Labyrinth of Desire: Women, Passion, and Romantic Obsession

A romantic at heart, this book provided a new insight into love and it's many forms - and an explanation for why some girls (and guys) fall in love so quickly, passionately, and often. Her description of the two main types of romantic love (mainly focusing on obsessive romantic love a.k.a. short-term, lustful love) via storytelling is both entricate and easy to understand. Anyone who has ever been in love can relate to this, and it certainly provides a medium for exploring not only the loves we have had and may have, but also views of love and ourselves. A must read for all lovers the world over.

Wonderful, thoughtful book that I wish someone had given me long ago. Why do we fall in love? What does it mean to fall in love? What are we searching for? Intoxicating.

"Labyrinth of Desire" is a real wake-up call for those of us who consider ourselves too smart, too tough and too self-assured to measure our worth through any man. Sullivan methodically and painstakingly peels back the myths we concoct in our heads to justify our bizarre and often unhealthy relationships, and forces us to face the awful truth: smart, wise, wordly women are just as prone to losing themselves in relationships as the "clingy", "needy" women we look down on. For the woman who sees through books like "The Rules" and would never be caught dead reading Cosmo, Sullivan brings us face to face with our own frailty, but respects us enough not to offer any pat solutions.A must-read for otherwise smart, tough women who always find themselves in cononundrums with smart, narcissistic, troubled men they secretly want to "save" or who "only" they understand. (frequent daters of artists and writers will know EXACTLY what I mean)

Labyrinth of Desire is The Rules for women of ample brain. Like the authors of that classic self-help manual for the man-crazy, rosemary sullivan understands the ways in which love drives women mad. by looking at literature & movies, sullivan identifies the love stories that make women a bit stupid, the stories that help us to confuse fantasy with reality. but sullivan offers neither advice for navigating through these narratives to marriage -- a la The Rules -- nor does she teach us how to steer clear of the doomed romance altogether. rather, she analyzes the tragic love story as the female version of the hero's quest, & celebrates it as a revelatory life experience. Labyrinth of Desire is erudite, insightful, deliciously compassionate, & ultimately empowering.

"Labyrinth of Desire" by Rosemary Sullivan offers an insightful look into women in obessive relationships, exploring the during and aftermath, picking apart what really happens and why. An interesting and novel look at something we all wonder about. I highly recommend this book.