Few things promise us greater happiness than our relationships - yet few things more reliably deliver misery and frustration. Our error is to suppose that we are born knowing how to love and that managing a relationship migh therefore be intuitive and easy.


Love has a history and we ride – sometimes rather helplessly – on its currents. Since around 1750, we have been living in a highly distinctive era in the history of love that we can call Romanticism. And it has been a disaster for love.


Relationships challenges the assumptions of the Romantic view of love. It shows how to develop new attitudes that can lead to a psychologically mature vision of love:




That it is ok that love and sex may not always belong together
That discussing money early on, in a serious way, is not a betrayal of love
That realising that we are rather flawed, and our partner is too, is of huge benefit to a couple
That we will never find everything we need in another person, nor they in us
That spending two hours discussing whether bathroom towels should be hung up or can be left on the floor has its own dignity.