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.

約翰•威爾伍德，芝加哥大學臨床心理學博士，美國著名臨床心理學傢和心理治療師，自上世紀80年代起成為超個人心理學的前驅。曾與聚焦療法大師尤金•簡德林（Eugene Gendlin）閤作，該療法對西方心理學界有巨大影響；又隨西藏上師修學，研習佛法與東方各種禪觀傳承。在此基礎上，他引領風潮，整閤西方心理治療與東方靈修傳統，把兩種方法共同引入治療和成長過程，成效卓著。作者目前任教於加州整閤學院，同時主持私人心理治療工作室，並在世界各地帶領工作坊。至今已齣版8部著作，除本書外，還包括《心靈之旅》（Journey of the Heart）、《愛與覺醒》（Love and Awakening）、《邁嚮覺醒的心理學》（Toward a Psychology of Awakening）等。