The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

by Neil Strauss

They say that when you meet someone and feel like it’s love at first sight, run in the other direction. All that’s happened is that your dysfunction has meshed with their dysfunction.

“Guilt is just about your behavior. Shame is about who you are.”

Spoken like a true crackhead.

Yet at the same time, there’s a voice inside me, telling me that somewhere out there, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, there are smart, attractive, and stable women who want commitment without requiring sexual exclusivity.

“Do you think it’s male nature that makes us want to sleep with other people or is it really an addiction?”

“What I’m saying is that if you have true intimacy with your partner, you won’t need to seek sex outside the relationship.”

Intimacy is sharing your reality with someone else and knowing you’re safe, and them being able to share their reality with you and also be safe.

As a culture, we voraciously consume horror movies about vampires, ghosts, zombies, and other supernatural beings. But people are much scarier than any monster we can make up.

The sins of the parents are the destinies of their children.

But every now and then, I come across someone who has the experience, knowledge, and calling to be not just a teacher dispensing information but a guide leading others to themselves.

Are you always trying to save or care for others because you were never able to save Mom from her depression or addiction?

If you find chemical, mental, or technological ways to numb yourself and your feelings, that’s trauma blocking.

Because it isn’t until we start developing an honest, compassionate, and functional relationship with ourselves that we can begin to experience a healthy, loving relationship with others.

“The avoidant is very good at seducing, in the sense that he has an uncanny ability to find out what his partner needs and give it to her. Because he was usually enmeshed, he gets his worth and value from taking care of needy people.”

The avoidant gives and gives, sacrificing his own needs, but it’s never enough for the love addict. So the avoidant grows resentful and seeks an outlet outside of the relationship, but at the same time feels too guilty to stop taking care of the needy person.”

“Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together.”

“If we eliminate one half of the dysfunctional relationship, the dysfunction is gone,” I explain. “What’s left is a single guy enjoying life and its pleasures. Why is the option with two people in a reciprocal nurturing relationship any better than this option?”

in her depiction of a relationship, all the highs and peak experiences of life have to be sacrificed in the name of intimacy. And that doesn’t seem like a goal worth aspiring to.

Real intelligence is when your mind and your heart connect.

Pets are the gateway drug to children.

One of the biggest indicators of enmeshment, according to Lorraine, is when a mother tells her children that she lives only for them.

Silently

Seduced.

pathological accommodation.

They tell me I need to build self-esteem from within. Yet in order to do that, I have to accept that I’m broken, shattered, stigmatized, diseased, and traumatized—and all that does is make me want to throw myself off a rooftop so I can start all over again.

Anatomy of Love,

The solution, she elaborates, is for couples to do novel and exciting things together (to release dopamine and get the romance rush), make love regularly (to release oxytocin and sexually bond), cut themselves off from cheating opportunities, and, in general, make sure their partners are “continually thrilling” enough to keep all three drives humming.

I’m so bad at commitment, I can’t even commit to being uncommitted.

“Wounds bring drama and trauma. They don’t bring comfort.” She pauses to make sure I understand, then elaborates. “We all have six core needs: emotional, social, intellectual, physical, sexual, and spiritual. And if they’re being attended to and enhanced, then you’re doing the right thing.”

“If this choice is coming from a healthy place, then you’ll find that it leads to lasting happiness,”

I’m starting to believe that the whole notion of classifying certain behaviors as normal and abnormal hurts people more than it helps them.

It was the Catholic Church that began a relentless campaign to make monogamy and lifelong marriages inviolable institutions in the ninth century.

compersion.

true love is wanting your partner to have whatever she wants—whether or not you approve of it.”

the classics in the field of consensual nonmonogamy—The Ethical Slut, Opening Up, Sex at Dawn, Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits—as well as a lesser-known book from a more therapeutic perspective, Love in Abundance: A Counselor’s Advice on Open Relationships,

Loneliness is holding in a joke because you have no one to share it with.

I’m not a top or a bottom. I’m a middle.

She’s verbalized my fear: that marriage means the end of fun, that the things a woman will do with a random guy she meets in Cabo are actually more fun than the things she’ll do with the man spending the rest of his life with her.

It’s not about waiting for a certain quantity of time before having sex, it’s about waiting for a certain quality of connection.

Only by saying no to others could I protect Ingrid’s heart. But now, I am saying yes—to everyone, to everything, to life. Because every yes is the gateway to an adventure.

I’m starting to wonder if the more people there are in a relationship, the less freedom each person actually has.

It’s these damn feelings. They’re to blame.

Even in movies, when couples decide to open their marriage, the results are usually disastrous and the moral of the story is to stick with what you’ve got.

“I guess swinging works because all the women you’re sleeping with are in other relationships, so they’re not a threat to your partner.”

He’s a cross between Clark Kent, John Malkovich, and someone recovering from a mild stroke.

Even if they have a best friend, that doesn’t mean they can’t have other friends. And that’s the way the people at this party think of sexual relationships.”

This is the worst orgy of my life.

what it takes to enjoy being the fulcrum is a high degree of narcissism and an unwavering certainty that your needs and beliefs are more important and enlightened than those of the rest of your community—and

And, as with every secret test a person gives someone they care about, she fails it.

“Love and let go,”