By Christabelle
One month until Valentine’s Day and Mari Ruti, Ph.D is here to help you find the partner of your dreams!
Based on a popular course taught at Harvard, author Mari Ruti, Ph.D. invites us to rethink our notions of love in The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can’t Master the Madness of Love—and Why That’s the Best Part (ISBN: 9781402250804, HC $21.99; February 2011).
Are you tired of hearing that men and women come from different planets? Are you sick of the idea that men and women live in separate emotional universes? You’re not the only one.
The Case for Falling in Love is aimed at women who are tired of hearing that they need to learn to read “the male psyche” in order to have successful relationships. Dr. Ruti rails against that gender-specific advice of many self-help guides—calling out the popular works of Sherry Argov, Greg Behrendt and Helen Fisher—and dismantles the tired notions that men and women are “wired” differently, and that men therefore need to be “tricked” into love and marriage.
Through pop culture examples, Dr. Ruti shows that television shows—yes, Gossip Girl—and movies offer us much better models for gender and romantic behavior than most self-help guides.
The Case for Falling in Love is meant to liberate those frustrated by the idea that they just need to learn the right strategies to find love, and rather offers 12 anti-rules of love:
1. Stop trying so hard
2. Stop being so cautious
3. Stop analyzing your every move
4. Stop expecting your guy to act like a caveman
5. Stop apologizing for being strong
6. Stop being afraid to have needs and vulnerabilities
7. Stop running after guys that don’t want you
8. Stop looking for a guy without issues
9. Stop manipulating the guy you love
10. Stop regretting every false step you ever took
11. Stop thinking of loss as a pure loss
Was that twelve of them? No? Only eleven? Well this one deserver double-billing: Stop trying so hard. These are your twelve anti-rules. They won’t guarantee your everlasting happiness. But they’ll guarantee that you will have lived like a true lover. Even when love fails, it’s not because you are doing something “wrong” with men, but because love is, by definition, fickle and volatile.
Leave a Reply