Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples: 20th Anniversary Edition Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00126MVC6 | Format: PDF
Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples: 20th Anniversary Edition Description
Originally published in 1988,
Getting the Love You Want has helped millions of couples attain more loving, supportive, and deeply satisfying relationships. This 20th-anniversary edition contains extensive revisions to the groundbreaking book, with a new chapter, new exercises, and a foreword detailing Dr. Hendrix's updated philosophy for eliminating all negativity from couples' daily interactions, allowing listeners of the 2008 edition to benefit from his ongoing discoveries during his last two decades of work.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 12 hours and 30 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: December 26, 2007
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00126MVC6
The relationship/self-help book market is booming. When looking for one of these books you are presented with a bewildering array of "experts" and "specialists", each with their pet theories about where men and women come from or what "rules" you should apply to your relationship.
It is rare to find a book written by an author with solid academic credentials and years of clinical practice. This book is one such find.
The book is organized into three parts. In part I, Dr. Hendrix describes the type of relationships most of us have - "Unconscious Marriage". In this section, he details how our childhood experiences, self image and ideals of romantic love combine to create an unstated power struggle between spouses. Often many books stop at this point, assuming that the reader can now go forth and solve their problems. Fortunately Dr. Hendrix continues.
In the second part, he describes what a more fulfilling relationship might look like, the "Conscious Marriage". He describes how to begin with commitment, stop destructive exit patterns, creating a zone of safety, understanding yourself and your partner, how to begin real self growth and containing rage. He closes by providing two examples of marriages that have been transformed by applying these techniques. The exercises and approaches described by Dr. Hendrix are hard. His most meaningful techniques are not quick tricks but require a lot of introspection and self awareness. As he mentions in his book, many couples may require external assistance (we did). However, his techniques provides lasting changes in the way that you interact with your partner.
The final part of the book is a series of exercises that help drive how the major points in each chapter of the preceding two sections.
When I told a pastor friend of mine a short time ago that I was ready to start pursuing a relationship again he recommend this book. When I noticed that it referred to itself as a guide to couples I thought maybe he'd made a mistake recommending it to me, however, as soon as I started getting into it I realized why he thought it'd be helpful to read even before I got into a relationship.
I'd recommend this book to both couples in crisis and those just trying to make things better as well as to any, like myself, that simply want to work on knowing ourselves better before getting into a relationship. It is also very helpful in being able to form insight into how others relate to us in a relationship, why they expect what they do and why we expect what we do.
Some of the author's insight into how childhood wounds effect us are very helpful in seeing how some of our personality gets formed and how those traits affect both our partners and ourselves. When two people start a relationship they both have expectations, conscious and subconscious, of what they expect the other person to do for them. Obviously in a healthy relationship both people are trying to love and give to the other person because giving and loving and being unselfish are traits we all recognize as being "good" and honourable and most healthy people desire to be good or Godly in some form or another.
What is not so obvious, and what I found most helpful in my reading of this book, is that people go into a relationship with the expectation that the other person will heal us where we were wounded and hurt as children. This unconscious desire to have our partners fill the need left behind by our less than perfect parents often is the cause of the ensuing battles and eventual breakdown of relationships.
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