08/01/2025
Falling in love is easy, staying in love will challenge every fiber of your being even when you feel like you have no fibers of being left in you. Sara Nasserzadeh, PhD, roots her book, Love By Design, in the premise that modern couples, with all their romantic idealism, flounder when it comes to ascribing meaning to the value of “feeling in love.” The stronger the feeling, the better the predictor of relationship success. Or, so we believe.
In the US, we remain smitten with Hollywood mythology; e.g. “love at first sight” and “feeling the spark.” For relationships to thrive long term, we need more than just feelings and more than just the magical spontaneity of “falling in love.”
“Love is the byproduct of the relationship rather than the sole foundation, something that grows slowly, over time, and is built every single day in a thousand small and specific interactions (p. 33).”
The feeling of being in love cannot support all your life’s needs. Losing the feeling of it simply means your life or your expectations need adjustment, not necessarily that something is wrong with your partner or the relationship. As the book stresses, love, like life itself, is inherently not a stable experience. We need to be intentional about our relationships by taking action!
The author doesn’t leave us hanging. She offers her “Emergent Love Model” that incorporates “six ingredients to build a lifetime of love” where we can take action on our relationships: attraction, respect, trust, shared vision, compassion, and loving behaviors.
Although this list won't shock anyone familiar with relationships, her book goes further. She deepens the conceptualization of each of the ingredients by anchoring her ideas to prior theory and research as well as her own original research and clinical experience.
Throughout the book, the author challenges conventional thinking around relationships. As it turns out, all types of relationships can utilize the six ingredients. Many couples come together for reasons neither romantic nor s*xual; i.e. polyamorous or mixed orientation relationships where partners may have a shared vision, but not the same romantic and s*xual requirements of a monogamous heteros*xual couple. Ultimately the ingredients apply to any dyadic relationship that is committed and loving, regardless of romantic or s*xual involvement.
If you’re a student of relationships or you find yourself questioning the underlying compatibility of your relationship, this book provides a useful framework for assessing whether yours is thriving or merely surviving. Love By Design is loaded with research and tools, allowing you to begin unpacking the ingredients of your own relationship. In sum, love is not a feeling to be chased, but a byproduct intentionally built over time through consistently taking action to cultivate attraction, respect, trust, shared vision, compassion, and loving behaviors.
Book Review - "Love By Design"
