Random Things Tours: Tell Me the Truth about Love by Susanna Abse

 

Relationships conjugate truth with love. More than with trust and surprisingly even more than with intimacy. When we talk about true love, we don´t stop mid-way, we go fast through the highest peaks of perfection. We want to be the best for the best of us. But somewhere half-way, or even earlier, we taste the sour grapes of failure. Sometimes love is not enough or there is no trust and intimacy is an illusion. 

Some may never knew what true love is. 

There is no other better place to learn about love than the therapist´s couch. A therapist is blessed to have access to so many different stories about love and how to be out of love, but it is also cursed to be shared the sadness of broken hearts. Sharing those experiences with wider audiences may help to understand our own relationships, feelings in couple and especially our errors therefore I am a big readers of family and relationship therapy testimonies.

Tell Me the Truth about Love by Susanna Abse is an intriguing collection of 13 tales of couples who decided to ask the help of a therapist for moving forward or maybe out of love. Abse has 30 years of experience as a coach and family therapist and is a former chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council, and presenter of Channel 4 News Britain on the Couch. 

Every story features different situations created by people with different mentalities, backgrounds and age. Thus, their approaches to relationships and ultimately, love, may differ and is not always open to change. Some are willing to be part of the emotional process of building trust, some others can´t wait to separate and start probably different stories. 

I may confess that I´ve found all stories interesting, but longed for much more. I bet it was difficult to make a selection after thousand of stories but as any therapist may outline, humanity is an open book and there is never shortage of characters. I was personally intrigued by the idea of curiosity as a part of building trust and the basis of a relationship. But it does make a lot of sense, as when someone is curious, most likely is not judgemental and stays open to discover the other person and its personality.

Tell Me the Truth about Love adds a lot of important testimonies about what does it mean to love and be loved in our contemporary era. It is a book written with the knowledge of the therapist and the acknowledgeable empathy of someone who herself may remain curious about the hardships of love. A must-read for anyone keen to understand how relationships may work, no matter if single or in a loving relationship.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own.