Edward Sri - Men, Women and the Mystery of Love: Practical Insights from John Paul II’s Love and Responsibility

INTRODUCTION

This is dangerous. Dont let my wife see this!

Thats how a friend of mine jokingly responded when he first came across the challenging insights on love, marriage and male-female relationships in John Paul IIs book Love and Responsibility. Indeed, I know of no other book that so brilliantly sheds light on the mysterious dynamics between men and womenand at the same time so poignantly challenges us to live out those relationships betteras Love and Responsibility.

Written in the late 1950s in Eastern bloc, Soviet-dominated Poland, Love and Responsibility prophetically anticipated many of the needs our own post-sexual- revolutionized Western world would face decades later. In an era like ours, when there is much confusion about love and marriage and when many people are struggling in their relationships with the opposite sex, John Paul IIs insights from Love and Responsibility are perhaps needed now more than ever before.beware: Love and Responsibility is truly life transforming. John Paul IIs vision for love is so captivating that it may change the way you think about love, friendship and relationships as a whole. If taken to heart, the wisdom from Love and Responsibility will change the way you interact with the opposite sex. It will change the way you date. It will change the way you relate to your spouse. It will make you a better husband or wife.

Some of the very practical, real-life relationship issues that Love and Responsibility addresses include:

Friendship: What makes a true friendship and how this kind of friendship lays the foundation for love.

Attraction: The two main ways men and women are attracted to each other and how these attractions can lead either to friendship and selfless love or to a relationship in which someone is being used.

Relationships: How do I know if I am in a relationship of authentic love or just another relationship that is doomed to failure? Why dont some relationships pass the test of time? What ingredients are necessary for true love?

Men and Women: The differences between men and women and the particular needs of a man and a woman in marriage.

Love: The two aspects of love and how knowing the difference is crucial for any relationship with the opposite sex.

The Emotions: The difference between feeling Im in love and love itself. How the emotions can either be incorporated into love or hinder true love from ever developing.

Sexuality: Why should people wait until they are married to have sex? What constitutes a lustful thought? The problem of pornography. How is human sexual desire different from animal instinct?

Marriage: How can I build greater trust and intimacy in my marriage? How do I deal with my beloveds faults? How can I be a better spouse? How can I grow in self-giving love?

Chastity: How to win the fight for purity in our relationships and in our hearts.

As one can see, Love and Responsibility is not a dry manual on sexual ethics or an abstract treatise on love. When read properly, it is down-to-earth and sheds much light on the real issues we face in our relationships with the opposite sex. Furthermore, Love and Responsibility is not just about marriage. More broadly, it delves into the dynamics of love between men and women at all stages of relationships, whether it be friendship, dating, engagement or married life.

My own writing on Love and Responsibility flows out of my teaching on this book for people of various ages and states of life. While there has been much attention given to John Paul IIs later work on love and sexuality known as the Theology of the Body, Love and Responsibility is not as well-known. Yet I have been impressed at how virtually everyonecollege students and young adults, engaged couples and married couples, priests and religiousfinds John Paul IIs insights from Love and Responsibility extremely useful and immediately applicable to their own lives and relationships.

Along this line, I intend this guide through Love and Responsibility to be very practicalhelping readers understand John Paul IIs vision for relationships between men and women and then make application to their own lives. I do not intend to offer an academic analysis or a comprehensive treatment of this work. Even less do I intend to enter scholarly debate about men and womens issues and sexual ethics. Rather, I simply aim to make some of the insights from this challenging philosophical work more accessible to the average lay reader and offer some of my own reflections along the way.