Choosing to Love

"What the world needs now is love, sweet love / It's the only thing that there's just too little of," the radio used to sing to us—while the divorce and teenage suicide rates soared. Our society extols both love between a man and a woman and self-love, yet is often incapable of neither.

Choosing to Love: Building a Deep Relationship with the Right Person—and with Yourself delves more broadly and deeply into the topics of Gila's previous books (although you needn't have read them first). Part I discusses love of another, including "being in love" versus life-long loving, the necessity of switching from the objectivity to subjectivity, and the meaning of oneness. It then expands upon the most powerful tool for achieving genuine love—refraining from physical involvement, offering hormonal explanations for bonding and for desensitization, as well as other thought-provoking ideas about the value of not touching.

Part II tackles the even more difficult issue of loving oneself. It offers important insights into tzniut (internal self-definition), including the importance of distinguishing between public and private realms, establishing appropriate boundaries, and what men in particular should be aware of and work on. It then discusses the media's effect on tzniut, and how lack of tzniut has contributed to the epidemic of eating disorders.

Choosing to Love concludes with a practical chapter on how to implement the ideas presented. Unlike Gila's other books, it contains an extensive bibliography and references for the interested reader.