High Maintenance Relationships

How do you cope with impossible people? The author offers clear and direct answers for dealing with relationships that give so little but demand so much.

Inner bonding is the process of connecting our adult thoughts with our instinctual, gut feelings—the feelings of the "inner child"—so that we can minimize painful conflict within ourselves. Free of inner conflict, we feel peaceful, open to joy, and open to giving and receiving love. Margaret Paul, coauthor of Healing Your Aloneness, explores how abandonment of the inner child leads to increasingly negative and destructive feelings of low self-worth, codepenclence, addiction, shame, powerlessness, and withdrawal from relationships. Her breakthrough inner bonding process teaches us to heal past wounds through reparenting and clearly demonstrates how we can learn to parent in the present. Real-life examples illustrate the dynamics of the healing process and show the benefits we can expect in every facet of our lives and in all our relationships. Inner Bonding provides the tools we need to forge and maintain the inner unity that makes our family, sexual, work, and social relationships productive, honest, and joyful.

An investigation of love in all its forms, featuring conversations with Lisa Taddeo, Esther Perel, Emily Nagoski, Kate Bowler, Alain de Botton, Stephen Grosz, Roxane Gay and others Journalist Natasha Lunn was almost 30 when she realized that there was no map for understanding love. While she was used to watching friends fall in and out of love, the older she got the more she had to acknowledge: her friends' relationship struggles could no longer be chalked up to youth, and the more she learned about her parents, grandparents, work colleagues, and mentors the clearer it became that age had not brought any of them any closer to understanding this elusive, transformative, consuming emotion. One night during the months she found this realization settling over her, she sat up in bed and jotted three words in a notebook: conversations on love. In that moment, Lunn understood that she didn't want advice about love, she wasn't looking for the answers, or evergreen wisdom but she craved candid, wide-ranging, sometimes uncomfortable conversations about the parts of love that often don't make it into our everyday discussions of marriage, sibling relationships, friendships, or mother/daughter bonds. Conversations on Love started as an experiment aimed at interviewing experts about what love meant to them, in all of it's messiness, and quickly blossomed into a newsletter that attracted thousands of subscribers and a prestigious range of interviewees. It turns out that Lunn wasn't the only person ready to talk more openly and expansively about love. Interweaving personal essays and revealing interviews with some of the most sough-after experts on love, journalist Natasha Lunn guides us through the paradoxical heart of three key questions about love--How do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it?--to deliver a book that is a solace, a beacon, a call to arms, a tool-kit. The real-life love stories in these pages will leave you hopeful and validated, while the insights from experts will transform the way you think about your relationships. Above all, Conversations on Love will remind you what love is: fragile, sturdy, mundane, beautiful, always worth fighting for.

The highly anticipated sequel to the global bestseller 12 Rules for Life. In 12 Rules for Life, acclaimed public thinker and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson offered an antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to modern anxieties. His insights have helped millions of readers and resonated powerfully around the world. Now in his long-awaited sequel, Peterson goes further, showing that part of life's meaning comes from reaching out into the domain beyond what we know, and adapting to an ever-transforming world. While an excess of chaos threatens us with uncertainty, an excess of order leads to a lack of curiosity and creative vitality. Beyond Order therefore calls on us to balance the two fundamental principles of reality--order and chaos--and reveals the profound meaning that can be found on the path that divides them. In times of instability and suffering, Peterson reminds us that there are sources of strength on which we can all draw: insights borrowed from psychology, philosophy, and humanity's greatest myths and stories. Drawing on the hard-won truths of ancient wisdom, as well as deeply personal lessons from his own life and clinical practice, Peterson offers twelve new principles to guide readers towards a more courageous, truthful, and meaningful life.

This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive summary of the psychology of close relationships, and showcases classic and contemporary theories, models, and empirical research that have been conducted in the field.

Marriage should be based on love, right? But does it seem as though you and your spouse are speaking two different languages? #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Chapman guides couples in identifying, understanding, and speaking their spouse's primary love language-quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch. By learning the five love languages, you and your spouse will discover your unique love languages and learn practical steps in truly loving each other. Chapters are categorized by love language for easy reference, and each one ends with simple steps to express a specific language to your spouse and guide your marriage in the right direction. A newly designed love languages assessment will help you understand and strengthen your relationship. You can build a lasting, loving marriage together. Gary Chapman hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio program called A Love Language Minute that can be heard on more than 150 radio stations as well as the weekly syndicated program Building Relationships with Gary Chapman, which can both be heard on fivelovelanguages.com. The Five Love Languages is a consistent New York Times bestseller - with over 5 million copies sold and translated into 38 languages. This book is a sales phenomenon, with each year outselling the prior for 16 years running!

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Over a million copies sold! “An eminently practical guide to an emotionally intelligent—and long-lasting—marriage.”—Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work has revolutionized the way we understand, repair, and strengthen marriages. John Gottman’s unprecedented study of couples over a period of years has allowed him to observe the habits that can make—and break—a marriage. Here is the culmination of that work: the seven principles that guide couples on a path toward a harmonious and long-lasting relationship. Straightforward yet profound, these principles teach partners new approaches for resolving conflicts, creating new common ground, and achieving greater levels of intimacy. Gottman offers strategies and resources to help couples collaborate more effectively to resolve any problem, whether dealing with issues related to sex, money, religion, work, family, or anything else. Packed with new exercises and the latest research out of the esteemed Gottman Institute, this revised edition of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is the definitive guide for anyone who wants their relationship to attain its highest potential.

Whether you’re newly together and eager to make it work or a longtime couple looking to strengthen and deepen your bond, Eight Dates offers a program of how, why, and when to have eight basic conversations with your partner that can result in a lifetime of love. “Happily ever after” is not by chance, it’s by choice– the choice each person in a relationship makes to remain open, remain curious, and, most of all, to keep talking to one another. From award-winning marriage researcher and bestselling author Dr. John Gottman and fellow researcher Julie Gottman, Eight Dates offers an ingenious and simple-to-implement approach to effective relationship communication. Here are the subjects that every serious couple should discuss: Trust. Family. Sex and intimacy. Dealing with conflict. Work and money. Dreams, and more. And here is how to talk about them—how to broach subjects that are difficult or embarrassing, how to be brave enough to say what you really feel. There are also suggestions for where and when to go on each date—book your favorite romantic restaurant for the Sex & Intimacy conversation (and maybe go to a yoga or dance class beforehand). There are questionnaires, innovative exercises, real-life case studies, and skills to master, including the Four Skills of Intimate Conversation and the Art of Listening. Because making love last is not about having a certain feeling—it’s about both of you being active and involved.