatically in the kitchen, and it did nothing for the bedroom. But if you fix the sex, the relationship transforms.”
I believe this also. I think sex between two people is essential for a healthy, happy relationship to thrive. When there is no sex, every problem is magnified. Thus, we must take desire seriously.
For desire to remain, there needs to be a space between couples. Too much togetherness can hurt intimacy and get in the way of closeness.
Dr. Perel explains,
When intimacy collapses into fusion, it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex.
I’ve read this book a few times. It is fascinating.
The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity by Esther Perel
I can’t get enough of Esther Perel’s work. She is so good at understanding love and long-term relationships, and where they fail, she deserves two slots on this list.
Perel has been a couples therapist for over 20 years and understands infidelity, why people cheat, the pain it causes, and the inherent difficulty of maintaining desire in monogamous relationships.
Perel gives direction in ways to navigate those opposing ideas.
Love needs closeness. Desire needs space.
One question Perel parses, again and again, is, can we desire something we already have?
Perel writes from a place of non-judgment. I like her work because she considers cultural differences in understanding monogamy, love and how other countries wrestle with infidelity and monogamy.
Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment by Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., and Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D.
A friend and relationship coach recommended this book to me. This book has been around for decades and is still well-read and recommended by therapists.
Most couples enter into a relationship without spoken agreements, but lots of unspoken ones. When you don’t have an expressed understanding with your partner, your relationship ends up operating on assumptions, which leads to miscommunication, disappointment, and power struggles between partners.
When we operate from unspoken contracts, we make it up as we go along, and we tend to reveal ourselves only very carefully — not fully, and with transparency — because we don’t want to get hurt. Even in close relationships, we hide our true selves.
A close relationship thrives on transparency — not when concealing who you are because you’re afraid of being judged.
We hide what we are from our partners all the time. We pretend. We don’t show up as our authentic selves out of protection. We don’t want to be slammed as we did in childhood.
This book also delves into the difference between the individual and the couple, setting boundaries and individuality vs. separateness. Grown-ups know how to communicate what their needs are and respond to their partner’s needs. Communication is the number one factor in determining whether a relationship will work or not.
This book delves into codependency, power struggles, and why we are deathly afraid of intimacy, and how to fully commit to the other person consciously instead of running on the assumptions we are making unconsciously.
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find — and Keep — Love by Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller, M. A.
This book talks about attachment theory. I’m someone who loves to read about child development and how upbringing affects and determines the health of future relationships.
Many of us suffer from abandonment issues of some kind, manifesting as chaos and drama in adult relationships later on in life from being either too anxious or too aloof. Both of these behaviors cause relationship problems.
Usually, one or both partners have unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with abandonment issues that get in the way of intimacy. Whether you know it or not, your upbringing determines what you put out in the world and which partners you attract.
When you heal that trauma, you have a better chance of attracting a healthy relationship.
The Art of Loving — Erich Fromm
You can’t love someone fully until you love yourself. Self-love isn’t about the ego or conceit. Self-love isn’t walking around thinking you are better than everyone else. It is treating yourself with forgiveness — giving yourself the same kindness and understanding you would a close friend you love unconditionally. Recognizing your foibles and loving them. It is understanding yourself and being gentle with yourself. Without it, you won’t be a good partner to anyone.
Self-love is the place where all real love comes from.
The Art of Loving teaches about one’s capacity to love and understanding the confusion between falling in love (which is easy) and the permanent state of being in love (not as easy).
This best-seller, written in 1956, looks at love from every angle, romantic, brotherly, erotic, parental, and self-love. It gives examples of how to get better at loving. Like any skill, the art of loving can be learned. As can empathy.
We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love by Robert A. Johnson
In this small book, Johnson explores the origins of “romantic love” and what it is, how it has infiltrated our Western psyche, how it affects our relationships with ourselves and others.
He explores these ideas by using the mythological narrative of two star-crossed lovers, Tristan and Iseult, whose story was the forerunner to not only Romeo and Juliet but the King Arthur-Gwynevere-Lancelot love triangle.
Here is a favorite passage,
So long as we are “in love” with someone, the world takes on a brightness and meaningfulness that no mortal human being could ever bestow. But when we fall “out of love” the world suddenly seems dismal and empty, even though we are still with the same human being who had inspired such rapture before. This is why men and women put such impossible demands on each other in their relationships: We actually believe unconsciously that this mortal human being has the responsibility for making our lives whole, keeping us happy, making our lives meaningful, intense, and ecstatic!
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman, PH.D.
Any book by John Gottman will help you understand your relationship with your partner and communicate more effectively.
Gottman teaches how to enhance love maps, nurture fondness and admiration, turn toward each other instead of away, the importance of allowing your partner to influence you, solve solvable problems, and overcome gridlock in perpetual disagreements.
Gottman backs his techniques with years of research, working with over 3,000 couples, and can predict divorce with over 95% accuracy.
Negative communication styles, or what Dr. John Gottman calls “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” used as a metaphor, describe communication styles that predict, according to his research, the end of a relationship.
“The Four Horsemen” are criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt. Gottman can predict the failure of a relationship with over 95% accuracy if these negative communication behaviors are not changed.
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
If you’ve ever been cheated on or are the cheater, read this book.
Let’s get this out of the way. After I read Dept. of Speculation, I thought I should give up writing for good. If you’re interested in writing well, this is one to read to get a glimpse at a genius writer at work. Offill is a natural talent. She masters the art of storytelling. Dept. of Speculation is exquisitely written.
This book is the best book I’ve read that describes the average marriage, how mundane marriage is, and what it feels like to share a life and a child with someone and to then find out they’re cheating on you, and cheating on you with someone they don’t even really care about. It is a beautiful book. Offill is one of the best writers I have ever read. I cried. A lot. It’s cathartic and beautifully written.
Below is Offill’s description in two separate passages of motherhood and her love for her young daughter.
There is a picture of my mother holding me as a baby, a look of naked love on her face. For years, it embarrassed me. Now there is a picture of me with my daughter looking exactly the same way.
I would give it up for her, everything, the hours alone, the radiant book, the postage stamp in my likeness, but only if she would consent to lie quietly with me until she is eighteen. If she would lie quietly with me, if I could bury my face in her hair, yes, then yes, uncle.
Ugh. Knife through the heart. Now that is a writer.
Love and Addiction by Staton Peele and Archie Brodsky
If only I had read this book in my 20s. It would have saved me a lot of pain, time, heartache, and money on therapy. The same way we are addicted to anything — shopping, gambling, drugs — can be applied to love.
This is one of the best books on love, why we fall in love, and how it has the same effect on us as any narcotic. This book is heavy. It is not light reading. Love and Addiction is one of the first books to talk about dependency, self-love, and why we enter into co-dependent relationships, often akin to other addictions and the societal pressures that reinforce those dependencies.
Love and Addiction focuses on dependent love relationships to explore what both love and addiction really are — psychologically, socially, and culturally.
Addiction is an overgrown, dependent, destructive relationship. Love is the opposite, a sharing, growth-inspiring one.
Here is the best description of the book,
“The authors’ analysis makes clear that an addiction is an experience that takes on meaning and power in light of a person’s needs, desires, beliefs, expectations, and fears. By showing how addiction grows out of the ordinary human experience, Peele and Brodsky offer a liberating understanding of all addictions — alcohol, drugs, tobacco, food, gambling, shopping, electronic media, sex, or love.
In 1975, Love and Addiction boldly proposed ideas whose truth is only now being recognized:
- Addiction is not limited to drugs, and drugs are not necessarily addictive.
- AA’s 12 steps are not the last word in addiction treatment. On the contrary, practically oriented addiction treatments are more effective.
- The goal of addiction treatment and recovery is not abstinence to the exclusion of all else but to build a life that rules out addiction.
- Love is the opposite of the self-protective constriction of addiction; it is the expansion of your spirit with another human being.”
This book will keep you up reading late into the wee hours of the night, losing sleep just to read one more fascinating page.
Conclusion
Love is tricky. Unless you are highly evolved or were raised by highly evolved parents, you may not know if you’re attracted to someone because of some negative trigger programmed in childhood or the person is actually a good fit for you.
Whatever situation resembles your childhood, you will try to replicate that pattern until it’s solved. The parent you didn’t get enough from will be what drives your choice of partner, whether conscious or not. If you’re aware and try to go in the opposite direction from the parent you couldn’t obtain, you’re still making decisions based on the relationship with the parent you received less from.
Marriage is ‘forever’, and a blessing, but so too can be divorce.
Yes, divorce is painful. But staying unhappily married is far worse. You should go in educated on these patterns of love before making a lifetime commitment.
Even though I didn’t want to get divorced, after years on the other side of that experience, I can honestly say it is the best decision that was thrust upon me. I’m closer to my true and much happier for it.
I sum it up as, Wow, that was something I never thought I’d get through. Not only did I get through it, I transcended it and have so many rich stories from which to write.
Divorce doesn’t have to be a big deal. It is what you make it.
Far too often, people get stuck on a path, and because they put so much time, money, energy, and devotion into it, they can’t bear the thought of changing directions because they can’t bear to suffer in the short term. Yet, change can often lead to long-term happiness. We have one life, don’t stay with something just because you didn’t know better when you decided.
Or, even better, go into marriage, eyes wide open.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.