Love’s Labour

by Stephen Grosz

‘A work of genius… It would not be humanly possible for me to recommend his work more highly’ India Knight
‘Left me feeling wiser and more open to life’ Oliver Burkeman

Luminous and necessary stories from the psychoanalyst's consulting room; on desire, heartbreak and learning how to love.

When it comes to love why do we find things so difficult? Drawing on over forty years of candid and surprising conversations with his patients, Stephen Grosz asks, what gets in the way of our falling in love? And what must we do to stay there?

In the intimate space of the consulting room, we meet the woman who can’t post her wedding invitations but then, decades later, can’t decide whether to get divorced; the friendship group that explodes when an adulterous affair begins; and the man whose partner’s death is almost too much to bear.

As an analyst, Grosz’s unerring ability is to locate what ails the heartsick. As a writer, he elegantly shows how we can deploy the agonies of love as tools for understanding.

The labour of love is the work of a lifetime but in finally learning to see ourselves and our world clearly, we find we are truly ready to love one another.

*** A 'BEST BOOK OF 2025' IN THE TIMES AND IRISH TIMES***

‘The poet laureate of human emotion’ Elizabeth Day
‘This man could save your marriage’ Sunday Times
'Stephen Grosz ... is one of the best at writing about psychoanalysis' The Times
'Powerful and compelling' Guardian
'This is a beautiful book' Nigella Lawson

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Love, Mental Health, Audiobook, Memoir

186 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 4, 2025

About the author

Stephen Grosz is a practicing psychoanalyst—he has worked with patients for more than twenty-five years. Born in America, educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Oxford University, he lives in London. A Sunday Times bestseller, The Examined Life is his first book.

Reviews

[Ellie Glennon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insanely captivating, couldn’t put it down!

[Mr T · Rating 5 out of 5]

so good I read it in a single sitting

[archana · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re a fan of Stephen Grosz, after reading The Examined Life, then pick this one up! A set of life-changing revelations which make you deeply think about love, tenderness and togetherness.

Thank you PRH for an advanced reading copy.

[nina okechukwu · Rating 4 out of 5]

“love, too, can cause us to feel vulnerable and helpless. maybe it is only in this state of mind–when we are unsure of what to do, when we no longer know which way to go–that we are motivated to understand ourselves better.”

this book feels like sitting quietly in the corner of a consulting room, listening to the truths people only admit when love has already failed them. stephen grosz writes with a rare gentleness, allowing love to appear not as romance, but as work: slow, repetitive, often misunderstood. this book isn’t interested in grand gestures; it’s interested in patterns, silences, and the strange ways we protect ourselves from needing others even when we so desperately want them.

i’m drawn to books like this because i like reading about things i don’t understand. love is one of them. psychoanalysis offers a language for something that otherwise feels abstract or unsafe to name. grosz doesn’t define love neatly, and that’s what makes the book resonate. instead, he circles it through absence, fear, dependency, and loss, showing how often love is confused with control, fantasy, or familiarity. reading this felt less like learning what love is and more like learning why it so often goes wrong, and why that doesn’t make us foolish, just human.

[Josette Zhou · Rating 5 out of 5]

So fascinating, entertaining, thought provoking. It could be a fiction even ….

[victoria marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book friend (Kirstin) had given this five stars, so ordered it from blackwells before it’s published in the states next year, as felt so drawn to it…

& so grateful that I did. definitely recommend.

I haven’t read anything previously by this author, but might later seek it out too.

[read the hardcover edition]

[Eren Akademir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable collection of short stories from a long career in psychotherapy, each one as engrossing and captivating as the last. The psyche in relationships as the most difficult unpredictable mystery.

[Robbie Stanley-Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat underwhelmingly short, but excellent, clear storytelling. Perceptive, wise and often very moving. Enjoyed it almost as much as The Examined Life, and very similar to Frank Tallis’s The Incurable Romantic.

[Morgan Holdsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

so fascinating, you feel like a fly on the wall of his sessions

[W.S. Luk · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We deceive ourselves about love—the who, what and why."

Much of LOVE'S LABOUR reads like a strange variant of the mystery novel. Grosz outlines the case history of his client, and the personal or relationship anxieties they experience, and he and they sit down in his office to resolve this riddle. Whether it's a husband collecting nonsensical evidence that his wife is unfaithful or a man traumatised by his girlfriend's suicide, the process of psychoanalysis and the solutions it uncovers in turn speaks to Grosz' overall question of the work that is needed to make a relationship flourish.

However, unlike the tidy resolutions of Doyle and Christie, Grosz' cases frequently end with a note of uncertainty, with some patients quitting therapy, others attaining some respite, and a few (including Grosz himself) continuing to look for answers. Refreshingly, this book offers few sweeping claims or easy self-help answers, regularly highlighting the difficulties that even seasoned psychoanalysts have in seeing themselves honestly. Intimate and thought-provoking, LOVE'S LABOUR is a revelatory look at the difficulties posed by love.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Grosz writes beautifully about the challenges and rewards of love, about the ways in which we sometimes struggle to face up to the truth of our lives, and about how we can move on if we understand things better. I liked this book a little more than his book The Examined Life, because the stories were longer and there were many thoughtful moments that stayed with me.

[Seb Swann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this if you like stories about the human condition and if you want to love better.

[Felicity Wills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply moving

I was looking forward to learning about myself by learning about Grosz’s encounters with his patients and with himself. This book was deeply satisfying and moving. I recommend it very highly. Although, do read The Examined Life first if you haven’t already.

[Randhir Senapala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing addition to his first book “The Examined Life” Grosz takes us through real life stories of LOVE in many forms and how we deal with it. Highly Recommended.

[Mythili · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this on my phone on the Kindle app on the Tube on the days when it was too crowded to open a real book. It has a nice Oliver Sacksian whimsy and voyeurism and literary tidiness. I found it provided a very satisfying lens into the philosophical approach of a highly trained psychotherapist. It's also just quite enjoyable simply as a collection of little vignettes about people navigating pretty juicy emotional dilemmas (and largely resolving them). Grosz writes with sensitivity and insight. There's a certain reverence he brings to his work that comes across too. He's gentle with his fucked-up patients.

This book also satisfied my curiosity on some aspects of the psychotherapeutic process. I've been working on a project where the main interviewee has only been able to tell her story after many years of therapy. Initially I didn't think much of it, but after hearing her repeat the details of certain stories more than once, I got to thinking more about psychotherapy's relationship to narrative-making.

Then I interviewed someone (for a completely different project) who also was clearly able to write certain stories about his childhood only because of therapy. And I again wondered a little more about the mechanics of the process.

I'd seen a review of this book somewhere and thought it might be a nice way into the question about the relationship between the psychotherapeutic process and memoir. And it was! Here, of course, the storyteller is the therapist, not the patient. But you can see how the story is arrived at jointly, and how the psychotherapist is a kind of editor.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting insight into psychoanalysis from someone who's worked in it for decades. I'd never thought about patients returning again and again to their therapist over decades, some even after leaving therapy. The author also focused on how he was thinking about various situations and patients and how they influenced his own life and thinking. I appreciated a lot of this and there were quite a few insights into love, life, grief and death that I found poignant.


Favourite quotes:

"Psychoanalysis is a particular form of not knowing. Psychoanalysis is two people not knowing together. The process of psychoanalysis is to think together, find meaning together. The only way he could get to know me - that we could get to know me - was through talking and listening." (p. 6)

"Her parents thought that mourning meant coping, she said. 'I didn't understand that mourning means accepting reality.'" (p. 30)

"At one time or another, each of us can get stuck in envy, or some kind of resentment, and in these instances, the fiction that grows up around us blocks our view: the ones we love and are closest to become characters in a world of our own imagination and we are trapped. We lose our connection to them, and they to us. (…) It's difficult to give up the pleasures of exasperation or indignation, or what I've seen called 'the ecstasy of sanctimony'. Finding our way back to a place where we can see ourselves requires courage." (p. 46)

[Annaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a lot of books in the field and this one is not among the top reads for me (Viktor Frankl, Oliver Sacks, Irvin Yalom, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, Lori Gottlieb, David Burns, and Esther Perel all rank higher imo). To me, the author comes across as a bit pompous and the stories and treatment feels both detached and grasping at alternating times. However, the book was a quick and interesting read with some valid insights and perspectives. I would say it's worth a read for practitioners and some of the general public, especially if you are already familiar with others that have done similar work.

[Ioana Chicet-Macoveiciuc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it in a few hours, I love the personal and professional insight of the author, very intriguing and unexpected at some points. The only reason I gave it 4 stars and not 5 is that I found the book too short! I wanted more!

[Lucy Carless · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8*. As brilliant and captivating as The Examined Life but much like the former I found myself waiting for something further at the end of a thought and found some thinking and stories were somewhat clumsily bound together.

[Elsa Termato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling reading and hard to put down. Which probably means you’re more likely to miss the opportunity to more deeply try at some self psychoanalysis!

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.3 / 5
enjoyed

[Tareq · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The greatest obstacle to learning about ourselves isn't ignorance, but our 'self-knowledge' "
- p.47

[Jon Margetts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the interweaving of literature and professional reflection. Grosz is an exceptional psychoanalyst. Worth it for the last story alone.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautiful, beautiful book. Maybe my favourite book that I have read this year.

[Sheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice insight into a therapist’s mind and the author has perfected the art of therapeutic writing. Not as good as his first book. Some sage insights and musings too.

[Pian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful and pleasant read.

[Anna Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

So so interesting! A great inisght into human behaviour and how our childhoods can shape our attachment.

[Ella Taylor-Fagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ate this up. Grosz writes gently and with such ease about some very difficult things. Lots of very insightful vignettes but was maybe hoping that they would be more explicitly tied together?

[Chelsea220 · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous book. i recommend it to anyone.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought the hardback of this which cost £18.99 and it was 176 pages long