Selected and reviewed by James Park.
Arranged by quality, beginning with the best.
Red comments are the opinions and evaluations of this reviewer.

1. Pepper Schwartz, PhD

Everything You Know about Love and Sex is Wrong:
Twenty-five Relationship Myths Redefined
to Achieve Happiness and Fulfillment in Your Intimate Life

2. Robert C. Solomon

Love: Emotion, Myth, & Metaphor

(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981)      347 pages

    An entertaining book by a philosopher familiar with the history
of love and contemporary attempts to understand it scientifically.
Solomon takes some of the same points of view as found in
New Ways of Loving by James Park,
but he does not work them out as systematically.

3. Bill Cosby 

Love and Marriage

(New York: Doubleday, 1989)      188 pages

    An autobiographical account of early love experiments
and 25 years of marriage with the same woman.
Funny on every page.
Deals with a lot of problems everyone faces in relationships.
Not intended to be profound, but this comic has a serious side.
And laughing at our problems is sometimes the best cure.

4. Ingrid Bengis

Combat in the Erogenous Zone

(New York: Knopf, 1972)      260 pages

    One woman's struggle to love more Authentically.
A sensitive, personal account of a sensual and attractive woman
attempting to find meaningful relationships with men and women:
Romantic love, sexploitation, hatred of men, fear of lesbianism,
& other traumas. Can a sexy woman find good loving relationships
when men are only interested in one thing?

5. Jill Tweedy

In the Name of Love

(New York: Pantheon, 1979)      196 pages

    An outspoken British feminist recounts the horrors that have
been inflicted on women down thru the ages "in the name of love".
She explores common mistakes women make in their 'loving relationships'
—as illustrated by her first two marriages.
Her third marriage is characterized by equality and mutual respect.
A clever and well-fashioned book.

6. Bonnie Kreps

Subversive Thoughts, Authentic Passions:
Finding Love Without Losing Your Self

(San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1990)      234 pages
(ISBN: 0-06-250483-5; hardcover)

paperback edition called:
Loving Without Losing Your Self

(Los Angles, CA: Lowell House, 1992)        234 pages
(ISBN: 0-929923-77-4; paperback)

    A committed feminist tells of her own mistakes in marriage and romantic love.
The Myth of Romantic Love misleads women into relationships
that harm their integrity as persons in the long run.
Instead of 'falling in love' autonomous woman should create
their own relationships based on aspiring passion, relationships based in reality,
founded on mutuality and respect for the selfhood of both autonomous persons.
This requires men and women to move beyond
their conventional sex-roles and conventional gender-personalities.
With regard to love, cultural traditions lead mostly in the wrong directions,
but autonomous men and women can create their own free relationships
based in reality instead of trying to reproduce romantic fantasies.

[last]. James Park

New Ways of Loving:
How Authenticity Transforms Relationships 

(Minneapolis, MN: Existential Books, 2007—6th edition)      264 pages

1. Romantic Love is a cultural invention rather than a natural phenomenon.

2. Relationships improve as we become less dependent and more autonomous.

3. Love is best when it arises from free choice rather than obligation.

4. Basing love on pre-existing needs leads to using, possessiveness, & jealousy.

5. Jealousy is a learned emotion,
which we transcend as we become more Authentic.

6. Once we transcend jealousy, we can love more than one person at a time.

7. Our 'femininity' and 'masculinity' make poor bases for relationships.

8. Our imprinted sexual fantasies can also be transcended in Authenticity.

9. The desire to have children is enculturated rather than natural.

10. Marriage is often a hindrance to love, rather than a help.

11. Relationships may be improved by the lovers not living together.

12. Keeping relationship journals can improve communication.

13. Transcending our Existential Predicament permits new forms of love.