We all crave intimacy. It's essential to our emotional and spiritual health, and without it we don't feel whole. Yet today our culture faces an intimacy crisis. Many of us, even when we're in a committed relationship, still feel painfully alone.For more than four decades, world-renowned author, counselor, and teacher Manis Friedman has empowered couples to successfully navigate their own intimacy issues and replace loneliness and unfulfilled expectations with a deeply soulful and satisfying relationship. In this refreshingly frank, sensible, and at times humorous guide, Rabbi Friedman and Ricardo Adler share the deeper truths at the heart of our longing for intimacy along with practical wisdom from Jewish tradition-insights anyone can use to recapture passion, save their relationship, and tap into the essence of the true intimate experience.One by one, The Joy of Intimacy exposes the myths about love, sex, and intimacy that separate rather than bring us together and shows how to overcome the greatest obstacles to a healthy intimate relationship. You'll explore secrets to preserving your natural spontaneity, setting the mood for intimacy, and making your bedroom a sacred space. You'll also learn how to increase your sensitivity to the sacred experience of oneness that has the power to transform every aspect of your marriage and nourish all those around you.Whether you are married or single, in a relationship or seeking to create one that is both meaningful and lasting, The Joy of Intimacy will give you the skills and confidence you need to keep your relationship alive, fresh, and fulfilling.

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.

The "intimacy course" hailed by Good Morning America, The Today Show, People magazine and Newsweek contains practical tools to enrich, repair, deepen, or rekindle intimate partnerships. Part of the successfully proven PAIRS Program. Line drawings.

Explores what sex means as part of a loving relationship, and how partners can experience it to its full potential.

Go beyond surviving to reclaim your sexual self. If you have experienced sexual abuse, assault, harassment, or rape, you may feel disconnected from your sexual self—even if you’ve overcome the initial trauma of your experience. You are a survivor; but surviving is just the beginning. This book explores what comes next. Written by a psychotherapist and grounded in cutting-edge research, Reclaiming Pleasure picks up where other sexual trauma recovery books leave off. It offers practical tools to help you cultivate a sense of safety, security and trust in order to reclaim the vitality, pleasure and great sex you deserve. The book will also serve as your compass on a journey toward the rediscovery of desire, letting you explore what you want from others and for yourself. This groundbreaking book will help you: Understand the lasting mental, physical, sexual, and relational impacts of sexual trauma Move beyond feelings of shame Reclaim pleasure and reignite passion in your life Surviving is merely the first step in the process of recovery from sexual trauma. With this sex-positive and empowering guide, you are invited to take your recovery to the next level. You’ll feel emboldened by the desire for better sex, healthier relationships, and a more connected, pleasurable life.

Twelve years after it was first published, The Joy of Writing Sex remains the classic writer's resource on creating compelling sex scenes. Elizabeth Benedict covers all the issues, from the first time, to married sex and adultery, to sex in the age of AIDS. Her instruction, supported with examples from the works of today's most respected writers—among them, Dorothy Allison, Russell Banks, Alan Hollinghurst, Joyce Carol Oates, Carol Shields, and John Updike—focuses on crafting believable sex scenes that hinge on freshness of character, dialogue, mood, and plot. In this revised edition, Benedict addresses the latest sexual revolution, intimacy on the Internet; adds new interviews with Edmund White, Darren Strauss, Stephen McCauley, and other writers; and updates her selections to include examples from the best fiction of the past few years.

From a two-time nationally award winning sexuality researcher - The Art of Intimate Marriage. God's plan for sexual intimacy in marriage is the work of a Master artist and genuine intimacy is like a beautiful masterpiece. Your marriage is going well but you want to make your sex life better and you’re looking for help on how to do that. You want to know what God has to say about how to build a fulfilling sexual intimacy in your marriage. Your sexual relationship has been full of pain, discouragement, and frustration and you need some answers. You have some medical issues that are making sex difficult and you would like to rekindle experiencing mutually pleasurable sex. For these issues and more, The Art of Intimate Marriage provides direction and guidance on how to get there. Creating that masterpiece may mean learning God’s view of sex, gaining life-giving intimacy skills, and figuring out how to work through conflict in a way that creates deeper connection. It may also mean overcoming things in your background, healing things in your marriage, or dealing with those medical challenges. We have the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of God’s loving heart through being deeply known and erotically bonded with our spouse. The Art of Intimate Marriage gives us a road map to experience growth toward a more rewarding, spiritual sexual relationship.

This frank, straightforward guide treats lovemaking as a joy to be experienced and shared, going beyond the usual sex manual to consider sexuality and sensuality in all their many dimensions. Dr. Etkes helps couples to communicate, gain understanding, and break down the barriers that limit sensual love.