The sexual revolution is justly celebrated for the freedoms it
brought--birth control, the decriminalization of abortion, the
liberalization of divorce, greater equality between the sexes,
women's massive entry into the workforce, and more tolerance of
homosexuality. But as Pascal Bruckner, one of France's leading
writers, argues in this lively and provocative reflection on the
contradictions of modern love, our new freedoms have also brought
new burdens and rules--without, however, wiping out the old rules,
emotions, desires, and arrangements: the couple, marriage,
jealousy, the demand for fidelity, the war between constancy and
inconstancy. It is no wonder that love, sex, and relationships
today are so confusing, so difficult, and so paradoxical.
Drawing on history, politics, psychology, literature, pop
culture, and current events, this book--a best seller in
France--exposes and dissects these paradoxes. With his customary
brilliance and wit, Bruckner traces the roots of sexual liberation
back to the Enlightenment in order to explain love's supreme
paradox, epitomized by the 1960s oxymoron of "free love": the
tension between freedom, which separates, and love, which attaches.
Ashamed that our sex lives fail to live up to such liberated
ideals, we have traded neuroses of repression for neuroses of
inadequacy, and we overcompensate: "Our parents lied about their
morality," Bruckner writes, but "we lie about our immorality."
Mixing irony and optimism, Bruckner argues that, when it comes
to love, we should side neither with the revolutionaries nor the
reactionaries. Rather, taking love and ourselves as we are, we
should realize that love makes no progress and that its messiness,
surprises, and paradoxes are not merely the sources of its
pain--but also of its pleasure and glory.
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