Rating: 
Summary: Get it Now
Review: My marriage of 13 years had lost almost all of its passion. I was thinking of leaving until I read this book and it compelled me to analyze what went wrong. Afterall, it the passion went from sizzle to fizzle in this marriage, it was likely that it might happen in any other relationship. Once I realized what was wrong, I was on the road to fixing me. I bought The Romantic's Guide -- a book I can't recommend highly enough. There is now more sizzle in my marriage than we have ever had.
Rating:
Summary: best book on relationships i've read so far
Review: Passionate Marriage is the best book i've come across on intimate relationships. Schnarch's focus on the need to differentiate is crucial to the idea of being able to relate as whole, sane adults without losing ourselves to the 'other' in relationships. This is such a difficult concept for so many people who have been brought up on the idea that love and/or marriage are about 'becoming one' with each other, and who have become merged or fused, to use Schnarch's terms. This exploration of selfhood, how to hold on to oneself in the presence of not only our intimate partner but in the face of our own feelings - of abandonment, rejection, loss, fear, anger, groundlessness, to mention a few - holding onto who we are without being washed away in a flood of emotional fusion, this is quite a trick to be able to learn and practice. The thread of this concept is woven right thru the book, into chapters on increasing sexual and non-sexual intimacy, chapters on how intimate connections are established, maintained and lost, and an excellent chapter dedicated to learning how to achieve intimate connection thru hugging. The invitation to eyes open intimacy during sexual contact - or even kissing!- is an excellent experiment. I recommend this book to anyone, friends, clients, colleagues, whether they are in a relationship or not. I figure that if you are ever intending to get into a relationship again, it will help. I guess you could say i think its a fantastic book, for therapists and laypeople alike. One last thing - there is a lot of explicit sexual descriptions. If you are hyper-sensitive to that, I believe the key concepts are worth being shocked for... what the heck, you can always close your eyes for those bits if you need to!
Rating:
Summary: Maps real-life marriage's desolation, milk and honey
Review: No better, stronger, and truer book on the real-life, grow-or-close-down processes of marriage and long-term commited relationships than this one (and David Schnarch's more technical "Constructing the Sexual Crucible", written for therapists). When you are ready, or almost ready, to take an honest and self-confronting look at yourself and at life itself --- including those areas where you really don't think you need to look because you've got it all figured out --- when you are ready to quit blaming your partner for every heartbreak, limitation, and shortcoming your life has delivered --- when you are ready to face yourself down so that you can become the better self part of you longs to be --- than this book is your map. Almost incidentally, you may find that your marriage --- perhaps predictable, perhaps torment-filled, perhaps sexually flat --- may become full of surprises, ravenously and heated sexual, and spiritually, intellectually, emotionally fulfilling. In crisis two years ago, I searched this site for books on marriage and happened onto this one. My much-loved husband of 22 years and I were at a terrible, terrifying marital crossroads neither of us could make sense of. I read readers reviews. I ordered perhaps half a dozen books which seemed promising. This was one. I can remember the crazy deep panic, trying to find something to latch on to, something that would take me deeper, or make sense. I ordered several books that night, and tore into them eagerly. Right from the start it was clear the Passionate Marriage was the key through the locked door, the map through the strange territory, and I didn't need to "wait for him" (my spouse) to change or get better --- I could start examining myself immediately and that, in itself, would create change --- for me. And, because my husband and I were then "fused", in Schnarch's language, any action either of us took changed the whole "elegant system of marriage... which is an engine for personal development." (More Schnarch-talk.) The map, of course, is not the territory. But with this guide and a LOT of hard work on his part and mine, over time --- we made our way through the once-verdant, than desolate country our entrenched patterns of loving each other had unwittingly created. The mechanics of marriage play out differently in each case, but there is enough common in the process of being married ITSELF that Schnarch's reasurrance makes sense. What is that reassurance? That you are not going crazy, that the seeming craziness is marriage working as it should, that, instead of treating the normal if searinmgly painful processes of marriage as pathology we should look at them as developmental, for growth. Once you start to get it, even though it's like nothing you've heard before, you --- or we --- go "Ah-HAH!" pretty quickly. Best of all, it elucidates how to start coming from the strong side of yourself, rather than the weak (the wounded child, poor-victimized-me stuff that is so pernicious a part of our self-help culture, including psychology as usually and wrongly practiced.) PM, as it is affectionately known in our house, is the one approach I have ever found that truly tells it like it is --- "it" meaning the dynamics of grown-up, real-world, long-time committed relationship love and passion. My husband and I continue to go deeper and deeper as a result of the reshifting of many of our most basic and cherish assumptions, which Schnarch's truly groundbreaking work forced us --- painfully --- to do. Painfully --- but with what joy and wonder do I regard the results! My husband and I, through the ideas in PM (note: IDEAS, not "how-to"s) have not only weathered our crisis but learned how to go through crisis and take meaning and strength from the anxiety, to love on life's own terms as two adults, not as two babies in grown-up bodies suckling on the same infantile "fusion fantasies" that love will save everything and solve everything and that you have to feel "safe" in order to love. Through the brave work of Schnarch and our own equally brave work in slowly trying (individually) to live what he articulates, my dear partner and I found a way of understanding that has plainly transformed us and the way we are for and with each other. We came so close to losing each other, and the preciousness of what we have instead continues to floor us. The PM approach is not something you pick up a few tips from and set aside... it is life-changing, and will flow into every relationship you have if you are brave enough to really take it in --- maybe most of all, or at least first of all, your relationship with yourself. I have recommended PM to everyone I love --- now I recommend it to any other reader who is truly prepared to grow up, develop, self-confront, and learn how to love and be loved with their whole heart.
Rating:
Summary: Far Beyond Just Marriage
Review: Simply an excellent book to help you discover YOU. If people are put off by the title because they are not married, it will be their loss, for this book is written for the individual and shows how the individual relates to others, both in a relationship and in general. Certainly, enough other reviews here make it clear that this book has helped their marriage; I personally have found it invaluable in making me clarify my desires for my next relationship. Now I know I will settle for nothing less than this type of passionate marriage and I know that I have the ability - with the right person - to create and sustain it. Thank you, Dr. Schnarch.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding! A MUST READ!
Review: Well researched. Well written. Case-based. Contemporary couples in a relationship who are married or who are contemplating marriage can and will benefit from this book. A must-read for healthcare providers of couples-therapy which may well include psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers.
Rating:
Summary: best of the "self-help" books
Review: Despite the title, this book works well if only one person in the relationship reads and implements his suggestions - unlike other "self-help" books that require both parties to be committed to change. For the first time in my life, I've let go of looking for a reflected sense of self, not only in my love relationship but also with family and friends. Whew! What a sense of freedom and confidence! If you buy no other book, you're doing yourself a big favor and cutting to the chase...
Rating:
Summary: perfect fusion
Review: not done yet, but this book transforms the wounded child model into something that encompasses the big points of it, but goes on to bring us back into passion and personal expansion and responsibility...adulthood. confirms what i was thinking of typical marital counseling and simple-minded, orgasm-centered sex therapy. rock on, doctor schnarch!
Rating:
Summary: inspiring
Review: In Flemmisch sounds "I love you" like this: "Ik zie je graag". Literaly translated this means: "I enjoy looking at you". Scnarchs' book highlighted for me the importance and challenge of looking at your loved one.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I've nothing original to add to the praise below. This is simply an outstanding, accessible book. Anyone interested in nurturing a committed, intimate relationship should read it.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific
Review: This book is extremely helpful in understanding why long term relationships go flat, and what needs to be done to correct it. Thanks Dr. Schnarch--it has made a huge difference in my relationship.
|
