How to Love
Classics
“Most people think of love as a feeling,” says Richo, “but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.” How to Be an Adult in Relationships explores five hallmarks of mindful loving and how they play a key role in our relationships. Adult love is based on a mutual commitment to what Richo calls the “five A’s”: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing. Brimming with practical exercises for couples and singles, How to Be an Adult in Relationships offers heartening insights into a lifelong journey of love. Topics include:
• Becoming conscious of our relationship patterns and how they relate to childhood
• Recognizing and attracting someone who can show adult love
• Understanding the phases relationships go through
• Creating and maintaining healthy boundaries
• Overcoming fears of abandonment and engulfment
• Expressing anger and other emotions in adult and loving ways
• Surviving break-ups with our self-esteem intact
• Understanding love as a spiritual journey
Why is it that, despite our best efforts, many of us remain fundamentally unhappy and unfulfilled in our lives? In this provocative and inspiring book, David Richo distills thirty years of experience as a therapist to explain the underlying roots of unhappiness—and the surprising secret to finding freedom and fulfillment.
There are certain facts of life that we cannot change—the unavoidable “givens” of human existence: (1) everything changes and ends, (2) things do not always go according to plan, (3) life is not always fair, (4) pain is a part of life, and (5) people are not loving and loyal all the time. Richo shows us that by dropping our deep-seated resistance to these givens, we can find liberation and discover the true richness that life has to offer.
Blending Western psychology and Eastern spirituality, and including practical exercises, Richo shows us how to open up to our lives—including what is frightening, painful, or disappointing—and discover our greatest gifts.
Why do most of us search our entire lives for loving and happy relationships but rarely find them? What is the "secret something" that all relationships need in order to thrive? Dr. Greg Baer found the answers to these questions while working with thousands of individuals and couples. In Real Love, he shares his enlightening and practical blueprint for creating successful relationships and reveals the secret to finding and keeping what he calls "Real Love."
In Real Love, you'll discover:
· The difference between Imitation Love and Real Love
· How to eliminate conflicts with spouses, children, parents, friends and colleagues
· How to put an end to destructive “Getting” and “Protecting” behaviors
· How Real Love can eliminate anger, resentment, and fear
· The four steps to finding Real Love
With Real Love as your guide you can begin to heal the wounds of your past and create rewarding and fulfilling relationships in every area of your life.
The Art of Loving is a rich and detailed guide to love—an achievement reached through maturity, practice, concentration, and courage. In the decades since the book's release, its words and lessons continue to resonate. Erich Fromm, a celebrated psychoanalyst and social psychologist, clearly and sincerely encourages the development of our capacity for and understanding of love in all of its facets. He discusses the familiar yet misunderstood romantic love, the all-encompassing brotherly love, spiritual love, and many more.
A challenge to traditional Western notions of love, The Art of Loving is a modern classic about taking care of ourselves through relationships with others by the New York Times–bestselling author of To Have or To Be? and Escape from Freedom.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.
Skills
What is Violent Communication?
If "violent" means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate—judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, finger pointing, discriminating, speaking without listening, criticizing others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, using political rhetoric, being defensive or judging who's "good/bad" or what's "right/wrong" with people—could indeed be called "violent communication."
What is Nonviolent Communication? Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things:
• Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and authenticity
• Language: understanding how words contribute to connection or distance
• Communication: knowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all
• Means of influence: sharing "power with others" rather than using "power over others"
Nonviolent Communication serves our desire to do three things:
• Increase our ability to live with choice, meaning, and connection
• Connect empathically with self and others to have more satisfying relationships
• Sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit
The New York Times bestselling guide to transforming an intimate relationship into a lasting source of love and companionship, now fully revised with a new forward and a brand new chapter.
Getting the Love You Want has helped millions of people experience more satisfying relationships and is recommended every day by professional therapists and happy couples around the world. Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt explain how to revive romance and remove negativity from daily interactions, to help you:
· Discover why you chose your mate
· Resolve the power struggle that prevents greater intimacy
· Learn to listen – really listen – to your partner
· Increase fun and laughter in your relationship
· Begin healing early childhood experiences by stretching into new behaviors
· Become passionate friends with your partner
· Achieve a common vision of your dream relationship
Become the most connected couple you know with this revolutionary guide, combining behavioral science, depth psychology, social learning theory, Gestalt therapy, and interpersonal neuroscience to help you and your partner recapture joy, enhance closeness, and experience the reward of a deeply fulfilling relationship.
Course objectives:
Recognize relationship as an emotional healer; identify triggers, move through them, and come back into ease and alivenessDiscover how intimacy in relationship requires curiosity, wonder, and the ability to find the truth of one's experience deep in one's bodyDiscuss how to speak the "unarguable truth"; utilizing the eight step moving emotions process—moving from stuckness into emotional flowDefine three toxic habits within relationships and their antidotes—transforming our own behavior, as well as those around us through positive attentionSummarize how to move out of power struggles within relationships and into agreements which allow everyone to get everything they wantDiscuss how to live within the relationship you really want moving between contractiona and expansiveness—welcoming appreciations, creativity, play, aliveness, as well as love for self and otherUtilize checklists, tools, and journaling exercises as a way to engage, reflect and explore relationship skills and self-growth
What are the ingredients of a successful and enduring relationship? Love, passion, and commitment are all vital—yet without certain basic skills, even the most devoted partners can find themselves descending into arguments, power struggles, and disillusionment. With The Relationship Skills Workbook, Dr. Julia Colwell presents a practical guide for building a conscious partnership based on cooperation and trust—offering relationship-saving techniques and on-the-spot conflict resolution tools for disarming the explosive clashes that most commonly break couples apart.
In this friendly and easy-to-use resource, Dr. Colwell teaches you essential tools for:
Crisis and conflict first aid—communication strategies and emotional mastery techniques to stop arguing and start connectingGetting unstuck from power struggles—how to shift from deadlock to mutual responsibility and supportEnding the blame game—letting go of accusation and resentment to create win-win agreementsSupporting each other's growth and success—how to retain your personal autonomy while fully committing to your partner's happinessMoving from reactivity to creative solutions—techniques to keep your brain's flight-or-fight instinct from undermining your heart's desiresSustaining love, passion, and romance—how you can choose to create a magnificent relationship together
"Relationships, while seemingly complicated, don't have to be so mysterious," Dr. Colwell says. "What I've learned from my decades of personal and professional experiences is that a few elegantly simple concepts and skills can help any couple through the most difficult spots—and help us transform conflict into intimacy, passion, and ever-deepening love."
This breakthrough book guides you through a series of self-tests designed to help you determine what kind of marriage you have, where your strengths and weaknesses are, and what specific actions you can take to help your marriage.
You'll also learn that more sex doesn't necessarily improve a marriage, frequent arguing will not lead to divorce, financial problems do not always spell trouble in a relationship, wives who make sour facial expressions when their husbands talk are likely to be separated within four years and there is a reason husbands withdraw from arguments—and there's a way around it.
Dr. Gottman teaches you how to recognize attitudes that doom a marriage—contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling—and provides practical exercises, quizzes, tips, and techniques that will help you understand and make the most of your relationship. You can avoid patterns that lead to divorce, and—Why Marriages Succeed or Fail will show you how.
Other
“Over a decade after its publication, one book on dating has people firmly in its grip.”
—The New York Times
We already rely on science to tell us what to eat, when to exercise, and how long to sleep. Why not use science to help us improve our relationships? In this revolutionary book, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel Heller scientifically explain why some people seem to navigate relationships effortlessly, while others struggle through adult attachment. Pioneered by psychologist John Bowlby in the 1950s, the field of attachment posits that everyone behaves in one of three distinct ways while in a relationship:
• Anxious people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back
• Avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness
• Secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving
Attached guides readers in determining what attachment style they and their mate (or potential mate) follow, offering a road map for building stronger, more fulfilling connections with the people they love.
Are you looking to enrich a healthy relationship, revitalize a tired one, or rescue one gone awry? We all want a lifetime of love, support, and companionship. But sometimes we need a little help.
Enter Dr. Sue Johnson, developer of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy and “the most original contributor to couple’s therapy to come along in the last thirty years,” according to Dr. William J. Doherty, PhD. In Hold Me Tight, Dr. Johnson shares her groundbreaking and remarkably successful program for creating stronger, more secure relationships.
The message of Hold Me Tight is simple: Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead, get to the emotional underpinnings of your relationship by recognizing that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection. Dr. Johnson teaches that the way to enhance or save a relationship is to be open, attuned, and responsive to each other and to reestablish emotional connection. With this in mind, she focuses on key moments in a relationship and uses them as touch points for seven healing conversations, including:
- Recognizing the Demon Dialogues
- Finding the Raw Spots
- Revisiting a Rocky Moment
- Forgiving Injuries
- Keeping Your Love Alive
Through stories from Dr. Johnson’s practice, illuminating advice, and practical exercises, you will learn how to nurture, protect, and grow your relationship, ensuring a lifetime of love.
You have a fulfilling job, great friends, and the perfect apartment. So what if you haven’t found “The One” just yet. He’ll come along someday, right?
But what if he doesn’t? Or what if Mr. Right had been, well, Mr. Right in Front of You—but you passed him by? Nearing forty and still single, journalist Lori Gottlieb started to wonder: What makes for lasting romantic fulfillment, and are we looking for those qualities when we’re dating? Are we too picky about trivial things that don’t matter, and not picky enough about the often overlooked things that do?
In Marry Him, Gottlieb explores an all-too-common dilemma—how to reconcile the desire for a happy marriage with a list of must-haves and deal-breakers so long and complicated that many great guys get misguidedly eliminated. On a quest to find the answer, Gottlieb sets out on her own journey in search of love, discovering wisdom and surprising insights from sociologists and neurobiologists, marital researchers and behavioral economists—as well as single and married men and women of all generations.
A New York City therapist examines the paradoxical relationship between domesticity and sexual desire and explains what it takes to bring lust home.
One of the world’s most respected voices on erotic intelligence, Esther Perel offers a bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex. Mating in Captivity invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home.
Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as a couples therapist, Perel examines the complexities of sustaining desire. Through case studies and lively discussion, Perel demonstrates how more exciting, playful, and even poetic sex is possible in long-term relationships. Wise, witty, and as revelatory as it is straightforward, Mating in Captivity is a sensational book that will transform the way you live and love.
“A drop-dead shocker.” —Washington Post Book World
If we all want love, why is there so much conflict in our most cherished relationships? To answer this question, we must look into our evolutionary past, argues prominent psychologist David M. Buss. Based one of the largest studies of human mating ever undertaken, encompassing more than 10,000 people of all ages from thirty-seven cultures worldwide, The Evolution of Desire is the first work to present a unified theory of human mating behavior. Drawing on a wide range of examples of mating behavior—from lovebugs to elephant seals, from the Yanomamö tribe of Venezuela to online dating apps—Buss reveals what women want, what men want, and why their desires radically differ. Love has a central place in human sexual psychology, but conflict, competition, and manipulation also pervade human mating—something we must confront in order to control our own mating destiny.
Updated to reflect recent scientific research on human mating, this definitive edition of this classic work of evolutionary psychology explains the powerful forces that shape our most intimate desires.