About the Book
Not as an expert on love. As someone undone by it, shattered by it, strengthened by it, and continually humbled by it.
Writing this was a dream of mine more than ten years ago. I talked myself out of it at the time because I lacked the credentials and felt I was not old enough. Years later, with a few more credentials to my name, more life behind me, and yes, being older, I can still talk myself out of it for the same reasons.
The mind is good at that.
I wrote it anyway, because it is a subject that fascinates and touches me so deeply that I discuss it daily with anyone who cares to engage. That is how I know it was meant to be written.
Love Unlocked is an exploration. Of self, specifically. A mirror held up to love in its many forms.
Some pages may resonate deeply. Others may provoke you, and some may even anger you. You will nod along in places and feel a degree of disagreement in others.
That is actually the point.
Much of the book speaks through the lens of romantic relationships, because that is how most of us first identify with love. But the truths reach further than that. Love between friends, family, mentors, colleagues. Love in the fleeting kindness of a stranger. Wherever love exists, these reflections are alive.
This book is not here to tell you what love is once and for all. Love resists that. Just when you think you have pinned it down, it changes shape. No book captures the totality of love, and I am not attempting to, least of all in two hundred pages.
It is also a guide to explore, not a diagnostic manual. Despite being trained as a master’s level clinician, I have found little value in official diagnoses. Diagnosing is largely our best attempt at discovering the parts of ourselves that want more attention, or the parts screaming for it because we have been ignoring them. We do not always need a label for that. Sometimes we just need a mirror and the time to listen more closely.
Over time I have come to see love less as something given or taken, and more as something reflected. Imagine each person is a mirror holding the reflection of the love we bring to them. When the mirror cracks, when a relationship shifts or ends, the image changes. The love itself remains, because the love was always ours.
It is no longer reflected the way we are used to seeing it, and from that person. But the one standing in front of the mirror is not broken. The mirror simply cannot return the same image it once did.
As you read, try not to ask whether you agree. None of this is about being right or wrong. Ask instead what it stirs. What is alive in you while you are reading.
What loves have broken you? What loves have remade you? What kind of love do you still long for?
If you finish the book with more questions than answers, then in many ways it will have done its work. Love is not meant to be solved. It is meant to be lived, felt, and acted upon.
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” — Rumi
Zac Spowart holds a master’s in Addiction Counseling from Hazelden Betty Ford and an MBA from Pepperdine. Sober since 2006, he has led treatment programs across the United States and now coaches individuals and couples in conscious relating.
He began writing Love Unlocked at 26, and his early collaboration with Les Brown became a milestone of gratitude and growth along the way.
For the full story, credentials, and his work beyond this book, visit zacspowart.com/about.
A Guide to Self-Acceptance and Conscious Relating. Sixteen chapters on attachment, identity, and what it actually takes to love without losing yourself.
Available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.