Summary

Chapter 9: Often, our misguided understandings about love result in efforts to love and be loved that only produce stress, strife, and discontent. Earlier in her life, hooks thought she understood love but falling in love often resulted in pain. She then writes about the two most intense partnerships of her life. The first was with a man who was very much like her father. After fifteen years with that partner, hooks realized that she wanted to get the love from him that she had not gotten from her father. He, in turn, wanted the unconditional love and service he had gotten from his mother and remained in a state of boyhood. Neither had been schooled in how to love and together they made many mistakes. In her second partnership, power struggles surfaced as hooks' partner had issues with his masculinity and allowed sexist...