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The Heart of Relationship: 5
Ultimate Truths For Understanding the Couple Relationship
The Heart of Relationship delineates five essential truths that
underlie all couplehood: the inescapable fact of struggling and
suffering, the fundamental cause of struggle and suffering, and
the three evolutionary steps out of struggle and suffering. These
three steps are awareness, self-care, and the twin capacity for
personal power and selflessness.
Straight-forward, elegant, and
entertaining, The Heart of Relationship is based on almost
twenty years of the author’s work with couples and thirty years
of his own marriage.
“A delightful, profoundly sage, practical
book that will help any couple find their way.” Hal
Stone, Ph.D. and Sidra Stone, Ph.D., authors of Embracing
Your Selves.
From the book:
Everyone struggles with relationships.
Struggle and suffering are an integral part of being a couple.
This is the first truth of love. If you are just beginning
a couple relationship, you and your partner hopefully enjoy
respect, kindness, generosity, a sharing of intimacy that is
both verbal and physical, a spirit of discovery, passionate
mutual interest, and altogether a great aliveness. Hopefully,
you and your partner share conversations from the heart about
your fears and dreams, a heated sexuality, and leisure and
social activities in common, whether they be cooking, dancing,
gardening, or reading together. For most of us, passion and
connection are relatively easy in the beginning because the
obstacles from the bottom of our psychological sea have yet
to surface.
However if you are like most people, as
your journey of relationship truly gets under way, something
will slowly happen to you. The change is usually so gradual it
may not be noticed at first. What causes the change will be even
less noticed. But at some point you will probably wake up and
realize something is very off. You may look at your beloved and
find that their physical being, which was once so pleasing, is
now less appealing. Certain previously insignificant habits will
begin to annoy you. It may be the way your partner dresses,
speaks, eats, or even breathes. Then their whole personality
may begin to bother you: the way they are too emotional, or unemotional;
the way they are overly responsible or irresponsible; the way
they make, or don’t, make love.
Gradually, you may no longer want
to share with them what is most personal to you - or find they
no longer share with you. Personal, caring, tender conversation
becomes increasingly difficult, love-making less frequent and
less enjoyable, and the life begins to ebb from the relationship.
The early days are so wonderful partly because
new lovers are so eager to please each other, but in the process
the tendency is for each to disregard his or her own needs. This
is exactly what my wife and I did when we were first dating.
At the same time, like many partners, we also pushed the other
too far, disregarding the other’s
needs.
A few snapshots:
- I want
to spend the day alone; she wants to be with old friends.
Instead of telling each other this, we spend the day together.
At the end of the day, neither of us feel satisfied.
- She likes to eat
vegetarian. I like to eat steak. To be amenable, I switch
to broccoli and tofu. This does not make me a happy camper.
To order:
Call: 203.256.9091
Email: bonniectoffice@aol.com
Or go to:
www.1stbooks.com
www.amazon.com
www.barnesandnoble.com
Counseling Brooklyn
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