Non-Recommended Reading For Love Zombies

Plenty of perfectly legit poetry, novels and esoterica are nonetheless dangerous for Love Zombies. For example, Khalil Gibran. Yes, The Prophet is like the seminal bible of the new age movement but phrases like this could test the resolve of the most vigilant recovering Love Zombie:

“The reality of the other person lies not In what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say.”
— Khalil Gibran

Yeah right. Crank the Zombie Vision up to high and fetch some Blue Devil Hoochie Juice – it’s time to go onto the Dark Web.

Also on the Non-Recommended Reading List for Love Zombies:

-Wuthering Heights
-Walk The Line
-Any site festooned with terms like ‘twin flames’ or ‘star seeds.’ They’re like inflammatory sugar to whatever the endorphins are in the Love Zombie condition.

Again, it’s not the terms, as such, but the way they’re used and their effect on Love Zombies. How many people have justified a ridiculously draining or even dangerous delusion/situation because of a “soul contract?”

They’re also big on content theft, cutting and pasting entire books onto their site – eg: my Soulmating book on Eros & Psyche – and then claiming they channeled it from Alpha Centauri. When caught out, they’ll claim that the internet is a nebulae of light and they, as superior star seedlings are entitled to share the light.

Anyway, what would YOU put on the Non-Recommended Reading List For Love Zombies?

129 thoughts on “Non-Recommended Reading For Love Zombies”

  1. I know this is about NON-recommended reading for LZ’s, but my god, the antidote to all LZ-ing is Mark Manson.

    This article is so right on:

    Love Is Not Enough

    http://markmanson.net/love

    SO loving Venus and Saturn transiting right on my Neptune in the 5th. The reality check, and idealistic love-busting vibes is really helping me right now. I wish this transit could just stay there on my Neptune permanently!

  2. Add to the do not listen/watch list- operas, especially “Tosca”, and “Carmen”. The music by itself might be ok.

    Maybe the ballet “Giselle” should be on the list, too. This one pains me, as I adore it, but it could be unhealthy for some. “Swan Lake”, too.

  3. Anything by Virginia Andrews (Angel, Heaven, Flowers in the Attic etc). Don’t even ask what they did to my teenage mind, and so addictive..!

  4. erm. just had a nasty viral infection and spent a weekend with an australian tv series called Spirited recommended by a friend. Add it to the list.

    A divorced uptight dentist (Claudia Karvan) falls in love with the ghost of an english punk rock star who is trapped in her apartment building.

    It’s quirky and funny and dark but… yeah definitely a love zombie trigger. Especially if you have a thing for musicians. (who me?)

  5. Wow, great thread re: Love Zombie aka Stockholme Syndrome!

    Avoid at all costs music list (this is exhaustive & not at all complete)

    : Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Shania Twain…

    Do not read (do not include in your astrodienst log)

    :His or a prospective His natal, Transitting or progressed chart including natal, Transitting or progressed synastry & composite

    Any advice on an online dating site – if it ain’t there it just ain’t there!

  6. The Time Traveller’s Wife – one of my favourite books ever!! Being a recovering LZ not only did I fetishise stalking Mr Object D’amour through time and space but I gave the bloke I am now married to, the love of my life, a copy two weeks after we met. Thank goodness he never read it!!!! He worked out my crazy cray streaks in other ways but I am pretty sure I’m mainly recovered and mr saggi cap remains amused at my occasional passionate relapses.

  7. Ugh, that ‘twin flame’ shizz, too……

    I really got taken in by it when I first ever heard about the idea of twin flames because it was exactly during a several year period of my worst LZ-ing on record, and the twin flame thing only fueled the fire, so to speak.. I can be SO gullible!
    I LZ’d about one guy for about seven years…..un-f*cking-believable. Really effed myself up with that one! Felt so relieved when I somehow finally released myself from that, and hopefully I’ve learned to see through this bullsh*t now….
    At the time, I remember a psychic telling me that guy was my twin flame, which is how I learned about this concept. Recently, another psychic told me my current guy is my twin flame……..it’s like, wait a minute, aren’t we only supposed to have ONE twin flame?? It’s all utter b.s……

    I mean, yeah, we’re ALL connected because we’re all star stuff on the same planet, same universe, etc. and if there are past lives and karma and all that, then that is in play with everything we do and everyone we encounter in this present life. Of course some events and people feel more significant to us, but the fact that we have karma with them or had a past life with them isn’t such a special thing, it’s a ‘routine’ thing in this universe, it would seem.. Our energy is going to magnetize to certain experiences and people and not to others, like, it’s not that ‘dear’ or mysterious.

  8. When we get to banning music I have four count em FOUR play lists on spotify that need to be burned on the lz charnel grounds.

  9. hmmm yes, I think LZism can be fueled by anything in written word..,how about a full on Ghoul to Cool curriculum intervention. (I think it’s called curriculum with intent?) Young scholars should write their own stories before they ever even pick up a book; deconstruction a core competency. No Carpenters and, under any circumstances, no humming or no dancing alone to (is this burning an) Eternal Flame.

  10. Pablo Neruda

    Love him, but his stuff will make me thinking of people that were evicted from my life/mind/heart years ago.

  11. Curiously enough poetry and great love books have helped overcome lovezombiness by reassuring that there is a mistery and a Socrate “I know I don’t know anything” type of philosophy. It has helped me not to idealise a human being and put my transcendence (if there is any), metaphisycs thoughts above humans, and above myself.
    Because lovezombiness is not only the fact that he is not there, he is not present, he is not real, it is also an incomensurable felt sense that he is what you need to be whole. The connection via his eyes, his breath, his gestures, his smiles, etc are the problem. For me, they were a big problem. But now I know that this desire doesn’t have much to do, in my case, with some sort of an insecure attachament, but with a soul question: who am I and what is love? Poetry has helped figure those questions out. 🙂
    Virgo Sun square Neptune, Scorpio Venus conjunct Uranus and Lilith here.

    1. THIS demonstrates a lot of insight imo and I think you go to The heart of what drives very strong emotional attachments or beliefs about a romantic interest who is not available to us for some reason.

      I am SO GLAD that you also mentioned poetry, a matter close to my heart. God there is just so much beautiful work out there.

      I know we read poems very personally but i wanted to share this as it is about , well lots of things. But when I read it had a moment of enlightenment, shed some tears, and realised maybe I wasn’t doing this alone.

      http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178697

  12. Avoid:

    linda goodman’s love signs
    wuthering heights
    bridget jones’ diary
    ‘chick lit’ in general
    your synastry & composite charts, over & over
    his social networking pages
    self-help books for couples (….just accept that you’re not operating from a ‘couple’ orientation — person X is not going to change via this book you read alone)
    basically anything that is the least bit romantic; where the protagonist is lovelorn; anything you can read yourself and person X into the narrative

    Suggested reading:

    ‘how should a person be’ by sheila heti
    ‘women, sex, and addiction’ by charlotte kasl
    ‘all about love’ by bell hooks
    ‘fear of flying’ by erica jong
    ‘lady oracle’ by margaret atwood (for irony); margaret atwood in general
    basically anything that is feminist, focuses on being emotionally independeny, emphasizes friendship or sibling dynamics, or has a venus-uranus vibe. sorry, this list is kinda gendered… for those less interested in female-centred books: alan watts, krishnamurti, a.a. almaas, pema chodron, ‘love is hell’ by matt groening, ‘if the buddha dated…’ by charlotte kasl

    1. *independent

      *eta: subtract ‘fear of flying’ — too relationship-centred… but she must have a more suitable anti LZ book in her biblio

  13. Yes to Mary Oliver and Gary Snyder. NO to Edna St. Vincent-Millay and Lorca!!!! No Hafiz. No Rilke. Absolutely no e e cummings. Jeffers and Williams instead.
    Anything metaphysical is zomb fodder. Campbell, Crowley, Blavatsky (ridiculous!), books of the dead – I’ve done them all. Magick of course is both a bad bad bad idea and irresistible, so no to all Little Books of Love Spells, put down the Hine and Regardie and Starhawk. The antidote is Edward Abbey and the permaculture manual.
    And absolutely positootly no Bright Eyes!!
    (Signed allergic to rom-coms and novels pro LZ. Except Jane Eyre. Will ALWAYS love Jane Eyre.)

    1. Laugh, but Judith Krantz novels are the perfect antidote for LZs (if MM were to want a Recommended Book List). One might think Trash Chic Lit, when Judith Krantz is mentioned, but the chic lead characters in her novels always win no matter what nor how miserable they feel when they fall prey to some dastardly male who tries to own them. In fact her books are like the A-Z of fighting Love Zombiedom.

        1. Am I a weirdo for taking a perverse pleasure in the possibility that someone would see me reading trash-fic and instantly judge me as non worthy of knowing. Oh it makes my mars in aqua SING, the contrariness of it all !! Mwaha

  14. Oh but DO read ‘How to Save Your Own Life’ by Erica Jong.. especially if you were seeing some scorpionic fuckboy who will never remember your birthday, be there when you’re sick, skip the chance to pick a fight, let alone commit, etc..

  15. Don’t read ‘Way of the Superior Man’.. It’ll make you bitter and frustrated that your ex is such an immature, selfish jerk.. you’ll wistfully think about how he has the potential to be like that, if he only…… then you’ll plot how you could ‘helpfully’ give it to him to read, then…….blah blah blah not worth it

  16. What a wonderfully pragmatic piece you have written Myst!
    Exactly what i have seen at all New Age bookshops OPS (other peeps stuff) regurgitated over and over.

    ‘I send you greetings from a far galaxy and just want you to know you are being watched over by us enlightened beings to guide your evolution into becoming starseeds. You are all beautiful and loving, we see that and your twin flame is coming to you to assist on your journey to a higher dimension of BeingHood.

    Yeah right!
    Men used to be for sperm and support mostly – but times have changed as women can do IVF and make a good income themselves. Good Men are adapting to this and encouraging that independence by making themselves useful in myriad of other ways.

    Would recommend a book on chakras to see where the emotional ‘hooks’ are that create LZism.
    Anatomy of the Spirit (7 keys to Power & Healing) gives a lucid comprehensive explanation of the chakras that includes many different philosophies and religious takes on them.
    Basically LZ can be from being ‘hooked’ into another person’s energy in a negative way, usually the 2nd energy centre, the lower belly, hence we feel ‘gutted’ when love goes awry.
    Anyways it’s how i feel it.
    LZ DOES create an immunity to it is the upside or farside 🙂

  17. Story of O? that and Erica Jong books were my fodder at 15yrs. Sure they shaped my LZ traits at an early age that and Disney. Plus with venus in Kataka Im a born natural – a total goner. Im much stronger and wiser now and have no need for LZism as all is good in my Leo realm.

    1. Yes Venus in Cancer here….can we say-fave Christopher reeve movie is NOT superman but “somewhere in Time”…ugh- that LZ killing penny!!! I hate that penny!!!! I hate my Venus in cancer….. Lol!

  18. How about a non recommended playlist. I think Shirley Bassey’s “Never Never Never” would be right up there.

    Recommended listening would have to include “Since I Left You” by the Avalanches. This song helped me break out of an LZ situation back in 2001.

    Here is a url to copy and paste.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfAuFAgHpzc

    1. yes, and for the recommended playlist, Dylan’s “Don’t think twice, it’s alright” which I did send to a Gemini once after our relationship ended in him being a Gemini 😉

  19. Fabulous commentary.

    I remember a movie in my late teens that cured me of many love zombie beliefs. I think it was called A man in love – woman falls for married charmer, promises the world and to leave his partner. The wise mother(i think) said simply “if he can do that to someone he can do that to you”.

    My own love zombie tendencies flared around rejection – enen if i cared not for some one i crumbled at break ups.

    So my films of choice involve anything that reunites star crossed lovers. I tended to get bored once i got them back making me a little nuts i expect and the next scene in a movie that never gets shown.

    Codependency cured by partner that has no dependency issues possible.

  20. Non-recommended reading for LZ’s…..excellent idea!

    I agree that films should be included, like most Disney films, rom-com’s, etc. I think all of this stuff has such a massive impact on the collective psyche and social conditioning and is very toxic. I know I got conditioned in this direction by watching these types of films my whole life, they get you young, right, with the Disney stuff…….just the right prince comes along and only his kiss can wake you up……..ugh!
    I want to clear the cache in my brain of all this shite!!!!!!

    I truly envy people who have never LZ’ed…..

    I have Neptune in the 5th in Scorp square Mercury, and I have a Pisces moon, Crab rising, just so….SO impressionable, idealistic, overly-romantic/delusional, fantasy-prone…….can’t stand it !!!!

    Can’t wait to read your book, MM! Your defining of LZ behavior and the on-going discussions about it here have been very therapeutic for me. No where else have I read this issue defined and addressed so perfectly and thoroughly ….thank you!

    1. Your astro sounds very mermaidy! I understand what you are saying though. Wishing you well on the pathway to understanding xox

      1. Mermaidy, yes!
        I do love to swim and have mostly always lived by the ocean..
        Funny, one time I was a ‘mermaid in training’ for Halloween and I wore children’s ‘swimmies’ on my upper arms, those inflatable thingies.

  21. Would Euripides’ Medea end up on the recommended or non?
    To be honest, it was like a tonic for me last week.
    Cleared my case of the old LZ right up.

  22. Holy horse shit, ladies — hands down, the all-time, MUST avoid like a scorching case of herpes AND total mind melting bender, cross-generational LZ-susceptible intervention — “Cinderella”. Teach ’em young, my strong & wise, Astro sisters!

    1. Yikes! Fairy tales! Sleeping Beauty, rapunzel, anything with a princess. I remember the ‘wise’ grandmother decorating the Little Mermaid’s tail with stingy molluscs sagely saying ” One must suffer pain to be beautiful”. Prep for wearing heels? Sheesh

  23. De Profundis by Oscar Wilde! Basically a long book-length letter to Lord Alfred Douglas written from jail. It makes zombie-ing sound so noble and poetic!

    Any Paulo Coelho crapola. But most especially The Alchemist, see particularly all the parts about one Fatima, woman of the desert, who was — gag — used to waiting?! Noooo, no she wasn’t!

    Love in the Time of Cholera. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The Great Gatsby.

      1. That’s yes to De Profundis. Fantastic book but NO! The Soul of Man….. Swoon….but that relationship was a hot mess.

  24. it’s funny though you know. I find that rom coms, rom tragedies (the notebook, out of africa e.g. ), joan collins novels (?) actually help to mitigate any power-crush I have going on. my desire to indulge in romantic smoosh, has an outlet that wld be otherwise stymied by the absence of the guy. so I can vicariously indulge these feelings without having to obsess too much over the actual person./ figment.

    1. gosling films an exception though, since he is an actual objet de zomb in my life. sorry gos. you know it. all the civilian crushing on a Public Scorp must be like .. a tesla coil gathering electricity from the air. i mean does the man even need sleep with that energy coming in?

      1. Yes, i often think of that. all that sexual energy being focused on one person by millions of people – how would that affect them on their ethereal or energetic or even spiritual level? …do they become some kinda godling (no pun intended,pi) in a parallel/alternative reality…maybe…..or do these sexual feelings become some kind of energy that is being harvested by some cosmic entity….
        (scarab)

        1. It’s a thing. Def. Think of live shows, musicians in front of huge crowds, tens of thousands of people directing energy andattention to 2,3,6people on stage at the same time and in an energetic state. No wonder rock stars etc live on a different plane.

  25. 12th house virgo

    When I was in the depths of love zombiedom, pretty much anything would trigger me. But, King Lear. I know its a love story between daughter and a father. But, so was a lot of my need and clingyness derived from that.
    “For thee, oppressèd King, I am cast down.
    Myself could else outfrown false fortune’s frown.”

    1. 12th house virgo

      No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison.
      We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage.
      When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
      And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
      And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
      At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
      Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
      Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—
      And take upon ’s the mystery of things
      As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out
      In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones
      That ebb and flow by the moon.

      1. I was just about to write RUMI! hahaha. Good call. There should also be a ban music list. Thinking GooGoo Dolls, Come to Me….. Argh. The list goes on.

  26. Hee hee this picture is classic! Mills and Boon/Kitsch Fantasy/Flesh/Blue Steel Looks/Symbol Laden…there’s not much it does not say!

  27. “Ana Karenina” – that has everything in it: society and hypocrisy, passion and desire, the progress of society, family, marriage, fidelity, faith etc. But it’s the gruelling LZombiness of Ana K towards Vronsky which is epic.

    1. As a lover of High Romance that i am, this novel actually turned me off being a LZ at a very early age….and a good thing too….though admittedly, i’ve had a few glitches along the way.

  28. During ‘The Love Zombie Years’ any romantic film was off limits as it would reduce me to a puddle of frantic longing.

    I don’t want to be a tragic literary character EVER AGAIN. So normalising/dramatising it is entirely off the menu for me. So much of what falls within storytelling has been rendered for me pathetic in these post LZ days …

  29. Wuthering Heights …. taught to every teenage girl at school. How do we end up getting anywhere else, but here, when that is what we learn …

    1. 12th house virgo

      Ha ha! Just commented that one above and then saw yours below. Total lz material. And a how-to on staying in an abusive relationship.

      1. yeah it would have been nice to do some critical readings of the classics . might have made me more interested in english lit.

        1. for example/ if [for australian peeps] someone had compared the spoof TV show Houso’s to Pride and Prejudice, I might have understood the whole pisstake/irony thing better as a a 14 y.o instead of stalling at the bonnet drama and fusty social scenes.

    2. What a great point!
      Especially in high school it’s SO IMPORTANT to learn how NOT to be a love zombie, or at least realise that there is a world – a life! – out there that exists over and above any love relationships.

      I would recommend feminist literature coupled with humour as best books to be on the list to combat love-zombiedom.

      On that note: Anne Summers’ ‘Damned Whores and God’s Police’ (best book title ever, right?) could be a good starting point! It’s available as e-book now -here: http://annesummers.com.au/

      Question is whether schools will ever have the guts and imagination to teach books like these.

    1. Amanda aka AbsintheDragonfly

      LOL Anything by Linda Goodman 😀 Star Signs too I think it was. Though I won’t pan her too much, she was my intro to astrology.

      1. On the subject of Liz Greene and plagiarism, has anyone noticed how her Astrology for Lovers is almost an exact rip-off of Love Signs? And I love Liz Greene but that is disappointing.

    1. People kept giving me copies of that book when I first moved in with my Mr. I kept one to fling around the room when I had computer problems.

      1. I read it in the bath, briefly, then threw it across the room. It sounded good slapping the tiles… So not totally useless

    2. Lux Interior is My Co-Pilot

      YES. I bloody hate those books!

      Also Wuthering Heights should be banned,

      And any book the LZ’s target of affections has recommended or raved about.

      When I was an LZ, a bloke I was fixated on recommended Brideshead Revisited and I read it over an over looking for symbolism of our non-existent relationship. I could have spent that time eating cake, or disco dancing with wolves–what a fuqing waste of time!!!

  30. Redlipstick Virgo

    Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte was original love zombie. Her letters to Belgian professor Heger literally bleed of the page. One in particular can just make you cry where she is in Englamd and writes to say she knows she is only permitted to contact him once a year but can she break the rule. This letter torn in two, was filched from the waste basket and stitched back together with thead (sticky tape not existing then) people presume by Zoe Heger his wife to been the needle woman … But what if it was him who regretted tearing it up. It’s incredible it survives. I guess it takes a love zombie to write the best love zombie novel ever.

      1. yeah that struck me as kind of beautiful. but i would love to have had a look at that stitching. in those days, you know, needle & thread was the wife’s domain. I am trying to imagine her carefully stitching together a love letter from a fan of her husband. *scratches head* museums would surely talk about this in the notes etc

    1. 12th house virgo

      Was thinking Wuthering Heights. I’d just stay away from the Brontes.

      Apparently Emily Dickinson was a love zombie too, but if you stay away from her letters, you should be OK.

  31. apropos of the actual post, might i suggest ..
    …peruses bookshelf…
    hmm

    *blows dust off textbooks*

    i really need to read more romance trash

    *takes notes from readers comments here*
    xx

  32. Personally, I think Khalil Gibran is a whole lot healthier than a lot of ‘chick lit’, Twilight, Nicholas Sparks stuff that most of those prone to being Love Zombies read. At least Gibran encourages deep examination of oneself and their relationship to others in a more profound way. Much more in the self-actualisation vein than the vein of being obsessed with finding love, another half/ other externalising.
    I actually recommend the collected letters of Gibran and his partner Mary Haskell published as ‘Beloved Prophet’ as excellent anti-love zombie material

  33. oh god it’s just so hard to think of anything original to write! i know, i’ll copy the post above but make mine totally incomprehensible. thanks, google thesaurus! or something. here’s a link to my questionable astrology site.

        1. …and as you know, I’ve just been thru tumultuous but gratifying Knee Conjunct Cojones (exact) transit a couple of weeks ago.

                1. i think it was 4am when i was typing that and attempting to finish an essay… brain needed distraction from dizzying fatigue

              1. Well you could say it was square on the cojones too. ;-).

                At first felt great, then weirdly guilty re using violence. But all’s good… well it was all good until yesterday, when i fell off my scooter on the rogue
                knee (the one that did the conjuncting), trying to avoid hitting a white cat. Knee is now scarily swollen…..fuqin guilt and self inflicted divine retribution dressed up as a white cat. :-/

                Is this what happens when Mars and Pluto run together in Cap?

                I preferred it when Mars was running thru Sag – carefree, forthright and non-guilting.
                scrb xx

  34. Any romance novel, especially the uber addictive varieties like Twilight and Shades of Grey… Anything to do with past lives and soul mates because its a dangerous path for the love zombie to tread, and definitely pop psychology about relationships: men are from mars type stuff, with the exception of those deliberately tailored to resolving the love zombie complex: how to get over your insecure attachment issues/ romance narrative trap

  35. Great topic. Ehm… Twilight? I myself have been temporary stuck between hunky wolves and pale dudes in my life but that Bella Swamp had no respect for herself.

    1. Yes & whatever you do don’t watch the entire collection as Team Jacob, then watch it again as Team Edward. It will totally do yr head in. 🙂

  36. All Latin telenovelas, Mills & Boone et al.

    Lady Chatterly’s Lover
    Anna Karenina
    50 Shades of Gray (because it shouldn’t be on any list of ‘to read’).

      1. Intransitive Verb

        I’m with you on that. Even though I love them, I have to say LZs shouldn’t read Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice. For a certain type of intelligent, bookish, neurotic person, the former implants the idea that brutal, draining love is the only worthwhile kind while the latter was the demon seed that spawned a jillion terrible rom-coms (“If I hate this guy at first, eventually it’ll turn out he was right for me ALL ALONG!” Blurgh.

        1. Exactly! Wuthering Heights the SONG should be banned too, the name itself has LZ Oxy-potency.

          I’m sure the Brontes and Austin were the first on many a list 🙂

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