The Future of Love: The Power of the Soul in Intimate Relationships

Daphne Rose Kingma's "The Future of Love" is-- at least in some ways-- among the five best books I have read this past decade, but at the same time I am now also finding it to be among the hardest books on which to write a worthy review. First, I must warn potential readers that this is NOT a self-help book "about love." In the broadest of terms, Kingma turns our perception of how we view love on its head, and invites us to consider love in the context of the soul, rather than as an extension of wants, desires, needs, personality, insecurities, and so forth. At the heart of this lies the non-dualistic premise that love isn't something we "want," or "have," or can "get," but simply something we ARE, with love as an "expression of the soul," rather than a "want" or "need." Kingma spends a fair amount of time examining the way we tend to push away love, through our efforts to force it into a particular "shape." To some, it may sound like she invests a lot of effort in taking to task the traditional concepts of "heterosexual marriage" and "till death do us part," but I believe those examples are merely used to illustrate our personalities' tendency to make love EXclusive, rather than INclusive. As she points out, we are "in relationship" with almost every person who comes through our lives, yet we tend to "limit" loving behavior to just a very few people. For many, she will cover some "uncomfortable ground," by making us look at the insecure ways in which we often tend to approach love, even while considering our motivations "noble" and "true." The first half of the book doesn't actually cover a lot of "new territory," exploring love and the structure of relationships in ways that have previously been covered by other writers. In all truth, I was a bit disappointed in the book until I started Chapter 5, entitled "The Journey to the Future." And it is really the second half of the book that offers the most insightful content. Here Kingma gets down to the essence of love as something that exists at the "soul level," rather than just as an "expression of personality." In a sense, she gets as close to truly explaining the nature of "unconditional" love as any writer I have come across. This is the love that doesn't care whether two people are together or have broken up... the love transcends the "structure" of their relationship. The latter chapters of the book explore the many "containers" soul-level love can live in. This section goes far beyond mere marriage, or "living together," and covers platonic love, group love, intentional communities, cross-generational love and much more. Kingma is not afraid to explore topics "conventional society" often frowns on, but does so in a way that suggests that the "frowning" is really more the result of ignorance than intolerance. Ultimately, she extends us an invitation to consider love in a much broader context than we normally do. This section even includes thoughts on ending relationships in a loving way,

Daphne Rose Kingma's book, THE FUTURE OF LOVE is a literary masterpiece. It shines like a star in the night, guiding us to a new and much improved view of ourselves and our relationship histories. With compassionate words and crystal-clear logic, Kingma explains why failure in love is actually impossible -- because love is who you are. Every relationship you have ever had has been part of your life for a very good reason, and when you step back and examine your life with compassionate eyes, you can see (perhaps for the first time) how perfectly orchestrated everything has actually been.As Kingma writes, "We stretch, and to our amazement we don't break. Instead, we grow. Suddenly, everything becomes easier, and our hearts, which once we believed could love only one person, or were battered so badly we thought they could never love again, expand so fully that the whole world is welcome." This spiritual book can provide amazing insights for you, regardless which of the seven stages of love you may currently find yourself in (Romance, Commitment, Crisis, Ordeal, Chaos, Surrender, Transformation). One thing is certain after you've read this book -- your view of the meaning of love will be permanently transformed.

Reading this book helped release me at last from the burden of shame i carried from my divorce 7 years ago. i now see that experience as one of spiritual transformation instead of a societal 'failure', and more importantly as a part of expressing society's spiritual evolution. i came home at last to a sense of greater meaning in what was a devastating personal experience. I also found the chapters on the qualities of soulful relationships totally inspiring and reorientating. My understanding of love has just taken a quantum leap thanks to ms kingma's lucid, poetic and profound writing. I recommend this book to everyone i think could benefit. You won't be sorry you bought this book!

Perhaps one of the most insightful, profound writers on relationships I've ever read. Particularly poignant were the 7 stages that every relationship experiences, be it 3 days or 30 years. I recommend it as a gift for young people as they enter into the realm of relationships as well as for those of us who have walked in that realm, that double edged sword of immense pain and immense love. Still I think her book is not quite complete and Lew Epstein's Trusting You are Loved is a perfect adjunct to Kingma's book. Again, they should be required reading for anyone in relationship.

A wonderful book that I wish everyone could read. Instead of seeing divorces as failures, they are steps on the road to realizing -- no, to EXPANDING ourselves into pure, unconditional love. Kingma explains why marriages/relationships really fail and how, as spiritually strong and independent beings, we can experience a more encompassing type of love. Relationships are "a journey of self-creation" where "our wholeness is emerging". "The future of love is true love, a great, sweet love that isn't pain but joy, not small but vast, not personal but spiritual". In the past, "our marriages become watered-down versions of the values of society, instead of vibrant emotional unions that nourish the people within them."