Reviews
The following are reviews of the book Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life by Thomas Jordan Ph.D.
Review by Christian Sia for readersfavorite.com
Review Rating: 5 Stars
In the opening lines of this groundbreaking self-help book, Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life, Thomas Jordan, Ph.D., the author, cautions that: “This is a book about love relationships. About the relationships we form, healthy or unhealthy, when we fall in love.” Falling in love is an experience that happens to most, if not everyone, but the big question is: Why does love hurt so much in many people? How can they heal from painful relationships? And how can they transition from people who develop destructive and sabotaging attitudes to persons who build relationships that reach deeper levels of intimacy, joy, and healing? This book provides surprising answers to these questions and explores similar questions.
This book combines a strong psychological approach with a unique understanding of social and personal issues to create a roadmap to building love relationships that are healthy and enriching. In this book, readers will learn how their first experience of relationships — even as babies — determine the way they love; they will understand just how they have been taught (or conditioned) to love and those lessons that set them up for failure or success in their relationships. They will understand how to unlearn the bad habits that spoil relationships and develop those that are positive, and a lot more. Learn to Love is one of the best books I have read on relationships, after The Five Love Languages.
The author clearly defines an unhealthy love life, explains why some people repeat relationship problems and why they replicate unhealthy relationship experiences and shows readers how they can take control of their relationships and their life. Thomas Jordan, Ph.D. writes beautifully and renders a complex message so simple that readers clearly understand how to transform their relationships. The book is packed with tips that help anyone to improve their relationship. A powerful guide, especially for those with painful love relationship experiences.
Review by Grant Leishman for readersfavorite.com
Review Rating: 5 Stars
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing your Disappointing Love Life by Thomas Jordan, Ph.D. delves into the world of the subconscious, analyzing the way in which our learned experiences affect our beliefs and feelings about love relationships. Why do 50% of marriages end in divorce? Why do so many of us struggle to find love relationships that work? Why do we often end up perpetuating the same mistakes in our love relationships, over and over again? Why does it seem that so many men marry a woman just like their mother or why do so many people who are abused end up marrying abusers, or are abusers themselves? Dr. Jordan examines what motivates us when we become involved in a love relationship. He looks at what experiences we have had of “love” from those within our life experience and concludes that our beliefs and feelings about love are a learned experience. As such, these experiences can be unlearned and new, positive expectations of love relationships can be learned and acted upon instead. The author draws on his thirty years of clinical experience in dealing with patients who have relationship issues and also on his own personal failure to form successful love relationships and what he learned about himself through counseling and psychotherapy.
This book is long overdue in the world of love relationships, especially now with the internet and online dating becoming such a large part of finding that perfect partner for us. Thomas Jordan takes the reader through some practical and easy to follow steps to turn your love life around. What I particularly found enlightening and useful was that the author didn’t just tell us the negative things we seem to seek out in a partner from our own life experiences, such as abandonment, abuse, control, dependency, dishonesty, etc. He also explained the opposite feelings that we need to relearn or learn to replace the beliefs we are rejecting. These feelings include attachment, respect, freedom, independence, honesty, etc.
The text was easy to read and understand from a lay perspective with little psycho jargon and I think the author did a tremendous job of clearly laying it out. A couple of takes from this book that will serve me wonderfully in life are 1/ there is no point in looking for the “perfect” partner – that person simply doesn’t exist - and 2/ you can NEVER change someone else. The only person you can ever change is yourself. Those two thoughts alone should improve your outlook on dating and love relationships. This truly is a self-help book we could all use. I can highly recommend this book to all readers.
Review by Mamta Madhavan for readersfavorite.com
Review Rating: 5 Stars
Love is vital and is an unbelievably important part of psychological and physical life. Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life by Thomas Jordan, Ph.D. is an insightful book that speaks about healthy and unhealthy love relationships and makes readers aware of how love relationships are insufficiently understood. The author's years of clinical research prove that love is difficult because the health and success of a love life are determined by what the person has learned about love relationships in life. The love life psychology, as the author puts it, is the study of love lives from the inside out. The book is a good tool to increase the chances of finding and sustaining a healthy love life.
Reading this book is a good way for readers to examine their love lives and see how they relate to both healthy and unhealthy love, and what can be done when it is unhealthy. It is a good book to make changes to unhealthy love lives and to look at the love life formula in a positive way. The author's techniques and suggestions will help readers learn to relate to love in a healthy way. It is a good book for readers to understand their psychological love life and make changes there. I like the way the author speaks about the topic, looking at it in a unique way and dealing extensively with every aspect of a relationship. Once readers have identified with their love relationships after reading this book, they can do something about it so that their love life is healthy.
Review by Sarah Stuart for readersfavorite.com
Review Rating: 5 Stars
So, you think you have a good love life? I did, I have, but Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life by Thomas Jordan Ph.D. was a revelation. More than that – a series of revelations. If you love, you will grieve. This assumes that you lose the one you love before he or she loses you, but it is a valid observation to which Dr Jordan returns in his conclusion. Learn to Love is divided into three main sections: The Unhealthy Love Life, Psychological Love Life, and Unlearning Method. Each comprises easy to read, detailed, chapters with lists and tables. The first enables the reader to identify the root cause or causes of their disappointing love life. The second digs deeper into the psychological effects of early trauma, and the third is a step-by-step route to recovery and happiness.
Learn to Love asks first from whom you learned to love and discusses whether what you learned was healthy or unhealthy. Both learned behaviors are repeated and for those who need this book, it is likely they were unhealthy without the person being aware of it. A frightening thought – you can’t change something you didn’t realize was affecting you. Dr Jordan gives you the tools to find answers, goes into each possibility in depth, and then shows you how to change: “Remember, the only person you can change is yourself”. I recommend Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life with confidence; Thomas Jordan Ph.D. has included his personal experience of practicing what he preaches.
Review by Gisela Dixon for readersfavorite.com
Review Rating: 5 Stars
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life is a non-fiction book on love relationships and how to understand and improve them. In this book, Thomas Jordan, Ph.D. has analyzed the reasons why people choose to fall in love or love the people that they do and how their past conditioning affects their present love life and choices. After an introduction to the topic, the book is organized into three major sections: The Unhealthy Love Life, Psychological Love Life, and Unlearning Method. Each of these broad sections contains several chapters that discuss the impact of early upbringing, parental relationships and how these affect a child, how we unconsciously “learn” to love and learn certain behaviors, how to break out of this pattern if it is unhealthy, treatments and “solutions” to learning healthy behaviors, and much more. There is a psychological profile analysis provided that enables readers to understand their own inner conditioning when it comes to love relationships. The book also contains references, an index, and author bio at the end of the book.
Learn to Love by Thomas Jordan, Ph.D. is a good book and is obviously needed in a world where the divorce rate is as high as 50% in America. Thomas makes some good points and I appreciated the various examples he has provided throughout the book that show how parental conditioning affects who we are today. The writing style is casual and the book flows at a fast pace. I think a book like this may serve as a substitute for actual therapy or counseling and is definitely worth a read for people who feel discouraged or disappointed about their love life or choice of partners. Overall, this is a book that I would recommend.
Review by Sue Maggie for thebookbag.co.uk
Review Rating: 4.5 Stars
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life is a book about love relationships rather than a book about love. The two greatest emotions are love and grief and love, is the opposite of grief: if you love, Dr. Thomas Jordan tells us, you will inevitably grieve. Your love relationships begin the moment you're born and end only when you die. Whilst we all come into the world hoping to give and receive love there are many people for whom love is not quite so simple. Some people suffer multiple disappointments - sometimes repeating the same mistakes - and this eventually becomes resignation. For people who are making the same mistakes repeatedly, self-preservation, in the form of resignation is a necessity.
It's simplistic to think that our love lives only begin in adolescence: our earliest experience of love begins with our parents, or those in loco parentis. We learn about love relationships by observing them, by being in one, or by receiving instruction. What we've learned about love relationships translates into an unconscious blueprint for how to relate in love.
We replicate what is familiar in our experience of the interpersonal relationships in our love lives.
It's strange how often a child forms a love relationship with someone who physically resembles a parent. And so, the problems of one generation are replicated in the next. A child who has seen his parents being abused and/or abusive will replicate this in his or her own relationships. Cheating is seen as normal. And so, it continues: Dr. Jordan details ten areas where problems are repeated and shows how they affect love relationships.
If we are to have sound love relationships, we need to ensure that the relationships we form are healthy enough to nurture and sustain the love we feel. The emotion in itself is insufficient.
Dr. Jordan shows us how to recognize the unhealthy practices we've learned and then how to unlearn them and replace them with practices which will form healthy relationships: he even - at the end of the book - gives us a 'recipe' for a healthy relationship.
Learn to Love should be a quick read, but it's heavy on content and if you're serious about making changes you will have to do a lot of homework, a lot of honest thinking. I started the book with a culprit in mind - an abusive, controlling parent - but was shocked to find that my experiences as a 'victim' had not left me immune to the expectation that I could control. From thinking that the book would vindicate me, I came to the conclusion that there were quite a few areas where I could - must - make improvements.
This book concentrates on 'love' life - intimate personal relationships - but I found myself considering my friendships and how my own experiences affected those relationships and I've areas I need to work on there too. This is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read for a long time. There were areas which I found painful, and I found a well of anger which I hadn't appreciated was there, and which needs to be emptied.
I did think I was going to have a criticism of the book: I really wanted to read some examples of relationships, but Dr. Jordan is a clinical psychologist and on reflection, I was rather glad that we didn't get to hear what he'd been told by his clients. But then he went one better - he gave a lot of details about his own love life, how his relationship with his mother had affected him and what he had to do to correct matters.
Summary: This is a book about love relationships, how to unlearn bad habits and learn new ones. It's thought-provoking and enlightening in equal measures. Highly recommended. I'd like to thank the publisher for sending a copy to the Bookbag: it was a fascinating, enlightening read and one to which I'll return.
Review by Dr. Tom Ferraro for Slate/Our Town
Review Rating: 5 Stars
Dr. Thomas Jordan is a psychoanalyst living and working in Manhattan and his book, “Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life,” is a primer on what can go wrong in your love life, why it happens, and what to do about it. His thesis is a simple one. He explains that we learn all about love in our childhoods, and the problems we absorb. We may experience abandonment, abuse, control, dependency, dishonesty, exploitation, mistrust, neglect, rejection or self-centeredness in our family of origin. He lays out a map that allows you to assess with some degree of accuracy which of these problems you may have and explains how one goes about changing things.
Like all good analysts, he suggests that you must face your own issues rather than attempting to change your significant other. He references the late great Leo Buscaglia, who taught the famed Love Class at Berkeley. Buscaglia was one of the first celebrity/academics who was often featured on PBS to discuss the wonders and draw of love. When I was in graduate school, I earned extra money by evaluating all the arts and humanities that run out of the Suffolk County BOCES and I was assigned to evaluate a million-dollar grant called “The Love Lesson” that the Roslyn School district created.
The grant was a thing of joy and to this day asks the question: why don’t schools put more time into teaching about love. Perhaps the subject of love is too complicated or maybe it’s not practical enough or maybe educators think that love is the exclusive domain of the family. Our search for love is akin to finding the Holy Grail or the golden city of El Dorado. Sir Lancelot spent a lifetime looking for the Holy Grail and Francisco Pizarro spent years in the jungles of the Amazon in search of the golden city of El Dorado.
As Dr. Thomas Jordan tells us, many spend a lifetime in a confused and desperate search for love, going down blind alleys and ending in discouragement. It is a welcome thing indeed to come across a treasure like his book, a friendly guide book helping the reader get through the jungle of confusion of the heart. His book is an easy captivating message that can hold your hand as you continue along your search to find love. What better time to do so than on Valentine’s Day.
Review by C.E. Flores for Reedsy.com/Discovery
Review Rating: 4 Stars
Loved it! A simple and concise guidebook to learning about your patterns of behavior when it comes to love relationships.
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life by Dr. Thomas Jordan is a book about learning how to work on your love life. Written for people who need a highly effective way of working on their love lives. Dr. Jordan, a New York City psychologist, discovered that most people are not in control of their love lives. Why?
Because most people don't know what they've learned about and from the love relationships in the course of their lives. If you don't know what you've learned about love relationships, then what you've learned is in control of your love life, healthy or unhealthy. If what you've learned was unhealthy, you could be unwittingly making the same love life mistakes over and over again.
Learn to Love will show readers how to identify what they’ve learned about love relationships, how to unlearn what was unhealthy, and practice the opposite of what was learned as a corrective in adulthood. This simple formula has helped Dr. Jordan’s patients begin taking control of their love lives. It even helped him improve his own love life. An easy read and highly effective way of learning how to take control of your love life.
It was obvious that Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life was written by a researcher. The book begins by explaining what book will cover. Then the book discusses those points, one by one. Finally, the conclusion recaps the information, exactly as if it were a research paper.
While I personally felt that the section on what will be covered in the book was unnecessary, the rest of the book was well-presented. Appropriate citations were included throughout the book to reinforce the main points. The author also used his own love story to make the message personal. When I finished the book, I felt like I had attended a “love relationship class”, which I believe was the author’s intent all along.
So, what did Dr. Jordan have to say about love relationships? In a nutshell, our relationship choices are often based on the types of relationships we had in our family of origin. For example, it’s likely that a person who was abused as a child, will find a way to become an abuser or take on the role of victim in his or her romantic relationships.
This recreation of past hurts isn’t really a new concept. However, Dr. Jordan takes the idea a step further and proposes that once we realize this, we can change it. The types of unhealthy relationships are discussed as are their healthy counterparts. Additionally, there are questions to help you determine what types of interactions you are repeating so that you can work towards finding healthy and whole love relationships.
The material is simply and clearly presented in terms that everyone can understand. In conclusion, I feel that Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life by Thomas Jordan, Ph.D. is a book that should be read by those in a relationship, those looking for a relationship, and those who have ended a relationship.
Review by Cristinaro for OnlineBookClub.org
Review Rating: 4 out of 4 Stars
We all know what is like to fall in and out of love. We have all experienced being on cloud nine or having butterflies in our stomach when thinking of the person we are in love with. Naturally, we have also passed through agonizing breakups or even traumatizing divorces. What if there were a book that helped us understand the reasons behind failure and disappointment in our love life? Thomas Jordan’s Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life answers the need to improve our chances of finding and sustaining a healthy love relationship. As a consequence, it turns into what the author calls “a 21st century love relationship class.”
At 132 pages, the book was an easy read excelling in clarity and organization. The product of Dr. Jordan’s thirty-year experience of researching and treating chronic love life problems, Learn to Love expertly guides its readers through the sinuous meanders of past, present, and future love relationships. After years of helping patients with psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the author realized that the most important lesson he could teach us is to closely examine our past love relationships so that we could have healthy ones in the future. Accordingly, the book is perfectly designed to follow such a trajectory. It consists of three main parts: I – “The Unhealthy Love Life”; II – “Psychological Love Life”; III – “Unlearning Method”.
Despite being a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology and a faculty member of a post-doctoral program, Thomas Jordan explains his ideas so simply and clearly that everybody could grasp the meaning of his reasoning. This is perhaps the thing I liked most about the book. While chapter one (“My Love Life Research”) details on different types of unhealthy love life and the danger of replicating past experience, chapter two (“Learning about Love Relationships”) refers to a most useful Love Life Formula and the inner mechanism of unconscious learning about love relationships. As they are both full of examples, I am sure different readers will probably resonate with one situation or another.
Dr. Jordan considers that our psychological love life represents the “blueprint” in our mind of what we have learned about love relationships that shape the love life experiences we will have going forward. In part II, he identifies a list of ten unhealthy relationship experiences ranging from abandonment and abuse to rejection and self-centeredness. There is a particular sub-chapter focusing on the aftereffects of what we have experienced that I highly recommend. You will see it is enlightening when it comes to our reactions to previous “toxic” relationships. Just think of the times when you tried to change partners instead of yourself or the way you became defensive precisely to hide your vulnerability.
Not accidentally, part 3 is the most extensive of the book as it is more practically oriented. In order to assist readers in changing their psychological love life, the author gives them a three-step unlearning formula that promises an “antidote” for unhealthy relationship experiences that negatively affected their love life. With courage and honesty, Dr. Jordan dedicates an entire chapter to his own psychological love life and his troubled relationship with his mother. Taking himself as a case study was definitely a bold action. I can tell you I got genuinely engrossed into the pages describing “parentification”, the transformation of a child into a parent with a parent.
Apart from a few misplaced commas, apostrophes, or articles, the book is very well-edited. Since I have enjoyed its interesting topics and clear layout, I am giving Thomas Jordan’s guide 4 out of 4 stars. Some readers might find the repetitiveness of certain ideas a bit tedious, but I think this strategy was useful in delivering the right message. In terms of content, organization, and editing, there was nothing I disliked about this book. Moreover, I am recommending it to all those interested in educating and improving their love life. No matter if you are single or in a couple, the book offers a great opportunity to analyze your love relationships “inside-out” and to remove the barriers holding you from taking control of your love life and being happy with your partner.
Reviewed by Amiee Ann for redheadedbooklover.com
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life is a captivating book that will help you learn to love and broaden your perspectives on love and this is courtesy of the sensational author, Thomas Jordan Ph.D. Learn to Love is a sensational book which is full of incredible wisdom that will help many readers with their relationships and if you are a reader who is struggling in your relationship and with love in general, then the Learn to Love is the perfect read for you! That is why I already have to recommend you readers have a read of Learn to Love, however, if you need more convincing then continue to read to learn more!
Learn to Love is written by the talented author, Thomas Jordan, an incredible man who will get you results with his outstanding book. Jordan is an exceptional man for writing his book and sharing his wisdom in order to help other readers. Learn to Love is an incredible book that has the premise of helping you improve your love life. This is achieved by evaluating your past relationships and learning whether they were healthy or unhealthy. The author describes that if they were unhealthy, then you will continue to have unhealthy relationships until you identify the issues so that you can change them for your future relationships and this book lovers is the short premise of the incredible Learn to Love!
The wisdom courtesy of Thomas Jordan laced throughout Learn to Love is sensational and awe-worthy. As I read Jordan’s book, I was engrossed and wanting to know more, whenever a question would pop up in my mind while reading this book Jordan eventually answered it, and so it truly is a wonderful reading experience that was incredibly informative too! And really opened my eyes.
The information and knowledge laced throughout Learn to Love is impeccable too, and I am impressed by just how much knowledge there is. Although Learn to Love is full of a wealth of information, all the information is useful as well as relevant to the topics explored so do not worry readers that you will be bombarded with information as this does not happen in this book!
As Learn to Love is a book laced with incredible wisdom, it is also laced with phenomenal literature courtesy of the wonderful Thomas Jordan; Jordan’s words are incredible, and they will flow flawlessly from beginning to end. As Learn to Love is a flawless, inspirational, and helpful self-help/relationship guide, I have no choice but to award this brilliant book five stars!
Review by Book Viral Reviews
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
The BookViral Review: Genre – Self-help and Personal Development; Recommended for the coveted BookViral Crimson Quill.
It seems we are inundated with self-help books and in particular those on the subject of love and relationships yet the genuinely worthwhile ones to read are sadly something of a rarity! Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life certainly falls into the latter and proves to be a motivational and practical handbook that encourages readers to own their love life.
“Your love life belongs to you,” says Thomas Jordan Ph.D “your love life can belong to past experiences you’ve had, or even someone else’s…” and Dr. Jordan believes what happens in anyone’s particular love life should be entirely up to them. On the face of it, such statements might seem glib but Dr. Jordan’s thinking is underpinned by his 30 years of love life research and he’s confident in challenging our perspectives on love relationships. Our learned beliefs, behaviours and feelings.
What’s clear from reading Dr. Jordan’s book is that love relationship problems don’t happen in a vacuum. There are self-esteem issues, there are identity issues, and there are deep insecurities that many of us never address and DR. Jordan not only looks at the psychology but the broader elements of personal development.
From the moment you start reading, you know you are in the hands of a consummate professional and candid writer whose words get to the heart of learning to love and how we can change ourselves to invite more of it into our lives.
Framed within the context of his own experiences Dr. Jordan has penned a powerful and meaningful book that is thought-provoking and decidedly unpretentious. A must-read for those looking for guidance and healing it is recommended without reservation.
Review by Dr. Barbara Dusansky
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Wonderful book for therapists and anyone interested in how to effectively work on their love lives. Clear writing about the psychology of changing your love life by a practicing psychologist and psychoanalyst. Easy for anyone to grasp and utilize in their own love lives. The author’s warmth, intimacy, and humor come across easily in the pages of this book. Highly recommended.
Reviewed by: Kirkus Reviews at Kirkus.com
A psychologist explains how to stop repeating relationship mistakes. Many people, Dr. Jordan writes, feel trapped in a cycle of disappointing or dysfunctional relationships because they keep running into the same problems. The author, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who previously wrote Healthy Love Relationships (2014), wanted to get to the bottom of what causes such repetitive, often destructive behaviors and to identify ways to change them. In this slim volume, he argues that people absorb lessons about love—sometimes consciously but usually unconsciously—from those that are close to them, going back to childhood. Therefore, learning to love in a healthy way begins with reflecting on past experiences and identifying what one learned from them. The experience of being abandoned, for example, may cause one to either abandon others or seek out familiar relationships in which one is likely to be abandoned again. Once a person realizes what lessons they’ve internalized, they can begin to understand negative patterns and avoid them in the future. Ultimately, he writes, this method is about “owning your own love life.” Dr. Jordan’s ideas, as laid out over the course of this…clearly written work may…be illuminating for readers who can’t figure out how to break unhelpful cycles. In addition, Dr. Jordan’s approach is appealingly judgment-free in tone, as he aims to help both those who’ve been hurt as well as those who may have done the hurting. Throughout, his emphasis is on looking forward and not castigating oneself for previous mistakes. A chapter in which the author opens up about his own love life is particularly helpful in showing how his process works.
Useful guidance for breaking out of unhealthy patterns and learning how to have a mature, fulfilling love life.
Reviewed by: Artisan Book Reviews
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life by Thomas Jordan Ph.D. examines love relationships, both healthy and unhealthy, and analyzes the conscious and unconscious factors that influence the types of love relationships people form. I loved reading this book. It is informative, enriching and well structured. The content is also very relevant and useful.
The book begins by discussing what a love life is and why love is difficult. The main content is then broken down into three sections that address specific topics. The first part discusses the unhealthy love life, specifically, how love relationships are learned and the characteristics of an unhealthy love life. The second part reveals the psychological causes of healthy and unhealthy love life experiences. The third shows how what has been learned can be unlearned. Other topics that are discussed in this section include available ways that can be used to teach about love relationships. Included too in the work is the author’s experience which relates to the content in the book.
The work moves from discussing the issues that appear in various types of love relationships to the causes and later, the steps that can be taken to create healthy love relationships. This approach makes the book’s content comprehensive and practical. It also incorporates various exercises, one exercise helps in identifying which unhealthy relationship experiences have affected one’s life, and what has been learned from them. Chapters are divided into sub-topics that address specific issues and summaries of the content are included, resulting in easily comprehensible information. Love relationships make up an important component in everyone’s life hence the information discussed is relevant and practical to every person.
Learn to Love is an eye-opening work. Its effective organization, applicable and helpful discussions, and its overall insight make it a valuable read. Artisan Book Reviews highly recommends Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life by Thomas Jordan Ph.D.
Useful guidance for breaking out of unhealthy patterns and learning how to have a mature, fulfilling love life.
Reviewed by: Elle Alouette
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Learn to Love is the book we all need to read. I found it revealed a lot about how I, and others I know, create and then struggle to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships with partners we are truly satisfied with. It is an interesting and informative book, which looks at how we unconsciously effect the relationships we develop with each other. Many people struggle to maintain relationships and long for the perfect match whether they are in a relationship or not. Love is something we perceive is all around us but it is so elusive and seems unattainable.
But is it? At the heart of this book we can discover how to define and understand love. It examines why it is so difficult to obtain and why many of us strive to keep it. It also studies unhealthy love and the constant disappointment this has on our lives. The author has excellent writing skills and provides readers with valuable guidance and advice. It also includes significant practical exercises that I found to be much needed compelling and important. I highly recommended this amazing book. It has changed how I look at relationships and showed me how I can improve my own, and I’m sure it will do the same for you.
Reviewed by: Midwest Book Review, James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Critique: Exceptionally informed and informative, insightful, practical, and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in tone, commentary, organization and presentation, "Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life" is an ideal and unreservedly recommended addition to community library Self-Help/Self-Improvement collections.
Synopsis: After 30 years of clinical research and treatment of patients with unhealthy love lives, clinical psychologist and therapist Thomas Jordan discovered that most people aren't actually in control of their own love lives. Why? Because most people don't know how to identify and change what they've learned from the love relationships in their lives.
In "Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life", Dr. Jordan shows how to make real (and lasting) improvements in your love life. Starting with our families of origin, we learn from all the love relationships in our lives, especially the unhealthy ones.
"Learn to Love" will also show you how these earlier relationship experiences form a "psychological blueprint" that shapes the love life experiences we have as adults. If what you've learned about love relationships was healthy, chances are you'll have a healthy love life. If what you've learned was unhealthy, chances are you'll unwittingly replicate what was unhealthy over and over again.
"Learn to Love" reveals how to unlearn this unhealthy learning and form the love relationships you've always wanted to have. The simple formula presented within the pages of "Learn to Love" has helped many of Dr. Jordan's patients begin taking control of their love lives, and as Dr. Jordan discloses, it has helped him improve his own love life as well.
"Learn to Love" will help you learn how to take control of your love life.
Reviewed by: Books Charming/Aakanksha Jain
Review Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
Learn to Love is a product of 30 years of clinical research done by psychoanalyst and psychologist Dr. Thomas Jordan. He helped his patients to live a healthy love life, and now with this book, he guides the readers like me, and you. Now the question is how one can learn to love? Before that we need to understand, what is love, and how it affects us?
When someone asked you about your first love, your mind revolves around your first boyfriend/girlfriend. The first heartbreak and all, but our first interaction starts when we were born. Whatever you learned or see in your house affects your love lives in the later years. Most of the people don't know about it; they behave in a pattern that sometimes turns their relationship into a toxic one.
I am sure once in a while you asked yourself why the same thing happened to me; all the time or why did not I find the perfect person? The answer is not easy, but it lies in our subconscious mind. According to the author, your exposure to certain unhealthy relationship experiences will unknowingly teach you how to act in a love relationship. The feelings like suspicion, abuse, abandonment, neglect, control, affect our capacity to love wholeheartedly. This negativity comes from our past love experiences or our parents.
This book shows a way to unlearn these feelings, so one can live a happy life. I know it is easy to jump from one partner to another, but at some point, we need to stop that and start working on ourselves. Dr. Thomas Jordan shares techniques to unlearn and then re-learn to grow and comprehend yourself. He provided the list of unhealthy relationship experiences to help us understand the issues.
The author shares his struggles that influence his love life and how did he subdue it. The book is very informative, but I felt the content is monotonous in some places. I'll advise you to read this book slowly to absorb the instructions. The book gave a clear idea about a healthy and unhealthy relationship, how to avoid it, and deal with your emotions because the only thing we can control in a love relationship is the way we relate in love. I enjoy reading this book, it provides insights that we all need to stay happy in a love alliance.
Review: Carolyn M. Bowen on BookBub
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Learn to Love was an amazing find for learning about how to develop and maintain healthy love relationships. The content is informative and provides a well-structured guide for fleshing out problems and resolving them to become a better version of you in your love relationships.
Thomas Jordan Ph.D. provides expert analysis of what a love relationship is and isn’t. He then leads us through the discovery process as a professional complete with exercises to further our learning on our own or by following his offerings: seminars, webinar, and private consultation.
The book is built upon his clinical research over the course of his thirty-year practice and his personal experiences. The outcome has substantial value to us for envisioning, learning, and creating the love life we desire.
This book will teach you something about your love life and broaden the chances of your finding and sustaining a healthy love relationship. A 21st Century Love Relationship Class that provides the training we need in today’s world. A must-read!
Review: Carolyn M. Bowen on BookBub
10/10
Author Dr. Thomas Jordan takes readers on a journey to examine how previous relationships of love in one’s life and a failure to learn from them can affect how much of their love life they control in the book, “Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life”.
After 30 years of clinical research and treatment of patients with unhealthy love lives, Dr. Thomas Jordan has recognized that most people aren’t actually in control of their own love lives. Why? Because most people don’t know how to identify and change what they’ve learned from the love relationships in their lives. In Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life, you will learn how to make real—and lasting—improvements in your love life.
Starting with the family into which we’re born, we learn from all the love relationships in our lives, especially the unhealthy ones. Learn to Love will show you how these experiences help to form a psychological blueprint that controls the love life experiences we have as adults. If what you learned about love relationships was healthy, you’ll replicate this and have a meaningful and satisfying love life. But if what you learned was unhealthy, chances are you’ll continue to make the same love life mistakes over and over again. Learn to Love will show you how to unlearn this unhealthy learning and form the love relationships you’ve always wanted to have.
The simple formula presented within the pages of this book has helped many of my patients begin taking control of their own love lives, as well as helping me improve my own love life. Learn to Love will help you learn how to take control of your love life.
The Review
This was a captivating read, delving into the many aspects of love that influence a person’s life. From early childhood relationships and how even how a person’s parents interact can impact their viewpoint of love, to how modern-day relationships can lead to emotional baggage and so much more, this book covers a wide range of topics.
It was fascinating to see the various studies the author brought to the subject from the earliest chapters of the book. In one section the author talks about how hope impacts an unhealthy love life by bringing into it the concept of multiple disappointments. Another chapter delves into how we often will recreate the aspects of a previous relationship that made it so unhealthy in our current relationships. These studies and experiences the author relays are not only well written but speak to the reader on a personal level that can allow the reader to identify and understand aspects of their own lives in this book.
The Verdict
Informative, personal, and passionately written, author Dr. Thomas Jordan’s “Learn to Love” is a masterful reading experience that readers will not soon forget. Built to highlight the experiences of love throughout multiple aspects of one’s life and how we need to learn from those experiences to escape unhealthy relationships overall, this book is a quick yet fascinating journey into the aspect of love in our lives and deserves to be read. Be sure to grab your copy today!
Reviewed by: Emma - EmmabBooks.com
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
How to identify, and resolve, what is wrong in your relationships
An essential guide for those who keep having love relationships with the “wrong” person for them, and how to stop repeating this negative pattern.
This self-help book, written by clinical psychologist Thomas Jordan Ph.D who has 30 years experience of research and treating patients, is about love relationships throughout life, and how unconscious unhelpful learnings from early relationships, including childhood ones, are often repeated throughout life. This book is about learning how to stop forming love relationships with people who are not going to give you a long term fulfilling relationship, and instead form relationships that are right for you.
Although quite a short book in number of pages, every page is jam packed with useful and interesting information, so it takes quite a time to read and take in all the information and suggestions given. Each chapter is divided into short sections, enabling the reader to easily stop and think about the content – this book invites the reader to do a lot of thinking. The sections are easy to understand and the language used suitable for all readers. The ideas Dr Jordan puts forward are clear and in helpful stages, including some worksheets.
The first 3 chapters of this book examine negative influences on people’s relationships. These chapters are a tough read, but essential in order to understand, and be able to work with, the more positive sections later on. Within the chapters are exercises to enable the reader to think about their personal relationships, and how to unlearn unhelpful ways. Many of the examples are taken from Dr. Jordan’s practice with his patients; he also talks about his own personal experiences of repeatedly starting relationships with people completely wrong for him, and how he turned this around – so interesting.
5*s from me, as I loved the psychology in this book, and can recommend this book to anyone who finds themselves in repeatedly unsatisfactory relationships, and wants to learn how to meet people that are right for them. Although the book is in easy to read and digest sections, the process of changing long held thought processes is something that needs time and effort, so this is a book to work with and keep referring to.
Wish I had read this when I was in my 20s!
Reviewed by: Jeyran Main
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Anyone who likes to educate themselves and find peace within the structure of their upbringing and receive answers will find this book to be beneficial.
Learn to Love is a self – help book written about how the way we are loved as a child and the environment we grow up in affects the subconscious mind and teaches us to show affection to others. It explains the reasons why we fail in establishing stable bonds, friendships, and relationships. We learn the fundamentals to love and understand how our perspective makes a difference.
The book is written with care. The literature is easy to understand, and the pace is steady. The subjects are organized well, and it is clear that the content is written by a professional. There are three parts to the book consisting of: The Unhealthy Love Life, the Psychological Love Life and the Unlearning Method. Each section contains detailed lists and tables related to the matter, and I found the issue to be beneficial.
After all, 30 years is a long time to research the matter, and I believe in order to have successful relationships, one needs to recognize how much control you actually have over the matter.
I look forward to reading more from this author.
Reviewed by: R. Exelbert, Ph.D.
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
This is an extremely valuable and informative book. Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2020
Dr. Thomas Jordan has been able to encapsulate years of psychotherapy knowledge into a well-articulated, step-by-step practice that allows individuals to discover ways to experience a healthier love life. By guiding the reader through the exploration of previously learned relationship patterns, the reader gains insight into why their current romantic relationships may not be working. What is magnificent about his approach, is that these themes often take years for people to more deeply understand through psychotherapy, but Dr. Jordan helps the reader make valuable and applicable connections through his well-articulated teachings.
In addition, Dr. Jordan utilizes personal example, making himself vulnerable and relatable. I will, without a doubt, recommend this book to my patients. This was an excellent read, and is a valuable resource for both lay people and professionals alike.
Reviewed by: Yecheilyah Ysrayl
Review Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
In Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life, clinical psychologist Dr. Thomas Jordan, outlines several ways couples can improve their love lives. He shows from a “psychological blueprint” how those previous experiences of love have shaped our current understanding in relationships going as far back as birth. He uses his personal life experience to show how what we learn in our family “shapes our experience of interpersonal reality when we become adults” (Jordan, pp 92). Dr. Jordan challenges readers to identify what they’ve learned, challenge what they’ve learned, and then try something new. As you can tell, Dr. Jordan’s explanations are easy-to-understand and his examples are clear and concise.
One of the most important points he makes is about learned beliefs, behavior, and feelings. Dr. Jordan asserts, for example, that if what we’ve learned about love was unhealthy growing up, we will unknowingly, somewhat subconsciously, repeat what was unhealthy in our adult relationships. The key here is what you believe about love relationships will shape your experience. Suppose someone taught you to think relationships are dishonest because you experienced dishonesty growing up. If you are not aware of this learned belief and have not made changes, chances are your current relationships will recreate dishonesty and generate a feeling that someone is deceptive.
This same thing can apply if you’ve felt Abandonment (loss), Exploitation (used), Abuse (fearful), Mistrust (suspicious), Controlled (trapped), Neglect (deprived), Dependency (needy), and Rejection (rejected). According to Dr. Jordan, these are among the ten unhealthy traits we learn and unconsciously recreate in our love relationships if we have not healed from them. Another critical detail Dr. Jordan makes is about how we become defensive to avoid being vulnerable.
It is the vulnerability that allows people to get to know us better because we have let them “in.” People shy away from opening up in this way because one cannot be vulnerable without risking unintentional hurt from time to time. What is meant by “unintentional?” There will inevitably be differences between you and the person you are in a relationship with, disagreements, different perspectives, opinions, etc. These differences are inevitable. There is no escaping it. According to Dr. Jordan, one cannot be in love without feeling unintentional hurt based on differences.
So then, why is “falling in love” worth it? Dr. Jordan has an interesting answer: Because we all have a natural ability to heal. The risk of falling in love is more tolerable and less stressful when we believe in our innate ability to heal. “If hurt leads to loss, we can grieve, heal our hearts, and move on.” (Jordan, pp55)
We can avoid pain altogether by not opening up, but being defensive in relationships interferes with our ability to give and receive love. Dr. Jordan notes that love as an emotion is unpredictable and uncontrollable; hence, we “fall in love,” the connotation is that we have lost control. Because of losing control, we risk getting hurt. We avoid this hurt in attempting to achieve a love relationship without being vulnerable, which is not possible.
“Vulnerability is the emotional experience that shows you are open to giving and receiving love.” – Dr. Thomas Jordan
This understanding took me back to the 80/20 rule. It is a lot to expect to receive 100% good from one person because we all have trauma and baggage from our life experience, we carry with us. Even in an emotionally healthy and stable individual, you still might only get 80% of what you consider beautiful traits, if that. Can you live with that person’s twenty percent, or is this person’s twenty percent unbearable/intolerable? Based on your conscious awareness of your own flaws and strengths, combined with their weaknesses and strengths, what can you realistically tolerate in a love relationship? What flaws can you live with (accept)?
My only issue with this book is the opening section detailing what the book would be about. I found it unnecessary and thought the author would do well to jump right in. However, the author made up for it with the breakdown of healthy relationship experiences at the end! I think that tied things up well. These healthy traits are the opposite of the unhealthy list I mentioned earlier: Attachment, Respect, Freedom, Independence, Honesty, Consideration, Trust, Devotion, Acceptance, and Intimacy.
This understanding took me back to the 80/20 rule. It is a lot to expect to receive 100% good from one person because we all have trauma and baggage from our life experience we carry with us. Even in an emotionally healthy and stable individual, you still might only get 80% of what you consider beautiful traits, if that. Can you live with that person’s twenty percent, or is this person’s twenty percent unbearable/intolerable? Based on your conscious awareness of your own flaws and strengths, combined with their weaknesses and strengths, what can you realistically tolerate in a love relationship? What flaws can you live with (accept)?
My only issue with this book is the opening section detailing what the book would be about. I found it unnecessary and thought the author would do well to jump right in. However, the author made up for it with the breakdown of healthy relationship experiences at the end! I think that tied things up well. These healthy traits are the opposite of the unhealthy list I mentioned earlier: Attachment, Respect, Freedom, Independence, Honesty, Consideration, Trust, Devotion, Acceptance, and Intimacy.
Anyone, single or married, disappointing love life or not, can learn how to heal by learning to love themselves, starting with being consciously aware of toxic patterns.
Strong Introduction: 4/5
Authenticity / Believable: 5/5
Organization: 5/5/
Thought Provoking: 5/5
Solid Conclusion: 5/5
Overall: 5/5
Reviewed by: Chizioboli
Review Rating: 4 out of 4 Stars
In recent times, I have noticed that love is lacking in many relationships. This universal subject has been explored by many writers. However, many do not know how to love right. There are many great stories of finding and keeping true love. However, these stories seem to be like fairy stories. Many have given up on healing from a failed love life and resigned to a bitter fate of pain from past hurting relationships. Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life by Thomas Jordan is an insightful self-help book. It promises to guide the reader to quickly heal from toxic or failed relationships. It also guarantees a better love life.
I liked that the author delved into the causes of failed relationships. When we seek to proffer solutions in situations, the best strategy is finding the source of the problem. He started off by analyzing why Thomas did an amazing job writing on the several experiences that lead to unhealthy love life. Some of these include physical and emotional abuse, rejection, infidelity, lack of trust. As a scholar in psychology, the author applied psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. These two strategies have proven to be useful tools in healing from unhealthy relationships. In addition, he also provided a self-evaluation exercise to help the reader determine how best to tackle fixing the problem.
Additionally, I liked how the author emphasized the need to drop unhealthy experiences garnered from previous relationships. Some of these experiences could be consciously or unconsciously learned. Based on thorough research done, he proved how each of these experiences defines and negatively affects every new relationship one enters into. He also drew knowledge from his wealth of personal experience and that of his patients. His words were direct and convincing. I felt I was in a relationship counseling session. I would highly recommend this book to anyone going through a divorce, breakup, or heartbreak. This book would be therapeutic for these readers. The author's insightful words, alongside the success stories of his patients, assures healing for these people. Also, this book will be resourceful to people in search of true love amid the prevailing disappointments.
I truly enjoyed the book. I must commend the conversational tone the author used. It makes the reader feel at ease while reading the book. I gladly rate this book 4 out of 4 stars for the captivating and educational content. I found nothing to dislike. Also, there were no grammatical errors noticed.
Reviewed by: Zainherb
Review Rating: 4 out of 4 Stars
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life is a book that explains all anyone needs to know about love relationships. In this book, Dr Thomas Jordan teaches us how we learn about unhealthy love relationships and how we replicate what we have previously learnt in our own love lives. One such example is those who have learnt that abuse is a part of love relationships, find partners who abuse them or become abusers themselves, or both. Furthermore, we learn about our individual psychological love lives, the aftereffects of our unhealthy relationship experiences, and how to unlearn unhealthy relationship behaviors so we can practice healthy relationship behaviors instead. So, a person who has learnt abuse as a part of love relationships is to unlearn this, and practice the opposite of abuse which is mentioned in the book.
What I love most about this book is the wealth of information packed in it. There is so much unique content in just 124 pages. Everything mentioned in the book applies to the subject under discussion and there is no unnecessary detail to fill out space and waste the reader’s time. Jordan’s narration about his personal experience learning about love and how this affected his love life later on was a nice inclusion. It made the book more interesting and relatable. There are also practice questions to encourage the reader to participate, apply what is being taught, dive deep and ask personal questions.
There is nothing I dislike about the book. I will mention that the way the book is written is academic and might be slightly difficult for those who aren’t well educated, or who are non-native English speakers to understand it. This is because apart from the vocabulary, there are lots of long, convoluted sentences in the book that make comprehension tough. Other than this, the book is brilliant. Even the editing was amazing.
I give this book four out of four stars. The book is truly spectacular, and the aforementioned issues were not enough to reduce the rating. I found the book to be more beneficial than I originally thought; I learnt a lot about myself and I am glad I read it.
Readers who love nonfiction and those who want to fix their love relationships by getting to the root of the problem will find the book interesting and beneficial. As for those who dislike nonfiction, have no interest in academic discussions, or love relationships will probably not enjoy it.
******
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life
View: on Bookshelves
Reviewed by: Shillah A.
Review Rating: 4 out of 4 Stars
Learn To Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life is a self-help book that talks about the unhealthy love relationships that we develop and the strategies by which we can unlearn them. The author points out that what can be learned can also be unlearned or re-learned. Different toxic behaviors have been listed and ways to overcome the negative aspects have been highlighted. The change process included in the book involves learning to make permanent changes in love relationships though it might prove a little difficult. This book is based on years of clinical research to come up with indisputable facts and it, therefore, includes educational and therapeutic strategies. The author has employed multiple life examples that are related to many relationship difficulties.
The book is so educative and therefore there are several things I loved about the book. The book is divided into three parts and an outline of the chapters on what each part will be dealing with. Dr. Thomas Jordan has similarly included researchers' insights in the book such as Dr. Leo Buscaglia and Marco Grassi an Italian painter. He also narrows down to the personal level of the reader in addressing some of the solutions and also uses different kinds of teaching such as using formulas and this, therefore, doesn't allow room for boredom. The reader also has an opportunity to fill in their experiences. There is a summary after each lesson highlighting the important aspects in bold and in a simple format.
However, despite enjoying the book there are some negative aspects I noted while reading the book. The author uses a lot of words to explain a particular aspect and also there is a repetition of facts that have already been clarified. The method that the author used in outlining seems to be so similar and one may be unable to decipher what category they are in.
The book contains very few typos and the terminology is simple to understand without being drawn away. I would therefore rate this book 4 out of 4 stars since it was professionally edited. The book's proper alignment also affirms this.
I would recommend this book to teenagers and adults who may be experiencing unhealthy love relationships and those who might have withdrawn after several setbacks. Researchers who are also interested in the psychology of love relationships may also find this book useful.
Reviewed by: Miriam Nkere
Review Rating: 4 out of 4 Stars
[Following is a volunteer review of "Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life" by Thomas Jordan, Ph.D.]
Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life is a self-help book written by Thomas Jordan. The author intends to open the eyes of his audience to the negative things they must have learned about relationships and how to unlearn them to enjoy a healthy love relationship.
Thomas Jordan divided his teaching into three parts. The first part was 'Unhealthy Love Life.' And he started by telling us what an unhealthy love life means and does to our relationships. He then goes further to the 'Psychological Aspect,' which is very important. The author stresses that to change an unhealthy love life, one has to work on the psychological part of the love life learned earlier. These are the negative experiences stored in our memory like abandonment, abuse, mistrust, neglect, etc. We have to consciously unlearn all these negative experiences that are likely to affect our relationships in the future. He takes us to the last part, which is the 'Unlearning Method.' This part is the highlight for me, and the author included formulas and practical exercises to help readers evaluate their love lives and make corrections. If you want to know more about these unhealthy relationships and how to remedy them, please pick the book and read it.
The author did thorough research to put these great lessons together. Thomas Jordan is a psychologist, and his wealth of knowledge made his teachings so refreshing and engaging. I appreciate the author for adding his personal love life accounts in his writing to motivate his readers.
The aspect I enjoyed most is the table provided by the author for readers to rate their relationships. It helped me to know the kind of relationship I have been exposed to and the kind of love relationship I have given out.
I must attest that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The author was able to hold my attention right from the first page to the last. He wrote in a simple language that made my reading experience enjoyable and seamless. I even felt I was undergoing a therapy session, and it gave me insights into how to enjoy a healthy love relationship.
I do not hate anything about this book because it is life-transforming. I highly recommend this book to singles and married people, especially those suffering from their past relationships and who are afraid to love again.
In conclusion, I am glad that the book is also professionally edited. I found only a few typographical errors in it, and it didn't affect my comprehension and love for the book. Therefore, I'm happy to give this book a perfect rating of four out of four stars because it gives hope, enhances a better love life, and helps those struggling with emotional problems.
Reviewed by: Unsullied
Review Rating: 4 out of 4 Stars
Following is a volunteer review of "Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life" by Thomas Jordan, Ph.D.
According to Dr. Thomas Jordan, the health and success of one's love life is determined by what they have learnt about love relationships in their lives. In his book, Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life, He argues that our ability to learn is one of our greatest assets and that we become what we learn. There are times when we know we are learning and other times when we are not even aware.
The book is a culmination of years of clinical research on the topic of love psychology. The author states facts and statistics gathered from his research and experiments to make his points. He talks about the basic characteristics of a healthy love life, then the psychological aspect of love and finally the ways we can unlearn what we have learnt overtime about love. With very clear examples, he also talks about the effects of abandonment, control, abuse, dependency and dishonesty on a person's love life.
I loved that this book was factual and practical. I came across a lot of issues that I've seen others go through clearly elaborated, explained and solutions provided by the author. He impeccably tackled the issue of how family and environment affect our attitudes towards giving and receiving love. I enjoyed reading the analysis that the author did on the issue of defensiveness in relationships as I could relate to it. It is funny how one can have a problem and not even know about it until someone explains it to them. Reading this book was like attending a therapy session for me.
The author delivers his message precisely. This is a feature I found very impressive about the book. A topic as sensitive as this requires precision which the author delivered in style. Too much information would have easily made it boring. The language he used was simple and easy to comprehend. He did not use much jargon as most professionals do when writing. The book was also edited professionally. I liked the organization of his writing. It was easy to trace back to any specific area I needed clarification on. My favorite part of the book was the one on 'Unlearning Methods'. I love when practical solutions are offered to problems and this part did exactly that.
There was nothing I disliked about this book and therefore give it a perfect rating of 4 out of 4 stars. We all need to give, receive and maintain love. I'd therefore recommend this book to all readers, especially those who want to learn about love relationships.