The School of Life

It can sometimes seem a mystery why some couples stay together and thrive - while many more split up or drag on scratchily. While we might think happy love is left to chance, there are some identifiable secrets that underpin good relationships that we can learn and put into practice.

The Secrets of Successful Relationships teaches us the key ingredients of contented love. In chapters that include Learning to Love Oneself, Knowing What to Overlook, Good Listening and The Importance of Bad Dates, we are prompted to reflect on the varied moves we will need to make to ensure emotional success. In a tone that's warm, encouraging and occasionally darkly funny, we learn how to communicate effectively, how to manage our differences, what to do when sexual problems arise, how to air grievances, the best way to share a home and - when things grow truly problematic - how to judge whether or not we should stay or leave.

This elegant handbook shows us how to take a range of necessary, careful and wise steps towards the contented love we deserve. Including questionnaires and exercises, it will suit both those embarking on new relationships and those seeking to deepen their established bonds.

Unlock the secrets to lasting love

The Secrets of Successful Relationships

Linus Rogge

Yet, in reality, we are love-worthy not because we are perfect but because none of us ever can be. 

Someone may often be a pain and yet still be worthy of a lot of thought and kindness

There are no prize for trying to initiate others into varieties of self-awareness they have no strength for

The paradox of love is that we both desperately long to be known and fear that we will be rejected if we ever are so

All that we are chiefly in search of when we are at our lowest point is evidence that we are in company. 

Everyone says that they cope so well, whatever the situation – but that’s precisely the problem. No one who really copes well copes all the time.

Breaking down and being a helpless, defenceless infant belongs to healthy adulthood. There’s no such thing as maturity without a constant connection with the immature self from which one has emerged.

It is never easy to accept how much we rely on someone we cannot control. 

Relationships should logically conclude when we’ve learnt as much from a partner as we'll ever be able to; when we’ve absorbed so much through being with them that we’re now ready to take our leave and perhaps - as it were - attend a school with a new teacher. One of the kindest and truest views of relationships is that they are in effect schools for emotional growth - which also implies that we can legitimately graduate from them. We can leave not because we hate our partner but because we’ve completed the course they can offer. There’s a parallel in the way that parents can be pleased that their child leaves home - not because they are glad to see the back of them but because leaving is the sign that things have gone well: the child has been sufficiently loved to be able to separate confidently.

One of the most important preconditions of a good relationship is a satisfactory perspective on being single. 

The Secrets of Successful Relationships quotes

Join the club