The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships by Neil StraussMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Malo veća knjiga nego što inače čitam ali sigurno vrijedna čitanja. Ukratko, autor pokušava pronaći rješenje zašto je nesretan u vezi i zašto vara svoju curu iako ju voli tj. pokušava shvatiti razliku između monogamije i strasti.
Često sam čuo da ljudi kažu, pa i sam sam tako govorio, da sam nesretan kada nisam u vezi ali isto tako da sam nesretan kad sam u vezi. Teško je poverovati da je ovaj isti autor napisao knjigu The Game u kojoj na sve načine opisuje kako uspješno zavesti što više žena.
Da bi se riješio ovog problema koji je imao autor je krenuo na životno putovanje tražeći sebe, na tom putu prošao je sve od raznih orgija, swingerskih partya pa sve do pokušaja veze s tri žene istovremeno (ovo se pokazalo kao problem jer je samo tri puta teže biti s tri žene i da sve budu emocionalno zadovoljne). Kako je riješio svoj problem? Distancirao se od svega, izbrisao sve brojeve raznih žena koje je ima, društvene mreže. Kad se na taj način ispraznio, onda je bio spreman za punjenje s novom vezom. Zvuči jednostavno i prelagano, ali on tako kaže da mu je to uspjelo. Po meni, čovjek je sve proživio što treba i onda je bio spreman skrasiti se s jednom ženom jer mu je više dosadio taj opasni i nepredvidljivi život divljih orgija i zabava.
Glavne lekcije iz ove knjige:
- U svima nama se nalazi dijete koje nosi traume iz djetinjstva, neke veće a neke manje, ali svi imamo ožiljke koji nam utječu na život kada odrastemo. Poanta je u tom da prepoznamo šta je to i da se borimo protiv toga. Autor je proživio emocionalni incest sa svojom majkom jer ga je ona zamijenila za oca i s njim pričala o onom što nije mogla s njegovim tatom jer nisu imali dobar odnos. Čak mu je "usadila" jednu rečenicu u glavu da "nikada ne učini nikog nesretnim kao što je njegov tata učinio nju".
- Raditi na sebi nije sebično jer jedino na taj način možemo imati normalan odnos s drugom osobom ako smo mentalno čisti i spremni.
- Da bi odnos bio kvalitetan samo je potrebno biti iskren jer laž je jednako strah.
- Zamisli da si Tarzan koji mora eventualno pustiti lijanu na kojoj je trenutno da bi uhvatio drugu i nastavio dalje.
- Promiskuitetan životni stil većinom donese više nesreće pa čak i korak do psiholoških problema u dosta slučajeva
- Nije vrijedno da zbog kratkog užitka žrtvuješ dugoročnu sreću
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They say that when you meet someone and feel like it’s love at first sight, run in the other direction.
Zar je ljubav tako loša? Ja mislim da se trebaš zatrčati u nju i proživjeti šta trebaš, život nije skrivanje od moguće boli.
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the way her high heels prevent us from walking more than a few blocks when we go out.
Požalio se kako zbog njenih štikli nikada ne mogu šetati. S ovim se mogu poistovjetiti svi momci koji su ovo sigurno prošli sa svojim curama.
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At the time, he was married to one of the world’s most successful and beautiful women, Victoria’s Secret supermodel Miranda Kerr, making him one of the most envied men on the planet. And the first thing out of his mouth? “I don’t know if marriage is worth it. I don’t know why anyone does it. I mean, I want romance and I want to be with someone, but I just don’t think it works.”
I ovo sam čuo puno puta u životu da nije bitno koga oženiš da će ti svejedno dosaditi i da ćeš htjeti druge žene opet, kao i ovaj njegov prijatelj koji je nesretan iako je oženjen sa supermodelom.
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Several years ago, I wrote a book called The Game about an underground community of pickup artists I joined in search of an answer to the biggest question plaguing my lonely life at the time: Why don’t women I like ever like me back?
O ovom bi mogao napisati čitav jedan blog zasebno jer sam kroz čitav svoj život bio odbijen kad god bi mi se cura sviđala, a ako sam išao upucavati se samo iz zezancije uvijek bi mi prošlo.
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The fucking questions. They don’t like them here. It’s because questions are powerful: The right question can expose the flaws in the system.
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There’s nothing a man with low self-esteem loves more than a beautiful woman who doesn’t know she’s beautiful.
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No one seems to have much of a problem with cheating here, just with getting caught.
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we don’t meet many people who truly love us, who accept us for who we are, who put us before themselves. Maybe a parent or two if we’re lucky, perhaps a couple of previous partners. So what kind of person rewards someone’s love with lies, betrayal, and pain?
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hesitates—“I’ll tell you honestly: I like sex that’s exciting, you know, and sometimes a little rough. And she just lies there like once every three months, and basically lets me have sex with her.”
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I can’t tell whether my tears are for the beauty of her love or the sadness of my incapacity to feel worthy of it.
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“Intimacy problems come from a lack of self-love,” she continues. “Someone who fears intimacy thinks, unconsciously, If you knew who I actually was, you’d leave me.”
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Unless you do something horribly wrong, they never completely disappear. A lonely night, a cheating boyfriend, a sudden breakup, an attack of low self-esteem, an attack of high self-esteem—anything can, out of the blue, send them scrolling through their address book looking for validation, for security, for conversation, for adoration, for the fantasy of you filling some empty space in their life.
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They say that a man is as faithful as his options, and in this moment I know it to be true. So I switch the phone off. It’s too much. Even Jesus had only three temptations.
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And now I’ve gotten my wish: I’m alone. I can breathe. I can read. I can do whatever I want. And it sucks.
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“The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful,” Jung wrote in a letter to Freud.
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This is truly the blackest day of my life: I’ve been kicked out of an orgy for eating popcorn.
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I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in the adult ego state. If both people descend to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that’s when all the forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed.
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but those are her emotions to worry about, not mine. I can’t get enmeshed here.
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If love hurts, then polyamory kills.
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Perhaps that’s the price of making your fantasies a reality. You realize pretty quickly that they were more fun to imagine.
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For me, the best way to understand what actually transpired in any given situation is to write about it until the truth emerges.
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Once again, she’s right. Where there’s reactivity, there’s a wound. And I am overreacting to everything.
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In the dance of infatuation, we see others not as they are, but as projections of who we want them to be.
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Start a family with a good platonic friend who’s your own age and keep sleeping with whoever you want.” His friend had an interesting point. “It’s like having a divorce but without the marriage,” his friend concluded.
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If someone’s going to leave you, they’re going to do it whether or not you’re jealous. In fact, they’re much more likely to do it if you are jealous.”
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For a guy who doesn’t want to be controlled, I never noticed how controlling I actually am. I’m acting just like my long-suffering mom. It’s a depressing insight. Rick would probably love to hear it.
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But the only relationship that’s truly a failure is one that lasts longer than it should.
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The success of a relationship should be measured by its depth, not by its length.
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He tells me about a book he recently read called His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley, a clinical psychologist who writes that a man needs five basic things from his wife: sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, physical attractiveness, domestic support, and admiration.
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“The obvious clinical facts demonstrate that men—and women—who devote their lives to unrestricted sexual satisfaction do not attain happiness, and very often suffer from severe neurotic conflicts or symptoms. The complete satisfaction of all instinctual needs is not only not a basis for happiness, it does not even guarantee sanity.”—Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
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Sex is easy to find—whether through game, money, chance, social proof, or charm. So are affairs, orgies, adventures, and three-month relationships—if you know where to look and are willing to go there. But love is rare.
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“Do you see how strong this is? How trauma can destroy individuals and nations and generations?”
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“Think of yourself as Tarzan,” he suggests, repeating advice that Lorraine once gave him. “You can’t hold onto the vine behind you and the vine in front of you forever. At some point, you have to let go of the past to move forward.”
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But it turns out that the inner child is very real. It is our past. And the only way to escape the past is to embrace it.
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“How you do anything is how you do everything,” Rick responds,
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“Don’t trade long-term happiness for short-term pleasure.”
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As my grandmother used to say: You can’t change a person unless they’re in diapers.
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With patience, even the grass becomes milk
.
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It’s when partners stop living in the past—in their trauma history—and start having a relationship with each other in the present moment. Love, it turns out, is not something to be learned. It’s something we already have, and we must unlearn in order to access it.
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Any style of relationship is the right one, as long as it’s a decision made by the whole person and not the hole in the person.
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