Author: Thomas Jordan,Ph.D.

Publisher : BookBaby

ISBN: 978-1-54398-787-4

Dr. Jordan, author of Learn To Love, works as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in the upper west side of Manhattan. His specialization is chronic love life problems. He and his wife share a group practice. Dr. Jordan graduated from NYU (New York University) where he is also an Associate Professor of Psychology and faculty of their post-doctoral program. Dr. Jordan devised a webinar series titled Learn To Love, Healthy Love Relationship, and Individuation in Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Doctor Jordan has been doing this work for the past 30 (thirty) years.


Dr. Jordan opens this informative read with a chapter titled What Is A Love Life? (2020, xi)  He agrees that the two most intense emotions people can have are love and hate. But those are not the only emotions at play. There is grief, rage, and many more emotions that any given person might feel and express. His definition for love life is; “…any and all interpersonal relationships involving the emotion of love, past, and present.” To which he adds that love can be anything but easy. 

In Chapter One Jordan delves into some types of unhealthy love. He states that “Human beings possess the need to receive and give love.” (2020, pg.3) Regarding unhealthy love he says it is repetitive. And that “…certain experiences are naturally “toxic” and commonly repeated and replicated in the adult love life. “ (p.5) 

Chapter two endeavors to teach us about these unhealthy love relationships. Dr. Jordan offers up the relationship formula as follows: “Love Life = Relationships + Love”. (2020, p.10) Basically Jordan says “There are three ways that you can learn about love relationships. The first is by being in a relationship with someone.” The next is observation and the final one is via instruction. What is critical is learning how to relate in our love relationships. This learning can come in the form of unhealthy or healthy relating. Jordan then dissects the difference with being in love and simply loving another person. Where he says that the later is “having affection, deep caring…” and the former is “…is reserved exclusively for the experience of true love for a unique individual human being.” (p.13) 

Part II of this books walks us through some of the common experiences that lead to unhealthy love relationships. I.e.”abandonment, exploitation, abuse, control, mistrust, neglect, rejection, dependency, dishonesty, and self-centeredness.” (2020, p.21) Dr. Jordan then breaks these emotions down into smaller parts and tells us how they affect our various love lives. Some of these are more self-explanatory than others might be. All are quite personal. The Learning Formula is: “Belief + Behavior = Feeling”. (p.33) Jordan says “What you believe about love relationships will shape the kind of experiences you’ll have in your love relationship.” 

Part III attempts to help us to unlearn what we are doing wrong. Doing this requires us to look into our past and determine who taught us about love and our love relationships. In essence, who influenced our beliefs and behaviors? To which Dr. Jordan says “Who taught you always comes before what you were taught.” (2020, p.49) This part in and of itself is a process and may take some time to work through. There are questions that require the reader to reflect upon past relationships and respond honestly. Then changing your unhealthy mindset to a healthy one. I.e. take abandonment and replace it with attachment, abuse is replaced with respect and so on. (p.63) 

Dr. Jordan goes into depth about his own life and how he learned about love and what he teaches now. I honestly think that no matter where you are on the spectrum of love you can learn something by reading this book. I enjoyed it and it made me stop at regular intervals to consider my own emotions and relationships and how those have shaped my current love relationships.