Secrets to Lasting Love : Uncovering the Keys to Life-Long Intimacy

Rating:
Summary: An **Essential** Toolkit
Review: Gary Smalley claims that the information in this book is revolutionary. It is. Very unlike his other titles. If you are in a man-woman relationship you have 3 choices: 1. Have your relationship far more shallow than you could know. 2. Be doing naturally what is in this book. 3. Be doing what is in this book from it having instructed you how. If you are divorced or going through one, be prepared for it to split you wide open. However, not to be left that way, it will give you a needle and thread to suture you back up. Myself, if I am dating someone and they aren't reading this book and discussing it with me by the 3rd date, there won't be a 4th date. Everyone I've gotten to pick it up has agreed. Read the Intro and Chap 1 and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable insights for all close relationships
Review: The author of this book is a therapist with decades of experience and a successful 35-year marriage. His book is written in a friendly, accessible style. Unfortunately, his informality extends to the lack of an index, list of references, or resource list. It is important to note that, though the author does not spell this out, the book is clearly aimed at couples whose marriages are suffering from relatively mild interpersonal emotional neglect due to passivity and/or passive-aggression. I do not believe the advice in this book would be helpful for couples enduring traumas such as entrenched, extensive verbal abuse, physical violence, addictions, or mental illness.

The aspect of this book I am most impressed with is the framework for Smalley's advice, five levels of communication involved in achieving intimacy: (1) Sharing cliches. The meaningless chatter strangers exchange presents zero emotional risk to those engaged in it. (2) Sharing facts. Stating bald facts about surface events in your life or the lives of others involves the slight risk of getting the facts wrong and being challenged on it. Note: Smalley does not go into the complicated scenario of sharing explosive, secret facts, which can involve an enormous amount of risk. (3) Sharing opinions. Stating individual opinions, concerns and expectations results in greater emotional risk than cliches or (non-explosive) facts because opinions can be criticized--and very likely will be if the opinion is critical of the person it is offered to. (4) Sharing significant feelings. Offering one's feelings, especially one's deepest, truest feelings, brings high risk because we are hoping to be listened to and valued, but we may be rejected and invalidated instead. (5) Sharing needs. Smalley sees sharing personal and relationship needs as more risky than sharing feelings. He offers a simple personality typology as an aid to couples in realizing that a good portion of their conflict may be due to them having very different personalities. (By the way, if this subject interests you, search Amazon for the topic "Myers-Briggs" and really have some fun.) Smalley believes that the solution to dealing with the conflicts inevitably arising out of differing personalities is "honoring." He defines this as not only respecting your partner's differences, but treasuring them, and committing yourself to making your partner the number one priority in your life.

Over the course of the book, the author offers illustrative examples of ways in which couples can become trapped in the communication of strangers and/or casual acquaintances. He states that the door to sharing significant feelings and needs, the realm of true intimacy, is the conflict caused by sharing opinions. He offers advice on how to move safely through this phase by using techniques which communicate "honoring." He believes the latter builds enough trust to permit the next two levels of risk, sharing feelings and needs.

In my opinion, the following relationships are most likely to find this book useful: (1) Troubled marriages. If your marriage is "merely" suffering from interpersonal emotional neglect, and underneath all the problems both of you retain goodwill to each other and a strong desire to save your marriage through hard work, I believe this book would be a good adjunct to ongoing marriage counseling. If your therapist doesn't know about this book, you could take it to him/her and ask to work from it as a couple doing weekly "homework" from it assigned and encouraged by the counselor to help you improve communication in order to gain greater intimacy. (2) New couples. This book can teach couples who are moving toward commitment, who are engaged, or very early in marriage what kind of communication they need to develop, from the start, to have consistent, long-term intimacy. But only IF the pair reads it together and both agree they want to communicate like this. Intimacy is not a one-sided affair. (3) Healthy marriages. People who have excellent relationships already can learn from this book to be more conscious about what they are doing that works so they will be sure to keep on doing it. (4) Friendships. If you are wondering why you feel alienated from or constantly hurt by a certain "very good friend" of yours, this book can help you find out why. It can also help you realize what kind of people you'd like to choose as intimate friends in the future.

Final recommendation: If you find this book helpful, you may also appreciate a fabulous book on healing emotional unavailability in men (most of Smalley's emotionally unavailable clients are men). It is called In the Company of Men: A New Approach to Healing for Husbands, Fathers, & Friends, by Marvin Allen.