Joe Burnham’s Reviews > We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love > Status Update

“If there is such a thing as psychological blasphemy, it is to take what is sacred and try to convert it to something else; it is to try to make the sacred into grist for the ego’s mill. Psychological sin does not consist in sex nor in being physical nor in ‘immorality’ but rather in calling a thing other than what it really is, in pretending to do one thing while doing another.”

“The sacred is always there, closer to us than any physical person could be, but it takes on the power to fill our lives with meaning and quality only when we open our eyes and bow down in awe.”

“This is the unhealed split within man that he projects onto outer woman, the war he fights at her expense.”

This section of the book is gutting me. I have embodied this for so long in ways that are both depraved and from an attempt at nobility. But however I’ve done it, “she” has always been collateral damage from my own inner war.

“At a certain level of our evolution, our relatedness to our soul and our relatedness to our human, personal world are in deadly conflict — and this conflict is the crucible of consciousness.”

Thinking about this through the lens of attachment theory and our attachment to ourself.

“This is why men and women put such impossible demands on each other in their relationships: We actually believe unconsciously that this mortal human being has the responsibility for making our lives whole, keeping us happy, making our lives meaningful, intense, and ecstatic!”

Yeah, been there. Guilty as charged. I think that’s the appeal of ongoing but casual ... it allows the illusion to stand longer.

“The fact that we say ‘romance’ when we mean ‘love’ shows us that underneath our language there is a psychological muddle... We are confusing two great psychological systems within us, and this has a devastating effect on our lives and our relationships.”

“When we grow wiser we learn that the disasters of life are often the genius of the unconscious, forcing our egos into a new experience of the self.”

Yet how often do we numb these invitations to explore and grow, choosing instead to settle back into the incomplete life we’ve always know?