Uncoupling

Drawing from extensive research and in-depth interviews, an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to understand—or prevent—the collapse of a relationship. How do relationships end? Why does one partner suddenly become discontented with the other—and why is the onset of that discontentment not so sudden after all? What signals do partners send each other to indicate their doubts? Why do those signals so often go unnoticed? And how do people who saw themselves as part of a couple come to terms not just with absence and abandonment, but with a new, single identity? This groundbreaking book reveals a process that begins in secret but gradually becomes public, implicating not only partners but their social milieu. Enlightening, accessible, and deeply affecting, Uncoupling offers a startling vision of what really happens behind the surface when relationships come apart.

And Then They Lived Happily… We enter our romantic relationships with great love, hope, and excitement--we've found the 'one', so we plan and forge our futures together. But sometimes, for many different reasons, relationships come undone; they don't work out. Commonly, we view this as a personal failure, rather than an opportunity. And instead of honoring what we once meant to each other, we hoard bitterness and anger, stewing in shame and resentment. Sometimes even lashing out in destructive and hurtful ways, despite the fact that we’re good people at heart. That's natural: we're almost biologically primed to respond this way. Yet there is another path to the end of a relationship--one filled with mutual respect, kindness, and deep caring. Katherine Woodward Thomas's groundbreaking method, Conscious Uncoupling, provides the valuable skills and tools for you to travel this challenging terrain with these five thoughtful and thought-provoking steps: Step 1: Find Emotional Freedom Step 2: Reclaim Your Power and Your Life Step 3: Break the Pattern, Heal Your Heart Step 4: Become a Love Alchemist Step 5: Create Your Happy Even After Life This paradigm-shifting guide will steer you away from a bitter end and toward a new life that’s empowered and flourishing.

And Then They Lived Happily… We enter our romantic relationships with great love, hope, and excitement--we've found the 'one', so we plan and forge our futures together. But sometimes, for many different reasons, relationships come undone; they don't work out. Commonly, we view this as a personal failure, rather than an opportunity. And instead of honoring what we once meant to each other, we hoard bitterness and anger, stewing in shame and resentment. Sometimes even lashing out in destructive and hurtful ways, despite the fact that we’re good people at heart. That's natural: we're almost biologically primed to respond this way. Yet there is another path to the end of a relationship--one filled with mutual respect, kindness, and deep caring. Katherine Woodward Thomas, author of Calling in "The One" and creator of the groundbreaking method, Conscious Uncoupling, provides the valuable skills and tools for you to travel this challenging terrain with these five thoughtful and thought-provoking steps: Step 1: Find Emotional Freedom Step 2: Reclaim Your Power and Your Life Step 3: Break the Pattern, Heal Your Heart Step 4: Become a Love Alchemist Step 5: Create Your Happy Even After Life This paradigm-shifting guide will steer you away from a bitter end and toward a new life that’s empowered and flourishing.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Interestings and The Female Persuasion, a funny, provocative, revealing novel about female desire. When the elliptical new drama teacher at Stellar Plains High School chooses for the school play Lysistrata-the comedy by Aristophanes in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war-a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. Or, at least, over the women. One by one throughout the high school community, perfectly healthy, normal women and teenage girls turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don't really understand. As the women worry over their loss of passion, and the men become by turns unhappy, offended, and above all, confused, both sides are forced to look at their shared history, and at their sexual selves in a new light. As she did to such acclaim with the New York Times bestseller The Ten-Year Nap, Wolitzer tackles an issue that has deep ramifications for women's lives, in a way that makes it funny, riveting, and totally fresh-allowing us to see our own lives through her insightful lens. Read an essay about writing The Uncoupling from the author, Meg Wolitzer.

With a fresh, sympathetic and reassuring approach, Uncoupling provides tried-and-tested advice that will help anyone going through a break-up. It is the book that Sara looked for - and couldn't find - when going through the process herself, so she is only too well aware how few places people feel they can turn to for compassionate and practical advice. Uncoupling combines Sara's extensive training in life-coaching techniques, her cutting-edge work with those who are themselves 'uncoupling', and her own personal experience. Her advice will show you how to navigate the pitfalls and will make the process easier. It is all about being in emotional control and Uncoupling will help you build your personal strength so that you can deal with the rollercoaster of emotions more effectively, enabling you to move forwards. It is all about putting you back in control.

What does it mean to be member of a gay/lesbian couple or family? The contributors to Uncoupling Convention: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Same-Sex Couples and Families address this question by drawing on two cultural movements of the twentieth century: psychoanalysis and the gay/lesbian civil rights movement. Taken together, these traditions provide a framework for understanding, and providing psychotherapeutic assistance to, gay and lesbian patients who present with troubled relationships. The contributors to this volume espouse a clinical focus that supplants the heterosexual perspectives of traditional psychoanalysis with new narratives about family life. Drawing on cultural, feminist, gay/lesbian, and queer studies, they illustrate how concepts of gender and sexuality are routinely informed by unproven heterosexist assumptions - both conscious and unconscious. By examining the changing developmental needs and family dynamics of gay and lesbian families, the contributors broaden our very understanding of what a family is. They illustrate how contrasting cultural constructions of homosexuality and family life play out in same-sex couples. They delineate the multiple realities of gender subjectivity, both in children and in their gay parents. They ponder how technology is shaping reproductive experiences, as lesbians become part of the biomedical system. And they explore recurrent themes of feeling different and ashamed, including the shameful secrecy surrounding same-sex couples' financial matters. In uncoupling conventions, the contributors are effectively coupling post-Freudian psychoanalysis with the insights of queer theory and the critical edge of contemporary cultural studies. The result is a framework for addressing the relational and family-related challenges of gay and lesbian patients that ranges far beyond traditional approaches and will benefit analytic, couples, and family therapists alike.

Whether you are uncoupling from a relationship, or find yourself suddenly uncoupled, this book offers sound guidance. Answering many questions to help you navigate the challenges of separation in New Zealand, Uncoupling will help you move through each step and into the next phase of your life. Personal experience and knowledge from experts will answer these and many other questions: Do you know the laws relating to separation? How to pick a lawyer? The range of resolution options? How to reduce your legal bill? How to tell your children - or your parents? Or that you need to care for yourself through this calamity? Out the other side, how do you provide for yourself financially and manage your money and assets? If you are lonely (or bored), what are the advantages and pitfalls of dating online? And if you happen to meet the new love of your life, do you know how to protect yourself in the future? Dip in as you reach each stage of separation for guidance on these and many other aspects of uncoupling.