A provocative and unflinching look at the nature of love and deception, by celebrated author and philosopher Clancy Martin

Is it possible to love well without lying? At least since Socrates’s discourse on love in Plato’s Symposium, philosophers have argued that love can lead us to the truth―about ourselves and the ones we love. But in the practical experience of erotic love―and perhaps especially in marriage―we find that love and lies often work hand in hand, and that it may be difficult to sustain long-term romantic love without deception, both of oneself and of others.

Drawing on contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, and cognitive neuroscience, as well as his own personal experience and such famed and diverse writers on love as Shakespeare, Stendhal, Proust, Adrienne Rich, and Raymond Carver, Clancy Martin―himself divorced twice and married three times―explores how love, truthfulness, and deception work together in contemporary life and society. He concludes that learning how to love and loving well inevitably requires lying and further argues that the best love relationships draw us slowly and with difficulty toward honesty and trust.

Love and Lies is a relentlessly honest book about the difficulty of love, which is certain to both provoke and entertain.