Ellen Kenner

This is the first book about romance written from the perspective of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism...but really, it's kind of just common sense. The problem is that the Judeo-Christian/altruist ethics have dominated our culture for so long that they tend to override common sense when it comes to trying to deal with difficult issues in relationships.

The basic approach taken by Locke and Kenner is that you don't want to be either an altruist or a narcissist (a term they take from their experience as clinical psychologists). In other words, you don't want to walk all over other people, but you don't want to be a doormat and let other people walk all over you, either. Either approach is a romance killer...one is bad for yourself, and one is bad for your partner, so both are bad for your relationship (and hence actually for both you and your partner).

Rather, romantic relationships should be win-win, with each partner finding happiness in the relationship and wanting happiness for the other partner as well. They go through a number of areas of relationships (including, of course, sex), drawing on their clinical experience to illustrate common problems, and demonstrate how a rationally egoistic approach can create such a win-win scenario for each.

But before they even get to examining relationships as such, they look at a more fundamental issue: if you want to be loved, first you have to make yourself loveable. So the early part of the book is devoted to looking at traits of character to cultivate in order to be worthy of love, and some character flaws to eliminate that are common sources of conflict in relationships.

There is some valuable material here---anybody could probably find something to take away from this book that would help them improve their love life. Definitely worth a read!… (mere)