Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love [Hardcover]

Roy F. Baumeister (Author), Wotman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0898625432 | ISBN-13: 978-0898625431 | Publication Date: October 16, 1992 | Edition: 1

Throughout history, unrequited love has inspired ballads, arias, poetry, drama, and literature. Almost always, however, the tale of the "star-crossed lovers" has been told from the point of view of the heartbroken pursuer. This illuminating new work explores unrequited love from both sides
Blending scientific research with vivid narrative, the book utilizes current psychological theories about relationships, interdependence, attachment, and communication to provide careful analysis of the sometimes amusing and often heart-rending stories people tell from their love lives. Demolishing pat theories about human fulfillment coming from loving or being loved, this valuable counterweight to traditional studies explores the other, darker side of love to show that it is the mutuality of affection that is crucial to happiness.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Engagingly written, BREAKING HEARTS offers an insightful and broad-ranging theoretical analysis and a careful empirical documentation of the heart breakers and the heart broken....It captures the drama of breaking hearts without sacrificing the rigor of the scientific enterprise.'
--Bella DePaulo, Ph.D., University of Virginia

"This book is a rich and enlightening account of the experience of unrequited love, and should be of interest not only to scientists who study close relationships, but also to the general public." --Caryl E. Rusbult, Ph.D., University of North Carolina

"The topic of unrequited love is an intriguing one that has caused much interest lately since the film, Fatal Attraction, and the several cases of stalking that have received public attention. This book offers the first systematic attempt to uncover the patterns of unrequited love and it is a good example of what a psychological analysis of important social issues can contribute to their solution." --Steve Duck, Ph.D., University of Iowa

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Baumeister received his PhD in experimental social psychology from Princeton University in 1978. Since then, his research career has taken him to the University of California at Berkeley, to the University of Texas at Austin, to the Max-Planck-Institute in Munich, Germany, and to Case Western Reserve University, where in 1992 he was awarded the Elsie B. Smith Professorship in Liberal Arts. The recipient of an American Psychological Association award for his first book, he has authored over 100 publications and numerous articles in professional journals and scholarly volumes.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 241 pages
• Publisher: Guilford Press; 1 edition (October 16, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898625432
• ISBN-13: 978-0898625431
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,006,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book, but not a "how to get over it" book., June 1, 2007

By 

Donald Kirson (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love (Paperback)

This is one of the best books a person in an uneven relationship could read. It is one of the few books (maybe the only one) that delves into what it is like to be a rejector, which is helpful for readers on both sides of the relationship. It also addresses the hidden assumptions about love and relationships can create problems when a new relationship fails or begins to falter. The book is based on the authors' research and findings from social psychology. The tone is academic but it is engaging because the subject matter is handled so well. The information is invaluable, because for most sensitive readers looking for direction in such a relationship, knowing what the other person is probably feeling gives you a better idea of what to do. So, for example, some persistence in a potential love relationship can be flattering, but once you start getting signals to stop, the harder you make the rejector work to get rid of you, the more they are going to dislike you. Lessions like this are punctuated with first person accounts that bring them to life. Warning: there are no sidebars, pictures, diagrams or funny quotes, and there are no bullet points "do's and don'ts" that you might find in a regular trade paperback on the topic. Nevertheless, this book does a real service.

3.0 out of 5 stars insights that are valuable but limited, January 25, 2009

By 

F Sparverius "sparverius" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love (Paperback)

This book seems to be taken from someone's PhD thesis. It strikes a very academic tone which may be appropriate in some settings but to a general reader seems to reduce genuine feelings to nearly useless abstractions. For example, the book asserts that people are usually attracted to people who are more attractive than they are, as though there were some universal, absolute scale.

More importantly though, the study is based on interviews with undergraduates. I find this to be a limited perspective on the breadth of human experience that can fall under the topic of "Unrequited Love."

Still, some of the insights are revealing. Popular convention does not acknowledge how uncomfortable it can be to have to reject someone and it is useful to hear that side of it.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A dark take with the best intentions., August 16, 2010

By 

Graham - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love (Paperback)

If you are in unrequited love I firmly do not recommend this book. For all others I'm giving a neutral recommendation. For those in unrequited love (like me) you are probably thinking to yourself that this book will help you to see how your loved one feels or even bring you closer to them. Or falling in love might have taken you so strongly in its grasps that suddenly the topic is endlessly interesting. Either way all you are going to get out of this book are excuses or reasons to feel depressed, hopeless, insane and even somewhat evil dare I say. It is interspersed with some interesting statistics however they are let down by poor experimental design and are not all that valid (this is not just some biased opinion, I'm actually a psych Ph.D). You know as well as the next person that how you feel is not in your long term best interests and that you no doubt need to address the issue. We can all empathise to some extent with the beloved and how difficult it must be for them. But this book unfortunately takes this issue too far and casts those in unrequited love in a very dark light. It actually gives the impression that the author was once on the receiving end of unwanted affection and they were obviously very uncomfortable and unforgiving. As though they blamed the other person. Anyway, people who have only been on the receiving end may well feel empowered and enjoy the book but for those on the other side you should look elsewhere. Love Sick by Frank Tallis is well worth a read if this topic is of interest.