Relationships Matter

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.

A workshop based on this book is also available in audio. For more information, click here. 

User Reviews about Perfect Love - Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart

I was absolutely blown away by this incredible cd set. John Welwood sounds like Dr Wayne Dyer and so I loved his voice from the outset. His gentle, humorous and insightful teachings get to the core of what it is to be in a relationship. As a relationship coach myself I am surrounded by books, seminars, cds, videos and workshops to add to my learning consistently. Of everything I have come across so far, John Welwood is up there with the best. I highly recommend this 'experience' because thats what it is.

FrancineDivorce Doctor -- Quality, depth and perception

I had been nursing a grievance for so long that I finally realized it was negatively affecting my outlook on life. I was lucky to find this book in which Welwood tackles the very subject of grievance, in the first chapter no less, by explaining why we find that state so compelling. He then delves into some of the origins of grievance, hatred, and what he calls the 'mood of unlove' and proceeds to explain why and how one can work to turn things around within.

Part of the premise of this book is that we often expect to find perfect love in our relationships with others. Yet we are so often incapable of providing each other with really great love. This does not make relationships worthless, but we need to understand that people are not the source of the perfect love that we seek.

Many of us have heard that we must find that perfect love within, and that is all well and good and true. I think it was Pema Chodron who first clued me in to the thought that we all have an innate wisdom within, and I believe it is that wisdom that allows us to know perfect love. Yet, I have never heard anyone remind me how to get in touch with that wisdom , or that perfect love, in such a simple, kind and practical manner as Welwood does in this short book.

As a practicing professional he has skillfully distilled the "how to's" of love and compassion down to easily understood concepts. This book is a worthy read for anyone, but especially for those who know of the desire to live a life of love, which Welwood beautifully calls a holy longing ... but are instead stuck in anger, hatred, bitterness, disappointment, fear or other outlooks that are non-conducive to loving. The exercises he offers are simple, insightful, powerful and effective. I am grateful that he has chosen to write and I consider myself lucky to have found his work.

This book ends up being a guide to developing a more loving relationship with yourself, which is where one has to start, and return to, if grievance overstays its' welcome in your life at times. Welwood has also published a really great read on his website, entitled Relationship as Spiritual Crucible, which is uniquely specific to working with others. -- Unusual, concise, practical and insightful

John Welwood's engaging book of objective love in theory and practicalities has opened a gateway for my 22 yr. marriage of patterns that have been misunderstood; which in turn we have regressed into frustration, underlying resentment, distrust, disconnection and isolation.

John's book has given me/us a lifeline (we are actually reading it together over morning coffee (a first of reading a book together), and it is a springboard for allowing attention and appreciation of the other) to grow into awareness of "why" we are in what what seems to be experiences outside of ourselves, and we can now "co-create" within ourselves as I thou, and discover a communion in relationship from "I thou" to "we are".

After you strip all of the righteous grievances away...there is an inherent diamond in the mud - that "Love is greater than hatred because it can embrace hatred, while hatred cannot embrace love. While love can exist free of hatred, hatred exists only because of love, as a painful symptom of our disconnection from it." (page 60). With this realization, I find myself bathing in a love consciousness that is inherent to my being, and that is enough to swim in the hate, understand it, let it go...and LIVE in the real mission of this planet - the power of love in all of its infinitely wide-spectrum of objectivity, grace and Isness in Being. Thank you John for bringing awareness in the duality of humanity of absolute love and relative love. -- Love is Greater Than Hatred

I haven't even finished reading it, but know I want to buy it for all my loved ones. If we don't come to understand why we "do the things we don't want to do, and don't do the things we want to do" we will never know world peace. Peace begins in our heart, and in our relationships, then will extend outwards to the world. I hope everyone gets this message, whether through Welwood's awesome book or other modalities. It's crucial for our continuance as a species. -- perfect explanation

This book really gets to the heart of perfection....but is it attainable?
I found "Single a documentary film" really covered this is well.
www.singlefilm.com
It's available on Amazon.com as DVD or Digital down load. -- perfect..or too high an ecpectation? www.singlefilm.com