Sad Love. A Romantic Paradox and the Search for the Meaning of Life

What if our happy future… is not what we thought? This book is about sad love. Or, more precisely, it will talk about eudaimonic love, which has room for the full range of human experiences, both positive and negative.
The term «eudaimonia» in its original sense referred to benevolent spirits. A proper understanding of eudaimonia today requires us to consider the deep and dramatic implications of our interconnectedness with other people: we must see meaning in collaboration and creativity.
Eudaimonic love is a shared, creative, and dynamic feeling. It guides us towards a meaningful life, but not towards the «pursuit of happiness». When we focus on eudaimonia rather than romance, we can understand why sadness and sorrow in love are not necessarily indicative of failure.
We need a new philosophy of love. In it, the pain and suffering caused by love will be a natural and integral part of what makes love worth our efforts.
What Carrie Jenkins calls «sad love» does not presume false «happy times». Rather, it seeks to find a way to properly integrate grief and disappointment into the life experience of love.