Passionate Marriage: Sex, Love, and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships Author: Visit Amazon's David Schnarch Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0393040216 | Format: PDF
Passionate Marriage: Sex, Love, and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships Description
Amazon.com Review
Couples therapists often specialize in one or the other--sex or the relationship. It's a ridiculous separation says marital and sex therapist David Schnarch, who believes sex is the all-telling barometer of a love relationship. Schnarch's fundamental lesson is differentiation--the often threatening process of defining yourself as separate from your partner, which inevitably draws you closer to your partner than you ever dreamed possible. Schnarch uses dramatic therapy sessions to illustrate how differentiation doesn't just cure sexual dysfunction; it helps couples reach the mind-blowing heights of their sexual potential. A groundbreaking and truly erotic discussion of adult sexuality.
From Library Journal
Living in a "dead" relationship? Want to make it more passionate? More intimate? More loving? Schnarch (Constructing the Sexual Crucible, Norton, 1991) takes the reader behind the scenes as couples describe similar feelings as well as their explicit sexual encounters during dramatic therapy sessions. The book is divided into three sections. The first section gives the reader a framework for understanding his or her existing relationship so that it can grow. The second section gives detailed instructions on ways to make sex better and more intimate. The last chapters show how sex and intimacy operate together in marriage. A potentially useful guide; recommended for larger well-circulating self-help collections.?Marty Dean Evensvold, Magnolia P.L., Tex.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- Hardcover: 432 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (April 17, 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393040216
- ISBN-13: 978-0393040210
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Couples with relationship problems that they cannot fix and do not even really understand may well find this book to be a lifeline, but they should not assume that following the Passionate Marriage approach will make them happy in the end. Dr. Schnarch's thesis (highly simplified) is that married couples often wind up in "emotional gridlock" because, as important differences between them (such as disparate sexual desire) arise in the marriage, they cling to the illusion that their partner can be their everything. In a doomed effort to perpetuate this illusion, they "manage" conflict by doing things that violate their own integrity (e.g. having sex they don't want to have) or by demanding that their partner do things that violate their partner's integrity (e.g. have oral sex when the partner doesn't really like it); the result, ironically, is that they wind up feeling farther apart rather than closer together.
Dr. Schnarch's solution to "emotional gridlock" is to encourage you to maintain your integrity -- i.e. to "hold on to" yourself -- without pushing your spouse away: to be who you really are, and to let your spouse see who you really are, while at the same time letting your spouse know that you love and value your spouse and the relationship. The result is that you feel authentic in the relationship and your partner is given a chance to know and love the "real" you (and vice-versa). Dr. Schnarch calls this process of "holding on to" yourself while simultanesouly "holding on to" your spouse "differentiation.
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.
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