We All Crave An Authentic Experience Of Intimacy. Though our hearts crave intimacy, though our minds understand our deep need for it, the self-revelation it requires is often too daunting a task. Complete and unrestrained sharing of self exposes the deepest human fear of being rejected for being ourselves. InThe Seven Levels of Intimacy,Matthew Kelly both acknowledges and calms our fears, while teaching us how to move beyond them to experience the power of true intimacy.Matthew reveals that each relationship is built upon a pattern of interaction. In the beginning stages, we rely on casual interactions, gaining familiarity by focusing on superficialities and facts. We grow closer and begin to share our opinions, learning to accept each other and embrace the growing relationship despite the difference in our experiences and viewpoints. Once our differences and opinions are shared and accepted, we feel safe enough to reveal our hopes, dreams, and feelings, developing trust. With this trust, we open ourselves and are able to share our legitimate needs, becoming liberated from carrying the burden of our real needs alone. At last, we are deeply intimate and both willing and able to reveal our deepest fears. We are beyond judgment and feel trust and acceptance. By moving through and building upon each level of intimacy, we find comfort and gain trust in our partners and ourselves until, by developing and deepening our intimacy within each level, we are able to fully open ourselves, finally opening to the possibility of truly being loved. It is through mastering the seven levels of intimacy that we will break through to fully experiencing love, commitment, trust, and happiness.The Seven Levels of Intimacyis a brilliant and practical guide to creating and sustaining intimacy, whether you are looking for a deeper sense of connection with your spouse, looking for more fulfillment in your relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend, trying to improve your relationships with your children, or simply wondering what you should be looking for in a partner.With profound insight and the use of powerful, everyday examples, Matthew Kelly explains how we can nurture the intimacy in our relationships.The Seven Levels of Intimacyredefines how we view our interactions with others. This new understanding leads us to successfully create the strong connections, deep joy, and lasting bonds that we all long for.

After multiple abortions and deep depression, Shellie Warren found healing and recovery in God. She draws young women who are dealing with sexual misuse to a place where they can be real and find wholeness and healing.

A behavioral scientist explores love, belongingness, and fulfillment, focusing on how modern technology can both help and hinder our need to connect. A Next Big Idea Club nominee. Millions of people around the world are not getting the physical, emotional, and intellectual intimacy they crave. Through the wonders of modern technology, we are connecting with more people more often than ever before, but are these connections what we long for? Pandemic isolation has made us even more alone. In Out of Touch, Professor of Psychology Michelle Drouin investigates what she calls our intimacy famine, exploring love, belongingness, and fulfillment and considering why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way: when most of our interactions are through social media, we are taking tiny hits of dopamine rather than the huge shots of oxytocin that an intimate in-person relationship would provide. Drouin explains that intimacy is not just sex—although of course sex is an important part of intimacy. But how important? Drouin reports on surveys that millennials (perhaps distracted by constant Tinder-swiping) have less sex than previous generations. She discusses pandemic puppies, professional cuddlers, the importance of touch, “desire discrepancy” in marriage, and the value of friendships. Online dating, she suggests, might give users too many options; and the internet facilitates “infidelity-related behaviors.” Some technological advances will help us develop and maintain intimate relationships—our phones, for example, can be bridges to emotional support. Some, on the other hand, might leave us out of touch. Drouin explores both of these possibilities.

People today live in psychological bubbles. They think that they are the only ones who experience what they do. Person after highly intelligent person comes into therapy thinking that there is something terribly wrong with them. They think that they are crazy, yet do not realize that everyone around them is having quite similar experiences. YOU ARE NOT CRAZY: Letters from Your Therapist ends the psychological isolation. It helps people realize that they are not the only ones who have strange thoughts or behave inconsistently. Psychotherapist David Klow brings deep insight, wisdom, and warmth to this process as he helps readers find new understanding about themselves. Through a series of heartfelt letters to his patients, he relates timeless and impactful information that normalizes life's struggles. YOU ARE NOT CRAZY . . . - Is for those looking to develop insight into themselves - For anyone who wants to have more satisfying relationships - For readers who want to eavesdrop on the inner lives of others while perhaps seeing themselves through their struggles - Uses letters as vehicles for transmitting valuable information and for normalizing the process of therapy - While confrontational on occasion, the compassion and love from the therapist shine through every time

All couples argue, but how do some couples get to what seems like the point of no return? Licensed marriage and family therapist Dr. Tara Fields has spent more than twenty-eight years working with couples, and she has discovered that there are five common conflict loops that couples fall into—and three steps to getting past having the same fights over and over again and onward to building a relationship where each partner feels heard, understood, respected, and loved. These steps include: Recognizing the conflict loop at play Exploring past and present fears Creating opportunities to get in touch with the deepest needs of both partners in order to find new gratitude, respect, and trust Change comes with awareness. When you’re present in the moment, conflict with your partner can become an opportunity to work through unresolved issues and to learn more about each other; it can even become a way to grow closer. In The Love Fix, Fields shares her tested and proven tools to help build stronger relationships, including: Insight from real couples who have repaired their relationships Self-assessment quizzes to get to the root of the problem Practical 3-Minute Fixes you can start using immediately HEARTwork exercises to help you dig deeper in order to reconnect It’s never too late to reignite your passion and to restore the love between you and your partner. Stop rehashing the same issues, figure out what you’re really fighting about, and start enjoying a happier, stronger relationship today.

Marriage should be based on love, right? But does it seem as though you and your spouse are speaking two different languages? #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Chapman guides couples in identifying, understanding, and speaking their spouse's primary love language-quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch. By learning the five love languages, you and your spouse will discover your unique love languages and learn practical steps in truly loving each other. Chapters are categorized by love language for easy reference, and each one ends with simple steps to express a specific language to your spouse and guide your marriage in the right direction. A newly designed love languages assessment will help you understand and strengthen your relationship. You can build a lasting, loving marriage together. Gary Chapman hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio program called A Love Language Minute that can be heard on more than 150 radio stations as well as the weekly syndicated program Building Relationships with Gary Chapman, which can both be heard on fivelovelanguages.com. The Five Love Languages is a consistent New York Times bestseller - with over 5 million copies sold and translated into 38 languages. This book is a sales phenomenon, with each year outselling the prior for 16 years running!

Incorporating the most up-to-date literature in sociology, psychoanalysis, psychology, and communication, this book provides an exhaustive synthesis of theoretical, empirical, and clinical research on personal relationships. Prager explores the complex interconnections between intimacy and individual development, examining relationships from intimacy to old age in their social, cultural, and gender contexts, and constructing an innovative, multi-tiered model of intimate relating. The book also delves into the thoughts and emotions people experience when they behave intimately with each other, and asks how intimate relationships come to be satisfying, stable and harmonious for the people involved. This book will be of interest to researchers, educators, students and practitioners who study or treat close relationships. It will also serve as an invaluable text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on personal relationships, intimacy, and family relations.

Dr. Douglas Weiss offers a 100-day practical plan that will energize your relationship and create a spiritual, emotional and physical closeness that you have hungered for in your marriage. You'll identify destructive emotional roadblocks that keep you from experiencing exciting and satisfying intimate moments with your spouse. Develop a marathon mentality for your relationship, and take the next 100 days to fall in love all over again.

Some really great books just keep getting better! For seventeen years The Betrayal Bond has been the primary source for therapists and patients wrestling the effects of emotional pain and harm caused by exploitation from someone they trusted. Divorce, litigation, incest and child abuse, domestic violence, kidnapping, professional exploitation and religious abuse are all areas of trauma bonding. These are situations and relationships of incredible intensity or importance lend themselves more easily to an exploitation of trust or power. In The Betrayal Bond, Dr. Carnes presents an in-depth study of these relationships; why they form, who is most susceptible, and how they become so powerful. Dr. Carnes also gives a clear explanation of the bond that compels people to tolerate the intolerable, and for the first time, maps out the brain connection that makes being with hurtful people comparable to 'a drug of choice.' Most importantly, Carnes provides practical steps to identify compulsive attachment patterns and ultimately to change or end them for good. This new edition includes: New science for understanding how our brains can make a prison of bad relationships New assessments and insights based on 50,000 research participants A new section utilizing the latest findings in attachment research and narrative therapy to concretely rewrite and rescript bad experiences A redefinition of the factors contributing to addictive relationships

“Over a decade after its publication, one book on dating has people firmly in its grip.” —The New York Times We already rely on science to tell us what to eat, when to exercise, and how long to sleep. Why not use science to help us improve our relationships? In this revolutionary book, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller scientifically explain why some people seem to navigate relationships effortlessly, while others struggle. Discover how an understanding of adult attachment—the most advanced relationship science in existence today—can help us find and sustain love. Pioneered by psychologist John Bowlby in the 1950s, the field of attachment posits that each of us behaves in relationships in one of three distinct ways: • Anxious people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back. • Avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness. • Secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving. Attached guides readers in determining what attachment style they and their mate (or potential mate) follow, offering a road map for building stronger, more fulfilling connections with the people they love.