Why Love Hurts

A new book by the award-winnning sociologist Eva Illouz on modern love.
Sets out to explain why love is such a painful experience for many people - why we invest so much in the search for love and why it so often disappoints us.

Argues that the modern romantic experience and the selection of a partner are shaped by a fundamental transformation in the ecology and architecture of romantic choice.

Autorentext

Eva Illouz is Rose Isaac Chair of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Center for the Study of Rationality. Her previous books include Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism and Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Her book Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery won the American Sociological Association, Culture Section Best Book Award, in 2005.

Klappentext

Neues Buch der preisgekrönten Soziologin Eva Illouez über die moderne Liebe, das der Frage nachgeht, warum Liebe so schmerzhaft, die Suche nach Liebe so beschwerlich und Liebe oft so enttäuschend ist, und als Antwort ein radikal neues Beziehungsmodell postuliert.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments vii

1 Introduction: The Misery of Love 1

2 The Great Transformation of Love or the Emergence of Marriage Markets 18

3 Commitment Phobia and the New Architecture of Romantic Choice (with Mattan Shachak) 59

4 The Demand for Recognition: Love and the Vulnerability of the Self 109

5 Love, Reason, Irony 156

6 From Romantic Fantasy to Disappointment 198

7 Epilogue 238

Notes 249

Index 282