A summary of love from Peck Scott’s “The Road less Travelled” Essay Example

myth or an illusion that people in marriage believe that falling in love will last forever. The favorite fairy tales are used as some of the examples that express a myth of romantic lovers, hence, influencing the culture among the young people. The stories of Mr. and Mrs. A, B, C, D, E and F. are all examples of breakups that stimulate Scott’s mythical analysis of love (Peck, 92). Once the romantic love is over, “all couples learn that an actual acceptance of its own and each other’s individuality and separateness as the only foundation upon which a mature marriage can be based and real love can grow” (Peck, 93).

Scotts also identifies dependency as another critical misconception about love. The effects of dependence are evident in those who “attempt or gesture or threat to commit suicide or who become incapacitating depressed in response to rejection or separation from spouse or lover” (Peck, 98). He gives an example of a thirty-year-old press operator, who threatens to leave his children after being abandoned by his wife (Peck, 99). This means that dependent couples always seek the companionship and support from each other. He argues that people on dependence love “desire filling, they desire to be happy, they do not desire to grow, nor are they willing to tolerate the unhappiness, loneliness, and suffering that is involved in growth” (Peck, 106).

Another misconception of love is the virtue of self-sacrifice. Scotts examines a woman prototypically, as who can “seek for psychiatric attention for depression in response to the dissertation by her husband” (Peck, 114). An example is a masochist who saw her tolerance to mistreatment as a sacrifice, not

knowing that it all happened because of the children (Peck, 115). This explains that love is not a feeling, but the commitment that one makes to his or her lover, regardless of whether the love feeling is there or not (Peck, 119).

Conclusion

All in all, love is built on the attention one makes to the other. What fails love is the most typical “inertia of laziness and the resistance of fear” (Peck, 120). Love, therefore, is the work of courage that must be directed towards one another’s spiritual growth and extending its influence to the commitments one has for the spouse. The onset of any love relationship determines its maturity. The teleological approach, love is built in the perspective of goal or purpose, which makes the relationship to prosper and yield the desired outcomes.

Work cited

1. Peck, Scott. M. D. The Road Less Travelled. The New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values; 2012 Print