Keeping The Love You Find

A guide to finding and keeping love shows readers how to meet the challenges of a new relationship, avoid making the same mistakes, deal with emotional issues, and improve their odds

I know of no better guide for couples who genuinely desire a maturing relationship.M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled A remarkable bookthe most incisive and persuasive I have ever read on the knotty problems of marriage relationships. Ann Roberts, former president, Rockefeller Family Fund

This groundbreaking book from the best-selling authors of Getting the Love You Want and coauthors of Giving the Love that Heals is the first to address the biggest unexplored issue facing couples today: Most of us are better at giving love than accepting it. We don't realize all the ways that our resistance to appreciation, praise, compliments, and accepting help from others hurts us and cripples our relationships. Many partners learn how to give love, but many more undermine their relationships by for-getting something that is equally important -- learning to receive it. According to the authors, the root of the problem is the self-rejection that began in childhood, when our parents and caretakers unintentionally failed to nurture or directly rejected traits, characteristics, or im-pulses when we were children. We end up rejecting in ourselves whatever our caretakers ignored or rejected in the course of our childhoods. When we become adults, this makes it impossible to let in the love we want and need, even when our partners offer it. As a result, we dismiss compliments, minimize gestures of affection, and create obstacles to true intimacy. In this book, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, co-creators of Imago Relation-ship Therapy, offer a definitive guide to breaking the shackles of self-rejection and embracing the love our partners offer. Receiving Love is a very personal book for Drs. Hendrix and Hunt, and much of their own journey is the inspiration for it. Drawing on their renowned expertise, the wide clinical experience of hundreds of Imago therapists, and their own personal experience, the authors are able to offer detailed guidance on how to conquer the problems that come from self-rejection and embrace the gifts that are abundant in every person's life, if only we knew how to accept them. With its groundbreaking theory, challenging processes, and inspiring examples, this book holds the key to loving relationships that last.

Draws on extensive research, counseling workshops with couples and the authors' own 30-year relationship to distill basic, provocative truths about marriage and provide essential tools for rendering a marriage more rewarding and positive. 50,000 first printing.

The first-ever book on Imago Relationship Therapy from its creators geared toward therapists. Developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt in the 1980s, Imago Relationship Therapy helps couples—and everyone in significant relationships—shift from conflict to connection by transforming the quality of their interactions. Now, for the first time, the essential principles and practices of Imago, as illustrated in the New York Times bestseller Getting the Love You Want, are presented for the benefit of both novice and seasoned clinicians. Using the Imago processes, couples create a Conscious Partnership in which they feel safe, fully alive, and joyful, learning to be mutually empathic for each other’s childhood challenges and present to each other without judgement. Hendrix and Hunt help couples learn and practice Imago Dialogue, moving from blame and reactivity to mutual acceptance, affirmation, and empathy, thus deepening their connection. Joining theory and practice with elegance, and filled with examples, exercises, and dialogues, this is a book no couples therapist can afford to be without.

Your dream of finding a partner is a natural and normal human instinct and your dream is perfectly achievable. Whatever your history, whatever your heartbreak, as a single person you are in an ideal position to learn what you need to know and what you can do to greatly improve your chances for finding, and keeping, love. With KEEPING THE LOVE YOU FIND, renowned relationship therapist and bestselling author Harville Hendrix will help you to: · IDENTIFY your Imago - the fantasy partner that your unconscious mind, which has a hidden agenda of its own, has chosen for you · BREAK FREE from those patterns in your parents' marriage that you have unknowingly accepted as your relationship model · CREATE hope in place of despair, companionship instead of loneliness · DEVELOP communication skills to turn conflict into contact - and togetherness · TRANSFORM every past relationship into a source of positive growth · DISCOVER the rewards of real love - and the little things that make it last … and more. Filled with wisdom and compassion, KEEPING THE LOVE YOU FIND will help get your next relationship off to the best start and keep your love strong for a lifetime.

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.

The bestselling author of Hold Me Tight presents a revolutionary new understanding of why and how we love, based on cutting-edge research. Every day, we hear of relationships failing and questions of whether humans are meant to be monogamous. Love Sense presents new scientific evidence that tells us that humans are meant to mate for life. Dr. Johnson explains that romantic love is an attachment bond, just like that between mother and child, and shows us how to develop our "love sense" -- our ability to develop long-lasting relationships. Love is not the least bit illogical or random, but actually an ordered and wise recipe for survival. Love Sense covers the three stages of a relationship and how to best weather them; the intelligence of emotions and the logic of love; the physical and psychological benefits of secure love; and much more. Based on groundbreaking research, Love Sense will change the way we think about love.