Reading this book is looking at relationship from a technical, neo-scientific point of view (words like love right triangle, psychological hypochondria, romantic inflation). De Botton offers some great insight into the psyche of the man and woman. In a TIME article, it is written "The pages of the novel are sprinkled with diagrams, floor plans of the heart and even a picture of a can of Campbell's soup-which reflect, in their way, the games and strategies we practice in love. "I love you," De Botton realizes, can be a question, a prompt or an opening bid". So far, my favorite paragraphs from the book are-->"If Alice couldn't possibly have been falling in love with Eric, then she was perhaps falling in love with love.
It expressed a certain reflexivity about the amorous state, it meant deriving more pleasure from one's own emotional enthusiasm than from the object of affection which had elicited it.
Rather than simply holding that X was wonderful, the in-love-with-love lover would first think, Isn't it wonderful to have found someone as wonderful as X? When Eric stopped to tie up his shoe lace, Alice thought not just, Doesn't he look adorable tying up his shoe? but also, Isn't it a dream to have at last met someone who I find ties up their shoes in an adorable way?"
This book makes me feel self-conscious at times, and through an outsider's perspective (de Botton's), now I can see that the slippery slope is always closer and more slippery than it is from the insider's perspective. Maybe I should buy this as a reference and a reminder.
