Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: A Workshop on Healing the Wound of the Heart

by John Welwood Narrated by Stephen Graybill

Overview

While most of us have moments of loving freely and openly, it is often hard to sustain this where it matters most--in our intimate relationships. Why, if love is so great and powerful, are human relationships so challenging and difficult? If love is the source of happiness and joy, why is it so hard to open to it fully and let it govern our lives? In this book, John Welwood addresses these questions and shows us how to overcome the most fundamental obstacle that keeps us from experiencing love's full flowering in our lives.

Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships begins by showing how all our relational problems arise out of a universal, core wounding around love that affects not only our personal relationships but the quality of life in our world as a whole. This wounding shows up as a pervasive mood of unlove--a deep sense that we are not intrinsically lovable just as we are. And this shuts down our capacity to trust, so that even though we may hunger for love, we have difficulty opening to it and letting it circulate freely through us.

This book takes the reader on a powerful journey of healing and transformation that involves learning to embrace our humanness and appreciate the imperfections of our relationships as trail-markers along the path to great love. It sets forth a process for releasing deep-seated grievances we hold against others for not loving us better and against ourselves for not being better loved. And it shows how our longing to be loved can magnetize the great love that will free us from looking to others to find ourselves.

Written with penetrating realism and a fresh, lyrical style that honors the subtlety and richness of our relationship to love itself, this revolutionary book offers profound and practical guidance for healing our lives as well as our embattled world.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Too often, our relationships leave us feeling frustrated, anxious, lonely, and sad. A nationally known psychotherapist, Welwood (Journey of the Heart) takes a psychospiritual approach to transforming our relationships by healing the "wound of the heart," i.e., the deep-seated, unconscious belief that we are unloved and unlovable as we are, which makes it impossible for us to give and receive love freely. In turn, this state of "unlove" causes us to numb our hearts and close ourselves off from others, thereby shutting down the pathways through which love can flow. To break free from this vicious cycle, Welwood offers practical exercises and real-life examples from his practice. His lyrical writing style may not appeal to quick-fix seekers, but the book will find an audience among New Agers and the deeply forlorn. For larger self-help collections.-Wendy Lee, Marshall-Lyon Cty. Lib., MN Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

From the Publisher

" Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships offers both grand theories and useful practices for learning how to receive love as well as give it."—Body & Soul

"Welwood skillfully identifies the fundamental obstacle in relationships and offers a clear, attainable, and transformative solution." —Harville Hendrix, coauthor of Receiving Love and Getting the Love You Want

"Welwood is one of the most brilliant and important teachers of our time."—Debbie Ford, author of The Best Year of Your Life

DEC 07/JAN 08 - AudioFile

Based on his book, Welwood’s recorded seminar offers a balanced blend of smooth teaching and carefully structured exercises, aimed at provoking self-discovery and openness to love. “If love is so great, why are human relationships so difficult, so messy, so impossible?” It’s mainly that we expect our connections with others to heal the issues that arise when we open ourselves to our vulnerabilities. Participation from audience members provokes an impressive range of thoughtful insights on the ways we can heal grievances and connect unconditionally to others. Welwood has a gentle verbal style—he speaks as if he’s thinking out loud and always sensing his audience. His style contributes as much to the audio’s healing quality as his moving words about the provocative nature of intimate relationships. T.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169441253
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	07/03/2018
Series:	Shambhala
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

All the most intractable problems in human relationships can be traced back to what I call the mood of unlove --a deep insecurity that most people harbor within themselves about being loved or lovable just for who they are. This doubt about our connection to love makes it hard to trust in ourselves, other people, life, or love itself.

The mood of unlove often shows up in the form of instant emotional reactivity to any perception of being slighted or treated badly. It's as though a huge reservoir of distrust and resentment is ready and waiting to be released--which the tiniest incident can trigger. For some couples, these emotional eruptions happen early on, blowing a budding relationship apart in their first few encounters. For others, the mood of unlove might not wreak its havoc until well into a seemingly happy marriage, when one or both partners suddenly wake up one day and realize they don't feel truly loved.

Fortunately, just as the sun is never permanently obscured by clouds, so our native capacity for love, for genuine warmth and openness, cannot be destroyed. To say that our heart is wounded means that we are lost in clouds that temporarily block our access to the sun that is always shining. Healing the love-wound, then, involves something like opening up spaces in the clouds and inviting the sun to do what it naturally wants to do: shine upon us.

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