Cupid's Arrow: The Course of Love through Time Book

From its passionate heights to its fatuous depths, Robert Sternberg has found a way to map the course of true love. Love is a triangle, drawn between points of passion, commitment and intimacy. Each person's "love triangle"--their way of loving--is a different shape, and the better a couple's triangles fit, the better. The problem is, each person's idea of their own triangle is subtly different from the one their partner perceives. And of course, each person's triangles, real and imagined, personal and projected, change over time. If the metaphor seems forced, the insights drawn from it do not, and the statistical data cited in support of Sternberg's model more than convince (this is an academic work, too, though it reads like the best pop psychology). Sternberg's comparative cultural and literary study of love through the ages widens the reader's appreciation of love's power. We learn why arranged marriages work, how Victorians harnessed love to moral improvement, and why the notion of platonic love makes us feel so uncomfortable today. Sternberg pulls no punches--his account of how relationships decay and die will give most readers cause for discomfort--but his writing is warm and humane, so that it may come as a surprise to the general reader to find, at the back of the book, 20 closely typeset pages of precise and learned references. This is more than a book of homilies: real work is being done here. --Simon IngsRead More