Question

James J. Lunch is author of The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness

and a leading specialist in psychosomatic medicine. He writes movingly about the

dependence we all have on ‘dialogues of love’. These are the verbal and non-verbal

exchanges that bring us close to other people, and close to a feeling of being understood

and cherished by those people. When these dialogues are disrupted and eroded,

significant increases in disease and death follow, with obvious social costs as well as

great personal loss.

Keeping your capacity for loving dialogue alive demands a willingness to be generous,

flexible and tolerant. “An individual can only receive to the extent that he gives,” Lunch

points out, ‘and, in that sense, dialogue is a mirror of his personality.

When you engage with another person, whether this is at work, within a love relationship,

with a member of your family of origin or a neighbour, you rarely explicitly promise to

be generous. Yet the presence of generosity within that relationship (or dialogue), or its

absence, can utterly determine the quality and longevity of the connection.

Generosity usually involves listening and ‘tuning in’, rather than imposing, and a

willingness to enter into the life of another human being as an honoured, respectful guest,

not as an invader or coloniser. This can be most difficult of all between members of the

same family where unconscious ‘debts’ may tangle with equally unconscious ‘requests’

that often emerge in ways destined to get you almost any result but the one you want.

1a What is a ‘Dialogues of love’? 2

1b Describe what happens when for some reason such a dialogue fails? 2

1c How are these dialogues of love kept alive? 2

1d What is the key factor which determines the quality and longevity of a relationship. 2

1e Why is maintaining generosity most difficult in a family relationship. 2

1f Pick out words from the text which mean the same as the following: 10

i unhappiness felt by somebody because they lack friends

ii the result of a situation

iii physical illness which occurs because the patient is worried or anxious

iv prevented from proceeding easily

v gradually destroyed

vi willing to change and adapt

vii long existence of something

viii forcing one’s views on others

ix enter by force

x difficult to unravel or smooth out

Answer 1

1. loneliness
2. consequences
3. unconscious
4. disrupted
5. erode
6. tuning in
7. longevity
8. impose
9. invade
10. tangle