7.1 · Love as a Capacity, Not a Search
Read this cluster before 7.3.
The Art of Loving
120 pages, 1956, still unbeaten. Its central argument: the problem is almost never finding the right person to love — it’s developing the capacity to love, which is a discipline like any other. Written for the exact belief I’m currently holding.
The Course of Love
A novel that follows one marriage across twenty years, with philosophical commentary threaded through. It dismantles Romanticism — the belief that the right person means no work. Reads as fiction, lands as instruction.
Deepen
Section titled “Deepen”Essays in Love
de Botton’s earlier, funnier version. One relationship from first glance to end, narrated with footnotes.