This beloved book has touched hundreds of thousands of lives with its profound and actionable advice. Retaining the core message of becoming more mindful in our relationships, this edition includes new and revised material that addresses how we live and love today. A new preface touches on David Richo’s experience with the book over time and outlines the key updates, including attention to online dating and modern communication styles as well as new perspectives on anger and ending relationships. “Most people think of love as a feeling,” says Richo, “but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.” How to Be an Adult in Relationships explores five hallmarks of mindful loving and how they play a key role in our relationships. Adult love is based on a mutual commitment to what Richo calls the “five A’s”: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing. Brimming with practical exercises for couples and singles, How to Be an Adult in Relationships offers heartening insights into a lifelong journey of love. Topics include: • Becoming conscious of our relationship patterns and how they relate to childhood • Recognizing and attracting someone who can show adult love • Understanding the phases relationships go through • Creating and maintaining healthy boundaries • Overcoming fears of abandonment and engulfment • Expressing anger and other emotions in adult and loving ways • Surviving break-ups with our self-esteem intact • Understanding love as a spiritual journey

Bringing attachment theory essentials to everyday life.

Your best friend is suddenly cool and distant. Your spouse can't stop complaining about your bad habits. Your son refuses to talk to you. What are you supposed to do? Plans A, B, and C might be to shut down, lash out, or get out. But consider Plan D: Recognize that God has the last word on those messy, conflict-ridden relationships. He can ...

Considering the pervasive immorality and high divorce rate of our contemporary Christian culture, we evidently need a biblically based, theologically compelling, practical understanding of sex, dating, and relationships. Pastors Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas counteract this problem with their paradigm-shifting view of purity and relationships—a view that challenges even the basic assumptions of evangelical subculture. Unlike most books on dating, this one cuts straight to the heart of dating relationships, asserting with confidence that the line must be drawn at "no sexual activity" whatever. Few have dared to define and apply the Bible's understanding of purity in premarital relationships to this degree, but Heistand and Thomas have done it. Furthermore, both authors are vocational pastors who communicate regularly with the target audience and have a proven ability to express biblical truth in a winsome and compelling manner. Sex, Dating, and Relationships adds a new, almost provocative voice to the conversation that, with straightforward theological insight, pleads with Christians to get serious about honoring Christ with their sexuality.

The bestselling author of the Conversations with God series discusses the purpose of relationships in our lives, and how we can improve them and ourselves. We are all involved in relationships. Indeed we are all in relationships with everything and everyone, all of the time. We have a relationship with ourselves, with our family, with our environment, with our work, with each other. Everything that we know and experience about ourselves, we understand within the context created by our relationships. For this reason, relationships are sacred—all relationships. And somewhere within the deepest reaches of our hearts and soul, we know it. That is why we yearn so for relationships—and for relationships of meaning. It is also, no doubt, why we have such trouble with them. At some level, we must be very clear how much is at stake. Yet it is possible to have joyful relationships. In Neale Donald Walsch on Relationships, the author examines the patterns that hinder our ability to build and maintain successful relationships. He teaches us to move beyond restrictive ways of relating. He also explores different types of relationships—with God, with self, with others—demonstrating how they all affect and enhance each other. If you want help in understanding relationships, here is a usable, powerful—and entertaining—key to opening the door to awareness.

Parasocial Romantic Relationships: Falling in Love with Media Figures explores how, why, and to what effect individuals develop romantic feelings toward people they “know” from the media. These imaginary, one-sided relationships, dubbed parasocial romantic relationships, are both profound and pervasive, Riva Tukachinsky Forster argues. These relationships can take many forms, including adolescents who develop celebrity crushes on popular music artist, anime enthusiasts who “marry” their favorite characters, and fanfiction authors who insert themselves into narratives as romantic interests of the protagonist. Through analysis of surveys, in-depth interviews, and historical examples, this book advances our understanding of parasocial romantic relationships on both a sociocultural and a psychological level. The data and theories analyzed offer insights into how individuals can become romantically engaged with people they do not actually know, some of whom may not even exist in reality. Ultimately, Tukachinsky Forster argues that although these relationships exist only in the mind of consumers, they serve important psychological functions across different stages of life and can lead to significant consequences for individuals’ nonmediated relationships. Scholars of media studies, communication, psychology, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

Have you read "that book" on non-monogamy and still wondered "But how do you actually DO this?" Are you totally great on the theory of open relationships, but feel like you don't know how it works in practice? Join Dr. Liz Powell, psychologist, speaker, and coach, as she draws from her education, research, and life experience to bring you Building Open Relationships. This new book is an all-inclusive guide to beginning and maintaining your non-monogamous life, no matter where you fall under the non-monogamous umbrella. Complete with worksheets, discussion starters, examples, and hard-won lessons (i.e. my mistakes), this book will give you all the tools you need to be more successful in non-monogamy.

Using the metaphor of the heroic journeydeparture, struggle and returnthe author shows readers the way to psychological and spiritual health.

Safe People will help you discover why good people can get tangled in bad relationships, how to avoid repeating your own mistakes, and how to pick safe, healthy people for the friends you make and the company you keep. Too many of us have invested in relationships that have gone wrong. Maybe you've been judged, manipulated, or controlled. Or maybe you've trusted the wrong people in the past. It's easy to make the same mistakes of judgment over and over--or, worse, to give up on trying to have great, authentic relationships again. But it doesn't have to be that way. In Safe People, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend teach you that being with an unsafe person can be damaging to your confidence, your trust in others, and even your health. You'll learn that you have the power to surround yourself with accepting, honest, and safe people who draw you closer to being the person God intended you to be. Drs. Cloud and Townsend, authors of the New York Times bestseller Boundaries, are here to share the lessons they've learned in their years of practicing psychology and studying the patterns and practices that support clear, biblical boundaries. In Safe People, they offer guidance for making safe choices in all of your day-to-day relationships, from family and friends to colleagues and partners. Safe People will give you the tools you need to recognize what makes people relationally safe, form positive relationships, and even become a safe person along the way. Drs. Cloud and Townsend share expert insights that will help you ask important questions: How can I learn to pick better friends? Why do I choose people who let me down? How did I end up with this critical boss? How do I attract irresponsible people? Why did I invest money with that unscrupulous person? What is it about me that draws the wrong types of people to me? Why am I drawn to the wrong types of people? It's time to revitalize your connections and finally start enjoying the healthy, balanced relationships that you deserve.

A fresh approach to matters of the heart, teaching us that success in love need never again be just a matter of luck.