Books for Prep | |
 - Helpful in the difficult path of relationships.This book is a bible on the subject of relationships. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Yes! Rating:  - ONE SURE WAY TO MAKE MARRIED SEX BETTERI liked the approach this writer took to bringing back the intimacy to a dead marriage. The concrete examples as manifested in therapy sessions held my interest. It's usually better to give an example than to lecture about something. There wasn't a whole lot of new information, but it was presented in an helpful manner. The parts about sex were good, but I kept thinking about the way I saved my marriage. Books such as this one helped, but the one thing that brought my husband and I back together, and created more intimacy than anything we had tried so far, was to perfect our oral sex techniques. Oral sex is perhaps the most intimate of sex acts. If you want to read the book that saved my marriage, check out Was that an earthquake? The Sensuous Couple's (Flip Over) Guide to Seismic Oral Sex. It's great! Rating:  - ConfusingDr. Schnarch might be well-served to take a lesson from military briefings: Tell them what you are going to tell them; Tell them; Tell them what you have told them. Never was a big fan of that process, but this book could benefit from it. Indeed, that - combined with the good doctor's appropriation of words for meanings other than that with which they are usually ascribed (the book could use a good definition section) - makes for a confusing lurch through an important subject. There is language here that can best be described as psycho-babble: "The process of becoming can lead you to act in ways that still exceeds the limits of your self-image." Or: "At another time in another context, [her] statement was the path of differentiation. Now it was the epitome of emotional fusion." Emotional fusion is bad; "f-ing" is good; one must "differentiate"; one must "self-soothe"; you must survive "crucibles." (Now "crucible" in this context is a seriously intellectual word, but you'd think the author would want to reach a lot more people other than those who understand the word has more meaning that that of a pot used for melting.) I read the whole book - and experienced an almost physical sense of relief when I reached the last chapters where he pulls it together. The bottom line of what he is saying, in a highly intellectual manner, is that good marriages are those in which people maintain their own independent identity; partners are not responsible for the happiness of their partner; only when you come together - aware of your own needs and wants and intent on ensuring they are met (too), can two people avoid the abyss of emotional fusion. Bottom line: be yourself no matter how scary; don't allow yourself to be made a slave to the idiosyncrasies and vagaries of your partner; own your feelings. In short, two halves don't make a whole; two wholes make a complete relationship. Rating:  - Fix your relationship by yourselfIn the middle of a relationship it becomes easy to focus on what your partner should be doing and there are a lot of books and therapists which will feed into this type of thinking. This book explains why you should work on yourself. In most relationships the problem is that couples are too emotionally interconnected. They support each other but if this support is relied on then it hurts the individual. They become unable to reveal themselves as they are but instead as their partner expects them to be. Only by validating themselves will people be able to free themselves and grow. There's much more in the book... Rating: - Wonderful Book, Great Information, Wish I read it year ago.I will put it bluntly. My relationship was on the rocks. Outwardly we were the perfect couple and family, but one day my world crashed around me. This book helped me understand that my relationship to myself is as important as my relationship to my wife. When I started to look inward and understand my own feelings, and then share them with my wife, our relationship started to turn around. (She was missing that part of me, and I was missing that part of her.) This book opened doors in my mind. It is a little hard to read, but stick with it. If you are reading this, I assume you are struggling. I am sorry. Read this book, seek individual and marriage counseling. Also read "Intimacy After Infidelity" even if an affair hasn't happened. It explains the stages of a relationship, the causes of problems, and how to work through them. I wish I was given these books earlier in my life. They provide tools for living. Good luck. In association with Amazon.com | |