Marriage Development

This solutions-oriented guide offers problem-solving and behavior-changing strategies for people working on their most intimate relationships. What distinguishes Intellectual Foreplay from similar titles is that it includes guidelines on what to do with the answers it gives. This makes it useful in both creating and sustaining a relationship.

A fascinating look at the key components of romantic love - sex, idealization, aggression, self-pity, guilt, and commitment - argues that romance does not diminish in a long-term relationship, describes the barriers to lasting love, and offers helpful advice on how to promote an enduring love by eliminating self-destructive efforts to protect oneself from its risks.

This extraordinary book presents scenarios of one family's therapy experience and explains what underlies each encounter. You will discover the general patterns that are common to all families - stress, polarization and escalation, scapegoating, triangulation, blaming, and the diffusion of identity - and you will gain a vivid understanding of the intriguing field of family therapy.

Susan Forward draws on real-life voices and stories of both women and men struggling to free themselves from the frustrating, hurtful, and infuriating relationships with their toxic in-laws. Dr. Forward offers you highly effective communication and behavioral techniques for getting through to partners who won't or can't stand up to their parents. Next, she lays out accessible and practical ways to reclaim you marriage from your in-laws. She shows you what to say, what to do, and what limits to set. If you follow these strategies, you will find some peace in your relationship with them.

Is an argument-free marriage possible? Fawn Weaver’s answer is yes, absolutely, even when one or both partners are strong willed, independent, and opinionated. (She admits to being all three.) In this groundbreaking book, the best-selling author and award-winning marriage blogger asks listeners to invest twenty-eight days in learning how to live together without bickering, blame, angry outbursts, or silent treatments.

This groundbreaking guide to consensual nonmonogamy offers a listening experience that feels like consulting with a trusted advisor. Martha Kauppi equips you with the skills to be a true ally to clients who want to explore polyamory. Learn from the expert who trains experts as she debunks myths and shares the exact tools she uses with her own clients.

Marriage is all about sharing: sharing space, sharing joys and sorrows, sharing hopes and dreams. Yet we often hold back a part of ourselves because we fear that being wholly transparent - about our past, our desires, our failures, our faults - will bring judgment, rejection, or even just unwanted friction to our relationship. We are afraid to be fully known. As a result, we never experience being fully loved. In this paradigm-shifting book, Ryan and Selena Frederick show you how to develop a see-through marriage, one that is marked by full transparency and confident vulnerability.

Talk to Me like I'm Someone You Love is a brilliant interactive relationship tool that can help couples stop arguing and begin healing. This revised edition features two new sections - one on making love and another on deepening trust - containing more than 25 new "flash cards for real life", statements that hold the power to express what we wish we could say to the person we love but for which we can't find either the right words or the right tone in which to say them.

You can't put it into words, but something is happening to you. Your stomach churns, your heart aches, and the tension in your marriage is making you feel weary and a little crazy. The constant criticism, disrespect, cruelty, deceit, and gross indifference are eroding your confidence and breaking your spirit. For any woman caught in an emotionally destructive marriage, Leslie Vernick offers a personalized path forward.

Boasting more than one million copies of his works sold, conservative radio personality Dr. James C. Dobson squarely addresses the problem of troubled marriages. He targets infidelity, alcoholism, spousal abuse, and emotional distance as the primary causes of divorce. Dobson also chooses to denounce homosexuality as an abomination. With his groundbreaking theory of "loving toughness", he offers a path toward solving marital problems, building family values, and rekindling lost romance.

After infidelity, relationships can become strained as both partners lose trust and faith in each other. Author Tammy Nelson helps couples regain trust, romance, and intimacy after infidelity by redefining the monogamy contract. The new monogamy contract is an explicit relationship agreement created after the affair that allows each partner to safely share their desires, expectations, and limitations. After an affair, it's impossible to go back to the way the relationship was before, but this book offers the chance for a new beginning.

In prospective, long-term research with over 700 couples, Gottman has discovered certain factors that distinguish happy, stable couples from both unstable, ultimately divorcing couples and stable but unhappy couples. These findings, which are explained here in understandable, nontechnical language, form the basis of his Sound Marital House theory of marriage, which guides the new therapy. This therapy has two goals: changing the marital friendship and teaching couples to regulate conflict.

In this extraordinary audiobook, Terrence Real, distinguished therapist and best-selling author, offers women a set of effective tools with which they can create the truly intimate relationships they desire and deserve. He guides you through the process of relationship repair with exercises that you can do alone or with your partner.

Love is messy. Add ADHD to the mix? Welcome to the emotional rollercoaster you didn’t know came with a seatbelt. Love, War, and ADHD is the real-talk survival guide for couples navigating the wild, frustrating, and sometimes hilarious journey of marriage when one partner has ADHD. Whether you're the one with ADHD or the one holding the emotional duct tape, this audiobook will make you feel seen—and give you tools that actually work.

This popular, science-based guide offers powerful solutions for couples frustrated by continual attempts to make each other change. True acceptance may seem difficult to accomplish, but the clear-cut steps and thought-provoking exercises in this audiobook can make it a reality. You'll learn why you keep having the same fights again and again; how to keep small incompatibilities from causing big problems; what communication strategies really work to resolve conflicts; and how to problem-solve and make positive changes - together.

Marriages today are deteriorating at an alarming rate: As of 2003, 43.7% of custodial mothers and 56.2% of custodial fathers were either separated or divorced (US Census Bureau). One might ask, "Why do so many marriages fail?" According to pastor and teacher Tony Evans, marriages deteriorate not because we no longer get along, but because we have lost sight of the purpose and prosperity of the marriage covenant.

Discovering that a partner has been unfaithful hits you like an earthquake. Long after the first jolt, emotional aftershocks can make it difficult to be there for your family, manage your daily life, and think clearly about your options. Whether you want to end the relationship or piece things back together, Getting Past the Affair guides you through the initial trauma so you can understand what happened and why before deciding how to move forward.

In the perennial favorite Boundaries, Anne Katherine introduced the concept and importance of personal limits. In Where to Draw the Line, she takes the next step with a practical guide to establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries in a wide range of situations. With every encounter, we either demonstrate that we'll protect what we value, or that we'll give ourselves away. Healthy boundaries preserve our integrity. Unlike defenses, which isolate us from our true selves and from those we love, boundaries filter out harm.

Great marriages don't just happen - they're made, intentionally, day by day. Yet most of us enter the covenant of marriage thinking that the role of spouse will be easy, natural, effortless. Rarely is this true. In fact, the number one cause of divorce isn't adultery or finances or disagreements. It's apathy - a lack of intentional emotional, physical, and mental investment in the relationship.

One of the biggest obstacles to a happy, strong marriage is a lack of understanding of yourself and your spouse. With Strengths Based Marriage, MarriageToday cofounder Jimmy Evans and Gallup-certified strengths coach Allan Kelsey give listeners the tools they need to dismantle that hurdle and develop a deeper and richer relationship.