What can you do when you see that your marriage has irretreivably broken down? After ten years of marriage, Paul realises that he no longer loves his wife, that they live like brother and sister, and that libido and sex are no longer present in their relationship. They are living a sham marriage. Paul decides to seek a lover, because, for society, his marriage is perfect and divorce would not be a reasonable option, as Paul is selfish and does not like being left alone. Shall he manage to betray his wife? Shall she find out? And what would happen should he fall in love? What will happen to this couple, and how shall they manage to cope with betrayals, quarrels, lies, intrigue, doubts and fears? Shall they manage to overcome all this and stay together? A story of love, doubts, uncertainty, neuroses, and struggle.

This book is for anyone who wants to get out of a painful internal or interpersonal cycle and seek a better way of living.The 12-Step model for recovery and healing has helped millions of addicts worldwide not only find and maintain sobriety but live healthier, happier, more intimately connected lives. But for some reason, this formula has never taken root beyond the recovering addict community. Until now. Kristin M. Snowden, a non-addict and therapist, and Scott Brassart, a long-recovering addict and author, have both worked and benefitted from the 12 Steps. And they have both wondered why-when it is so clear to them that the 12 Steps can help any person (addicted or not)-this proven program for healthy change is not more widely utilized. That is why Life Anonymous was written, with Kristin and Scott using their personal and professional journeys to show how every person can use the 12 Steps to ignite profound change. You don't need to be an addict and you don't need extreme or obvious symptoms such as debilitating depression or anxiety to get something meaningful from this book. You don't even need to be in relationship with an addict. The simple truth is that people in deep struggle can appear to be quite high functioning. The 12 Steps are about identifying what is not working in our lives and making changes to better both ourselves and our relationships. Ultimately, healthy connection with self and others is what it's all about.Whoever you are, whatever your situation, your life can be better. Much better. And the 12 Step process described in these pages can help you make that happen.

A guide for parents whose adult children have cut off contact that reveals the hidden logic of estrangement, explores its cultural causes, and offers practical advice for parents trying to reestablish contact with their adult children. “Finally, here’s a hopeful, comprehensive, and compassionate guide to navigating one of the most painful experiences for parents and their adult children alike.”—Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Labeled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent's life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for estrangement are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren. As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr. Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr. Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible. While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr. Coleman's insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.

After the Affair teaches partners how to heal themselves and grow from the shattering crisis of an infidelity. Drawing on thirty-five years as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Spring offers a series of original and proven strategies that address such questions as: Why did it happen? Once love and trust are gone, can we ever get them back? Can I—should I—recommit when I feel so ambivalent? How do we become sexually intimate again? Is forgiveness possible? What constitutes an affair in cyberspace?

R.T. Kendall has given us a treasure…the hope and possibility of experiencing incredible freedom and peace that can only come when we walk in total forgiveness. One of the core messages of the gospel is that of total forgiveness…not only that we can be totally forgiven by God, but also that we must, in turn, totally forgive others. Our culture is bound up in bitterness, resentment, and wallowing in wounds inflicted upon us by others, wounds that we all too easily accept and even cling to! This revised and updated best seller lovingly challenges believers to look within and root out those hidden and hardened places where subtle resentments and areas of un-forgiveness have been allowed to remain.

Nothing destroys trust like sexual betrayal. Beyond broken vows, a woman who discovers that the man she loves has been viewing pornography or having an affair must deal with devastating blows to her self-image and self-worth. She must grapple with the fact that the man she thought she knew has lied and deceived her. She may even bear the brunt of shame and judgment when the people around her find out. Drawing from her experience both as a marriage and family therapist and a woman who personally experienced the devastation of sexual betrayal, Dr. Sheri Keffer walks women impacted by betrayal through the pain and toward recovery. She explains how the trauma of betrayal affects our minds, bodies, spirits, and sexuality. She offers practical tools for dealing with emotional triggers and helps women understand the realities of sexual addiction. And she shows women how to practice self-care, develop healthy boundaries, protect themselves from abuse or manipulation, and find freedom from the burden of shame and guilt.

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. Fierce Marriage authors Ryan and Selena Frederick think your marriage deserves better. In this new, paradigm-shifting book, they show you how to develop a see-through marriage, one that is marked by full transparency and confident vulnerability. Through personal stories, testimonies from other couples, and biblical truth, they make the case that living authentically in front of each other is the only way to experience love the way we were designed to. If you desire an honest, no-holding-back marriage where you are fully known, fully accepted, and fully loved, you need this book.

A go-to guide on how to confront, heal from, and ultimately thrive after the devastation of betrayal by a partner's compulsive sexual or other addictive behavior The first book specifically for partners affected by addictive behavior that addresses, in detail, how to identify, create, and maintain boundaries as a vital component of self-care and an indispensable tool for healing and growth. Through working the 5-Step Boundary Solution partners will gain clarity; reduce the chaos inherent in relationships impacted by sex addiction; feel more empowered and in control of their lives; discover whether or not their relationship with the addict is salvageable. Vicki Tidwell Palmer is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT), and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) in private practice in Houston, Texas. She is the author of the blog for partners Survival Strategies for Partners of Sex Addicts.

Caroline Myss, author of the New York Times bestsellers Anatomy of the Spirit and Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, presents an exciting, highly original program in this long-awaited book. Based on her internationally popular workshop of the same name, Sacred Contracts is a brilliant synthesis of psychology, healing guidance, and spiritual insight. As a medical intuitive, Myss has found that people often don’t understand their purpose in life, which has led to a spiritual malaise of epidemic proportions. This metaphysical disease in turn leads to depression, anxiety, fatigue, and eventually physical illness. But our purpose—our individual Sacred Contract—is often difficult to apprehend. For this reason, Myss developed an enjoyable and ingenious process for deciphering your own Contract using a new theory of archetypes that builds on the works of Jung, Plato, and contemporary thinkers. She first recounts how the concept of Sacred Contracts took form in myths and other cultural traditions through the ages. She then examines the lives of the spiritual masters and prophets—Abraham, Jesus, the Buddha, and Muhammad—whose archetypal journeys illustrate the four stages of a Sacred Contract and provide clues for discovering your own. With her signature motivational style and stories, Myss explains how you can identify your particular spiritual energies, or archetypes—the gatekeepers of your higher purpose—and use them to help you find out what you are here on earth to learn and whom you are meant to meet. In coming to know your archetypal companions, you also begin to see how to live your life in ways that make the best use of your personal power and lead you to fulfill your greatest—in fact, your divine—potential. In this process, you learn how to see your life—and the lives of others—symbolically, allowing you to manage your personal power without getting caught up in emotional drama. You will also learn how to fulfill your Sacred Contract: what you and only you are here on earth to do. Finally, Myss offers specific guidance for locating your physical and emotional vulnerabilities and healing any susceptible areas. Both visionary and practical, Sacred Contracts is a completely unique process of self-discovery and spiritual archaeology and a bold, powerful work of spiritual wisdom.

One of the world's top experts on betrayal looks at why we often can't see it right in front of our faces If the cover-up is worse than the crime, blindness to betrayal can be worse than the betrayal itself. Whether the betrayer is an unfaithful spouse, an abusive authority figure, an unfair boss, or a corrupt institution, we often refuse to see the truth order to protect ourselves. This book explores the fascinating phenomenon of how and why we ignore or deny betrayal, and what we can gain by transforming "betrayal blindness" into insight. Explains the psychological phenomenon of "betrayal blindness", in which we implicitly choose unawareness in order to avoid the risk of seeing treachery or injustice Based on the authors' substantial original research and clinical experience carried out over the last decade as well as their own story of confronting betrayal Filled with fascinating case studies involving unfaithful spouses, abusive authority figures and corrupt institutions, to name a few In a remarkable collaboration of science and clinical perspectives, Jennifer Freyd, one of the world's top experts on betrayal and child abuse, teams up with Pamela Birrell, a psychotherapist and educator with 25 years of experience.