Stephen Grosz, "Love's Labour: How We Break and Make the Bonds of Love" (Vintage, 2026)

About this episode

Stephen Grosz discusses the complexities of love and the challenges individuals face in forming and maintaining relationships.

When it comes to love why do we find things so difficult? Drawing on over forty years of candid and surprising conversations with his patients, Stephen Grosz asks, what gets in the way of our falling in love? And what must we do to stay there?In the intimate space of the consulting room, we meet the woman who can't post her wedding invitations but then, decades later, can't decide whether to get divorced; the friendship group that explodes when an adulterous affair begins; and the man whose partner's death is almost too much to bear.As an analyst, Grosz's unerring ability is to locate what ails the heartsick. As a writer, he elegantly shows how we can deploy the agonies of love as tools for understanding.The labour of love is the work of a lifetime but in finally learning to see ourselves and our world clearly, we find we are truly ready to love one another. Stephen Grosz is a practicing psychoanalyst - he has worked with patients for more than forty years. Born in America, he was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Oxford University, and now lives in London. His Number One Sunday Times bestseller, The Examined Life, has been translated into more than…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Stephen Grosz

Topics covered

• love
• psychoanalysis
• relationships
• emotional challenges
• personal growth

Keywords

• love
• psychoanalysis
• relationships
• Stephen Grosz
• emotional challenges
• personal growth
• The Examined Life

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: California Institute of Integral Studies

Books & works: Love's Labour: How We Break and Make the Bonds of Love, The Examined Life

Places: California, London, America, University of California, Berkeley, Oxford University

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