Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples this question feed

asked by fusionz on November 25, 2006 11:07 AM
When Harville Hendrix writes about relationships, he discusses them not just as an educator and a therapist, but as a man who has himself been through a failed marriage. Hendrix felt the sting of his divorce intensely because he believed it signaled not only his failure as a husband but also his failure as a couples counselor. Investigating why his marriage dissolved led him to start looking into the psychology of love. Marriage, he ultimately discovered, is the "practice of becoming passionate friends."

As a result of his research, Hendrix created a therapy he calls Imago Relationship Therapy. In it, he combines what he's learned in a number of disciplines, including the behavioral sciences, depth psychology, cognitive therapy, and Gestalt therapy, to name just a few. He expounds upon this approach in Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. His purpose in writing the book, he says, is "to share with you what I have learned about the psychology of love relationships, and to help you transform your relationship into a lasting source of love and companionship."

Divided into three sections, the book covers "The Unconscious Marriage," which details a marriage in which the remaining desires and behavior of childhood interfere with the current relationship; "The Conscious Marriage," which shows a marriage that fulfils those childhood needs in a positive manner; and a 10-week "course in relationship therapy, " which gives detailed exercises for you and your partner to follow in order to learn how to "replace confrontation and criticism ... with a healing process of mutual growth and support." The text is occasionally dry and technical; however, the information provided is valuable, the case studies are interesting, and the exercises are revealing and helpful. By utilizing his program, Hendrix hopes you too will be able to solve your marital difficulties without the expense of a therapist. --Jenny Brown


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Falling in love is wonderful, but when the divorce rate is so high that less than 1 in 2 marriages succeed, many people want and need relationship advice, communications skills, and marriage counseling to make sure that their love can last. This book will help any couple find the love they want. Harville Hendrix has more than 30 years' experience as an educator and therapist. He specializes in working with couples in private practice, teaching marital therapy to therapists, and conducting couples workshops across the country. This book will be very useful for just about any couple.
reviewed by alexis on November 26, 2006 10:43 AM

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Dr. Hendrix is the creator of the imago model, which is more or less a breakthrough way for finding and solving various relationship problems. Thanks to it everyone can easily discover the very reasons for even the most serious problems that plague marriages and freeze love, respect and intimacy. I think that it ranks in importance with bestsellers such as lies at the alter and scientfically guaranteed male multiple orgasms and ultimate sex. One of the best things about getting the love you want is that it is directly applicable regardless of whether you want to get deeper understanding about yourself or a relationship. What makes it so valuable are the different tools that Dr. Hendrix has developed and used for a long time and are guaranteed to help you understand and solve many problems as well as to eliminate the underlying reasons. There are also examples which will calm you down especially if you think that your situation is very bad. Even if it is, this book provides 16 exercises which you can use right away together with your beloved one and start solving any problem right away. It is definitely one of the bestsellers, which I believe that every single and married person should have and often refer to.
reviewed by linda on November 27, 2006 2:52 AM

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Just reading this book gave me great optimism about my marriage and my ability to greatly improve it. His exercises provide explicit and practical steps to take to meet the conflicts and sense of something missing and turn them into relationship and personal growth. The book begins by explaining things you never thought to ask, like 'why was I so attracted to this particular person I married?' He then goes on to describe how the things left unresolved from our childhood experience with our parents become the major themes in the new family created by marriage. The explainations have a common sense feel of the truth being told. From the understanding of how marraage works it becomes easy to see for the first time what creates the tensions and what to do about them. As a marriage therapist Hendrix assumes major problems is your marriage. If your marrage is still in good shape he may seem to overstate the conflicts but the descriptions and cures very much on target and useful.
reviewed by learner on November 28, 2006 6:31 PM

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