Best Marriage & Long-Term Relationships
Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work. While working as a marriage counselor for more than 30 years, he identified five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Gifts are highly important to one spouse, while another sees fixing a leaky faucet, ironing a shirt, or cooking a meal as filling their "love tank." "In this unabridged recording of material the author has been perfecting for years, he says that people experience love most strongly through one of five love languages--quality time, words of encouragement, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Without making light of the work a marriage requires, he'll convince most listeners that with just a little planning and effort they can make a good marriage great and a broken partnership truly satisfying again."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I was once asked to read this book by the only person in the world I love.....I refused. It's not a good feeling as a man to agree to read a book on relationships because you feel like you're putting everything into the authors hands.....and what if he "doesn't understand" or what if the advice doesn't apply to us.....what if it makes things worse between us because he advises things we don't believe in.....no....I'm not reading that I told her. I thought no matter what we would always figure each other out and we would be ok......I didn't see being asked to read this book , was a cry out from the woman I love hitting a boiling point and her attempt to communicate to me in a different way......the same things she's been trying to for a long time..... Instead of being some guys opinions or......typical shrink talk that in no way could apply to each specific relationship.......I found it to be a book that opens up the mind to the understanding of love.....and how it is not this one universal "language" we all feel we should be the same with.....I once told her...."nobody taught me how to love, I'm growing....learning".....I pleased with her to understand I love her.......we simply didn't have an understanding of how and why we didnt approach love the exact same way as each other.....only makes sense that it should be the same right? I will just end it like this..... last night I took a stretch that I have been doing for over 2 years and I changed it in a slightly different way....... a lot of the pain I normally get daily is gone....... just to put a spotlight on that sentence .....I'm saying that what I had been doing for so long..... trying to cure one of the biggest problems in my life that hadnt been working............that I continued doing........ believing in and depending on.... to be my much needed answer.......It wasn't until I allowed the idea of the same stretch applied in a different way, that I ALLOWED life to be better for me. You have to go into the book with an open mind because if you do it with the mindset of wanting it to say what it is that you want to hear.....then you can never let the life-changing words happen.......you're learning a language as you read...not what's right and wrong but what was being lost in life. Keep in mind this is a book about the language of love so if you think about when you go to school to learn a different language...you are taking the difficult step of taking time there in order to understand.....be able to take what you understand and apply it.....and be able to communicate in a NEEDED way once you learn....AND THEN USE......communicate and UNDERSTAND eachother."
"My wife and I have 2 small children and our house is hard to stay clean because every room feels like a mess. A big part of improving your relationship with your spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend is to sticking with a date night to make sure you have quality time together. My wife and I have been together for 10 years and got stuck in the rut of an endless routine of doing everything we could for our kids, followed by daily chores and left little time for ourselves. Committing to 1 date night a week has really helped our relationship and improved our communication."
"I have heard about this book for over a decade and I finally decided to purchase and read it."
"I bought the paperback for a friend (I have the Kindle version for myself) so she would better understand my request for Touch and Quality Time."
"Great book, I read a friends book and decided to purchase it for myself."
"Gives you unique insight into how to best communicate your love for your significant other in a manner that best helps them understand how you feel."
"Really comes to show you why people are the way they are."
"This is an excellent book."
Iconic couples’ therapist and bestselling author of Mating in Captivity Esther Perel returns with a provocative look at relationships through the lens of infidelity. Perel weaves real-life case stories with incisive psychological and cultural analysis in this fast-paced and compelling book. For the past ten years, Perel has traveled the globe and worked with hundreds of couples who have grappled with infidelity. Through examining illicit love from multiple angles, Perel invites readers into an honest, enlightened, and entertaining exploration of modern marriage in its many variations. In The State of Affairs , Perel explores a vast landscape of the adulterous terrain... in a way that’s deeply humane and never preachy.” (NPR’s Guide to 2017’s Greatest Reads). “[Perel] deals with the mess and pain of fractured relationships with searing honesty, astute observations and compassion… If your marriage were in trouble, you’d want her help.” ( Guardian (UK)). “In her opinion, confronting and unearthing the why behind an affair with honesty and courage, can steer a relationship back from brink—possibly towards a place of erotic rediscovery.” (Esquire). Her celebrated TED talks have garnered nearly 20 million views and her international bestseller Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence became a global phenomenon translated into 24 languages.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Maybe it was you or your spouse. I keep finding myself looking back at passages and rethinking the relationships I have seen, the people I have counseled, and understandings or judgments I have had about others, rightly or wrongly. But often our preconceived, worst construction on everything the cheater did, stands in the way of ever finding the ability to forgive the person, or see them as human, even when we pay lip service to forgiveness. Esther, brings in real people, real situations, with pseudonyms, and their real thoughts and feelings."
"I started following Esther Perel's work years ago when she did a riveting TEDtalk about infidelity & she authored a fascinating book called MATING IN CAPTIVITY. Both captivated me --not just because it's a titillating topic or because we were finally getting access to the underbelly of relationships that nobody openly discusses-- but because her work is full of human truths. About desire, love, the often inconvenient construct of marriage, egos, the secret longings people hide. Her work lets reality finally breathe.... uncloaked, so we can learn from it vs getting continually stuck in judgment. Without meaning to, she may have written the first guidebook to having healthier relationships (with ourselves and others) in the REAL world, because she tells us the actual state of affairs, not that Face-tuned version."
"I'm not sure I would have had the same appreciation of it had I not gone through my personal experience, but I still think this could be a great book for couples to read together, even as part of pre-marriage counseling or marriage therapy."
"Writing in a very readable format, she also looks at the causative factors in considerable depth providing greater insight into the behavior of the unfaithful partner."
"I picked up this book after listening to the podcast."
"I can't even begin to give this book the plaudits it deserves."
"Very unique and enlightening book!"
"A wonderful listening experience on Audible.com."
As a professor of psychology at the University of Washington and the founder and director of the Seattle Marital and Family Institute, he has studied the habits of married couples in unprecedented detail over the course of many years. Gottman helps couples focus on each other, on paying attention to the small day-to-day moments that, strung together, make up the heart and soul of any relationship. Packed with questionnaires and exercises whose effectiveness has been proven in Dr. Gottman's workshops, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is the definitive guide for anyone who wants their relationship to attain its highest potential. -- Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence "Gottman stays refreshingly down to earth, rather than on Mars and Venus." JOHN GOTTMAN, a leading research scientist on marriage and family, is emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Washington; executive director of his laboratory, the Relationship Research Institute; and cofounder of the Gottman Institute. Dr. Gottman is the author of more than two hundred professional journal articles and forty-two books, as well as the recipient of numerous prestigious awards for his extensive contributions to marriage and family research. NAN SILVER is a former editor in chief of Health magazine and coauthor, with Dr. Gottman, of What Makes Love Last: and Why Marriages Succeed or Fail .
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Using interviews, research, and scienfic data analysis, the authors begin with a startling claim: They can predict an impending divorce with a 91% accuracy just by looking at various signs. In brief, the principles are: 1) Learning to enhance one's love maps. 2) Nurturing fondness and admiration for each other. 3) Turning toward each other instead of away from. 4) Letting One's Partner Influence You. 5) Solve the Solvable problems. 6) Overcoming gridlock over unsolvable ones. 7) Creating shared meaning. Filled with plenty of tips and advice, the authors know that marriage has far more complications in real life. Using direct support for couples, marital therapies, and training sessions, they have accumulated more statistics on the Seven Principles. They claim that couples who read the book without additional professional assistance "were significantly happier in their relationship." The love maps questionnaire for instance, force individuals to dig a little deeper into their hearts prior to answering the simple Yes/No questions. The authors take a break between Principles 5 and 6 to include some modern distractions like the electronic additions, relations with in-laws, money matters, housework expectations, sex, and the ubiquitous nuisance: Stress. Some of the more notable ones are: Six Signs of Failing Marriage. Seven Week Course in Fondness and Admiration. Stress Reducing Conversations. Seven Tips for Listening to Fears and Sadness. Two Kinds of Marital Conflicts: Perpetual and Solvable. Seven Steps to Dealing with Emotional Injuries. Signs of Gridlocks. Four Pillars of Shared Meaning. The Magic Five Hours. ...."
"Read this book just when I was about to give up on my marriage."
"As a social psychologist I have had to read tonnes of literature on interpersonal relationships, both for my academic study and out of interest."
"I got this book for research for a class in my graduate program."
"Bought this to spruce up our relationship."
"Recommended by my friend!"
"It starts off a bit dry filled with lots of data."
"I found this book to be well-written, however not at all helpful for my particular situation."
Best Interpersonal Relations
-Six ways to make people like you. -Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking. -Nine ways to change people without arousing resentment. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to "the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people." You learn how to make people like you, win people over to your way of thinking, and change people without causing offense or arousing resentment.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The realization that my marriage was being effected by my nearly empty toolbox of social skills promoted me to take personal responsibility and shoulder the blame myself for once instead of blaming everyone around me for everything. I grew up with a hypercritical Mother so I think I had promised myself that I would never be criticized again, even if that meant writing people off the instant I felt like I had made myself vulnerable enough to be hurt by them. The strategies are applicable to and helpful in all aspects of my life so far, from my marriage to my job, and even to the way I interact with clerks in gas stations."
"I did think several of the principles explained in the book are common sense, but I found that it could be easy for a person to react quickly to conflicts. The first principle emphasizes the importance of avoiding criticism and he describes working with people as: working with people of logic. With this principle, he describes the importance of self-expression and connects it to the importance of thinking in terms of the other person, so that they come up with your ideas on their own, which they will like more. Dale then describes the importance to recall a person's name in the third principle. He further explains this point in principle five: Talk in terms of the other person's interests. Dale describes in the third part of the book the steps to have a person think in terms of your own thoughts. He then explains the importance of agreement and having the person say "yes," at least twice. If all else fails, he explains the importance of competition and how it drives people to feel important and empowered to work efficiently and effectively. He then explains the importance of asking questions that direct the person you’re speaking to, to obtain your idea on their own. He emphasizes the importance of having the person be saved from embarrassment, and then explains the importance of praise again, even if it is small."
"Don't wish you had already read this in the future when you can read it NOW."
"It's funny how long ago this book was written yet the fundamental truths of human interactions haven't changed for thousands of years."
Best Love & Romance
Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work. While working as a marriage counselor for more than 30 years, he identified five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Gifts are highly important to one spouse, while another sees fixing a leaky faucet, ironing a shirt, or cooking a meal as filling their "love tank." "In this unabridged recording of material the author has been perfecting for years, he says that people experience love most strongly through one of five love languages--quality time, words of encouragement, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Without making light of the work a marriage requires, he'll convince most listeners that with just a little planning and effort they can make a good marriage great and a broken partnership truly satisfying again."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I was once asked to read this book by the only person in the world I love.....I refused. It's not a good feeling as a man to agree to read a book on relationships because you feel like you're putting everything into the authors hands.....and what if he "doesn't understand" or what if the advice doesn't apply to us.....what if it makes things worse between us because he advises things we don't believe in.....no....I'm not reading that I told her. I thought no matter what we would always figure each other out and we would be ok......I didn't see being asked to read this book , was a cry out from the woman I love hitting a boiling point and her attempt to communicate to me in a different way......the same things she's been trying to for a long time..... Instead of being some guys opinions or......typical shrink talk that in no way could apply to each specific relationship.......I found it to be a book that opens up the mind to the understanding of love.....and how it is not this one universal "language" we all feel we should be the same with.....I once told her...."nobody taught me how to love, I'm growing....learning".....I pleased with her to understand I love her.......we simply didn't have an understanding of how and why we didnt approach love the exact same way as each other.....only makes sense that it should be the same right? I will just end it like this..... last night I took a stretch that I have been doing for over 2 years and I changed it in a slightly different way....... a lot of the pain I normally get daily is gone....... just to put a spotlight on that sentence .....I'm saying that what I had been doing for so long..... trying to cure one of the biggest problems in my life that hadnt been working............that I continued doing........ believing in and depending on.... to be my much needed answer.......It wasn't until I allowed the idea of the same stretch applied in a different way, that I ALLOWED life to be better for me. You have to go into the book with an open mind because if you do it with the mindset of wanting it to say what it is that you want to hear.....then you can never let the life-changing words happen.......you're learning a language as you read...not what's right and wrong but what was being lost in life. Keep in mind this is a book about the language of love so if you think about when you go to school to learn a different language...you are taking the difficult step of taking time there in order to understand.....be able to take what you understand and apply it.....and be able to communicate in a NEEDED way once you learn....AND THEN USE......communicate and UNDERSTAND eachother."
"My wife and I have 2 small children and our house is hard to stay clean because every room feels like a mess. A big part of improving your relationship with your spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend is to sticking with a date night to make sure you have quality time together. My wife and I have been together for 10 years and got stuck in the rut of an endless routine of doing everything we could for our kids, followed by daily chores and left little time for ourselves. Committing to 1 date night a week has really helped our relationship and improved our communication."
"Learning what your LOVE language is, is essential to learning whom you should be connected to."
"Our counselor gave us, this book, for homework after our first session. I have been seeing her for the last couple of months and she asked me if I could get my partner to come to the next session to give her a different perspective of me."
"Showed us our similarities, differences, and really how to speak each others love language."
Best Mate Seeking
-Six ways to make people like you. -Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking. -Nine ways to change people without arousing resentment. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to "the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people." You learn how to make people like you, win people over to your way of thinking, and change people without causing offense or arousing resentment.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The realization that my marriage was being effected by my nearly empty toolbox of social skills promoted me to take personal responsibility and shoulder the blame myself for once instead of blaming everyone around me for everything. I grew up with a hypercritical Mother so I think I had promised myself that I would never be criticized again, even if that meant writing people off the instant I felt like I had made myself vulnerable enough to be hurt by them. The strategies are applicable to and helpful in all aspects of my life so far, from my marriage to my job, and even to the way I interact with clerks in gas stations."
"I did think several of the principles explained in the book are common sense, but I found that it could be easy for a person to react quickly to conflicts. The first principle emphasizes the importance of avoiding criticism and he describes working with people as: working with people of logic. With this principle, he describes the importance of self-expression and connects it to the importance of thinking in terms of the other person, so that they come up with your ideas on their own, which they will like more. Dale then describes the importance to recall a person's name in the third principle. He further explains this point in principle five: Talk in terms of the other person's interests. Dale describes in the third part of the book the steps to have a person think in terms of your own thoughts. He then explains the importance of agreement and having the person say "yes," at least twice. If all else fails, he explains the importance of competition and how it drives people to feel important and empowered to work efficiently and effectively. He then explains the importance of asking questions that direct the person you’re speaking to, to obtain your idea on their own. He emphasizes the importance of having the person be saved from embarrassment, and then explains the importance of praise again, even if it is small."
"The values and discussion are as relevant today as they have ever been and this book, despite its incredible acclaim, exceeded all expectations. This book is one of the most useful, important, and relevant pieces of work that I’ve ever read."
"Yes, there is nothing new here but I would say that much like the basket ball star who practices relentlessly the same foul shot over & over again so that when its crunch time, the ball hits the hoop to win the game no matter how much pressure is on."
"I'm happy to have read this--it flows well and many truths to it albeit they're of scientifically argued for."