Love is great, love is necessary, love is beautiful. But love is not enough. That’s what the 37-year old American bestselling self-help author and blogger Mark Manson says about love. In his ‘In Your Face’ style of writing, he goes back to the domain of ‘relationships, from where he started his career in his new audiobook ‘Love is Not Enough’. The audiobook was released in December 2020.
In an interview with Guardian, Mark reveals “I was very conscious that you can’t help somebody if you’re judging them”. I genuinely believe that the awful things we do in our relationships, we don’t do them because we’re evil or mean. We do them because we’re scared or hurt.”
Mark is of the view that love is regarded as the perfect state of being, an antidote to all the pain and sorrow in life. In fact, our culture, movies, etc consider love as the ultimate aim of one’s life. We exaggerate love and that’s why our relationships suffer.
This unrealistic understanding of love makes us over expect out of our relationships. This compels us to give up on important values like self-respect, commitment towards each other, etc. We go blind and simply ignore these fundamental values when choosing a partner. All that we consider is the emotion ‘Love’. Many of us enter into a relationship simply because it feels right! And that’s where we go wrong!
Intimacy: The Recurrent Theme of The Audible Original Audiobook ‘Love Is Not Enough’
Mark Manson adopts his usual way of saying things bluntly, honestly, and with profanity, in the audiobook ‘Love Is Not Enough.’ His self-help writings are contradictory to the typical self-help authors in the industry. Where the industry authorities talk about ‘Saying Yes’ to everything, Mark emphasizes ‘Saying No’. Where industry experts tell you that you are unique and special, Mark dedicates one full chapter to ‘You’re Not Special’ in his bestseller ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck’.
Likewise, in ‘Love is Not Enough’ Mark takes us through the journey of five individuals who have messy romantic lives. In this, Mark works out the real-life challenges that these people face in their lives. They connect with Mark over the course of six months as they experience complex and messy romantic situations. For instance, Vanessa is a successful businesswoman who has a three-year-old affair outside marriage with a man she met at work. Likewise, there’s a serial tinder dater and an intimacy phobe who is divorced, twice.
These interviews with five real individuals are messy, funny, and candid conversations. Mark advises them on where they are going wrong with love and their choices of partners. These individuals learn how their unrealistic imaginations can play havoc with intimacy. Further, they also learn how one’s deepest desires can cause difficulties in one’s life.
Mark Manson Brand – From A Pick Up Artist to Self-Help Author
Life as a Pick Up Artist
As said earlier, ‘Love Is Not Enough’ audiobook is about relationships, an area where he started advising as a Pick Up Artist (PUA). He calls himself ‘an entrepreneur by accident.’ Mark got influenced by a book written by Neil Strauss in 2005 titled The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (PUAs). And that’s when he started giving advice on various PUA forums. Mark loved playing video games and thus revived his gamer name ‘Entropy’ as a pseudonym for the PUA forums. He then started his first blog by the name of ‘Practical Pickup’ in the year 2008. Mark together with two other men coaches provided dating help to people through this blog.
He then shifted to providing general self-improvement advice to men in the year 2010 through another blog named Post Masculine. During this year, he made a public exit from the Pick Up Industry by posting an article on his blog. Here are some of the lines from the blog post ‘ My Life as a Pick Up Artist’.
“Regardless, I choose to not identify with the Pick Up Artist moniker any longer. The reasons are the two I listed above: I refuse to objectify my social interactions and love life, and I refuse to judge my personal success or have others judge my personal success based on my social and emotional life.”
“Personally, I think the PUA thing is a fad. I think in 10 years, we’ll look back and think of it as one of those silly things we did in the 2000′s, kind of like big hair in the 80′s, or dial-up modems in the 90′s. The mindsets the community is based upon are self-defeating, and only the truly damaged or self-loathing would continue to subscribe to them for a whole lifetime.”
Mark Manson Books
He then published his first book titled Models: A Comprehensive Guide to Attracting Women in July 2011. This book was a critique of Neil Strauss’ The Game’. Further, he released a revised version of this book in 2012 which he named Models: Attract Women Through Honesty. Mark then shifted to the blog markmanosn.net in 2013 and wrote an article titled ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck’ in 2015. This article became the foundation of his second book with the same title released in 2016.
In 2019, Mark rolled out his third book titled ‘Everything is Fucked: A Book About Hope’.
