Reviews for How to say no to the one you love

The average rating for How to say no to the one you love based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-08 00:00:00 Bridget Appel In "The Eden Project: In search of the magical other" J. Hollis brilliantly laid out how difficult it is to have an authentic REAL marriage between all the projection & expectations that we carry into romantic relationships. This book, "How to say no" actually seems to have some answers for possibly having an authentic marriage that does not create complexes. Some confusing aspects which I hope will be clarified further in the book. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This book can be dense at times and is not the easiest read. However, it powerfully explains the process of how we can get to the authentic, healthy and beneficial aspect of romantic love. While some aspects of this book may be controversial or worthy of further exploration, the main point seems to make a lot of sense. It also seem to be the first workable description I have encountered in dealing with infatuation and projection. The following excerpt is one of the key points of this book: -------------------------------------------------- "The fundamental experience of love consists in overcoming the isolation of the individual. This experience emanates from the overwhelming feeling of being one with the Thou, and through the Thou, one with the entire world. In this experience, the ego is not stabilized but revitalized; it is not tied down but is set in motion toward a greater Self. What ultimately motivates every love is the shadowy presentiment that one can become a new person through devotion and surrender to a Thou. That love often turns to hate does not contradict this assertion, but rather indicates the considerable difficulties that are bound up with the process of devotion and surrender to a Thou. The major difficulty probably lies in perceiving in the Thou something strange and different and yet at the same time very close, something of one's very own in the deepest sense of the word: "I am not you, but you are an image of that which I lack on my path to reaching my own Self." Bringing together this - "No, I am not you" and this - "Yes, through your very being you reveal to me things that I must also actualize" is an art that must be learned. That is the message of this book. First Stage - Fusion …There are three developmental stages of an emotional relationship. The first is fusion. Fusion informs the relationships of natural man, the child - and also those of the lover. The distinction between I and Thou does not exist or is not yet possible. The confluence of I and Thou is intoxicating and, depending on the situation, is experienced as an increase or as a loss of strength. Second Stage - Projection The second stage is projection. Unconscious parts of oneself are erroneously cast out onto an object in the external world - onto the lover, for example - so that one's perception of him or her is distorted. In political life, images of the enemy are just such projections. Admittedly, there are usually "hooks" in the object that fit the projected contents, but they are exaggerated. Judgments that are shaped by projections have something absolute about them. The external object is reduced to a common denominator, and we no longer perceive the differentiated features of its whole being. Third Stage - Reflection of the Guiding Image The third stage is reflection of the guiding image. This is the most complete form of emotional relationship. The person whom I love becomes a guiding image for me that reflects my own heretofore unknown possibilities of living, the dynamics of my development. Reflection of the guiding image is a realistic perception both of the partner who already embodies such characteristics in his or her personality, qualities that I still lack, and also of my Self in a facet of personality unknown to me up until now. "Reflection" could be associated with cool distance and egocentric vanity, but here, on the contrary, I mean that vision into the depths of the Thou of which only the one who loves is capable. Only with strong mutual feeling can two people reflect each other so deeply that they become guiding images and not merely external, perhaps unfitting role models for each other. In the person whom I love a new picture appears at each new meeting, a picture that bursts the narrowness of my usual way of experiencing and seeing and heralds a heretofore undiscovered aspect of my own nature. Through this, my partner now becomes a potent guiding image for me. In the course of this and of the following chapters, I will fully develop the various characteristics of reflection of the guiding image. To help the reader get an initial feeling for the reality of the reflection of the guiding image, I want to illustrate the concept with a brief example. A 25 year old man had experienced all the events of his life up until then - friendships, completion of professional training, death of close persons - with a cool, detached, observing distance. He was never "in" these events, hence he could never be fully and completely happy nor could he fully and completely mourn. "Life roared past me," as he expressed it. Then he fell in love with a woman about his own age who, in contrast to him, was totally "in" everything that she felt, thought, and said. She was quite at home in her body, too - again in contrast to him, who often felt his body as foreign, as not belonging to him when he looked in the mirror as he shaved in the morning. The young woman whom he loved spontaneously awakened in him a new feeling for life. Often he was able to delight and to mourn, just as she was. In the course of many years he learned no longer to be dependent on her company in his new, more direct manner of experiencing. For him the woman became an inner guiding image that worked autonomously in him, even when he was alone, and bestowed upon him the gift of a previously impossible level of intensity of experience. That is reflection of the guiding image. It enlivens our developmental dynamics. In this book we are always talking about mutual reflection of the guiding image. In love, two persons become mutual guiding images for countless separate developmental steps. …Our emotional relationships should be informed progressively less by merging and projection and progressively more by reflection of the guiding image. Admittedly, every relationship is a mixture of these three forms of relationship. -----------------------------------------------

Review # 2 was written on 2020-03-08 00:00:00 Adam Jasons Do you think that all ways of thinking are equally valid? That science is just one way of 'knowing the world'? Do you consider science to be just our cultures creation story? Noretta Koertge is here to explain why you are wrong. Her name is pronounced ker-chee, and she is a woman so you can't dismiss her as just another tool of the colonial patriarchy sent here to oppress american graduate students.