The Future of Love

Every now and then, I come across books I experience as significant enough to be "life changing," because they offer perspectives that change or expand my thinking. Dr. Elaine Aron's "The Highly Sensitive Person" was such a book.

"The Future of Love" by Daphne Rose Kingma, is also such a book. Whereas it is not about the HSP trait, the ideas presented are highly relevant to HSPs. Why? Because Kingma has the courage to examine relationships in a non-standard fashion, inviting the reader to find deep meaningful relationships in a format that works for us, rather than limiting us to what societal conventions dictate we "should" want.

For example, HSPs are easily overstimulated, and this includes in their love relationships. At HSP Gatherings, I have occasionally met couples who'd been "together" for a long time, in a completely committed relationship-- and yet, their choice was to maintain separate residences, to address their needs for privacy and quiet time. Now, many might say something like "But relationships aren't supposed to work like that!" But if it works for the people IN the relationship, isn't that really what matters most?

Whereas some readers of Kingma's book might feel offended by the way she criticizes the limitations of "conventional" marriage, the real value is in the way the second half of the book examines the many many different ways deep soul-based love relationships can be formed. What I particularly liked about the book-- and which I find is an excellent "match" for most HSPs' desire to form "deep" relationships-- is Kingma's focus on the "content and nature" of relationships, rather than on the "wrapping" we put them in.