Hold me tightly

The Irish poet John O'Donohue says: "A huge feeling of loneliness and depression resembles ice attacking many people." We now ask our loved ones for emotional connection and a sense of belonging that my grandmother would have received from an entire village. And this celebration of romantic love, which our popular culture nurtures; like films and dramatic TV series that chase us with images of romantic love, as the first and the end of all relationships. Therefore, it should not be surprising that people included in recent opinion polls rank a satisfying love relationship as a primary goal, before financial success and a fulfilling career. It has become necessary to understand what love is, how to obtain it, and how to make it last. Fortunately, over the past two decades, a new, exciting, and revolutionary understanding of love has emerged, and we now know that love, in fact, is the peak and summit of evolution, and the most convincing survival mechanism for the human species. Not because it drives us to mate and reproduce; as we succeed in mating without love, but because it drives us to emotionally bond with a precious few others who provide us with a safe haven from life's storms. And because love is our fortress designed to provide emotional protection that enables us to cope with the fluctuations of existence, Sue Johnson has written this book to be a guide, targeting couples, engaged, and lovers, explaining her theory which has achieved great success in emotion-focused therapy.