Kindle Notes & Highlights
Most of us hope that love will save us from “the worst thing” we can imagine about ourselves. For some, the worst thing is being alone. For others, the worst thing is being found worthless. Each of us hides this deepest wound from our partners and often from ourselves, while simultaneously craving love’s absolution. Undefended Love takes us right into the thicket of the worst thing, and it fairly skips along with the bone-deep certainty of knowing that true intimacy frees us. True intimacy utilizes fear and scythes through illusion to leave us, as Marlena and Jett have discovered, “at ease
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She was looking for a relationship that would be a vehicle, not a barrier, for self-discovery and mutual healing. For Anne, the only primary relationship worth having was one in which both parties work in a collaborative way, inviting and realizing their full potential individually and together.
Having failed to sustain this deep and unwavering connection—the experience of being united in heart and mind—with another, he had long ago given up on the possibility.
The further Anne and Tim delved into this exploration the more they realized the radical potential of this journey. If being emotionally intimate meant knowing and loving the very core of each other’s being—with no buffer between them to obstruct or obscure the contact—they were committing themselves to becoming undefended lovers. On the one hand this felt like suicide, and on the other it felt wildly exciting.
We will first make the critical distinction between personality, which is actually a defense structure created to protect us from painful situations over which we had no control, and essence, the core of who we are.
