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Chapter Eight
Renewing Newness
As much as I really wish I didn’t have to address the issues surrounding love fading or becoming more destructive than uplifting, this topic is one my favorites. I favor the concept of helping people hind hope in their love, especially when I pessimistically point out that the odds are stacked against it. But I also believe that if you pay attention to love, if you devote yourself to it, work for it, maintain it — it can last, and it can keep taking your breath away. So if I sound like a broken record about the downside potential, I want to sound like a more broken record about the upside potential.
The reason I like concentrating on “newness” is that the concept of “newness,” is counterintuitive, it’s “uncommon sense,” and I like the idea of sharing thoughts and ideas that take us off the path of “normal” thinking.
The “renewal” of newness, the journey back to the beginning, intoxicating phase of new love is contrary to the notion that for a relationship to last you must always be going “forward” into a happy and loving future. In fact what I am saying is that ironically, you have to go backwards to move forward. The notion that close, loving relationships, as difhicult and complicated as they are to fortify and maintain, can be invigorated with something as simple as bringing something new and different into the collective world of you and
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