爱的旅程 – A Book About Love by Jonah Lehrer

作者通过深入的研究，系统地回顾了西方文学作品和社会思想中有关爱的演进历史，科学地分析了情感的演进过程，揭示了形成良好关系的内在机制。

这本书中所说的爱并不局限于男女之间的爱情，亲子之间，伴侣之间，朋友之间，爱是每天都无处不在的奇迹，却常常被我们忽视。相较于带来日常快乐的依恋关系，我们更愿意拥抱转瞬即逝的情感；相较于一直都在身边的爱，我们更容易沉迷于一见钟情。但是，激情并不是爱。

我们虽为罗密欧与朱丽叶的故事感动唏嘘，但爱最不同寻常的特质却是它对抗习惯的力量。作者莱勒说，爱并不建立在神秘的、热血沸腾的激情中，而是需要对一系列能力长久的培养和提升，这种缓慢形成的爱，才更加迷人。我们遭遇逆境时的果敢沉着，或是脱离稚气步入成熟的最终成功，无一不是我们爱别人和被爱的结果。

这本书集合了心理学和文学上的各种分析，研究了爱如何形成，如何塑造了我们，为什么我们离不开爱，我们如何在爱的旅程中，建立并保持长久的亲密关系。

Science writer Jonah Lehrer explores the mysterious subject of love.

Weaving together scientific studies from clinical psychologists, longitudinal studies of health and happiness, historical accounts and literary depictions, child-rearing manuals, and the language of online dating sites, Jonah Lehrer’s A Book About Love plumbs the most mysterious, most formative, most important impulse governing our lives.

Love confuses and compels us—and it can destroy and define us. It has inspired our greatest poetry, defined our societies and our beliefs, and governs our biology. From the way infants attach to their parents, to the way we fall in love with another person, to the way some find a love for God or their pets, to the way we remember and mourn love after it ends, this book focuses on research that attempts, even in glancing ways, to deal with the long-term and the everyday. The most dangerous myth of love is that it’s easy, that we fall into the feeling and then the feeling takes care of itself. While we can easily measure the dopamine that causes the initial feelings of “falling” in love, the partnerships and devotions that last decades or longer remain a mystery. This book is about that mystery. Love, Lehrer argues, is not built solely on overwhelming passion, but, fascinatingly, on a set of skills to be cultivated over a lifetime.