Love Centered Marriage In A Self Centered World

Considers how mates jointly create a setting for sharing love and defending against the fear of loving. The authors have integrated theory and practice in their description of six desirable objectives couples can plan to attain over a lifetime.

In the best-selling ScreamFree Parenting, Hal Runkel showed thousands of parents how focusing on themselves, in order to keep their cool, can revolutionize their family life. In his groundbreaking new book, The Self-Centered Marriage, Runkel now shows couples how learning to focus on themselves, in order to stay calm in the face of common marital conflicts, is the key to creating a deep, lifelong connection. Every committed couple strives to hold on to the marriage they envisioned back when they first said "I do"--before kids, mortgages, and all of life's inescapable issues seemed to get in the way. But the truth is this: conflict about these issues is unavoidable. What typically results are two spouses feeling forced to compromise themselves in order to just get along and keep it together. Eventually couples start "screaming" at each other--sometimes literally yelling out loud, sometimes shutting themselves down and shutting their partners out. In The Self-Centered Marriage, therapist and bestselling author Hal Runkel introduces some radical new concepts about marriage, teaching couples how to embrace their separate selves as a profound vehicle for strengthening a marriage. Every great marriage is a self-centered marriage because it's a bond between two whole, centered people. Calmly focusing on your own behavior, choices, and moods—which you can control—rather than your spouse’s—which you cannot—is the first step toward creating the relationship you really crave. Using accessible anecdotes and disarming humor, Runkel disproves prevailing marital wisdom and reveals a revolutionary path for spouses to be fully themselves, and fully married, at the same time.

Brad Hambrick examines Jesus teachings about broken relationships and shares strategies for interacting with a chronically self-centered spouse, bringing hope to victims of marital abuse and neglect.

This distinctive volume expands our understanding of couple resilience by identifying and exploring specific mechanisms unique to intimate relationships that facilitate positive adaptation to life challenges. Committed partnerships represent a unique form of relational alliance that offers an opportunity and challenge to go beyond the self - to develop as individuals and as a relationship. The contributors to this volume represent a range of perspectives that integrate conventional relationship science and innovative empirical and theoretical work on the importance of meaning-making, narrative construction, intersubjectivity, forgiveness, and positive emotion in couple life. The volume also offers a unique anchor point - ‘We-ness’ as it relates to the intersection between shared, personal identity and well-being. Under-examined relational contexts such as resilience among LGBT partners and sexual resilience during illness adds further refinement of thought and application.

Our culture is self-obsessed – in our schedules, relationships, and especially online. (Can you say selfie?) But in this near-narcissism, people are less content than in decades past. Why? Because we forgot the joy that comes from putting others first. Doing so requires us to live alert, listening for “heart drops,” hints from those in our lives who need a helping hand or a generous dose of encouragement. Living alert lifts our own spirits, showing us that blessing others blesses us even more. Listen, Love, Repeat offers biblical teaching and suggests doable actions that are simple, heart-tugging, sentimental, even sneaky and hilarious. This message: • Presents scriptural examples of those who lived alert, including Jesus, who noticed those who least expected to be seen. • Explains the role of good works for followers of Christ. They aren’t our ticket to heaven but they are our marching orders on earth. • Gives creative ideas for showing love to friends and family, and suggests practical ways to reach out to the lonely, the marginalized, the outcast, and the odd duck. Additionally, it helps you comfort the grieving, showing what you can do when you don’t know what to say. • Provides inspiration for blessing the “necessary people” in your life, those often-overlooked souls who help you get life done every day, and teaches you how to hug a porcupine by genuinely loving the hard-to-love. As we scatter love, we create a safe space where we can openly share the gospel. We get to see lives changed right before our eyes. Most importantly, Listen, Love, Repeat will enable you to live a life that is full of kind deeds, not to selfishly shout, “Hey! Look at me!” but to humbly implore, “Will you look at Him?”

Is trying to be “the best you” actually ruining you? From “living your best life” to “self-actualizing,” “finding your destiny,” and “waiting on the best to come,” the contemporary messages of the world exhort us to believe that we are promised and entitled the biggest and best life can possibly offer. But is that actually what Jesus promises? Is that even close to the message of the gospel? Getting Over Yourself is a call for Christians to reject these hollow messages of personal prosperity and to return to the humble truths of the gospel. You’ll learn how to identify this insidious, popular theology in culture and churches and examine its devastating effects. And, perhaps most importantly, you’ll learn how to combat it with gospel truth that leads to the abundant life Jesus actually desires for His people. Discover the beauty in losing yourself—and ultimately in gaining Him.

Positive Couple Therapy: Using We-Stories to Enhance Resilience is a significant step forward in the couple literature. Utilizing a strengths-based approach, it teaches therapists and couples a unique method for uncovering positive potential within a relationship. The authors demonstrate how “We stories”–created, recovered and made anew–provide essential elements of connection. With vivid imagery, these stories capture the couple’s sense of “We-ness,” highlighting memorable moments of compassion, acceptance, and respect. A shared commitment to the “We” simultaneously builds the relationship and enables each individual in the partnership to feel a greater degree of both accountability and autonomy. Couples that can find their stories, share them with each other, and then carry them forward to family, friends, and a larger community are likely to preserve a sense of mutuality that will thrive over a lifetime of partnership. Positive Couple Therapy provides simple and practical instruction for reclaiming positive stories that can catalyze hope in relationships that have become stressed and strained. The authors weave together cutting edge thinking and research in attachment theory, narrative therapy, neuroscience, and adult development, as well as their own research and clinical experience to present vivid case histories, step-by-step strategies, exercises, questionnaires, and interview techniques. They cover a range of contemporary couple experiences: couples in conflict, LGBT partnerships, deployed and discharged military couples, and couples at various points across the life span. The authors’ unique Me (to US) Scale, a 10-item tool that assesses the degree of mutuality a couple possesses at the start of treatment, gives therapists of any theoretical orientation the ability to put this intervention to immediate use.

Apply God’s Wisdom to Your Marriage God designed the unique covenant between a man and a woman to be a lifelong partnership that brings joy, support, and stability to both their lives. You can experience this fulfillment for yourself when you follow His plan as the foundation for the relationship between you and your loved one. This companion to Your Marriage God’s Way invites you to work together with your spouse to take a closer look at the biblical principles for this precious contract and make them an active part of your own marriage. You will build a stronger relationship and deeper faith as you understand the unique roles God has given each of you identify ways you can better help, encourage, and support each other make serving God the focal point of your marriage No matter how long you’ve been married, there is always room to grow in your relationship by placing Christ at its center. With the help of the Your Marriage God’s Way Workbook, bring your hearts closer together and experience the fullness God has in store for both of you.