(Note: the copy of this book that I found on a free table is titled "How to Look for Love: A Refreshing New Take on Men, Women, and Romance." It seems to be from some foreign country or other? Anyway, at some point it got a retitle, I'm putting down the Amazon one here.)
This is a book I think I am going to pimp to everyone. Hell, I just got off the phone, where I was pimping it to a friend. This is brilliant. I'm not sure what the heck I thought it was when I got it off the free table. It's not your usual self-help book. Apparently this one was inspired by reading various self-help books ("He's Just Not That Into You," all the Mars/Venus John Gray crap) and thinking a lot of it was bull, which I totally agree with. She also taught a course at Harvard on the topic.
Ruti has very well thought out ideas on how love works, how we deal with it (and shouldn't deal with it), what it does to us, and how we should roll with it, more or less.
Notable points from the book:
- The mission of love is to introduce us to frequencies of human life that would otherwise elude us. It releases dormant layers of our being.
- Love comes from the specific/unique and not so much "generic supermodel." It wants what makes you incomparable.
- She talks a lot about "The Thing," which is (vaguely) whatever the hell your deepest unconscious desires are made of. You spend your whole life looking for it, you think all your issues will be solved if you get The Thing, except we don't know what it is and never quite get it. But love is as close as we get to it. I absolutely love that she talks about this because I've never heard of this concept before but it sounds utterly right and explains everything.
- You can't ever get over wanting The Thing, but it does lead you to the most engaging part of a dude (note: this book's a little obviously written for a female hetero audience in the phrasing, but it is from 2011).
- You can't turn any or all dudes into someone with The Thing. It only happens with specific people. "You could meet a thousand hot and accomplished men and not be in any way moved by them." THAT IS MY LIFE, Y'ALL. It is SO RARE that my Thing ever gets triggered! I relate!
- "Your Thing-radar is highly sensitive. It almost always directs you to something significant, even when you're dealing with someone you just met."
- "When everything else clicks into place, this kind of an intuitive bond can steer us to relationships that, quite literally, have the power to change our destiny."
- "It won't take you long to tell the difference between a man who is just a regular date and one who has the potential to cultivate your Thing."
- "If there's anything hard-wired about people...the astonishing accuracy with which they locate their Thing n another person."
- "Either a guy has your Thing, or he doesn't. Either you have his Thing, or you don't."
- You should be appreciating the good details of your beloved and make sure that they are told these things, because we're all told a lot of bad things about ourselves and could really use hearing good things.Your dude should stand out from the crowd for you and that's something to treasure.
- "Because love is so complicated, our approach to it needs to be simple. The best we can do is to step right into it, surrender to it, experience it, and learn from it regardless of how it turns out." The author also has a lot on how you just gotta deal with broken hearts and learn from them and grow deeper, as well.
- "When it comes to love, don't expect caution to get you anywhere." Reminds me of reading The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, which apparently I forgot to review here and maybe I should get around to that.
She also has eleven very reasonable guidelines that you can read here.
Other things by the author I found interesting:
Four and a half stars. Near epic for me and blew my mind.
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