The person you love should contribute to your happiness, help you grow as an individual and encourage your freedom and independence. However, as we are reminded by the cognitive therapist and bestselling author Walter Riso, the culture that we are immersed in is based on an anachronistic conception of love, which considers suffering, self-denial and renunciation prerequisites for a long term relationship. Riso launches a manifesto for authentic emotional release, to maintain deep and authentic relationships with ather person, without losing our identity or being caught in a vicious cycle of dependency. The author proposes a wise and total love that will reinvent itself without obsessions or slavery. I love you because I love you, because I have chosen you and I like being around you, t because you are essential to my happiness. I do t need you; I prefer to be with you.
Walter Riso is a psychologist specializing in cognitive therapy and has a master's degree in bioethics. He has been a therapist for twenty-eight years, alternating as university chair, conducting research in clinical practice and scientific disclosure and psychological publications. He currently teaches cognitive therapy in different faculties of psychology in Latin America and Spain, and is honorary president of the Colombian Association of Cognitive Therapy.