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.

约翰•威尔伍德，芝加哥大学临床心理学博士，美国著名临床心理学家和心理治疗师，自上世纪80年代起成为超个人心理学的前驱。曾与聚焦疗法大师尤金•简德林（Eugene Gendlin）合作，该疗法对西方心理学界有巨大影响；又随西藏上师修学，研习佛法与东方各种禅观传承。在此基础上，他引领风潮，整合西方心理治疗与东方灵修传统，把两种方法共同引入治疗和成长过程，成效卓著。作者目前任教于加州整合学院，同时主持私人心理治疗工作室，并在世界各地带领工作坊。至今已出版8部著作，除本书外，还包括《心灵之旅》（Journey of the Heart）、《爱与觉醒》（Love and Awakening）、《迈向觉醒的心理学》（Toward a Psychology of Awakening）等。