Living with Love

True love and its obstacles.

by Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D.

Too Commonly, "I'm Bored" Is Our Response to the Mystery of Life: Are We Losing Our Religion?

When religion is alive and healthy, children grow up surrounded by a respect for human existence and the mystery of life—for a fascination or freshness that never leaves our side. Read More

Ladies, Love to Shop? I Know Why!

Retailers seduce us into buying an illusory freedom—a freedom that is in fact no freedom at all. Read More

Over 60 and Looking for Love: Why Not?

The vein of agelessness that runs through our being refuses to feel “old” in relation to a new love. Read More

How Parents and Children Can Finally Come to Love Each Other

Adult children and their aging parents have a unique opportunity to relinquish control, to see, for once and for all, whether love is possible after all. Read More

Why You Should Kick Your Addiction to Romance and Learn to Love

It’s not, it turns out, as easy to find a soul mate as the magazines and movies imply. Read More

How Well-Meaning Parents Cheat Their Children of Self-Confidence and Self-Compassion

The difference between idealization and love is not to be taken lightly. Mistaking one for the other can lead even the most well-meaning parent astray and damage the very child her or she is trying to nurture and protect. Read More

When Perfect Couples Don’t Have Perfect Relationships

The sense of closeness can seem a horrible delusion and create a painful sense of betrayal when the inevitable differences show up. Read More

What About the Chemistry? The Mysterious and Paradoxical Process of Finding Your Other Half

At a deep level, each of us feels incomplete — just as we should. Read More

This Can't Be Love: Why Affection, Attachment, Respect—Even Passion—Are Not Love

Contrary to popular opinion, love is neither a feeling nor an instinctive or hormonal response nor even primarily a joy. Read More

When the Heart Is on Fire

Strange, isn't it, that we're willing to sacrifice almost anything for love? As lovers, partners, parents, friends, we enter into relationships with a crazy kind of happiness and hope. And even when we're fully warned about the disillusionment that always follows that first blush of frenzied hope, we still find ourselves suffering painfully when it happens, too often feeling like a failure. Read More

Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Vermont, and the author of 13 books.

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About Living with Love

Living with Love will create a map that shows how we move from our first encounters with love -- falling in love with a new baby, a romantic partner, a parent, a friend, a sibling, or even a new pet -- to becoming a warmly attuned witness whose interest in the beloved abides.It will talk about the gap between people, how to handle hurt and anger, how we know when love has died, the process of transforming a broken heart, and finally the complex and layered nature of true love..