Summary

This work explores the crisis of intimacy in the contemporary West. Interweaving his analysis with case studies, literary examples and major events, Michael Vincent Miller demonstrates how our cultural myths about romance are arrested in adolescence, and how the inevitable disappointments result in bitter struggles between men and women (which the author terms intimate terrorism), fuelled by anxiety and resentment. The bonds of love have become so intertwined with the quest for power that we have created what Miller calls the culture of abuse - reflecting both an increase in actual abuse but also an overcompensating need to imagine abuse in almost any intimate encounter. Miller concludes with an eloquent plea for a new maturity in our culture that will aid couples in a realistic, if somewhat ironic, redefinition of romance.