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.

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.

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.

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.

Integrating the psychology of love and creativity, this pioneering book explores both how a couple’s involvement as lovers influences their creative collaboration and how working together affects their relationship. Representing a variety of genres—painting, sculpture, photography, and installation art—the celebrated couples profiled here include, among others, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, and Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel. Intrigued by this process of "intimate creativity," psychologists Irving and Suzanne Sarnoff (themselves partners in love and work) decided to conduct in-depth interviews with partners in visual art because they defy the supremely individualistic tradition of their field. Whatever their age or sexual orientation, these artist-couples combine their talents to form a collective identity as a professional team. Passionately intense about their shared commitment, they communicate endlessly to resolve conflicts and reach consensus. Providing mutual validation and support, they increase their productivity and the quality of their work; they minimize their fear and frustration and enhance their pleasure in being together. The authors also draw on historical and contemporary literature about similar couples, ranging from Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber to Gilbert and George to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Stimulating and engaging, this book highlights the features of a unique collaborative process, considers the connection between creativity and sexuality, and suggests possibilities for any couple to expand their intimacy.

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.