Jonathan Rutherford draws together autobiographical, psychological and cultural perspectives to present an accessible, troubling, textured and moving series of reflections on what happens when men are stripped of their mask of self-sufficiency and fall - truly, madly and deeply - in love.

Why do words fail men when they need them most? Why is the subject of what men want emotionally, shrouded in silence? This is a book that attempts, in the style of Blake Morrison and Richard Rayner, to put men's experience of Love into words. * I am no longer myself without you is NOT a self-help manual. Jonathan Rutherford draws together autobiographical, psychological and cultural perspectives to present an accessible, troubling, textured and deeply moving series of reflections on what happens when men are stripped of their mask of self-sufficiency and fall -- truly, madly and deeply -- in love. * Though he does write about gay love, the great majority of Rutherford's book concentrates on heterosexual love and he tackles this most elusive of subjects in a strikingly original and moving way. * In a book that is tied together by material drawn from his own life, Rutherford articulates, in crisp, haunting prose, feelings about silence, mothers, fathers, family, romance and seduction that many of us may have had (about ourselves, our friends or our partners) at one time or another but have never coherently connected together.