FROM LOVE TRAUMA TO FEARLESS LOVE

In this work that blends fiction and self-help advice, a psychotherapist traces the path to healing after suffering sexual abuse through the metaphor of a highly ritualized dance.

Elena and Cesar meet through the singles scene in their South Florida community. She is a newly divorced graduate student seeking a license to practice psychotherapy. He is a divorced FBI agent with a co-dependent relationship with his former wife and numerous drama-filled entanglements with ex-girlfriends. Elena is both attracted and overwhelmed by Cesar’s charm and attentive “love bombing.” His erratically possessive behavior sets off alarms immediately, and she almost ends their relationship after their first date. Increasingly wary, she calls off their romance time after time only to be lured back by Cesar’s combination of seduction and passive-aggressive behavior until it finally culminates in sexual assault. The story intersperses the development of Elena and Cesar’s thrilling and disturbing relationship with her later conversations with her therapist and a rape support group. Woven among these strands are seven tango lessons that teach Elena about the dynamic relationship of trust, control, and responsibility that develops between the leader and the follower in the passionate dance. Through therapy and dance, Elena begins to trace the roots of her trauma and the old wounds that made her vulnerable to the manipulations of a narcissistic man. The second section, titled “Psychological Insights,” ties Adamo’s own experience of rape to Elena and Cesar’s story in a more straightforward, mental health text, offering explanations and support on such topics as “Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Predatory People” and “What is Consent, Anyway?” The author’s choice to introduce her exploration of sexual abuse and narcissism with a fictionalized “case study” gives her narrative a dramatic pull, and the therapeutic chapters supply a cogent outline of “loving and leaving a narcissist.” While the arc of Elena and Cesar’s back-and-forth relationship seems agonizingly long, the metaphor of the tango provides an innovative approach to recovering from a toxic relationship and wresting strength and autonomy out of hopelessness and shame.

A valuable guide to recognizing predatory behavior and surviving sexual abuse.