A review by bisexualbookshelf
Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together by Dean Spade

informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book was released in the US on January 14th, 2025 by Algonquin Books. 

Dean Spade’s Love in a Fucked Up World is not a self-help book in the traditional sense—there are no quick fixes or easy affirmations to soothe our romantic woes. Instead, Spade offers something more valuable: a radical reimagining of love and relationships, grounded in activism, accountability, and collective care. This is an anti-self-help book, one that interrogates the myths we’ve been sold about romance and urges us to step off the relationship escalator in favor of something more liberatory.

Spade meticulously deconstructs the cultural scripts that tell us one person should meet all our needs, that romantic love is the pinnacle of human connection, and that marriage and nuclear families are “natural” structures rather than social constructs designed to uphold systems of power. By tracing how these ideas have evolved over time, Spade reveals how they function to isolate us, keeping us tethered to capitalist fantasies of scarcity, consumption, and individualism. The book challenges readers to decenter romance, making space for deeper forms of care and intimacy beyond monogamous or hierarchical partnerships.

What sets this book apart is Spade’s ability to weave together structural analysis with deeply personal reflections and actionable exercises. Self-inquiry prompts throughout the text encourage readers to interrogate their own conditioning, expectations, and attachment patterns. Spade asks hard questions about why we desire what we desire, why the new relationship phase inevitably fades, and how we can move beyond cycles of conflict and punishment into more value-aligned ways of relating.

A particularly striking section examines how capitalism and technology teach us to numb ourselves, ensuring that we neither resist the horrors of the world nor stop chasing the impossible highs that consumer culture promises. In contrast, Spade calls for emotional presence and accountability—not just within romantic relationships but across all forms of intimacy. Through a transformative justice lens, the book offers strategies for conflict resolution, boundary-setting, and navigating consent, even (or especially) when the answer is “maybe.”

Spade’s prose is sharp and urgent, but never detached. The writing is direct, analytical, and deeply reflective, seamlessly blending political critique with relational introspection. Repetition, rhetorical questions, and declarative statements drive home key insights, making the book both intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant. This is a text that does not just critique existing structures but provides a roadmap for building something better.

Ultimately, Love in a Fucked Up World is a call to action: to unlearn, to resist, and to reimagine love outside the constraints of capitalism, patriarchy, and isolation. It is an invitation to cultivate relationships rooted in interdependence, solidarity, and care—ones that nourish rather than deplete, that liberate rather than confine. Spade doesn’t just ask us to love differently; he challenges us to love in a way that transforms the world itself.

📖 Recommended For: Readers invested in radical relationship models, transformative justice, and the intersections of activism and intimacy; those questioning the romance myth and seeking liberatory approaches to love and connection; fans of adrienne maree brown, bell hooks, and Mia Mingus.

🔑 Key Themes: Decentering Romance, Mutual Aid and Interdependence, The Impact of Capitalism on Intimacy, Transformative Justice in Relationships.
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